“I am confused! An actual Asura just took over a bus and I’m talking to my dead ancestor’s ghost. Who wouldn’t be confused?”

“Let’s start again. You know I’m not your actual, real ancestor, right? Like, that Ashwini is very dead and very not me.”

I paused. “Um, okay, I guess I do know that, but I also feel like I don’t know anything else.”

“Do you want the long explanation or the short explanation?”

“How about an explanation that doesn’t sound completely bananas?”

“Ah,” said Ashwini sadly, “you’re out of luck.”

I made an exasperated noise. “I’ll take the short one, then.”

“So you know how you came up with the idea of me and brought me to life in your sketchbook?”

“To be fair, I had no idea I was literally bringing you to life.”

“Well, you did. And it’s what you did to everything else in that book. It’s all real. Your whole world, your Kingdom of Mysore, it’s all alive inside that sketchbook. Like a pocket universe tucked inside yours, I guess.”

“A pocket universe?” I said skeptically.

“I don’t know, I’m thirteen,” she said. She paused to leave the bicycle in front of the house she’d borrowed it from. We walked past the bus stop (a place I would now never be able to look at the same way) and turned back onto the street where I lived. “The point is,” she went on, “I’m here because you drew me into that world. That Asura was here because you drew him into it, too.”

“But—”

“The Asura used a crack between the two universes to escape out of that version of Mysore and into this world. I followed him to stop him before he could hurt anyone. That’s my job. I slay demons. But you know that already, don’t you? That was your idea.”

“But,” I floundered again. “But how? How could I possibly have turned drawings into real life?”

“You didn’t.”

“You just said I did—”

“Let me rephrase,” she said, annoyingly cheerful. “You made that world, but it was Mahishasura who used his powers to turn your fictional universe into a real one, hidden away inside your sketchbook.”

This completely boggled my brain, but before I could reply, I heard a sound that was almost scarier than the Asura.

“Kritika Kallira, you get back in here RIGHT NOW!”

Oops. I had forgotten about Mum.

I gave Ashwini a panicked look and ran the rest of the way down the street to where Mum stood in the doorway of our house, incandescent with fury.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning,” she hissed, in a quiet voice that was much, much scarier than the yelling. “You know you’re not supposed to be outside this late! What are you doing out here? And why are you barefoot?”

“Hiya!” said Ashwini merrily, popping up at my shoulder.

Mum’s eyes narrowed. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

“I live three doors down,” she replied, lying so smoothly that I almost believed her. “It’s my fault Kiki’s outside. I needed space to practice for this school play I’m in, so I came out here. Kiki saw me from her window.”