ahu’s screams chased them through the Door of Shadows, but the moment they tumbled into the crypt, there was only silence.

Aru shook herself. She was sprawled on the ground, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Overhead, the ceiling seemed to be wreathed in a thin, hazy light. It reminded her of how the last eclipse had looked through the special sunglasses her mom had ordered: a black blot radiating wispy rays. The crypt’s floor was cold and hard-packed, but with an odd texture. Like scales. Specifically, Rahu and Ketu’s scales. Gross, thought Aru. It was like they had said, Nah, who needs a carpet when I’ve got dead skin!

“Those must be the vaults over there!” whispered Brynne.

Aru looked to where her sister was pointing. After a while, she could recognize doors along both sides of the space. They weren’t ordinary doors with locks or knobs or handles. Instead they looked like faint shadows, discernible only by the thin outline of light around their edges. Like in an eclipse.

The faint illumination allowed Aru to see some detail in the stone columns that supported the ceiling. Like on the pillars outside, the black rock rippled slightly, as if it were breathing.

“Okay,” said Rudy in a low voice. “The moment I announce my intentions, the yalis will wake up…. They’re creepy as anything.” He shuddered a bit.

“Worse than a bisected dragon?” whispered Mini.

“Rahu and Ketu are bizarre, but they’re not creepy,” said Rudy.

Mini stared at him. “In what world is a bisected dragon not creepy?”

Rudy was on the verge of answering when Brynne interrupted.

“Just tell us what will happen next,” said Brynne.

“Right, so, after they greet us, the yalis will lead us to the vault, where Shah takes over.”

“I use the key,” said Aru, softly patting her backpack, secretly loath to wake the living thing.

“Wait a second,” said Rudy. He paused. Then shut his eyes tight and winced. “I…may have forgotten about something.”

“Seriously, Rudy?” growled Brynne, not bothering to whisper anymore. “Why are you even on this quest, anyway?”

He looked stung but quickly masked it with a hapless grin. “C’mon, you guys are Pandavas. Surely you can handle any—”

“Spill it, Rudy,” said Aiden, crossing his arms.

“Okay, one tiny hiccup. I forgot that the yalis can see inside the vaults.”

“So they’re going to know what we’re up to!” said Aru angrily.

“Not if we camouflage it,” said Aiden, touching his camera. “With Mini’s help, we can make a pretty convincing illusion in the doorway.”

“Yeah, but first Aru has to open it with the key,” said Rudy. “If they see that…” His face grew pale. “In fact, if they figure out that you’re demigods…” He groaned and slumped against a column.

“WHAT?” asked the others simultaneously.

“I didn’t think this through,” whined Rudy, his head in his hands. “We should just turn around and—”

“Maybe they don’t have to know we’re here at all,” said Mini quietly. “I could do that. I can—”

Rudy scoffed. “I don’t think one of your shields is going to help in this—”

“And I don’t think you should interrupt me,” said Mini, drawing herself up. “You’ve got no idea what I’m capable of.”

Aiden looked surprised, and Rudy actually flinched. Brynne, biting back a grin, caught Aru’s eye. This was probably a bad time to yell SHE IS THE DAUGHTER OF DEATH, LOOK UPON HER AND DESPAIR, but Aru really wanted to.

Mini pointed her Death Danda at Aru and whispered, “Adrishya.”

Cold violet light shot out from Dee Dee and crept over Aru’s skin, clothing, and backpack. Aru looked down at her disappearing feet, then legs, and finally, her hands. She did a little dance. It was a horrible dance. Luckily, no one saw it, because she…was…INVISIBLE!

“This is amazing!” said Aru. She spun in place. “How come you’ve never done this to yourself, Mini?”

“It feels…sneaky,” said Mini uncomfortably. “And what would I do with it, anyway?”

“You’d always have an advantage over your enemies,” said Brynne.

“You could capture some great candid shots,” mused Aiden.

“Or you could randomly move things around without anyone knowing,” said Aru. “You know that ficus plant Mom keeps in the museum lobby? You could tell someone it’s haunted and then carry it around so it’s following them.”

Everyone fell silent.

