My new rakkhosh fans sent up a little cheer.
“No wonder he was acting so weird all those weeks—so power-hungry, so unlike his normal self. I can’t believe I never realized that wasn’t the real Lal.” Mati’s eyes were a little glassy as she turned the thermos around and around in her hands. “Where is he? The real Lal, I mean.”
Instead of answering directly, I repeated the rhyme the captured bhoot had told us. “A peanut where my garden grows. A pike all the way from my toes to my nose!”
Everyone was quiet for a second, until Tuni announced, in a game show contestant kind of way, “OOO! I know! I know the answer! It’s Ne-e-ew Joi-sey!” The bird did a loop-da-loop swirling dive in the air. “It’s shaped like a peanut, called the Garden State, and covered north to south by the New Jersey Turnpike! The real Prince Lalkamal’s in New Jersey!”
“Exactly! So, we’ll go across the dimensions, then go home to my parents in Parsippany! It’ll be squishy, and maybe we’ll have to borrow some sleeping bags from Zuzu’s family, but it’ll be so cool to have you all there!” My bestie, Zuzu, had a lot of brothers and sisters, and so always had extras of everything. I thought of my own babyish pink Princess Pretty Pants™ sleeping bag and hoped Neel wouldn’t laugh at it.
“What?” I was just noticing everybody’s frowning faces. “Okay, so we can start out for Parsippany right after Neel gets crowned or whatever.”
I expected Mati to be even more enthusiastic about freeing Lal than I was, so I was kind of surprised when she hesitated. She handed the Lola Morgana thermos off to Priya, before replying, “No, Kiran, you’re going to have to go back to New Jersey on your own.”
“Are you kidding me?” My eyes met Neel’s. He looked as confused as I felt.
“Seriously, why can’t we all go get Lal?” Neel asked. “And, like, get some baklava at Kiran’s friend’s diner while we’re at it?”
The mention of Zuzu’s family’s baklava made my stomach growl. Man, all that swimming from the bottom of the ocean had given me an appetite. I grinned at Neel. I wouldn’t mind a nice high-carb visit to the Mount Olympus Diner either.
“Bakla-vah? Bakla-na! Shame, my prince! We can’t let the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers become a part of the Kingdom of Serpents!” sputtered Sir Gobbet. “That is why we are here. Not just to crown you and make you the Raja, sire, but then to urge the people of the kingdom to rise up behind you! Your people need a symbol to rally around, and that symbol is you!”
“Why can’t I be a symbol after I rescue my brother? Maybe eat something? Have a shower?” Neel asked. “And, like, a nap?”
“No, we can’t get distracted.” Mati tucked the end of her pink sari firmly into her waist. “We can’t let our personal feelings come before the needs of the kingdom. Including hunger!” Although she did make a little motion, and another one of the PSS girls brought Neel, Naya, and me small silver tiffin boxes.
“Can’t let personal feelings get in the way?” I sputtered, more than a little surprised at my cousin’s attitude. I dug into some of the delicious biriyani in the tiffin box, chewed, and swallowed before adding, “But Lal’s your best friend! Don’t you want to rescue him? Who knows how long the ghost has had him in that tree trunk!”
Priya shot her a look, and Mati seemed pained. Then she shook her head. “He’s my best friend, yes, but he is going to have no home to return to if we don’t protect it. We’ve got to go on a campaign—show Neel around the kingdom, get support from the common people to overthrow the Serpent King. We’ve also gotten several disturbing reports that Sesha may be planning some kind of an alliance with … well …” Mati’s voice trailed off.
“Who?” Neel insisted.
When Mati said nothing, Priya drawled, “Your mommy dearest, my prince!”
“My mother?” Neel repeated in a stunned voice. “You think Kiran’s birth dad is planning an alliance with my mom? That’s ridiculous!”
“That’s the report that’s reached us,” confirmed Mati. “The people of the Kingdom Beyond are terrified, ready to hand over control to Sesha just at the thought.”
“But that’s garbage!” I snorted. “Sesha and Pinki allies? They hate each other! Last we saw them, Sesha was trying to kill Neel’s mom and use her powers to change these jewels into neutron stars!” I held up the Thought and Touch Stones from my backpack for Mati to see before carefully putting them away again. “And then, after Ai-Ma … um … sacrificed herself saving us, Neel’s mom went chasing after Sesha to murder him and get revenge! No way they would ever become allies! They’re worst enemies!”
“And Sesha’s entire stance has always been very anti-rakkhosh. I can’t believe the alliance is real either,” Mati admitted. “But having Neel crowned is a sure way to squash the rumors. The people will be confident the Demon Queen’s not going to turn against the kingdom if her son is Raja.”
“It is what she always wanted for you, anyway,” I murmured to Neel.
“No way, though, she’s teaming up with Sesha,” he said. “This is just false propaganda, like that stuff about you and Lal when you were competing in Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer?”
I squirmed a little at his words. So Neel knew about those stories linking me up with his brother? They’d obviously been totally fake news, but it was still embarrassing to think Neel had heard the gossip.
“So what do you say, sire?” sputtered Sir Gobbet, waving his pillow. “Ready to become Raja?”
“But …” Neel threw me another desperate look.
I could see how unsure he was. With a heavy heart, I realized that things weren’t going to go as I’d imagined, yet again. There wasn’t going to be a sleeping-bag slumber party at my parents’ house, or late-night giggly stories or all-kingdom pillow fights. Neel and I weren’t going to go on this adventure together, and I wasn’t going to get to show him around my hometown of Parsippany or introduce him to my bestie, Zuzu. But I shoved my disappointment aside. There were bigger things at stake now.
“Mati’s right, Neel,” I said finally. “We can’t let Sesha take over the Kingdom Beyond. I don’t know what his plan is, but it can’t be good. And if it gives the people confidence to see you as Raja, you’ve got to accept the crown.”
“I don’t know …” Neel muttered. Then he took a look around the beach. At all the people who were looking to him to solve this crisis. He whispered in a voice so low only I could hear it, “What if I can’t do it?”
I thought for a minute about saying something nice and supportive, like how of course he could or how I believed in him. But I knew Neel well enough not to go down that route. Instead, I looked into his dark eyes and drawled, “Don’t act like such a 2-D! What are you, scared or something?”
Neel held my gaze for a second longer than he had to, his lips twitching a little like he was trying not to smile. Then he made a snorting noise. He obviously knew I was teasing him, calling him by the insulting name he’d once given me—because I was from a dimension where everyone expected everything to be uncomplicated and easy, for the mysteries of the universe to have simple answers. He sighed, shutting his eyes tightly, like he was being forced to drink some bad-tasting medicine. “All right, I’ll do it,” he finally gritted out.