Ashwini rolled her eyes and led me out of the room. I followed her up the crooked stairs to the second floor, where more doors branched off a sunny corridor lined with plants in clay pots.

The first door led to a bedroom that I knew at once had to be Ashwini’s: the simple wooden walls were lined with no fewer than four swords, seven knives, two tridents, one spear, and one unexpected baseball bat. The floor had wooden floorboards, all scuffed and worn down from what I could only assume was Ashwini practicing with the aforementioned weapons; and the few clothes I could see were in messy piles on the unmade bed and armchair.

“I’m the warrior.” Ashwini shrugged by way of explanation. “If you think this is weird, wait till you see Lej’s room.”

She beckoned me across the corridor to a room that immediately hurt my eyes.

Lej wasn’t in his room, which was probably just as well because I wasn’t sure he would fit. Every available surface of the room was crammed with objects of every possible kind. I could see bottles of fizzy liquid, rusty weapons, broken clocks with their mechanics laid out, incomplete pieces of armor, a box of cake mix, something that looked like a microwave, wrenches and screwdrivers and other tools, a grubby porcelain doll, torn and stained maps, cutlery, a lamp without a lampshade, a lampshade without a lamp, a chipped marble bust, dishcloths, and much, much more.

My brain felt intensely, violently itchy at the sight of it. I wasn’t especially tidy, and it wasn’t like I liked cleaning or anything, but my brain needed some kind of order to feel calm. Even if something was messy, if it made sense to me, it was fine. But Lej’s room was chaos, and this kind of chaos, to me, was kind of like having an itch in your armpit in the middle of a school play. No matter how bad it gets, you can’t scratch it.

“I . . .” I tried and failed to think of something to say.

Ashwini laughed at my reaction. “Lej is more of a magpie than a Crow,” she said. “But this isn’t just for show. All this stuff? Lej will find a way to make it useful. When we need weapons, Lej finds them. When Jojo needs fabric or material, Lej gets it. Whatever we need, he gets it, whatever it takes. Most of this stuff may or may not be stolen,” she added primly.

I turned back to the room in fascination, and, now that I knew to look for it, I saw the pattern my brain so badly needed. Every object in the room had its place, and its purpose, and it would help the Crows fight the monsters. The bulb in that lamp without a lampshade could be used to make a flashlight, that chipped marble bust could be traded for food, and the porcelain doll—

“Why the doll?” I asked, trying and failing to think of a way a doll could be used to defeat Mahishasura.