“Or…there could be another explanation,” said Brynne, eyeing Kara. “It’s rarely done, but sometimes rich Otherworld families can pay a timekeeper to take a baby and put it in stasis until the parents are ready to raise it. That happened with one of my aunts. She died in an accident right after my cousin was born. Her sister agreed to adopt him later, but she was super young—like eleven or something. So they magically froze the kid’s development until my aunt’s sister was old enough to take care of a baby. Which makes my cousin, who just had his fifteenth birthday, technically thirty. He tried to use that as an excuse when he threw a party and broke into my uncle’s ‘bad day’ cabinet, but it didn’t go so well.”
“Timekeeper?” asked Mini, her eyes wide. “Wait. They can change time?”
“No,” said Brynne. “That’s impossible. But they can hold on to pockets of it. It’s a whole other level of magic.”
Aru frowned. So Kara could be her older half sister, from before the Sleeper knew Aru’s mom, but that still left a lot of questions unanswered. What had happened to Kara’s mother? Did Aru’s mom know about this? Had Krithika and Suyodhana planned to bring Kara into their family one day?
Mini still looked concerned. “Are there any health ramifications to freezing a baby’s development? Does it affect their DNA? What about—”
“Point is,” Brynne said over her, “it’s possible, but it still doesn’t explain why you brought her along.”
“Kara said she knows how to stop the Sleeper,” said Aru, shoving a macaron into her mouth. “And also…you’re not gonna believe this, but…apparently his army is marching on Lanka right now. They’re planning to attack within a week.”
Aru stared at her sisters, expecting them to look shocked. Instead, they looked resigned.
“We know,” said Mini. “It’s all over the Otherworld news. But Kubera, the ruler of Lanka and Lord of Wealth, says—”
Brynne held a finger to her lips, pointing at Kara, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “We’ll get to that, but should we even be talking about this stuff with her around? I mean, how do you know we can trust her, Shah? All that stuff about stopping the Sleeper…Do you seriously believe her?”
Aru pictured Kara nervously fiddling with her ring and thought about that aura of loneliness that clung to her.
“Yeah, I do, actually,” said Aru. “She’s just found out that the person who promised to take care of her turned out to be lying. She’s hurt. She just she wants to do what’s right and doesn’t know what that looks like. I can’t fault her for that.”
Aru’s jaw clenched. She understood how Kara felt, even though her own feelings were complicated when it came to her father. She hadn’t even had a chance to tell her sisters what she’d seen and learned about him from the goddess Aranyani.
Aru had known that the Sleeper had gone looking for the Tree of Wishes, but she hadn’t understood that it was because he wanted to change his terrible destiny to bring destruction upon the world. All he’d hoped for was a quiet family life. But, in the end, trying to change his fate ended up sealing it.
Aru stared around the apartment. It was so clean and so quiet that it was honestly distracting. Where was her mom? And what happened to Sheela, Nikita, and Rudy? They’d all been together back in March, and Aru had half expected Rudy to storm in with a garishly colored outfit by now.
“Where is everyone?”
“Everyone is fine…. At least, we think so,” said Mini.
“We know Sheela and Nikita are okay,” said Brynne. “They’re still annoyingly bad about crossing boundaries while we sleep, sometimes yanking us into the astral plane—which is the worst—but Mini and I have been able to train them in our shared dreams, so that’s been kinda cool.”
“Nikita recently informed me that my clothes are, and I quote, ‘an abysmal representation of my dread powers and hopelessly one-note,’” Mini said, plucking at her black-and-purple tie-dyed sweatshirt. “She’s going to send me a whole new wardrobe. She’s calling it a ‘deathly do-over.’”
Aru laughed, but her smile faded when she saw the grave look on Brynne’s face.
“Aru…something happened the moment you went against the Sleeper,” said Brynne. “It looked like you hugged him, and then there was this huge burst of light. After that, you guys were straight-up gone. His armies vanished, too.”
“We looked for you for hours,” added Mini. “We would’ve gone back to the garden, but—”
“But emergency alarms started blaring all over the place. We tried to call you through the Pandava mind link, but there was nothing but static,” said Brynne. “We didn’t know what else to do, so we went back to the Night Bazaar.”
Aiden, who had been silently observing up to now, reached for Shadowfax. “It might be easier to show you what happened next.”
“At first it was great!” said Mini. “Boo had tracked down the twins’ parents, and he used his Council status to speed up their immigration paperwork. He brought them to the Night Bazaar so they could be reunited! Apparently, the twins’ parents had been looking for them for years, but children under thirteen have all these protective spells surrounding them.”
At the mention of Boo, Aru’s chest squeezed tight. You will hate him for his love, Sheela had predicted. Aru wished she’d never heard that line of prophecy.
“Boo isn’t who you—” she started, but a movement from Aiden interrupted her.
Aiden pinched Shadowfax’s screen, pulling out an enchanted image. A holographic scene appeared over the dining table. Sheela and Nikita ran into the outstretched arms of their crying parents. Behind them, Boo hovered protectively. Rudy’s lip trembled as he jammed a pair of sunglasses on his nose while Mini openly wept and Brynne looked somewhere else. Suddenly, gold rain fell from the sky, each droplet as big and round as a coin, hitting the rocky ground with a loud plink! And then, over the shower of gold, a loud voice announced:
“INTELLIGENCE FROM LANKA HAS FOUND TRAITORS IN OUR MIDST! BY ORDER OF ACTING COUNCIL LEADER LORD KUBERA, RULER OF LANKA AND GOD OF WEALTH AND TREASURES, ALL TRAVEL TO AND FROM THE OTHERWORLD IS TERMINATED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE! LORD KUBERA HAS ALSO HEREBY DISBANDED THE COUNCIL UNTIL INVESTIGATIONS HAVE BEEN COMPLETED.”
The piles of coins started to quiver, and then the gold melted into pools that spread across the floor.
“RUN!” screamed someone in the Night Bazaar. “They’re going to seal the exits!”
At that point, Aiden’s images went shaky and blurred until they finally blipped out.
“Everyone found their families and vanished into their homes,” said Aiden. “Rudy’s parents appeared in a fountain and literally dragged him back to Naga-Loka. Haven’t heard from him since.”
“At all?” asked Aru.
Aiden shook his head.
“Hira has been staying with Gunky and Funky, so she’s fine,” said Brynne. There was the faintest hint of color on her cheeks. “Like, you know, she’s okay, not ‘fine’ like…” She trailed off.