Chapter 2

Penny’s POV

“Pen, you’re finally awake!” Ivy chirped, sweeping past me without waiting to be invited. “I came early because I really wanted to talk to you.”

I closed the door and followed her into the living room. “Oh? What happened?” I put on my best worried-best-friend face.

She clasped her hands together and let her expression turn hesitant, as if the words cost her something. “You know that jade bangle you picked up at the antique market last week? It’s really beautiful.”

Here it comes.

Of course it’s beautiful, I thought. That’s why I bought it.

“Yeah?” I said, blank and innocent.

Ivy bit her lip. She looked down, then up again, then let out a small, wounded sigh. “I talked to my grandmother last night. She says it might be part of an old family heirloom set. I know it sounds crazy, but… I was wondering if you’d let me have it?”

The nerve of her. I nearly rolled my eyes so hard they would have gotten stuck.

In the novel, this exact lie had worked. The old Penny had melted at the first tremble of Ivy’s lower lip and handed over the bangle without a single question. In exchange she got a hug and a “you’re the best friend ever.” Ivy got the key to the apocalypse. Then she never, not once, mentioned the end of the world.

I smiled sweetly. “Oh, Ivy, what a coincidence!”

She blinked. “Huh?”

“I actually had it checked yesterday,” I said, tilting my head. “The expert thinks it might be a genuine antique worth a fortune. I sent it to an appraiser to confirm, and I’ll have the results the day after tomorrow!”

Ivy’s smile froze. It was a tiny thing, there and gone, but I was watching for it.

I could practically hear her thoughts. This isn’t how it happened. It wasn’t like this in my last life. How was she going to hoard supplies without the bangle? She needed to get it back, and fast.

“Then how about…”

“You wouldn’t believe how lucky I am!” I laughed lightly, cutting her off. “If it’s real jade, I could sell it for millions.”

Something twisted across her face for half a second before she smoothed it over with a smile. “Wow. That’s amazing, Pen.” She hesitated, then plowed on. “But could you maybe ask the appraiser to give it back? Just for a day. I’d show it to my grandmother, and the second she verifies it, I’ll return it right away.”

She’ll claim she lost it after the apocalypse, I realized with sudden, perfect clarity. That’s her plan.

I almost admired it, honestly. It was a neat little trap. She really thought I was stupid enough to walk into it.

Nice try. I’m not your stepping stone.

“You know how appraisers are,” I said, putting on an apologetic frown. “They won’t release it until the paperwork’s done. It’s just two days. I’ll pick it up then, and you can look at it as much as you want.”

She stared at me for a long moment. I held her gaze with the calm, vacant sweetness of a girl who had never had a suspicious thought in her life.

“Okay,” Ivy said at last. “I’ll see you later, then.” She was already turning toward the door, her mind clearly racing. She’d start buying supplies right away, I guessed, and when she got the bangle she could simply transfer everything in. It wouldn’t change a thing.

Oh, honey.

The door clicked shut behind her.

I counted to thirty, listening to her heels fade down the hallway, and then I moved.

I locked the door, flipped the deadbolt, and sprinted back to the bedroom. The hidden compartment slid open under my fingers. The bangle dropped into my palm, cool and smooth. I sat cross-legged on the bed and turned it over, studying it.

At first glance there was nothing special about it. A plain loop of pale green jade, heavy and warm, with a tiny phoenix carved into the surface. The carving was so faint I had to tilt the bracelet under the light to see it at all.

I had read the novel. I knew the method.

I pricked my index finger with a safety pin from the vanity drawer and pressed a bead of blood onto the phoenix. For a heartbeat nothing happened.

Then a soft white light flared, and the bangle vanished from my hand.

I closed my eyes. I reached, the way the novel described it, with something that wasn’t quite thought and wasn’t quite muscle. The room blurred and dropped away.

When I opened my eyes again, I was standing in an enormous, silent emptiness.

I turned in a slow circle, my breath caught in my throat. The space stretched out in every direction, a vast open expanse with a pale luminous glow overhead that wasn’t quite sky. Roughly fifty-four thousand square feet, I recalled from the novel. About the size of a very large warehouse. Compared to the spaces I had read about in other apocalypse novels, it was modest. But I came from a world where interdimensional storage was pure fantasy. To me, it was a miracle.

It was empty except for one thing in the far corner: a small pond of water so clear it looked like glass.

I walked toward it. If I remembered right, that water was special. It purified and healed. In a world of poisoned rain and infected wounds, it would be worth more than gold.

And the original Penny had been ready to hand it all over.

“No wonder she died so miserably,” I muttered, clicking my tongue.

But there was no point lamenting a dead girl’s mistakes. I had a clock running, and it was loud.

Seven days. That was all I had before the world ended.

I left the space, climbed off the bed, and found a notepad in the vanity drawer. I pressed the pen to the page and started writing: food with a long shelf life, medicine, weapons, warm clothing, tools, fuel. I wrote until my hand cramped and my list ran onto a second page.

I didn’t have to worry about storage. The author wanted her heroine to live comfortably in the apocalypse, so the space kept everything fresh no matter how long it sat. Time inside was frozen.

Which raised a question I had absolutely no way to answer: how could a person breathe in a place where time didn’t move?

I decided that was a problem for future Penny.