In the headset, Andrew screamed.

Horror turned Jonathan’s blood to ice. The shrink ray fell out of his numb fingers and clattered to the ground. His brain immediately started running a series of calculations as to how the last two minutes could be undone—reversing the rotation of the earth to turn back time or getting access to a TARDIS or forcing himself to wake up from what was surely just a nightmare. Regardless of the how, what he knew for certain was that Warren couldn’t stay dead. Jonathan—and Andrew—needed Warren. Without him, how would they take over the world? How would they walk the streets of Demondale uneaten? Who would kill the spiders that got into their lair?

Unbothered by the carnage, the blond girl scooped all the artifacts on the security table into the open mouth of an unzippered backpack. Andrew’s backpack.

“Thanks for the party favors,” she said. When she knocked the staff twice against the dance floor, a portal of swirling purple nothingness opened directly in front of her.

Jonathan heard his name being shouted through the headset. He glimpsed Andrew climbing up the dais, stepping awkwardly around the pile of yuck that had once been their friend.

When he turned back, the blond girl already had one foot inside the portal.

“Wait!” Jonathan called after her. Even though, if he thought about it, he didn’t really want her to wait. He just wanted to know who she was and why she had appeared only to steal their magical objects and make him kill one of his only friends.

The girl looked over her shoulder at him. She gave a halfhearted shrug. “Later, nerds,” she said. And then she leaped into the darkness. The portal swallowed her whole and closed up, leaving no trace of itself behind.

Jonathan stood, stunned. The blaring alarm sounded far away. As did the whirring gears of the party-bots struggling to dance on their backs, like so many fallen turtles. It was only fear that the blond girl could come back and karate-chop him to death that spurred him into action.

He ran up to the dais, dragging a weeping, blood-splattered Andrew away from the charred remains of the Books of Ascension.

“We need to get out of here,” Jonathan said, holding down the headset button out of habit. “Turn off the alarm, grab the laptop, and let’s go.”

Andrew wiped his nose on the back of his wrist, glaring down at Jonathan. “Who made you the leader?”

Jonathan gulped, looking down at the floor of the dais. Teeth and bone shards mixed in a horrible white confetti. “We don’t have a leader anymore. It’s just the two of us. I don’t want to stand here in a room covered in blood, do you?”

Andrew’s jaw trembled, but he shook his head, crunching his way over to the computer set up behind the dais. After a few keystrokes, the alarm finally stopped. As did the dancing party-bots. Suddenly the warehouse was full of resounding silence. It just felt like an abandoned building again, although now it was an abandoned building that smelled like vampire bait.