“Plant-stalking?” said Aiden. “That’s what you’d do with powers of invisibility?”

“Duh,” said Aru. “With great power comes great opportunity to annoy.”

“All right, all right. Fine, that’s a pretty cool trick, Mini,” allowed Rudy.

Mini rolled her eyes.

“Now do it to Brynne and yourself,” he said. “Aiden can be my servant.”

“I’ll serve you up to the yalis,” Aiden muttered through gritted teeth.

As the invisibility spell washed over Brynne, she said, “So Aru uses the key, Mini and Aiden create an illusion in the front of the vault, we get whatever is inside, and we leave immediately.”

Everyone nodded. Then Aru remembered she couldn’t be seen and said, “Yes.”

“The vault may have some booby traps in it, though,” said Rudy. “We won’t know until…” He hesitated, a look of pain crossing his face. “Until we see it.”

Before anyone could ask him about that, Rudy quickly swiveled around and announced to the darkness:

“I, Prince Rudra of Naga-Loka, am here to make a withdrawal.”

A handful of bright lights flickered against the walls and then went out. Vajra sparked nervously on Aru’s wrist, but remained invisible. Aru crossed her arms, trying to hug her lightning bolt reassuringly even as a chill crept up her spine.

“A withdrawal?” asked a voice in the dark.

On the three closest support columns, more lights flashed, then started traveling downward as if they were…Aru froze. They weren’t lights at all, but three pairs of eyes. Long shapes twisted sinuously before sliding onto the scale-covered floor. The eyes belonged to the yalis, living temple carvings in the shape of three hybrid animals that slithered toward them. In the half-light, Aru just could make out their bodies: crocodile-shaped but with huge dragon-like spikes knifing out of their spines. They seemed to be one with the rock, occasionally sinking into the floor and then half emerging to stare up at the visitors.

“How strange to see the princeling without his family,” said a second voice, scratchier and higher-pitched than the first.

“Has your father decided to trust your judgment after all, little snake?” asked the third voice, as cruel and sharp as a blade. “Has your vision improved? Or is the family simply blind to your weakness?”

The first yali whipped its head back and forth, as if scenting the air. “I smell sacred objects,” it said.

The second groaned hungrily. “It smells so much like freedom. Is that what you’ve come to do, sweet prince? Break us from our bonds of servitude? How grateful we would be….”

“No…” said the third. “It is not just objects, but beings.”

The blinking eyes circled Aru, and she had the distinct memory of watching one of those nature documentaries where a crocodile lies like a log in the water, barely visible…before it rushes its prey, jaws open wide.

“Enough of this,” said Rudy imperiously. “Take us to chamber A-Seven.”

The yalis stilled.

“No one has entered that particular crypt in some time…. What do you want with it?”

“As if that’s any of your business,” said Rudy haughtily. “Lead on.”

The yalis slunk ahead, and without another word, Rudy strolled after them with Aiden in tow. Aru fell in line behind them, and she assumed Brynne and Mini did, too. Invisibility is awesome but kinda awkward, she thought, hoping she wouldn’t bump into or trip either of her sisters.

The crypt was longer than it had looked at first. It stretched out before them like a never-ending grocery-store aisle. On the floor, images skipped and hopped, as if the whole thing were a ginormous screen….

Aru didn’t like the story it told. One scene showed a cracked and weathered pillar in a courtyard under a sky between day and night. Dusk? Dawn? The pillar split down the middle to reveal a deity who was a lion on top and a man on the bottom. Aru knew he was a god by the divine glow that clung to him, but it was a terrible light—like a wall of fire. The god let loose a silent roar, and his red eyes narrowed as he clawed himself out of the rubble.

“Admiring our little warning, sweet prince?” hissed the first yali.

Rudy stumbled a little but quickly regained his footing. “Who is that?”

The image of the lion-man-god was familiar, but Aru couldn’t place a name to the face.

“Narasimha,” whispered the second yali, as it scuttled up a nearby column.

Aru felt his breath on the back of her neck and fought the urge to whimper.

“One of Lord Vishnu’s most vicious manifestations…The gods allowed us to us bottle up Narasimha’s divine wrath, and now it sleeps beneath the Crypt of Eclipses, waking up only when it’s time to devour little thieves….”

