The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim (ebook reader with highlighter .txt) 📕

lion, who was probably a hallucination, and a bearded man who tried to kill us. Who even was he? Why would we trust him? There must be another way. There has to be!”

He looks down at his ring, then stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I can’t, Riley, I just can’t….”

I pinch my thigh. “I know, Em. I know.” I take a big breath. “Which is why I’ve decided to go on alone.”

He screws up his face but doesn’t say anything. So I continue.

“I don’t want to go there, either.” For more reasons than you know. “But I have to. I promised Hattie I would save her. But I can’t ask you to come with me. No—I don’t want you to come with me. You need to go home now.”

Emmett covers his face with his hands and kicks the pavement with his foot. “All of this scares me, Rye,” he finally says. “It scares the freaking jelly beans out of me.”

I nod. I know how hard it was for him to say those words. If Emmett founded a clan, its motto would be Emotions Are Evil. I pat him on the back. “Me too, Em. Me too.” And it’s the most honest thing I’ve said to him in a long time.

He drops his hands and sighs. “But I’m not a quitter. And I’m not about to leave my best friend to walk into a clan of murderers by herself.”

My eyes well up with tears. “But you can’t possibly go there,” I mutter. “Not after what they did—”

He unfolds Boris with a decisive snap. “My mind’s made up. Like you said, Hattie is counting on us, and I’m not gonna let her down, either.” He steps onto the scooter and holds his breath as the blue scales creep up his feet. “Besides, my mom deserves justice. And I’m gonna get it for her.”

He waves me over. “What are you waiting for? Jump on.”

Stunned by this new gutsy Emmett, I climb on behind him without another word.

“Although, uh,” he says, testing Boris’s handlebars, “where exactly do we go to find these mother killers?”

I recall the third scene that played in the Haetae’s vision. The one in which Emmett and I were at the zoo, drinking boba tea. “This is going to sound weird, but you’ll have to trust me,” I say. “We’ve got to go have some tea with the tigers.”

Boris dutifully delivers us to the Los Angeles Zoo. We’re becoming a lot more confident on him now, and by the time we get off, not only are our stomachs intact, but Emmett’s feelings toward the dragon-on-wheels have done a complete 180.

“Aren’t you just the cutest,” he coos, rubbing Boris behind the ears. “And the way you do that invisibility thing—full of surprises, aren’t you!”

On the way over, we’d gotten some gobsmacked looks from saram pedestrians who couldn’t figure out how we were moving so fast. Boris kept pointing an ear toward a toggle on his handlebars until Emmett gave in to curiosity and pressed it. Turns out it put us into stealth mode, which kept us conveniently hidden from suspicious saram eyes. Genius.

After folding up Boris once more, we rush over to the posted directory to find the tiger enclosure.

“There,” Emmett says, pointing at the signboard. “Right next to the bears and the Desert Garden. It’s really close.”

It only takes us a few minutes to walk there. And just as the scene in the Haetae’s bell showed, there’s a food truck parked nearby.

“I don’t know why,” I explain to Emmett, “but the Haetae told me we need to get boba tea.”

Emmett’s eyes sparkle. “Hey, I’ll make the sacrifice if we must!”

We walk up to the window, and a young woman hands over a laminated menu. She has piercings in her ears, eyebrows, and nose, and her hair is dyed in four different colors, like a shaved-ice cone. She is the definition of cool. “Hey, dudes, let me know what you want when you’re ready.”

We nod and study the list, which looks pretty standard. How is ordering one of these drinks going to get us to the Horangi?

I glance inside the food truck to see if there are any clues, and that’s when I spot the poster on the wall. It’s bright red, showing a tiger sitting in a library, drinking boba tea while reading a book. The words YOU NEED A SWEET TOOTH TO KNOW THE TRUTH are written in cursive letters underneath. It looks like a cute hipster ad for drinking boba tea.

The Horangi’s clan color is red, and their motto is Knowledge and Truth. Plus, the tiger is in a library. The poster has to be some kind of secret message.

Emmett has already changed his mind three times about his order, and he’s now wondering whether his mango green tea slushy should have boba, or coconut jelly, or both.

As the woman patiently listens to him, I notice there is water sloshing inside a glass charm on her wrist. Ah, she’s gifted. And she’s selling tea, so she’s probably a Tokki infuser.

She sees me looking at her and smiles. “And you? Have you decided what you want?”

I take a stab in the dark. “I have a real sweet tooth, and I want to know the truth.” I cock my head toward the poster on the wall, hoping I don’t look like an idiot.

She freezes like a rabbit caught in headlights. I must be onto something. She looks down at my empty wrist and narrows her eyes. “Who’s asking?”

I clear my throat and improvise. “Sora sent for us.” I’m starting to become an expert liar, and I don’t know how I feel about that.

The woman breathes out a sigh of relief. She smiles. “Well, I do have a house special, if you’re into forbidden fruit. I’m sure you’ll like it if you’re into the truth. It’s a real trip.”

Forbidden fruit? I have to be on the right track. “That sounds great,” I say. “We’ll get two of those, please.”

Emmett opens