Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet #1)(32)

“So? Why stick your nose into it?”

That kind of thing happened at school all the time. Aru just let it be. It wasn’t her business. Or her fight.

Mini sighed. “Matilda had to leave school last year because she got sick, and when she got chemo, she went bald. Her hair has only just started to grow back. If Dennis had cut it, she would’ve been really sad.”

“See?” said Aru. “You did a good thing. Plus, Dennis has two first names. He was asking to get in trouble.”

Mini laughed.

“So you’re not a tattletale…you’re just honorable. Like a knight! Knights always rescue people.”

Mini raised her palm. The saat symbol still looked like a backward three. “What about when knights aren’t strong enough?”

“Even when they fail, they’re still knights,” said Aru. “Now come on. Boo said this was a special kind of Otherworldly Costco, and I want to see if their toilet paper floats. Maybe they have special Otherworld-Costco things like bulk bags of wishes or dragon teeth or something. We can pick some up as soon as we get that second key. What is it, again? A bite of adulthood?”

This seemed to perk up Mini. She nodded.

“Still have the first key?” asked Aru.

Mini patted her backpack. “Right here, still wrapped in your Kleenex.”

“Handkerchief.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Let’s go, Sir Mini.”

Like at every Costco Aru had been to, lots of customers were walking in and out. But here the people changed as soon as they crossed the threshold. For example, one woman pushing a cart toward the entrance looked like any woman you’d see on the street. Sensible shoes. Sensible hair. Sensible outfit.

The minute she stepped over the mat that said WELCOME TO COSTCO, she was suddenly covered in golden feathers. Like a giant bird! And her feathers were edged in flames. Little embers sparked and burned, falling onto the pavement and sputtering like a blown-out candle.

Another family was getting their receipt checked at the door before exiting. On the other side of the mat, they looked like humans from the waist up, but from the waist down they were snakes. The moment they crossed the mat, they were all human.

The snake boy winked at Mini.

She walked into a telephone pole.

“You are the Daughter of Death,” hissed Aru. “You don’t walk into a telephone pole because of a boy.”

“I didn’t! I tripped. It wasn’t because…you know. It’s not because he did the thing with his mouth where it went up and his teeth showed.”

“You mean when he smiled?”

“Yeah,” said Mini, rubbing furiously at her bright red cheeks. “That.”

Boo glared at them from the top of a grocery cart. “What took you so long? I almost started aging.”

“You don’t age?” asked Aru.

“If you do, you can use the sprig of youth,” offered Mini. “Not sure how it works, though. Do we just hit you with it?”

Boo flew to Aru’s shoulder and then poked his head out from underneath her hair. “You shall do no such thing, fiendish girl!”

“I was only offering to help,” said Mini, crossing her arms.

“Well, stop offering before you get one of us killed,” said Boo. “Now, before you go into the Costco, remember that it won’t become the Night Bazaar until you stop looking so hard.”

Aru blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means go to the frozen food aisle, and start counting all the breakfast items. That should be enough to make your mind detach itself from reality and drift off. Or you could do algebra. Or read James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. That’s my go-to.”

“That sounds dangerous…” started Mini, but with one glare from Aru, she took a deep breath. “But I am the Daughter of Death, and so that sounds…like something I should like?”

Aru grinned.

The moment they walked inside, Aru was hit with that musty, industrial smell of supermarket. Why was everything made of concrete here? And it was so cold….

Even if it was the middle of summer and so blazing hot outside that the road was melting, supermarkets were always freezing. Aru wished she’d brought a sweatshirt with her.

On her shoulder, Boo had made a strange nest for himself out of her hair and was now peering out of the hair-turned-shawl like an angry grandmother. “Not that way! That leads to the electronics. Too many bright, shiny things.”

There were tons of people walking around them. Moms and dads and kids with those weird sneakers that had wheels on the bottom. There were all kinds of people, too—white, black, Hispanic, Asian, tall, short, fat, skinny. Not all appeared human, either. Some of them were feathered or furred, fanged or feline.

Aru’s eyes widened. “Are they all…like us?”

“Dense as bricks?” offered Boo.

“No, like—”

“Scrawny heroes?” Boo guessed again.

“Ugh!”

“I don’t know what an ugh is, but probably not,” said Boo smugly. “But if you are asking whether they all have a connection to an Otherworld…Yes.”

“Like ours?”

“Like theirs,” said Boo. “Whatever their version of the Otherworld happens to be. But let’s not get into the question of metaphysics. Many things can coexist. Several gods can live in one universe. It’s like fingers on a hand. They’re all different, but still part of a hand.”