Oh. Wow.
They passed a parked car, and Bailey must have jumped against it or something, because a loud, rhythmic alarm went off, bursts of sound matching the pacing of her heart, her breath, her desire. The heat rode up her legs, her core, to her face, and she took in a deep breath of air just as Noah bounced her again on his hips to get a better hold of her.
“Oh, hey,” Daisy said, gripping the cool bottle, anchoring herself to it and to Noah, holding on to what control she had left.
And then, finally, Noah stopped in front of the coffeehouse. He settled her down gently on the sidewalk, and the warm cement shot another wave of sensation through her body. She looked again at the bottle in her hand; what the hell was in that stuff?
“Well,” Noah said. “I’ll see you Tuesday at class?”
Daisy looked up, feeling bereft. Tuesday? Five whole days?
“Actually,” she said quickly, “hell of a coincidence with you being a musician and all, Abby’s having an open mike night here tomorrow night.”
“Yeah?” Noah looked at the coffeehouse door, where the giant CLOSED sign sat in the dusty window. “It’s not … closed?”
“No. Well, yes. But no.” God, but she was a bad liar. “Abby needs to bring in a little extra cash, so she’s having an open mike night, like Bea used to have. Except instead of poets, Abby wants music.” Daisy smiled up at him, hoping her face wasn’t as flushed as it felt. “I’d love to hear you play.”
“Then I’ll be there.” He waved good-bye to Bailey, and a moment later he’d disappeared around the corner. Daisy leaned against the cool glass of the old storefront.
“Daisy happy!” Bailey yipped, hopping into the air. “Happy, happy, happy!”
Daisy looked down and felt a rush of affection for the little furball. She knelt down and rubbed his head.
“Daisy happy.” She stood up, corked the bottle, and pulled open the stairwell door. “Come on. You go say hi to my couch pillow while I drum up the nerve to tell Abby I’ve booked her an open mike tomorrow.”
“Yay!” Bailey barked, darting up the steps, and Daisy followed, laughing.
Kammani stood at the back of the temple flanked by Bikka and Umma, watching the last of the Three leave while the teenagers, Bun and Gen, gathered their things and giggled at their dogs, a fat poodle mix in a tiara and a resigned foxhound in a bandanna. Twits, Kammani thought, and wondered what twits were. There were words in the air in this world, crackling as they came and went, annoying her with their strangeness and inexplicability. This world was not like her old world; it was wrong, ignorant, lacking in respect, starting with the people who had called her back and then not greeted her—
“Ohmigod, I think we lost the Cheetos,” Bun said, looking around the floor.
“Ohmigod, I think we ate the Cheetos,” Gen said, and they collapsed into laughter again.
Kammani thought, I should smite you into grease spots.
“They’re young,” Umma barked.
“Yes,“ Kammani said. “But they will learn. And then—”
Someone moved in the darkness behind the altar.
“Careful,” Umma growled.
The dark-haired girl with the little black dog in her arms came out of the curtains and bent her head. “I bow before thee, O Goddess. I am Mina Wortham. My mother has sent me because I am your Chosen, the youngest woman of age in our family. I will do your bidding.”
“Your mother?” Kammani said.
“Miriam Wortham,” the girl said, and Kammani thought of the lone, fervent little woman who had greeted her when she’d awakened, who had bowed low and brought clothes and food and money and a machine that played flat disks. “So you can see the world you will rule, my goddess.” Mina looked like Miriam, eyes bulging with devotion, thin chest heaving with passion, a dark raw nerve. Her little black dog breathed heavily, too, making a Heh heh heh sound as he smiled, his eyelids half-closed.
Kammani walked up the three shallow steps to the altar to look down on Mina Wortham. “You say you are chosen. Tell me how you will serve me.”
“My name is Death,” the girl said almost hissing the word. “I will serve you by bringing an end to any who oppose you.”
Kammani closed her eyes. Seven priestesses and this is the one who remembers. “You are not Death. You are the human manifestation of the abstract principle of the cessation of life.” Mina frowned, and Kammani tried again. “You are not a goddess; you are a priestess charged with helping the dying among my people to find Ereshkigal’s kingdom in the Netherworld.”
