“How is that possible?” asked Aru. “I thought you can only enter with a celestial weapon?”
“True, but you don’t need one toexitit,” said Nikita. “That’s how he’ll get his army inside.”
“Well, then, what are we doing here? Why don’t we just stalk his soldiers and enter the labyrinth that way?” asked Brynne.
Nikita shook her head. “If you do that, it will only lead you straight to his camp. Hanuman and Urvashi are already searching for those entrances and trying to block them off. Besides…”
“It won’t do us much good unless we have something to fight him with,” said Aru glumly.
“The good news is that the Sun Jewel lantern won’t just get you through the labyrinth, it’ll also break all the barriers at once!” said Sheela. “So once you get inside, we’ll be able to meet you! To fight with you!”
Aru’s ears were ringing. A tightness wrapped around her chest. What if that never happened?
Nikita looked her in the eyes, and it didn’t matter that she was nearly translucent—Aru felt the intensity of her stare like a slap. “He’s telling people he’s already won, Aru.”
“And do they believe him?”
“If you guys don’t come back soon,” said Sheela, her fading eyes acquiring that frosty look of prophecy, “they will.”
“How do we get out of this place?” asked Brynne. She tried to take a step off the platform, but some kind of invisible barrier threw her backward.
Nikita raised her head as if she’d caught sight of something in the distance. But to Aru it just looked like a never-ending tunnel of multicolored lights.
“Any minute now,” Nikita said. She closed her eyes, made a fist, and then opened her fingers. Five vivid—and solid—petals lay in her hand. “Place these on your clothes. They’ll act like camouflage stickers and keep you hidden.”
“How did you—” started Aru.
“Do it!” said Nikita.
Aru grabbed them.
“Now what?” asked Mini.
“Now, I guess, it’s up to you,” said Sheela. “I can’t see clearly anymore. You have to move fast, or else—”
“Ouch,” said Aru, stumbling forward while massaging her temple.
“Hey!” shouted someone far behind her. “No cutting! We were in line first!”
Line?thought Aru.
She blinked, trying to get a sense of her surroundings. She tapped her foot and felt sand beneath her. Something huge, winged, and fanged moved across her sight and she jumped back to see a ginormous bright-green headdress swaying a couple of feet away from her. The person wearing it swung around. They had the narrow, flat head of a lizard, pink skin, and a pair of bulbous eyes that did a quick head-to-foot scan of Aru, followed by a dismissive flick of their forked tongue.
FIRST OF ALL, RUDE…thought Aru.
“Ugh, my head,” said Mini, beside her.
All the Potatoes, except Aiden, swayed and blinked, clutching their heads as if they’d just survived the World’s Worst Migraine. For some reason, Aiden looked completely normal. By the time Aru’s vision had fully returned, he’d already grabbed the Sun Jewel lantern and stuffed it into hisoh-so-precious-no-one-can-touch-itbackpack. He was still staring into the bag, looking deeply concerned.
“Here,” said Aru groggily, holding out the camouflage petals from Nikita. “Stick them to your clothes.”
With an equally groggy grunt, each of them took a petal and stuck it to the front of their shirt.
As her head slowly cleared, Aru realized that they had stumbled out of a low mirrored wall and into a line that stretchedat leasta mile in either direction. People were appearing right and left, stepping out of the same wall with a brightpop!, which meant that the mirror was some kind of gateway.
But to where? Judging by the half day/half night sky above them, they were somewhere in the Otherworld. But it wasn’t terrain Aru had ever visited before. It was a black-sand desert formed of ever-shifting, glittering dunes that reminded Aru of a great creature’s ridges rippling.
Aiden raised Shadowfax to his eye and snapped a couple of pictures. “I don’t see anything nearby. No buildings, no signs—”
