On Aru’s birthday.
But even though Kara and the Sleeper had vanished, at least Aru now knew where she could find them.
It was almost evening in Atlanta, and the February wind made her ears burn as she stared up at the stone gate marking the entrance to Lullwater Park. According to Krithika Shah, this was the current hiding spot of the labyrinth holding the nectar of immortality, but just for the next ten days. The only way to navigate the labyrinth was by the light of the sun, and now that the Sleeper had Kara’s demigod solar powers on his side, the Pandavas’ chances of reaching the nectar of immortality first were looking, well, low.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they could simply get through the magical barrier surrounding the park. For the second time since they’d arrived, Aru held out her hand. She could feel a pulse of energy near the gate. It was like a curtain drawn tight. She couldn’t push past it.
“I told you, Aru,” said Krithika softly, laying her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You won’t be admitted without your godly weapons. It’s to be expected that the devas would come up with a way to keep humans out.”
“But we’re not humans!” said Brynne. “We’re demigods!”
At that moment, a young white family walked past. The mom grinned at the Pandavas and thrust her fist into the air. “That’s the spirit of the future! We’re all demigods!” And then she laughed and kept walking.
“You okay, Brynne?” asked Mini. “Your forehead vein is sticking out a lot….”
“No, I’m not okay!” said Brynne. “We have nothing. We can’t fight without our weapons!”
“Technically, we could…” said Mini, weakly holding up her fists. “It’d be a short fight, though. Because we’d die almost immediately—”
“Only someone with a godly weapon can control the Nairrata army,” said Brynne. “We don’t have them anymore! And we can’t get into the labyrinth, either!” Her voice broke, and she looked away from them right before she mumbled, “We can’t protect anyone.”
“That’s not true, Bee,” said Aru. “We still have this.”
Aru shoved her right hand into her pocket. Her fingers instinctively searched for her lightning bolt, Vajra, which normally would either be coiled into a glowing ball of static electricity or wrapped around her wrist as a sparking bracelet. Aru felt a sharp ache. Without Vajra, the world was a little less bright.
Aru withdrew her hand. She had meant to pull out the IO(F)U coin from Agni, the god of fire. But she must have reached into the wrong pocket, because instead she drew out half an expired and possibly fossilized Twix bar. While her left hand fished around in her other pocket for the enchanted coin, Aru shrugged and took a bite.
“Aru! NO!” shouted Mini, smacking Aru’s back so hard that Aru spat out the candy bar.
“That was perfectly good chocolate!” said Aru.
“What is wrong with you?” demanded Mini. “You cannot eat that! Expired candy can carry microbes! Some even have strains of salmonella! And if you eat it, you could die.”
“We’re already going to die!” said Brynne, crossing her arms. “Especially if Aru thinks a moldy candy bar is a way to avoid doom!”
“What I meant to take out was this,” said Aru, holding up the glowing coin.
Brynne still didn’t look convinced. “Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to work, does it?”
Aru sighed. Nothing was going her way. She couldn’t even eat some chocolate without the risk of death.
When they’d previously tried to contact Agni with the coin, Mini, Brynne, and Aru had taken turns holding it tight and making a wish. They’d even called out Agni’s name and held it to the sky, but nothing seemed to make a difference.
“So how exactly are we going to find the god of fire, Shah?” demanded Brynne. “If we set foot in the Otherworld and start asking questions, the devas are going to figure out we don’t have our weapons anymore. Everyone will panic. What if they know already? What if Rudy goes back to the Naga realm and doesn’t keep his mouth shut?”
“I think Rudy and Aiden are still at home fighting over who gets to hold BB,” piped up Mini.
BB was what they had decided to name Baby Boo, who had hatched at the museum this morning and had already left multiple singe marks on the floor. Mini hadn’t wanted to take him outside, worried that he would catch a cold—even though Aru had pointed out that he was literally a firebird—so they’d left him behind with the boys.
Brynne groaned. “There’s no way to hide what’s happened to us. Hanuman and Urvashi are bound to check in any minute now.”
Aru flipped the coin between her fingers, weighing a new idea in her head. “Mom? Can you talk to Sheela and Nikita’s parents? The twins may be able to help us.”
“Of course,” said Krithika. “But the girls are still too young to have inherited a godly weapon, so they won’t be able to open the boundary either.”
“But they still have their Pandava powers,” said Mini.
Brynne looked like she was chewing on the inside of her cheek. Like Mini and Aru, she had lost her control of wind, her element. But she was part asura, which meant she could still shape-shift. The only problem was that she couldn’t turn into anything big anymore.
Brynne shook her head. “So what? It’s not like we can make the twins fight an entire battle on their own.”
“I know,” said Aru. “But we need a prophecy. Something that will let us get around in the Otherworld and look for Agni without anyone bothering us for the next few days.”
Brynne kicked at a bottle cap on the sidewalk. “Right. We’ll just pop over to a convenience store and pick a prophecy off the shelf.”
Aru ignored her soul sister’s tone. She knew Brynne was hurting—they all were—but Brynne was taking it even harder than Aru expected. A small part of Aru felt responsible for this whole mess.
On the drive over to Lullwater Park, she kept replaying all the things she could have done differently. She should have worded her answer better when the god of treasures, Kubera, had asked her to decide who could wield the Nairrata army. She should have stopped the Sleeper the first time she’d had the chance. She should have confronted her mom about the truth ages ago.
But it was too late for all that.
Aru squared her shoulders and frowned at the darkening sky overhead before she faced her mom and her sisters. “I never said it had to be a real prophecy.”
One hour later, Aru found herself seated on a barstool at a kitchen counter that seemed to offer everything but food. There was a rotating shelf containing various multivitamins, a deadly-looking blender, jars of green powder, a whiteboard listing the multiple health benefits of fruits and vegetables, and a massive stack of books with titles like Parenting a Prodigy and Unlock the Secrets to Ivy League School Admission.
Across from her, Brynne slammed the fridge closed with such force that the magnets on the door fell off and papers on the counter were blown on the floor.
“Careful!” said Mini, bending to pick up a bright red card with golden script on it. “Nothing can look out of place or my parents will be suspicious when they get back home.”