The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,73

image to him. “No step-ball-change for me.”

“Then it’s back to demon school we go?” I suggested. “For Naya?”

“For Naya.” Neel’s eyes locked with mine.

I looked away from him, feeling suddenly shy at his nearness. “What if it only takes the one of us who is doing the reading? We should probably read it together.”

“That makes sense. And maybe just to be safe, maybe we should … uh … hold hands while we read.” Neel’s voice cracked in a funny way as he finished that sentence.

Without meeting his eyes, I held out my hand, hoping it wasn’t too gross and sweaty for him to hold. He grasped it with his own warm one, interlacing his fingers with mine. I felt a zipping electricity where our skin touched, and my stomach gave a lurch.

“Okay, let’s do this,” I muttered. “One, two, three …”

Even as we started reading the first sentence of the story together, it was hard to stay focused. Neel’s fingers kept a tight grip on mine, and he was sitting so close, I could feel the words of the story rumbling in his chest as he spoke them out loud.

“Nothing’s happening,” Neel whispered as we finished the first sentence.

“Keep reading. Stories don’t work unless you keep reading, dive into them,” I said.

And so we kept reading, our voices rising and falling together, the words rolling off both our tongues, the images and plot being built by both our voices. Not long after we’d finished the first paragraph, I felt it, the tugging at my belly. I looked at Neel, who was starting to look all smudgy—like a charcoal drawing being erased by someone’s fingers. I saw his eyes widen as he looked at me, so I figured I must look the same.

“Here goes nothing,” I said.

He nodded. “We’re going to demon school.”

We landed with a thump on the rocky ground right below one of the many balconies jutting out from a majestic building of turrets, mosaics, and open porticos. I was at first really impressed by the architecture, until I realized most of the mosaics were images of bloody rakkhosh attacks—pictures of demons tearing people and animals apart in a bunch of gross and horrible ways. This was obviously the famed Ghatatkach Academy of Murder and Mayhem! It was twilight, and from the voices I heard just above us, I knew we weren’t alone.

There was a light on in the balcony and two people up there, near the edge. Luckily, Neel and I had landed next to a broad tree with thick branches, so we were shielded from view. As I glanced over at him, I realized that he looked really different—with small horns peeking out of his dark hair, and fangs hanging below his lips, and even a little wart on his cheek. His eyes widened as he looked at me, and putting my hands to my face, I realized that I too had somehow been transformed by our magic time-traveling storybook into a rakkhosh! But I didn’t have time to worry about how many warts I had on my face. Right now, we had to concentrate on not being found out. We both leaned hard against the tree, listening to the people in the balcony.

“Oh, my suave serpentine suitor! How patient you have been!” someone was saying. Neel put a hand over his mouth, like he was stopping himself from crying out. Wait a minute—the person talking was Pinki, his mother. I was sure of it!

“Oh, my demonic darling! You are more than worth waiting for!” This time it was my turn to clap a hand over my mouth. That voice—it couldn’t be, could it? I snuck a quick look up at the balcony from around the tree. What was he doing here? Sesha!

Neel put his hand on my arm, like he thought I was stupid enough to leap out from behind the tree and confront my snake father. I shook my head. I loathed Sesha for all that he had done to us, but I wasn’t that stupid. Plus, what exactly could I do to him from down on the ground when he was up in that balcony? But what in the world was he doing here in Demon Land? Neel and I eased ourselves out from behind the tree but were careful to stay well in the shadows so we could hear and see their conversation without any threat of being seen ourselves.

“Tonight is the night we have been waiting for, my darling! The night of