The Serpent's Secret (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #1)(34)

Neel was still ranting, his voice getting louder, “If I’d known you had a moving map, I wouldn’t have even come home to talk to Tuni, and if we hadn’t come here …”

He didn’t have to say it. I finished the thought for him. “If we hadn’t come here, then Lal and Mati would still be okay.”

Bullock’s biscuits was right. Here was yet another way that I was directly responsible for everything going wrong.

I felt worse than ever.





What is this thing?”

We were back in the bathing room with the hanging vines, where I’d left my backpack. The mood between Neel and me was still tense, but at least he was talking to me. Together, we examined Ma’s map, which looked just the same as the first time I’d seen it. As opposed to being covered with images of roads, mountains, lakes, or rivers, the entire page was smudgy and blank.

I reread the birthday card, the last message I had from my parents to me. “It says right here it’s a moving map.”

Neel stared at the blank paper with a serious expression, as if commanding the map to appear.

We were both quiet for a minute. Then Neel held the paper up to his face and sniffed it.

“What are you doing?”

“Just what I suspected,” Neel replied. “It smells fishy.”

“Very punny.”

“I’m serious.” Neel’s grim face reminded me that he was only tolerating me out of some sense of princely duty. “There’s a map here; it’s just invisible. It’s probably coated with Tangra fish juice.”

“Some kind of invisible ink?”

Neel nodded.

Why not? A map that keeps up with moving land masses drawn with invisible fish juice. It certainly wasn’t the strangest thing I had heard about so far. Of course, it wasn’t exactly the kind of atlas we sold in our convenience store—the most exotic things on those were, like, the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike. (Though I used to think the Holland Tunnel sounded super exotic, like it was in Europe or something, but it’s actually in Jersey City, New Jersey, which, in case you haven’t been, isn’t really that exotic at all.)

I squinted at the paper. “How do we decode it? With secret spy rings?”

“Let me look it up.” Neel fished a battered little book out of his pocket. The cover read:

The Adventurer’s Guide to Rakkhosh, Khokkosh, Bhoot, Petni, Doito, Danav, Daini, and Secret Code

Khogen Prasad Das



“Rakkhosh I know, decoding I get,” I said. “But what are all those other words?”

“Oh, different kinds of demons, ghosts, witches, goblins, that sort of thing. K. P. Das is a senior demonologist of the highest caliber. He’s one of Lal’s and my tutors.”

Neel’s voice was carefully neutral, and I could practically feel the distance between us. I took a big breath.

“Um … Neel?”

“Yeah?”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m really …”

Neel lifted his face from his book and looked, for the first time in what felt like forever, straight at me. I couldn’t tell if he was upset or angry or … hungry. I realized how alone we were and felt a spasm of fear.

But his words weren’t as much scary as they were just sad. “I’m … I’m just going to need some time, okay? I just … I’m going to need some time before I can forgive you.”

I felt like crying, but I just jammed my nails into my fist. “No, I get it, that’s cool.”

“So let’s just get on with what we’ve got to do, all right?”

“No, fine.” I felt like I wasn’t getting enough air. “Good idea. Lots of people to rescue.”

“Lal would have just remembered how to decode Tangra fish juice.” Neel sighed. “Decoding’s my worst subject.”

“What’s your best?” I asked in as normal a voice as I could manage while still trying to stuff down tears.

Neel flipped to the glossary and began scanning the Ts. “Talons, Tambourines … Here it is, Tangra,” he read. “My best subject is demon slaying of course. Even though I believe more in demonic violence prevention and restorative justice than actual demon slaying.”

“Oh.”

It couldn’t be easy, I guessed, for Neel to be half demon himself and have to hear all the time about how much people hated rakkhosh. He knew—maybe even better than me—what it was like to feel different.

“Well, Professor Das says here that there are only three ways to decode something written with Tangra fish juice.”

“All right, shoot.”

“One.” Neel counted on his fingers. “Blow a powder made from ground-up rakkhosh bones on it.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“You see any dead rakkhosh lying around here? And no, a half rakkhosh doesn’t count. Even if it did, I’m not sacrificing my bones for your map.”

“Fine.” My face was as serious as I could keep it.

Neel looked huffy. Then he realized I was joking. “Very clever. You’re such a comedian.” He concentrated again on the book. “Two, dip the map in the waters from the River Jogai.”

“Much easier than killing a rakkhosh,” I said, “so let’s go; where is this river?”