I'd Give Up The World For You

Juliet blinked against a sudden onslaught of light and saw that she had fallen asleep at her desk again with her cheek squished against the keyboard. She stretched, yawned, and checked her phone. She had been asleep for about four hours. No wonder she felt so stiff!

She had a really weird dream too. In it she had been sucked into the fictional world she had created and gotten involved in a whole lot of drama with her villain and a transmigrated girl from Ohio of all places. 

It had been a rather disturbing dream. She must have been spending too much time inside Rukelion Blaze's twisted head working on her prequel draft. 

That reminded her! She should really get back to working on the edits for that. Once they were done she could ship the first draft off to Rachelle. She swiped on the mousepad to wake her laptop up and got back to it. The problem was that the draft she saw was not the draft she had written. 

It left off where she had been editing before—when Rukelion Blaze was supposed to wake up alone and injured and take shelter in an abandoned farmhouse—but it was wrong. It mentioned meeting a girl named Veronica. Just like in her dream!

"What in the world?" Juliet wondered aloud.

A horrifyingly familiar voice spoke up in a cold fury from behind her. "That's what I would like to know."

Whirling around in her computer chair, she saw Rukelion Blaze sitting on her couch regarding her with absolute loathing. If looks could kill she would be dead ten times over. 

It hadn't been a dream?! Then how had they ended up back in her apartment with almost no time passing? She had been inside the world of thro for over a year! This didn't make any sense!

Juliet remembered diving for him, certain he was about to burn the world to the ground like he had between Throne of Fire and Down in Flames. Deep down she had known there was nothing she could do to stop him but she felt so horribly responsible for what happened to Daisy that she had to try anyway. 

Wait. Daisy. If he was here…then she was really dead and it was basically her fault for bringing Demetria onboard with her plan. 

Rukelion had to know that. He had woken up before her so why hadn't he killed her? Wouldn't that be the first thing on his mind knowing she was involved in the deaths of his wife and unborn child? 

"How are you here?!" Juliet screeched, unable to ask 'why haven't you killed me?'

"I assume this is your dwelling," he said in the same terrifying voice. One that promised total destruction if she didn't do exactly what he wanted her to. "There are pictures of you all over the walls."

"…yeah. This is my apartment."

"I thought so. I've heard Daisy use the word apartment and she did say the two of you were from the same place. I wondered if she would come back to this world or end up somewhere else. It seems that I'm close even if you did stupidly knock me off course."

Juliet stared at him uncomprehendingly. "Hang on, you were trying to find Daisy by lighting the world on fire?"

Rukelion looked at her with utmost contempt. "Obviously. I was trying to locate her soul and managed to do it before you interfered. She isn't here or I would be able to sense her. So where. Is. She."

Oh. Oh dear. This was bad. She couldn't possibly think of a way for this to be worse because someone she knew had no regard for human life AND had a personal grudge against her was in her house and she had no way to give him what he wanted. 

"How am I supposed to know? She could be anywhere—anyone!—and I would have absolutely no way of knowing that. Her body back in Mirea died so her soul could have ended up in any number of people. That's what happened when she died the first time."

That was not what Rukelion wanted to hear. He burst into flames and she screamed. He immediately realized what he had done and extinguished himself, looking as though it was done with great effort. 

"You're telling me you don't even have a starting point for reference?" he asked in a deadly tone. 

"I don't know! She might have gone back to Ohio but she could be on the other side of the world. It's impossible to tell. If she had a body to return to that would be one thing but why would she go to Mirea in the first place if she did? She would have to be in some sort of coma."

Juliet realized something that might save her hide and was quick to add, "But she might have been! I was in Mirea for over a year and it's only been four hours since I left here. She was there for eight, wasn't she?" 

"Yes."

She whipped out her phone and did some quick math, running several different calculations to be sure since it wasn't her strong suit. She had always been more humanities-minded than math-minded and she couldn't screw this up. Her life was on the line!

Geez. She never thought that math might actually save her life someday. She owed her tenth grade Algebra I teacher an apology. 

"If I'm right—and I'm not sure if I am, mind you—Daisy has been gone from this world for less than a week. Knowing that, she might have gone back to her original body. What do you know about her? I might be able to help you track her down."

A tiny flicker of hope crossed his stony face before he let out a sigh of frustration and threw his hands in the air. He began pacing erratically and Juliet genuinely feared for her safety as he did so. The man was unhinged. 

"Not nearly enough! I know she's from the country of Ohio, she was something called an accountant that worked with numbers, and that she lived in a one-room apartment filled with plants. I don't even know her last name. How did I never ask for such a basic piece of information?!"

"Uh…Ohio isn't a country."

"What?"

Juliet was frightened by the look in his eyes as he turned on her but she had to persevere because she had been stupid enough to speak up in the first place while he was ranting. 

"Ohio isn't a country. It's a state. Kind of like a territory within a country. We're in the United States of America in the state of Pennsylvania right now. Ohio is directly to the west of here but it's a big place…did she never say which city she was from?"

"No but she said it was big. I don't know what that qualifier means here as opposed to back in Mirea," Rukelion said, sounding more rational than he had a moment before. She couldn't let her guard down though. 

Juliet might be able to work with this. "Okay! Big cities in Ohio. Let me look that up."

She immediately did an internet search on 'biggest cities in Ohio' and narrowed it down to the five most likely possibilities. People didn't tend to say they were from a big city if they didn't reach a certain set of standards in terms of size and population. 

"The most likely places she would be from are Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, or Akron.. All of those are like, less than five hours from here by car. Let me try something else here…hang on…" 

Juliet logged into Facebook and began doing a search for the name Daisy in all five of those cities. She realized this wasn't a perfect method but she was no private investigator. She couldn't afford one either but she had to try to keep this psychopath happy so he wouldn't kill her. 

Oh boy. There were a lot more people named Daisy than she thought. And here she had labored under the delusion that it was an uncommon name!

This wasn't going to work. She needed to try something else. What if she looked up car crashes in all of those cities within the past week? She was pretty sure Daisy said she died in a car accident. 

This might tell her if she had gone back to her original body or not at the very least. If any article she found said 'died at the scene' or something like that they were back to square one. But if she had been in the hospital unconscious for a week or less it was possible that her soul could have traveled to Mirea and lived those eight years out because time flowed differently between the two worlds. 

That would explain why she had known that Adele song that should have come out after she landed in another world. Because she hadn't actually been gone for eight years here. 

Juliet checked and found a few different options fitting the time frame but couldn't find the name Daisy. Unless people died, their privacy was protected and they were referred to using generics. 

There were a few fatal accidents involving women but none were named Daisy. The non-fatal but life-threatening ones in that time frame involving unnamed women happened in Cleveland and Cincinnati. 

Not very helpful. She couldn't exactly set this crazy person loose on two whole cities.. He would likely burn everything down trying to find his wife.