and neat.
No half-empty coffee cups perched on chairs, no open books, no jasmine scent from the shampoo her mom used. At this time of year the museum should’ve been open for tours and summer camps, but it was completely empty downstairs.
Mini pinched her arm.
“Ow!” said Aru. “What was that for?”
“Checking your skin turgor for potential dehydration,” said Mini. “What have you been eating? Have you been drinking enough water? Your skin looks—”
Aru raised an eyebrow. “Flushed and glowing from running back to you guys?”
“I was going to say ‘dull.’”
“Thanks.”
“How did you get back to us?” asked Brynne.
As Aru was steered to the dining table, she nodded toward Kara. Aiden had carried the unconscious girl up the stairs and laid her on the couch. “She’s still out?”
“Your mom put an enchantment around the museum that makes any stranger temporarily fall asleep once they get too close,” said Aiden. “Anyone with Otherworldly blood, that is.”
“Pretty sneaky,” said Brynne admiringly. “Kinda like you, Shah.”
“Where is Mom?” asked Aru. “Is she out for groceries or something?”
Brynne and Mini exchanged a look.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about, Shah,” said Brynne.
“If it’s bad, tell me now,” said Aru.
“It’s not bad…” said Mini. “Just strange.”
Aru wasn’t sure what that meant, so she waited.
“First, why don’t you eat and catch us up,” said Brynne. “Starting with why did you bring the Sleeper’s daughter here?”
Between bites of cake and gulps of milk, Aru repeated what Kara had told her—how Kara had been raised in the Sleeper’s home for the past two years and her memories had been wiped, about the strange, glowing ward on the back of her neck and how the Sleeper called Kara his “secret weapon” even though she wasn’t a Pandava. Aru even told them about Sunny the trident, now secure on Kara’s finger as a shiny ring.
“I don’t get it, though,” said Aru. “She’s my age, but I didn’t see her in the Pool of the Past or in the Sleeper’s memories. I don’t know how that’s possible—unless he was secretly a jerk of a husband to my mom….”
“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