The girl blinked.
Kammani spoke slower. “You are Mina Wortham, a priestess only. You will serve me, forsaking all others, staying virgin and aloof, giving your life to me. And you will kill no one.” Unless I tell you to.
Mina bowed. “I am untouched by man, and I am your priestess, your servant, your slave, my goddess.”
Kammani nodded. “Welcome, Mina, descendant of Munawirtum. You are the seventh of my priestesses—”
“And the most powerful,” Mina said, tasting the words.
“No,” Kammani said, wondering if Mina knew what happened to people who interrupted a goddess.
“And I will stand by your left hand, and I will smite your enemies,” Mina went on, her voice rising.
If this had been the old world, Mina would have been a scorch mark on the stone by now, or at least a small furred creature with a collar.
But she needed Mina, needed Mina’s family of devout worshipers, women who had not forgotten over centuries …
Bun and Gen were at the big double doors now, leaving a welter of papers and bags behind them, whispering and giggling as they looked back at Mina, no idea that they were in the presence of Divinity.
They’ve forgotten me, Kammani thought with a chill. Only Mina’s family remembers, and their numbers are not large enough to give me the power I need—
“Shall I smite them?” Mina said.
“No, Mina. You may not smite anyone,” Kammani said, and Mina looked rebellious as Bun and Gen escaped, unscathed.
“You say I am not the most powerful,” Mina said, coming closer. “Why? I am the most faithful.”
“There are others who come before you.” Kammani looked back at the three chairs in the middle of the semicircle.
Mina stiffened, following Kammani’s gaze to the center chair. “Daisy? She’s nothing.”
“On the contrary, she is very important.” Kammani watched as Mina’s eyes narrowed.
“She can’t be important; she’s not even five foot tall,” Mina said. “She can’t even control her dog.”
“She is one of the Three.” Kammani stared out over the temple, remembering their presence, feeling the power and passion they were repressing within themselves. Once she’d brought them back to her, released all that power in them, once they were open to her again—
“The Three?” Mina’s eyes grew greedy.
Kammani walked down the shallow steps, tired of the girl’s neediness, leaving Mina to seethe behind her.
Bun’s and Gen’s chairs were covered with papers and Kammani picked one up. A magazine. Miriam had brought some of those, too, but not like these. InStyle, she read on the first cover, savoring the new word. People. Star. Pictures of women falling out of their clothing, men with jutting jaws and empty eyes, babies in jewels. Celebribaby. Another word from the air. She shook her head and went back up the steps to the altar.
“The Three?” Mina said, spitting the words. “The three who sat in the middle? They have power? That little shrimp Daisy? Old Professor Summer with her gray hair? That skinny weakling with the big dog? They’re the most powerful?”
“They will be,” Kammani said. “When they follow me.”
“What about me?”
“You?” Kammani turned to her. “You are my seventh priestess and your birthright is to serve me.”
“Yes, my goddess,” Mina said, but her eyes slid left.
“Begin now.” Kammani dropped the
magazines on the altar. “Discover all you can about the Three. Then come here tomorrow and tell me.”
“Yes, my goddess.” Mina straightened, sticking out her chin over her little dog, who heh-heh-ed. “I will serve you; I will be the most powerful; I will smite your enemies; I will—”
“You will bring what I require and do nothing else,” Kammani said.
Mina set her jaw, as if biting back words. “Yes, my goddess. My mother said to tell you that she’ll bring your breakfast tomorrow at eight if that is suitable. Waffles and strawberries.”
Kammani nodded, and Mina left, and Kammani sat down on the step below the altar, alone in her temple, and thought about her priestesses.
Nin-kagina, Belessunu, Abi-simti, Humusi, Sharrat, Iltani, Munawirtum.
But now they were Gen, Bun, Abby, Daisy, Shar, Vera, and Mina….
