I knelt down beside his wheelchair. He had a pile of the fabric scraps on his lap. “I’m so sorry, Jojo,” I said. “I know how hard you worked on those costumes.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s what she said. It was like we had betrayed her.”

It was Lej who said firmly, “That’s not true. She loves us, but she’s hurt and she made a bad choice. That’s on her, not on us.”

“It is our fault, at least a little,” Suki said unhappily. “I was always asking her for stuff, and Pip and I were total nuisances, and we all just needed her so much all the time. I don’t think I can blame her for wanting to leave us.”

“Well, I can,” said Lej. “We should have helped her more, and asked a whole lot less of her. Believe me, I know that. But none of that makes what she did okay.”

“But, Lej,” said Samara, her voice small, “what do we do now?”

I could tell Lej didn’t have an answer, but that he wanted to give her one. With Ashwini gone, he was the one they turned to. But he looked very young all of a sudden, and I found myself coming to his rescue.

“Plan B,” I announced.

“What’s Plan B?”

“We fight him,” said Lej. “Right? We go to battle.”

I nodded. I swallowed back my doubt and my fear, and I said, “Simha, Chamundeshwari has been gathering people to come and fight with us, hasn’t she? That’s what Vishnu asked her to do.” The lion nodded his great head. “Okay, then we’ll get them all together. Anyone who’ll fight with us. We’ll ask the Good Witch to help, too. And we’ll all go to Chamundi Hills, just like in the old story, and we’ll meet Mahishasura outside Lalith Mahal. And there, one way or another, we’ll stop him for good.”

No one said that there was no way we could win, but we were all thinking it. No one pointed out that Mahishasura’s army would overwhelm us in no time at all, but we all knew they would.

No one said any of that because even though we knew we’d probably be defeated, we still had to try. Because there was a chance, because we owed it to Pip, and because we all deserved a life without the monsters.

“Okay,” Lej said at last. “That’s what we’ll do.”

“We won’t have our costumes,” Samara said sadly.

“We don’t need them. We still have bits and pieces of armor.”

“I know we don’t need them,” she said. “It’s just that they were us. You know? They said we were a team, that we were a family. I know it’s silly, but they made me feel braver.”

I understood. It was like my statue in the square outside. I had made the bold, brave, strong version of myself that I had wanted to be, down to the superhero pose and cape, because sometimes when you put your shoulders back and put on a cape, you feel like you can do anything. Costumes are a small thing, but as Pip showed us over and over, something small can make a big difference.