The flood of happy memories made it difficult, suddenly, to breathe. I had seen a lot of amazing, terrifying, and impossible things since a monster had materialized in my bedroom, but none of them had gotten to me quite like meeting Pip did now. The sight of him, this impossible echo of a happier, sunnier time and a happier, sunnier me, made tears prickle my eyes.

“Kiki!” His mischievous face lit up like he had just found a long-lost friend. “I’m so happy to see you again! Come look at this. You’ll love it!”

His easy familiarity made my heart hurt. “You remember me?”

He scrunched up his forehead. “Well, I think so,” he said. “I remember most of my life here in Mysore, but I also have these other memories of a little girl with a big grin, a pirate ship, and a lot of salt. I used to think they were just dreams,” he added, “but then Ashwini told us what Brahma told her, and I realized it had to be you. You were the little girl.”

I almost burst into tears right then and there, but Pip grabbed me by the hand and whisked me into his room, which was absolutely bonkers.

There was an actual carousel in the middle of the room, for a start, and a tree growing on the inside of one wall, stretching all the way up through the ceiling to the sky. A tiny tree house nestled in the higher branches of the tree, just like the tree house I used to pretend Pip and I were in every time we draped a sheet over a table and hid underneath. And scattered around the room were bits of our shared childhood: a stuffed rabbit I had lost years ago, the crown we fought over when we couldn’t decide who got to be the princess and who got to be the knight, the flag we tore off a rival pirate’s ship during one of our adventures. Every adventure I pretended to have with my imaginary friend, every story we told each other, every toy we loved—it was all here.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said, my voice all choked up. “I . . . This is . . .”

“Here.” Pip grinned, handing the stuffed rabbit to me. “I believe this is yours.”

“Petey!”

“Uh, I think you mean Hairy Hare-Hare,” Pip corrected me, eyes twinkling wickedly.

I gasped, affronted. “That was a terrible name six years ago, and it’s a terrible name now. This is Petey.”

And then I realized how weird and ridiculous this whole situation was, and both Pip and I burst out laughing while Ashwini shook her head in bemusement. “It looks like you’ve both found the missing halves of your souls,” she said wryly.

“What was that explosion a minute ago?” I asked Pip.

His grin grew even bigger, which I hadn’t believed was possible. “Stink bomb,” he said gleefully. I blinked. “You can’t smell it because I haven’t yet added the stinky part, but I promise it’ll be awful when I do.”