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“Everything we do is dangerous. We can’t leave Juniper and the others any longer. Hell, they might already be choking on nothingness.” I didn’t look up from the paper as I drew my spell.
“If Alyssa thinks it’ll work, it’ll work,” Jag said, and I startled. I hadn’t realized he was awake. He sat and swung his legs off Ram’s invisible platform, pausing to adjust the jackets around his waist.
Moe groaned and stretched his body its full length before nudging Elliot and rolling off the platform. Jag caught him so he didn’t land face-first on the concrete.
Elliot turned his back to us. “Fifteen more minutes.”
I couldn’t wait for him to wake up. So, I turned back to drawing my amplifiers: one for the center of the magical circle below my cell phone to boost the tracker spell. Another for the edge of the circle for Ram to place his hand on when he cast the portal spell.
It would be better if Jag, Elliot, and Moe weren’t here in case the spell went sideways. But they would refuse to leave, and I didn’t want to waste time fighting with them.
In truth, I didn’t want to fight with them at all. They were my safe, peaceful place.
I turned to Ram. “Ready?”
He frowned but nodded. “I’m dropping the hover spell,” he shouted to Elliot. The other man sat up with a groan, and Moe dragged him to his feet.
Ram planted one palm on the amplifier and the other on the magic circle. For the hundred-and-something-th time, I thought of Juniper, unleashed my magic, and spoke the tracker incantation.
As my magic flowed through the symbols of the amplifier spell, my power and mind expanded so quickly, it felt like I was the Big Bang itself. My body trembled with joy and energy, as though a thousand galaxies burned within me.
I think I laughed, but maybe the sensation was my magic thrumming like a million plucked strings.
Ram’s magic was even brighter than my own, throbbing with power thicker than the visible universe was wide. It weaved around my magic as my tracker spell and his portal spell combined.
Light burst before me, and I saw Free Jinx—or what had once been Free Jinx. The only thing left was a patch of dead grass surrounded by pure nothingness. Juniper and the other witches clustered together with magic flaring in their hands as they fought to hold the universe from total collapse.
The blocking spell tried to close around me like a collar around the throat, but I batted it away. The portal remained open. My heart soared, and I felt like a balloon bobbing happily and freely through the sky, as though a massive weight had finally vanished from my shoulders.
Juniper looked up and even though a portal still stood between us, her gaze locked on mine. She smiled—
Free Jinx shook and turned into one big blur like I was caught in the maracas on Elliot’s grandma’s clit. My stomach heaved even though I wasn’t one for motion sickness, so I pried open my physical eyes to try to ground myself in one spot.
I gasped.
A portal yawned above me, swirling a sickly yellow and green like crap when you have food poisoning.
I yanked my magic back into my skin, ending the tracker spell. Ram’s purple cloud of magic vanished into his body as he cut off the portal spell.
Still, the magic circle glowed green, somehow running without Ram’s or my magic to power it. The puke-colored portal gaped like a mouth with rotted breath flowing out of it. It smelled of an open grave when exhumed. You don’t want to know how I learn what that smells like. The wind beat against my body and rattled the walls of the garden shed. My throat closed off as panic rose in my chest. I met Ram’s dark gaze.
“You were right.” I don’t think he heard me as the wind stole my words.
I had broken the spell. Fuck, by opening a sick portal, I had probably hastened the destruction of Free Jinx and the death of my friends like in the other bubble dimensions we had visited.
“What’s happening?” Jag shouted, his usually loud voice quiet from the cornucopia of wind.
I jumped to my feet. “We have to get—”
Teeth shot out of the portal. Not individual ones like if a tooth fairy had exploded. That would have been fine. No, this was a set of teeth, long and pointed like a shark’s mouth, but there was no head, no lips, and no tongue attached to it. It was just the teeth in a bare jaw.
It reached for me. I called upon my magic, but before I could mutter the word for shield, Elliot grabbed my shoulders and spun us around, putting himself between me and the teeth. They grabbed the back of his shirt. For half a second, our gazes met. His was scared and resigned, as though he was ready to suffer any misfortune, any torture for me.
Then, the teeth yanked him through the portal.
I screamed a spell and let my magic fly to grab him, but he was already gone.
I had encouraged him to be brave, to fight, and now he would die for it.
