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I show him a glare. “If you’re sabotaging this spell, I will help the cops haul you back to prison. No point in protecting Juniper from the law if she’s trapped in another universe or dead.”
Ram frowned. “I’m on your side. I’ve always been… even though I wasn’t always good at it.”
“A shark gnawing off my leg would have been better at it,” I said. But I slid my hand against the grass and burned Ram’s symbol into the circle. “When we open the portal, don’t go through it! If we’ve reached Juniper, she’ll come to us, and if we don’t… well, we don’t want to end up in another random shit pile.”
“Don’t enter magical holes, got it,” Jag said.
He can enter my magical hole,my brain said.
I ignored her and started to chant the portal spell. As I let my magic flow along the circle, I thought of Juniper and her aura: a mix of purple and green as quick and dangerous as wildfire and as precise and cutting as a scalpel.
My magic swam over Ram’s new symbol like water over a stone—not quite taking it into the spell but not getting stuck either. Like before, my magic caught on the other broken sections of the circle. Ram weaved his magic through my mine like tangling limbs together, close and almost comforting.
With a burst of power and a tug, he forced my spell to continue past the missing symbols.
This time, I kept my eyes open. Tendrils of sickly green gas rose from the circle and swirled together to form a portal. But unlike the other ones, it wasn’t rainbow-hued. It was green and brown like rotted flesh.
Ah, of course. Our spell was broken and sick, so the portals were too.
It stretched wider like a snake’s mouth. Before I could react, it rushed forward and swallowed me whole.
Well, shit, I thought.
I heard the men shouting, and panic rushed through my blood. I twisted around to find them but saw only swirling green like murky swamp water. I tried to shout, but there was no air.
Ahead, the murk peeled apart like sliced skin to reveal dying brown grass. Houses built in the shapes of small castles, pirate ships, and treehouses clustered together like wild horses against the cold. They were so familiar and so long lost that it made my heart ache.
Juniper ran into view, looming large between me and the Free Jinx village. Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear her. She blurred and vanished as though a dirty window had dropped down between us.
Fucking hell! Was Juniper sending me away? Why would she do that? Or was something else at work here?
The universe spun around me, up becoming down and down becoming up. I landed with a thud on my back, sending a jolt through my spine.
Four more thuds followed, the ground thumping gently under my back and hands.
“Wheee,” Moe said. “We made it!”
I sat up and gaped at the world around me. It looked like Van Gogh had vomited on an image from NASA.
A galaxy hung heavy in the sky above, each little star swirling its light in a halo around it like an Impressionist painting. I was sitting on a wooden pier. The grain in the wood was a rough brush stroke. The water shimmered with the twisting starlight reflected in it like a school of endless fish.
It was gorgeous and overwhelming all at once. I didn’t know where to look. So, I looked at my men instead.
“Holy shit,” Jag said as he climbed to his feet. The Impressionist look of everything didn’t touch us. He was still Jag in tiny shorts and a cloud-patterned jacket with a half grin on his face.
Elliot jumped up and offered me his hand. I didn’t need the help but I took it, just to feel his touch. A jolt went through me like I’d stuck my finger into a socket, and Elliot blushed as though he felt it too.
Moe gazed at everything with his mouth hanging open and his body still, as though the sight was enough to slow him down. Ram just rested his elbows on his knees and sighed.
“Why the fuck did Juniper send us here when we were trying to save her ass?”
I sighed too and shrugged, letting my arms fall limp at my sides. “I don’t fucking know. Maybe it was someone else who—”
“Whoa, dudes! Please tell me you’re from the real world.” A man with shaggy purple hair ran across the dock toward us and stumbled to a stop nearby. “Please tell me you know how to get out of here. I’m losing my mind. I’m not made for this Mario Paint shit, I’m more of a Skyrim guy.”
Moe leaped up. “Hail, fellow Dragonborn!”
“I liked Mario Paint,” Elliot muttered. “It was relaxing.”
