Read Online Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) by Lars Guignard - Free Book Online

woman, this one blind in both eyes, approached. There were sewn-up black holes where the woman’s eyes used to be. I had to look away because I wanted to scream. India was turning out to be much more than I had been prepared for. I took a deep breath, struggling to get ahold of myself. I turned my head and this time I saw Zak, a little farther off in the crowd. Typical boy I thought to myself. Not worried about a thing. He seemed to be having a blast.
    “Hello India!” Zak screamed into the rain.
    I slouched lower against the lamppost and ran a hand over my tears. We needed to get out of there. We needed a plan.
    “Do you have place to stay for the night?” I overheard a woman’s voice say.
    I glanced back through the sea of arms and legs to see Zak speaking to the beautiful woman in the back of the rickshaw. The woman’s hair was long and dark and there was something luminous about her, her bright eyes sparkling in the night.
    “Not yet,” Zak said.
    “Well, if you’d like, I can help you with that.”
    “Can I drive?”
    “Ask him.”
    Zak motioned to the driver, a little man with deep bags under his eyes wearing a cloth skirt for men called a lungi. The lungi really wasn’t much more than a cotton sheet tied around the waist, or so I had read, but I guessed that in a hot place like India, it was comfortable. The driver seemed to understand what Zak wanted because he got into the back seat. Thinking back to my reading, I was pretty sure that the rickshaw driver was called a wala. Basically, wala was a word for someone who did something in India, so it made sense that the driver would be called a rickshaw wala. Zak hopped onto the front seat of the bicycle rickshaw and started to pedal, ringing the bell like he was driving a bus. He pulled up right in front of me.
    “Staying there?”
    “Not if I can help it,” I said, hoping that he couldn’t tell I’d been crying.
    “Then get in.”
    “You’re the reason we’re in this mess. Why should I come with you?”
    The blind woman pushed forward, extending her hand to me. Then she removed her long checkered scarf, a gumcha I think they call it, to reveal a scaly pinkish snake she had coiled around her neck. My heart skipped a beat and I jolted backward as the snake slithered down her arm and into her hand toward me. I’ve got to say right now: I hate snakes. I don’t know why, but they just creep me out, like circus clowns, and rats. There was only so far I could go to get away though. I backed right into a wall. The pink snake looked nearly translucent in places, its forked tongue tasting the air.
    “Please come,” the woman in the rickshaw said. “It is not safe here.”
    Really, it’s not safe? Imagine that. Did she think I wanted to stay? Without warning, the blind woman placed her bony fingers over my eyes. I couldn’t believe it was happening. The snake was close to my face now. Close enough that I could hear it hissing in my ear. I pulled my head away from the woman’s bony grasp.
    “You will see,” the blind woman said.
    Maybe I would see, but whatever I did, whatever I saw, I knew that I couldn’t stay where I was. I carefully shuffled away from the snake woman and climbed into the back of the rickshaw.

    Zak pedaled the rickshaw through the crazy streets as the weird jumbled madness of the city flew by. There were pigs snuffling through heaps of garbage. There were tiny stores selling all kinds of medicines and meats and nuts. And there were thousands, maybe millions of people just waiting in the rain. Now that I was done with my crying jag, I almost felt numb. It was like I wasn’t even there. Like I was watching the craziest movie of my life. I sat in the back of the rickshaw with the woman in blue on one side of me and the rickshaw wala on the other, feeling nearly hypnotized by the never-ending activity around us.
    “Why are you helping us?” I asked the woman.
    “Because you need a place to stay.”
    “You know we have no money