The Serpent's Secret (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #1)(35)

“Dried up years ago.”

“Better and better.” I sighed. “Okay, and what’s the third?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Just tell me,” I insisted.

Neel read from the book. “Well, the third way to decode something written in Tangra fish juice is to look at it through the prism of a python jewel.”

I had a bad feeling. “A what?”

“The jewel from a powerful python’s head. And of course, the place to get that is the underworld Kingdom of Serpents.” He waited a beat. “Your father’s kingdom.”

“My birth father,” I corrected. I’d made up my mind: I wasn’t going to buy into that movie-of-the-week sap—like I was supposed to run into the arms of some dude who’d tried to kill me when I was a baby. Just because he’d donated his genes to my existence didn’t make him Daddy Dearest. I mean, the Rakkhoshi Queen was Neel’s mom and had actually raised him, but you didn’t see him making any “I Heart My Demonic Mama” clay spitoons for her in art class.

“It’s our only choice. Luckily, I have a working map to the serpent kingdom. And there are no other ways to decode something written in Tangra fish juice. At least that exist in this world.”

“What—there’s another way?” I jumped on his hesitation.

Neel nodded. “Lal and I discovered it by mistake when we were trying to get to your house. We didn’t realize the New Jersey map we had was encoded—probably written with Bhetki fish scales—until it was too late. We didn’t think we’d ever make it to Parsippany in time to save you when Lal knocked his Giant Gulpie over on the paper.”

I remembered Lal’s love of soda fountains and fizzy drinks. And what was it that they had been arguing about when I opened the door? If it wasn’t for that Giant Gulpie, we wouldn’t have found her at all?

“So he spilled soda on the map, and the hidden ink showed itself?”

“Yup. I don’t suppose you brought some with you?”

I shook my head, and was about to say something, when Neel went on. “Wait a minute, what’s this writing on the other side of the map?”

“What?” Maybe Ma hadn’t kept everything encoded.

But the opposite side of the map just held a note, written in Ma’s handwriting:

You might get thirsty on your travels. Why not take some pek-pek with you?

Blast. That didn’t help. It was also a code, just a lot simpler than the one in Tangra juice. No one but me and my parents would know that as a kid, I pronounced the word for a brand of soda like peksi and that, over the years, the word had become pek-pek in our family.

I explained that to Neel, who wasn’t that amused by my childhood anecdote. “Your Ma wanted to make sure no one else could follow the map to Maya Pahar,” he growled, “and she gave you this clue to figure out how to decode the map. She went to all this trouble and you couldn’t bother to bring a can of soda with you?”

“Uh, if you’ll remember, Your Imperial Oh-So-Super Royal Highness, I was a little occupied right when we left New Jersey. I was saving Lal’s butt from that rakkhosh on my lawn, while you, his big, strong half-demon older brother, sat around and did nothing.”

“I would have gotten around to saving him,” Neel countered. “I saved you, didn’t I? Not that you seem particularly grateful.”

“Grateful?” I snorted. “Since I’ve met you, my house has been destroyed, my parents have disappeared, I’ve almost been eaten by a tantruming transit officer, then practically got arrested for stealing someone’s moustache”—I took a breath—“I got beaned with guava seeds by a delusional bird, and pretty near got devoured by your demon mother.”

“And you’ve loved every minute of it,” Neel drawled, finally smiling for the first time in what felt like forever.

The thing was, I kind of had.





Neel and I left almost right away to find a python jewel in the Kingdom of Serpents. Without one, we couldn’t read the moving map and had no hope of finding Maya Pahar.

The journey started off fine enough. The night sky was clear with perfect visibility. But it wasn’t long after we started, Neel on Midnight and me on Snowy, that I knew something was wrong. At first, it was just a feeling in the cold night air that made goose bumps come up on my arms. Then it was the faint flapping sound that I could hear off-time from either Midnight or Snowy’s wing motions. Finally, it was the smell: the sort of scent that filled up our convenience store van once when Baba forgot to close the vents and we were driving right behind a giant garbage truck.

Neel and Midnight slowed down, until they were flying next to Snowy and me.

“I think there’s someone following us,” I said, gesturing behind us into the night.

“Rakkhosh,” Neel said flatly. “I smelled them almost as soon as we left.”

“We’re being followed by demons? What do we do?”

Sensing my tension, Snowy bucked and snorted. “Whoa, boy, take it easy.” I patted his soft neck.

“We ride faster and try to lose them. If we’re lucky, it’s just a coincidence, and they’re heading somewhere else and won’t follow.” With that, Neel whispered something into first Midnight’s ear and then Snowy’s, and the pakkhiraj horses took off like shots. I almost couldn’t catch my breath, we were riding so fast, but as soon as I got used to our new speed, I realized the sound of chasing wings had also grown faster. And louder. Not to mention how intense the smell of garbage was getting.