They were not like their ancestors; they’d need training—Vera had not even come when summoned—but they would be hers again. The Three were steady and sane, and they would give her the power she needed, they and Samu-la-el. She would raise him tonight in the sacred room at the top of her temple, and he would stand at her side—
“Biscuit, biscuit, biscuit,” Bikka said, wriggling under Bun’s chair for some kind of bag that crackled when she pawed at it.
Umma looked back over the deserted temple to where the Three had sat as Bikka crunched something.
“Wolfie,” Umma said.
Kammani looked at her sharply, but the little dog said nothing else, so she went up the steps to the altar and picked up the biscuit box there. She gave Umma one while she thought about the work of her evening. She had to check the cask of the still-fermenting elixir, evoke the spirit and the body of her four-thousand-year-dead consort, and learn more about this new world that made women weak and dogs mute.
But afterward, when all is ready, I will rule this new world as I ruled the old one and they will all follow my bidding.
She picked up the papers from the altar. The lettering on the top one said: BABY CAMISOLE’S FIRST BLING! over a picture of a baby draped in sparkling stones.
Because on their own, they’re idiots, she thought, and put all the magazines in a stack to read later.
Bowser didn’t speak again, and Abby managed to calm herself down long enough to go shopping. By the time she made it back to the Temple Street Coffeehouse, she’d almost sideswiped a Lexus, crushed a shopping cart at the mammoth Kroger, and only barely resisted the temptation to call her mother in hysterics. The memory of just how unhelpful Amanda Richmond could be in a crisis was enough to bring her to her senses.
She pulled up into the alleyway behind Granny B’s lavender building. Bowser lifted his head, tilting it slightly in that quizzical look that only dogs could perfect.
“Home,” Abby said, and slid out of the car.
It took her three trips into the back kitchen of the coffeehouse to unload all the stuff she’d bought. Butter, cream, honey, cinnamon, licorice, enough flour and sugar to consume what little money she had left, along with a six-pack of Diet Coke. Bowser trotted beside her, his mouth full of the soup bone she’d brought him, and while it occasionally sounded as if he was mumbling at her, she ignored it, taking another swig from the ceramic bottle Kami had given her.
Fortunately someone, presumably Daisy, had kept the kitchen clean and dust-free, and the baking pans and bowls were easy enough to find. It didn’t keep Abby from muttering imprecations about the professor beneath her breath, and eventually Bowser dropped the bone to look up at her.
“Liked him,” he growled.
“You’re man’s best friend,” she replied, cranky. “Who says you’re any judge of character?”
Bowser just looked at her, then picked up the bone again.
“Blabbermouth,” Abby said beneath her breath, pulling on one of the aprons she’d found hanging on the door to the storeroom. It was lavender as well, decorated with sparkly dragonflies and bejeweled organza ribbons, with Bea spelled out in rhinestones across the top. Clearly dear old Granny B was a far cry from the sweet little old lady Abby had fantasized about. And a far cry from her buttoned-up, uptight, real estate-obsessed mother.
She found a stack of notebooks under the wide center island, a treasure trove of recipes and memories, and she squinted at the handwriting, feeling a headache coming on. She took another swig of the tonic, and the curlicues of old-fashioned script suddenly sorted themselves out and became legible. She twisted her long hair back into a bun, pulled out the mixing bowls, and set to work.
She had her first tray of cookies in the oven and was elbow-deep in her second batch of cookie dough when Daisy walked in, a bemused expression on her face, her chaotic dog by her side.
“I saw the light on and I thought I’d check,” Daisy said. “I take it you found the grocery store.”
“I did. And it turns out baking isn’t that hard. You just have to relax.”
Daisy leaned forward, peering at the dough. “Looks good. Smells good, too. I think you’re a natural.”
“Maybe,” Abby said.
In fact, it had been surprisingly easy. She glanced over at Bowser, who’d abandoned his bone to have a low, inaudible conversation with Bailey. Abby shook her head. “Weird,” she muttered under her breath.
