I had a bad feeling. “A what?”
“The jewel from a powerful python’s head. And of course, the place to get that is the underworld Kingdom of Serpents.” He waited a beat. “Your father’s kingdom.”
“My birth father,” I corrected. I’d made up my mind: I wasn’t going to buy into that movie-of-the-week sap—like I was supposed to run into the arms of some dude who’d tried to kill me when I was a baby. Just because he’d donated his genes to my existence didn’t make him Daddy Dearest. I mean, the Rakkhoshi Queen was Neel’s mom and had actually raised him, but you didn’t see him making any “I Heart My Demonic Mama” clay spitoons for her in art class.
“It’s our only choice. Luckily, I have a working map to the serpent kingdom. And there are no other ways to decode something written in Tangra fish juice. At least that exist in this world.”
“What—there’s another way?” I jumped on his hesitation.
Neel nodded. “Lal and I discovered it by mistake when we were trying to get to your house. We didn’t realize the New Jersey map we had was encoded—probably written with Bhetki fish scales—until it was too late. We didn’t think we’d ever make it to Parsippany in time to save you when Lal knocked his Giant Gulpie over on the paper.”
I remembered Lal’s love of soda fountains and fizzy drinks. And what was it that they had been arguing about when I opened the door? If it wasn’t for that Giant Gulpie, we wouldn’t have found her at all?
“So he spilled soda on the map, and the hidden ink showed itself?”
“Yup. I don’t suppose you brought some with you?”
I shook my head, and was about to say something, when Neel went on. “Wait a minute, what’s this writing on the other side of the map?”
“What?” Maybe Ma hadn’t kept everything encoded.
But the opposite side of the map just held a note, written in Ma’s handwriting:
You might get thirsty on your travels. Why not take some pek-pek with you?
Blast. That didn’t help. It was also a code, just a lot simpler than the one in Tangra juice. No one but me and my parents would know that as a kid, I pronounced the word for a brand of soda like peksi and that, over the years, the word had become pek-pek in our family.
I explained that to Neel, who wasn’t that amused by my childhood anecdote. “Your Ma wanted to make sure no one else could follow the map to Maya Pahar,” he growled, “and she gave you this clue to figure out how to decode the map. She went to all this trouble and you couldn’t bother to bring a can of soda with you?”
“Uh, if you’ll remember, Your Imperial Oh-So-Super Royal Highness, I was a little occupied right when we left New Jersey. I was saving Lal’s butt from that rakkhosh on my lawn, while you, his big, strong half-demon older brother, sat around and did nothing.”
“I would have gotten around to saving him,” Neel countered. “I saved you, didn’t I? Not that you seem particularly grateful.”
“Grateful?” I snorted. “Since I’ve met you, my house has been destroyed, my parents have disappeared, I’ve almost been eaten by a tantruming transit officer, then practically got arrested for stealing someone’s moustache”—I took a breath—“I got beaned with guava seeds by a delusional bird, and pretty near got devoured by your demon mother.”
“And you’ve loved every minute of it,” Neel drawled, finally smiling for the first time in what felt like forever.
The thing was, I kind of had.
Neel and I left almost right away to find a python jewel in the Kingdom of Serpents. Without one, we couldn’t read the moving map and had no hope of finding Maya Pahar.
The journey started off fine enough. The night sky was clear with perfect visibility. But it wasn’t long after we started, Neel on Midnight and me on Snowy, that I knew something was wrong. At first, it was just a feeling in the cold night air that made goose bumps come up on my arms. Then it was the faint flapping sound that I could hear off-time from either Midnight or Snowy’s wing motions. Finally, it was the smell: the sort of scent that filled up our convenience store van once when Baba forgot to close the vents and we were driving right behind a giant garbage truck.
Neel and Midnight slowed down, until they were flying next to Snowy and me.
“I think there’s someone following us,” I said, gesturing behind us into the night.
“Rakkhosh,” Neel said flatly. “I smelled them almost as soon as we left.”
“We’re being followed by demons? What do we do?”
Sensing my tension, Snowy bucked and snorted. “Whoa, boy, take it easy.” I patted his soft neck.
“We ride faster and try to lose them. If we’re lucky, it’s just a coincidence, and they’re heading somewhere else and won’t follow.” With that, Neel whispered something into first Midnight’s ear and then Snowy’s, and the pakkhiraj horses took off like shots. I almost couldn’t catch my breath, we were riding so fast, but as soon as I got used to our new speed, I realized the sound of chasing wings had also grown faster. And louder. Not to mention how intense the smell of garbage was getting.
“We’re going to have to outrun them,” Neel called from Midnight. “Rakkhosh are afraid of snakes. They’ll never follow us all the way to the Kingdom of Serpents.”
I really hoped he was right. Midnight swooped to the left in a complex and unexpected zigzag and Snowy followed. I couldn’t help letting out a choked scream.
As we regained altitude, though, something else made me want to scream even more.
“Neel is dreamy! Neel is sweet!” a cackling voice called from somewhere behind me. “Prince Neel’s toes are a great treat!”
That was all the incentive I needed to urge Snowy to go faster. The rakkhoshi knew who we were. This was no coincidence. They were after us. They were going to catch up to us soon. They were already telling us how they were going to eat us, starting with Neel’s feet. I remembered what Baba had said about rakkhosh using the bones of their victims as toothpicks, and felt like I was going to die for sure.
But when I looked over at Neel, I realized he didn’t look as scared as he did just a minute ago. In fact, he kept looking over his shoulder with a confused expression, like—could it be?—he recognized the rakkhoshi’s voice?
I took the risk of looking back at the demons now close behind us. Though it was dark, they were lit up with an inner green glow. They were a group of young rakkhoshis in saris and earrings, their unbound dark hair flying, wings flapping, and fangs glinting in the unnatural green light. They were flying in a bunch, their clawed hands outstretched in our direction, with kind of goofy expressions on their faces. Could I be imagining it, or did they look more like lovesick demonic cheerleaders than marauding murderers?
“Don’t be frightened, don’t be blue! Don’t run, dear prince, for we love you!”
And then chanting rhythmically: “Princie! Princie! He’s so fly! We’ll eat his friend if she’s nearby!”
They said this with a tittering that sounded, for all the world, the way that Jovi and her gang sounded when they were talking about their favorite TV stars and pop singers.