Chapter 1

My husband found a magic lamp that could carry him through time into a future world.

One day, he and his mother both vanished for ten days.

When they came back, my mother-in-law's ramblings only got wilder.

"We traveled to the year 2026. High-rises everywhere, and Arthur even married a rich man's daughter."

"We lived in a two-story house with people to wait on us. No firewood to chop, no cooking to do ourselves."

"The rich girl was carrying Arthur's child too. She said if it's a boy, she'd marry our Arthur."

I thought she'd lost her mind. I didn't take it to heart.

But after that, every single month, she and my husband disappeared for ten days.

Until the day I went into labor. I hemorrhaged, and neither of them was anywhere to be found.

Covered in blood, I crawled to Mrs. Chavez's door and knocked.

By the time she got me to the clinic, the baby was already dead inside me.

I dragged myself home, torn open with grief, only to find that the two of them had killed the one rooster we owned and packed our last ten farm-fresh eggs into a bag.

My mother-in-law shot me a look of disgust. "Useless thing, can't even hold on to a baby. Good thing my rich daughter-in-law gave me a fat healthy grandson."

"I'm taking this chicken and these eggs to build her strength back up. You can make do at home with some flatbread and foraged greens."

My husband didn't say a word. But his fist tightened around the bag.

Then the two of them vanished again.

I took the magic lamp my husband kept on the altar in the prayer room, and I raised it high.

Travel through time?

Fine. Let them go and never come back.

"Don't smash it!"

"I can grant you three wishes."

I stared at the lamp in my hands and, doubting, lifted it to my ear.

"You're talking?"

The lamp flickered once. "It's me."

"Your husband found me. I granted him three wishes. I sent him to the year 2026, gave him a rich wife, and gave him a son."

I stood frozen, staring at the lamp in my hands. So it was all true.

Arthur Dickerson really had used this lamp to go to the future, to take a wife and have a child.

My trembling hand came to rest carefully on my flat belly. While he was celebrating a son with another woman, our child had been smothered to death inside me.

"Do you envy him? If you're willing, I can grant you three wishes too. There's nothing I can't do."

The hand holding the lamp gave a small shudder.

"What's the price?"

The lamp's glow swelled a little. "You trade something belonging to you, or to someone of your blood."

"Your husband traded the life of his unborn child for his three wishes."

At that, my legs gave out and I dropped to the floor, tears running down before I could stop them.

Arthur Dickerson and I had been married five years. My first two pregnancies never made it.

This one I'd finally carried to full term, and he'd killed it for his own selfish wants.

If he could use the lamp to take my child's life, then I would use the lamp to make him pay in blood.

I clutched the lamp tight. "I want to trade my husband's life for three wishes."

The lamp dimmed. "I can't take the life or the years of someone already living. You can try something else."

Something else?

Weak as I was, I pushed myself up off the floor and stared at the photo pasted to the cabinet door, the three of us together: me, my mother-in-law, and Arthur Dickerson.

A rich wife?

A fat healthy grandson?

A future world?

I pulled my mouth into a cold smile. "I want to trade my husband's fertility for the rest of his life for three wishes."

The lamp blazed, almost blinding. "Done. Speak your wishes, and I will grant them all."

"I want him to lose his wife and his child."

"I want them trapped here forever, never to see that future world again."

"I want to become the richest businesswoman in the county."