Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet #1)(31)

“Did the Sleeper say anything to you?” asked Aru.

Mini frowned. “No. How ’bout to you?”

Aru stilled. “Earlier. The last time we tried to get to…wherever this is. He spoke in my mind and compared me to my mom. Called me deceitful like her. It was so weird.”

Boo looked as if he was trying to make himself smaller on top of Mini’s head.

“Do you know anything about this, Boo?” asked Aru.

“Me? No. Not a thing!” he squawked. “Come along!”

“If he figured out where we were last time, and he can find us when we’re traveling between places, he can probably do it again, even if we have the mantra to cover our tracks,” said Mini. “What do we do if the Sleeper catches up to us?”

“Run faster than the other person,” said Boo. And with that, he flew off toward the entrance to Costco.

Aru was about to make a joke to Mini, but she had turned on her heel and was jogging into the jungle of parked cars and abandoned shopping carts.


“Hey! Mini! There you are!” shouted Aru.

Aru had circled Costco Parking Lot Section A twice before she saw her. Mini was curled up on the hood of a minivan that boasted MY CHILD IS AN HONORS STUDENT.

When Aru walked up to her, Mini didn’t turn her head. She just kept tracing the Sanskrit symbol on her left palm.

“You’re going to leave me behind, aren’t you?” asked Mini softly.

“What? Why do you think that?”

“I’m not as good as you are at…at this….I wasn’t even supposed to be going on any quests or anything! The first time my mom ever took me to the Otherworld, I threw up. The threshold guardians didn’t even let me past.”

“That’s better than me,” said Aru. “My mom never even took me to the Otherworld. At least your mom told you about all this stuff.”

“She had to,” sniffed Mini. “She’s a panchakanya.”

“What’s that?” asked Aru. She could break down what the words meant, but it didn’t help her understand.

Panch. Five.

Kanya. Woman.

“It’s the sisterhood Mom’s always talking about. Five women who are reincarnations of legendary queens from the ancient stories. These days their job is to raise and protect us.”

“So my mom is part of this…sisterhood?” asked Aru.

“I guess,” said Mini a little rudely.

Aru knew why Mini’s tone had changed. They had started off talking about Mini’s feelings, and now they were back to talking about Aru. But Aru couldn’t help herself. There was so much she didn’t know…and so much she wanted to know.

“Do you know who the other women are? Do they talk on the phone? Have you met the other Pandavas? Are they all girls our age?”

Mini shook her head. “Sorry.” Then her eyes narrowed. “Why? Do you wish you had a different Pandava with you, instead of me?”

“I’m not saying that….”

“You’re not not saying that,” said Mini. “But it’s fine. I’m used to it. Second choice for everything. I’m always getting left behind.”

“Is this about what Boo said? That the slowest one of us is going to get caught by the Sleeper?”

She nodded, sniffling.

“Boo was just being Boo. He’s a pigeon.”

As if being a pigeon explained a lot of nasty behavior. But in Boo’s case, the observation rang true.

“I just…don’t want to be left behind.” Her eyes welled with tears. “It happens to me all the time, and I hate it.”

“Did you get chased by a monster with someone else?”

Mini laughed, but because she was crying, it sounded like a wet hiccup. Aru scooted away a little. The last thing she wanted on her was snot. She was already covered in monster ashes.

“No,” said Mini when she had finished snort-laugh-hiccupping. “You don’t know what it’s like. You’re probably popular at school. I bet you’re good at everything….You’ve never even been to the Otherworld before and you fought Brahmasura better than me. I bet at school you don’t get called the Tattletale. And you’ve probably never shown up at a birthday party to find no one is there because they put the wrong date on your invitation….People wouldn’t avoid you.”

Aru tried not to wince. She had to admit that being a tattletale was the worst thing you could be at school. No one would tell you anything.

“Have you ever done anything you regretted?” asked Mini.

Aru didn’t meet her eyes. She could have told the truth about a lot of things. That she wasn’t popular. That she did know how it felt to be on the outside. That her best talent wasn’t defeating monsters…it was pretending.

For a moment, Aru even wanted to tell her the truth about what happened with the lamp. How it hadn’t been an accident at all, but something she’d done on purpose just to impress people who probably weren’t worth impressing anyway, but she couldn’t.

It felt nice to be considered more than what she was for a change.

So she asked a different question. “If you could go back in time and un-tattletale on someone…would you?”

Mini looked up. “No. Dennis Connor was about to cut Matilda’s hair.”