Guru-ji,” Brice said softly. “This guy’s the real deal.”
It wasn’t Guru-ji, the celebs’ guru, who was putting out spectacular vibes. It was Dev, his driver!
Dev’s fabulously pure energy had jolted Carol back to Earth from Planet Guru, or wherever she’d been hanging out the past few years. Dev’s vibes had also attracted a lost child bodhisattva into his orbit, like a teeny, lonely asteroid being pulled towards a friendly star.
I wondered if Dev was one of those unknown souls Sam mentioned, who turn India’s pain into love and Light? Dev wasn’t famous. I doubt many people knew he existed, yet he was making a difference to the Universe, purely by living and breathing. By being himself basically.
Brice immediately texted the Agency to notify them of Obi’s new Space-Time co-ordinates. I know. Really brave. But the text mysteriously refused to go.
“Probably your phone got an energy overload in the tunnels,” Reuben suggested.
Brice tugged at his spiky hair. “It’s still getting info. It just won’t send messages.”
Dev was watching Carol walk away with her little girls. Hopefully they were going to pack their bags and get a life. He locked the car, smiling to himself, and strolled off to a row of bungalows. I suppose they were like the servants’ quarters. (I was shocked, actually, that an ashram, a supposedly spiritual place, would have servants.)
“Dev’s wife is having a baby,” Obi told us, eyes sparkling. “She’s called Saraswati and she’s really pretty. Come and see.”
We exchanged looks. How did Obi know this stuff?
“Well, it’s not like we’re going anywhere,” Brice said.
Adding our shoes to the row of dusty human shoes outside we followed Dev into his house.
They didn’t own a great deal, Dev and Saraswati: a string bed for sleeping, a paraffin burner for cooking, a plastic bowl for hygiene, but the vibes in that house were a-mazing . Dev and Saraswati’s vibes combined, plus the special vibes from their unborn child, practically took the top of my head off.
Saraswati had been praying. A tiny stub of sandalwood incense was still burning in front of a tin statue of Krishna.
“Has my child been behaving?” Dev was asking.
“He has been kicking me day and night,” Saraswati complained, patting her belly. “I think he was missing his father!”
Despite her scarily huge belly, Saraswati moved with the grace of a dancer. Her bangles jingled as she poured Dev a drink of cooling yoghurt. Obi was wrong; she wasn’t pretty. She was beautiful.
“So it is a boy then?” Dev teased.
I glanced at Obi and was taken aback to see his eyes soft with love. “Obi, who are these people?” I asked.
A bewildered little frown crinkled his forehead. He looked almost scared. “I told you,” he said quickly, “he’s called Dev and she’s called Saraswati.” Obi gabbled the names like a rhyme he knew by heart, but didn’t fully understand.
“But you seem like you really know them. And you said Saraswati was having a baby. How did you know?”
Obi’s face crumpled. “I don’t know.” The room spread and rippled like wet silk. Brice made a grab just too late. Obi had hopped times again.
Chapter Twelve
I t had seemed like such a simple mission. Take a child bodhisattva to India, hand him over to the monks, go back home.
I’d forgotten that nothing on Planet Earth is ever simple.
“It’s my fault,” I said miserably as Brice wearily led us back to the time tunnels. “I was interrogating him like a cop.”
“It’s not your fault,” Reubs contradicted.
Brice agreed. “Now he’s unplugged from the time grid, I don’t think anything seems quite real to our little Obi Wan now except his feelings, which feel like, gigantic . That’s what Florentina said. She said it felt like she was one massive nerve-ending flitting through a world of dreams.”
This made sense. In dreams the least little thing can knock you off balance, even just being asked a
Sharon Kleve, Jennifer Conner, Danica Winters, Casey Dawes