occasional podiatrist too.”
A whole area for tooth and feet doctors? Why not.
As we flew even lower, I saw in the distance the familiar shoreline of the Ruby Red Sea. From each direction, there were lines of demons trudging toward the watery border of their country.
“What’s going on there?” I pointed.
“Ever since the show producers started raiding demon villages, taking away rakkhosh, khokkosh, doito, and danav to detention centers, the refugee situation has been terrible,” said Tuni, his voice unusually serious. “Everyone in Demon Land is leaving their homes, and running away. No one wants to be the monster on a game show, the bait so that someone else can be a hero.”
I shivered, not sure what to feel. I mean, these were demons we were talking about. They were evil. They ate people, for goodness’ sake. But it was still kind of sad to think about an entire country living in fear of being raided and put in detention.
“What’s going to happen to them?” I looked at the endless streams of rakkhosh, khokkosh, doito, and danav, happy that we were well out of the reach of their notice, not to mention their claws and fangs. They were mostly traveling in what looked like family groups, adults carrying children and elders on their shoulders and backs. Plus, a lot of demons seemed to be carrying all their worldly possessions—inflatable life rafts, half-eaten kitchen appliances, broken-down toilet seat covers.
“Some will make it to safety across the Ruby Red Sea, and some won’t,” said Tuni, as Bangoma landed in a rubbish-filled but otherwise empty parking lot. “There was an entire boat of doito schoolchildren drowned last month. Doito are scared of water as a rule, and not as strong as rakkhosh. Those kids didn’t stand a chance.”
Wow, that was heavy. It was terrible thinking of those doito kids drowning, but less sad when I remembered that feeling sorry for demons was something you could only do from really far away. That’s when another thought occurred to me. What if those refugees started streaming into the Kingdom Beyond? Or even, gulp, through a wormhole and into Parsippany? I mean, Naya and her family had somehow immigrated, just like Ma, Baba, and I had. What was to stop refugee rakkhosh from doing the same thing?
Mati and Naya approached us from where the other bird had landed, a few feet away. “Ready, Cousin?”
“Hey, how did the dentist become a brain surgeon?” quipped Tuntuni.
“Tuni, this is really not the time, I really want to know how …” I began, but the dumb bird just kept going.
“His drill slipped!”
Despite myself, I laughed along with everyone else. Okay, whatever was going on with this rakkhosh refugee stuff, saving demons was not my problem right now. I just had to worry about saving the half-demon prince Neel. I took a big breath and tried to put the image of those drowning refugee kids out of my mind.
Mati went over the plan again with us with the seriousness of a director giving her spies a briefing. “Remember, the dental receptionist is on our side. So, she’s arranged for the regular dental hygienist not to be there today. You’ll be taking that hygienist’s place, Kiran, and helping the dentist with the extraction.”
“But there’s no way Sesha’s not going to recognize me!” I protested.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be in this fantastic disguise!” Naya chirped, handing me a full hygienist’s robe along with a ridiculously bright red wig.
“Um … really?” I looked skeptically at the wig, which would do nothing for my skin tone.
She helped me slip into the robe and jammed the wig on my head before saying, “You’ll also have this!” Naya handed me an eye patch that looked like she’d stolen it from a Halloween pirate.
I put on the disguise, feeling ridiculous. “But what happens if something goes wrong? Who’s my backup?”
“We’ll be right there with you—in the air shafts.” Mati had pulled out, again from who knows where, a scale model of the dentist’s office. “We’ll enter here”—she pointed—“and crawl through to here”—she pointed again. “From there, we’ll connect the sleeping gas canister pipes to the pipes for the ventilation. So that when the dentist turns on the gas to knock the Serpent King out, he’ll knock himself out.”
“Won’t I get knocked out too?”
“That’s where this special face mask comes in, Your Royalness!” Naya chirped, handing me a weird-looking beak face mask that looked like something out of a medieval painting.
“Uh, okay.” I eyed the beak mask. “But what about your