Page 49 of Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes

“Bro,nowis the time to invest in enchanted phone lines, I’m telling you. Everyone is like ‘Oh no, are my loved ones okay?’ and they’ll paythrough the snoutto find out,” he said.

Gross,thought Aru.

“Yo, I’m not worried. My dad can pay for all that stuff. I’d beshockedif I didn’t get paid—”

Shocked, huh?thought Aru. As she walked past, she snapped her fingers, and a tendril of Vajra’s electricity whipped into the air and smacked the analyst on the back of his head.

“WHAT WAS THAT?!” he yelped, jumping.

But by then, Aru and her friends had already turned a corner. Aru grinned to herself. Beside her, Aiden lowered Shadowfax. “I saw that, Shah.”

“Saw what?” asked Aru innocently. “You didn’t see me do anything.”

Aiden raised an eyebrow. “I always see you, Shah.”

Aru felt her heart beating a bit faster, but she scolded herself. Aiden didn’t mean it like that. He only meant that he was super observant and whatnot. How many times had he reminded Aru that he only saw her as a friend? Even a simple misunderstanding about the two of them being together had grossed him out so much that he’d immediately walked away from her. Aru shoved her hands into her pockets and sped up.

Kara led them down a darkened alley. Here, the sounds of the city square faded to a distant growl. The golden walls looked dented and scorched in some places, and Aru remembered Queen Tara telling them how Hanuman had once set fire to the city.

In the middle of the dead end, a statue of a golden mongoose stood on a slender pedestal. It had a little silver bell tied around its neck. Aru’s skin tingled from the rich sensation of magic flowing around this place. It reminded her of the thresholds to the Otherworld, but she felt a coil of misgiving all the same. Kubera liked playing tricks. Who was to say this wasn’t one of them?

“This should be the entrance,” said Kara.

“Maybe we have to ring the bell,” said Brynne, taking a step toward the mongoose statue.

“Hold on…” said Mini. “I really don’t like the look of the walls.”

Aru followed her gaze and saw several large golden faces jutting out of the walls and staring down at them. They looked identical: male, mustached, lips pulled into a grimace under two short tusks.

Beside Aru, Mini wordlessly counted the faces. “Ten,” she said, taking a step back. “Didn’tRavanahave ten heads?”

Ravana was once the demon king of Lanka. Rama killed him after Ravana kidnapped Sita, the god king’s wife.

“Yeah, but he’s dead,” said Aru.

“Lots of things that are supposed to be dead in the stories are still somehow alive,” said Mini. “It’s like their spirits go on.”

“Fair, but look at this place!” said Aru, turning in the narrow alley. “There’s no way Ravana could fit in here. Dude had ten heads. Can you imagine how big his hallways must have been? Or his bed? What if all your heads demanded Tempur-Pedic pillows?”

“Why did he have ten heads, anyway?” asked Brynne, rubbing the back of her neck as if trying to imagine the weight.

“In an act of penance to the god Brahma,” said Aiden, “he kept cutting off his head as a sacrifice. He did it ten times. And each time, Brahma replaced it with an additional new one. Ravana was really pious.”

“He doesn’t sound so bad for a demon king,” said Brynne. “Stealing Sita was definitely wrong, but at least he didn’t hurt her?”

Aru made a face. Her mom had always reminded her that sometimes heroes did bad things, and villains did good things, and you had to look at the shadow with the light. It was true Ravana wasn’t all bad, but that didn’t make him all good, either, which reminded Aru of a story her mother had told her about the demon king.

“Theonlyreason he didn’t touch Sita was because there was a curse on him that said that if he kept trying to touch women who didn’t want him to, his heads would explode,” said Aru.

Kara and Mini looked grossed out. Aiden was horrified.

Brynne gagged. “What?If he wasn’t dead already, I’d totally chop off his heads.”

“Same,” said Mini, shuddering. “Let’s just ring the bell and get out of this creepy alley. Kara?”

She seemed distracted. She kept twisting her ring, her shoulders bowed and her head bent.

“Kara?” asked Aru.