She turned to Daisy, about to say something, then thought better of it. If she asked her if she could hear her dog talking, Daisy might run screaming out of the place, and Abby needed the rent. Not to mention the friend. No, the talking dog was nothing more than her imagination and too much stress. She’d been driving for days, talking to no one but Bowser. It was no wonder he was talking back.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with this place?” Daisy asked.
“I don’t know.” Abby picked up a shamrock-shaped cookie cutter, then shook her head and dumped it back in. “I’m leaving things kind of open.”
“Well, what do you think of Summerville?”
“I like it.” Abby pulled out a gingerbread man-shaped cutter and tossed it back. “Even if there are certain obnoxious professors who think they can tell someone what to do.” She rejected a plain circle, a paw shape, and a baby bootie. She picked out a heart, shrugged, and kept it, returning the basket back to the shelf.
“Um, okay,” Daisy said, “but I was thinking—”
Abby cut a heart. “And now he expects me to just drop everything and bake him cookies. All I wanted was some answers about my grandmother, and he just—” She perked up suddenly and sniffed the air. “Just a minute.” She walked over to the wall oven and pulled out the pan of cookies, warm and buttery, with sun shapes embossed in the tops. Absolutely perfect, she thought, beaming down at them.
“Did I miss the timer going off?” Daisy asked.
“No,” Abby said. “I didn’t set one.”
“So, you just … know when they’re done?”
Abby nodded, staring down at the cookies. “Seems that way.”
“You’re definitely a natural, then.”
Daisy was moving around, looking far too nervous, and Abby wanted to plant her hands on Daisy’s tiny shoulders and hold her still for a moment.
“What’s up?” Abby asked in her most patient voice.
“Well … I really need you to open the coffeehouse tomorrow night.”
Abby picked up the heart-shaped cutter and went back to work. “Why?”
“Well, Bea used to have these open mike nights, and they were so fun. People would flock in and do poetry readings, although I was thinking that maybe we’d just do music at this one—”
Abby stopped cutting. “Granny B used to have open mike nights?”
“Yeah. She loved poetry and music, all kinds of music. And colors. Anything bright and anti-establishment. She was so …” Daisy trailed off. “You didn’t know her well, did you?”
“No,” Abby said simply, trying to ignore the ache inside her. “But … I feel a strange sort of connection to her, as if …” She looked down at the cooki
es. “I haven’t seen her since I was a little girl. Is it weird that I miss her?”
“No. She was great. She had this laugh … hell, you could hear it for miles. And she had this way of inspiring people. Artists, poets, the lovelorn.” Daisy had a distant look in her eyes. “So, about this open mike… .”
“I’m not so sure it’s a good idea,” Abby said.
Daisy leaned over the counter, her expression plaintive, her focus unshakeable. “Look, you’ve already got a start with the cookies, and if they taste as good as they smell, they’ll sell like mad. The front room won’t take long to clean—all we have to do is dust and then drag in a few extra tables and chairs, get the coffee machine cleaned and running, and we’re golden. I’ll oversee all that. I can clean; I can wait tables; I am an excellent coffee pourer. I used to help Bea when things were busy, I know the register and everything.”
“Okay.”
Daisy snapped her fingers. “Oh, and I bet Shar would help. And maybe those two little giggly girls can help me wait tables if we’re desperate. Not Mina, though; she’s the Grim Reaper in a miniskirt.” She blinked, seeming to finally process what she’d heard. “What did you say?”
“I said okay,” Abby said. “Granny B would have done it, right?”
“Are you kidding? Bea would have held a circus in here if it would get me laid. She always thought it was sad that she got more action than I did. I wasn’t too crazy about it, either, but Bea—”
“Wait.” Abby laughed. “All this is to get you laid?”
“No.” Daisy put her hands over her eyes. “Yes. Kind of.” She pulled her hands down. “It’s Noah. From class. He’s completely wrong for me, but he gave me this piggyback ride and I almost had … fun. It’s been so long since I’ve had fun, Abby.”
“I know the feeling,” Abby said, glancing down at her ridiculous apron. At least Granny B had been enjoying herself—more than her two descendents put together.
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