Rudy gulped audibly. “Charming.”

“Surely you know the tale, little princeling?” asked the first yali. “Once upon a time, a demon king got a little too power-hungry. He asked the gods to make it impossible for him to be killed by man or beast, during daytime or nighttime, indoors or outdoors, or by any weapon.”

Aru glanced at the images again, seeing how they pieced together. Narasimha had arrived not indoors or outdoors, but in a courtyard, which was both. And not in daytime or nighttime, but at dawn or dusk—both. And not as a man or a beast…but as both.

After seeing those sharp claws, she could guess how he’d killed the demon king.

“No other way around those conditions,” said Rudy, shuddering.

Actually, Aru had noticed a pretty large loophole. But Brynne beat her to the punch.

They could’ve just sent a girl, said Brynne through their mind link. Satisfies all the conditions.

Specifically, you—there’s no way I’d go, said Aru.

Mini laughed, and the yalis froze in their tracks. Three pairs of glowing eyes turned in her direction. For a terrifying moment, Aru thought the yalis were going to sniff them out. But instead they swiftly melted back into the floor, emerging partway to lead them the rest of the way to the chamber marked A7.

When they arrived, Rudy asked, “May we have a moment of privacy, please?”

“We always bear witness…” said the first yali. “’Tis our curse to guard.”

“To see,” added the second.

“To know,” said the third.

“Until the instruments of gods free us from our bondage,” said the three of them at the same time.

“You have always turned your backs when my parents unlocked the doors of this vault,” said Rudy, “and I demand the same treatment. You may look after the door is open.”

Aru saw one of the yalis’ heads rear back, its skin rippling angrily before it sank back into the floor as if it were water.

“Very well, princeling.”

“But remember that we—”

“Are always watching.”

With that, the yalis vanished, leaving the five of them alone before a smooth metal panel. Aru brought the velvet pouch out of her backpack, her nerves on fire. No one could see it but her.

Mr. V’s warning about the key rang out in Aru’s head: It might demand something in return for its services.

The last thing Aru wanted to do was touch the key. It was too alive. And she hadn’t liked the feeling of it rummaging around in her soul. But they had to do this. The fate of the Otherworld hung in the balance. If the Sleeper won, everything would be lost. Aru blinked and saw the twins clinging to each other in a nightmare; Boo staring at his huge shadow; Opal taunting her about failure.

Aru grabbed the key, pressed it to the metal, and gasped. It was as if a safe she’d tried to keep locked inside her was suddenly flung open. She was flooded with a bone-deep aching, an overwhelming sense of loss. She saw every time she had made a card on Father’s Day only to end up throwing it in the trash. She saw every moment her mother’s face had shuttered with grief, every nightmare in which Aru had pressed her hand to her heart and known without a shadow of a doubt that she was missing something.

She pulled back the key, and the panel shivered before them. A slit appeared down its center and the two halves slowly retracted into the wall. Bright golden light began to spill out of the opening. It was too bright to see the interior of the vault clearly, but its magic felt powerful, like a hurricane crammed into a closet.

The key in Aru’s hand turned warm and purred like a cat that had eaten its fill. She quickly dropped it back into the velvet pouch, which she closed and stuffed into her backpack. Then she sighed with relief.

“Shah…are you okay?” asked Aiden.

She was still invisible, but somehow Aiden was looking straight at her. Aru caught her breath, trying to bury the empty feeling the key had left behind.

“Duh,” she managed to whisper.

“Quick! Get inside!” hissed Rudy. “Aiden, the entrance!”

Once Aiden knew—from their pats on his shoulder—that all three Pandavas had stepped across the threshold, he lifted his camera and snapped a photo of Rudy entering. A moment later, Aiden touched the view screen and then literally peeled off the image. He walked into the vault, turned, and flung the small rectangle at the opening, where it expanded into a semi-transparent banner that filled the space. Mini projected a force field with Dee Dee, solidifying the illusion.

Now if the yalis peeked inside, all they’d see was Rudy.

Okay, then, said Aru, speaking to her sisters through their Pandava mind link. Let’s go steal a wishing tree.