Daisy stood up, restless. “Bea wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. I know that. But it’s weird that she knew about Kammani.”
Abby looked down at the brightly colored skirt that somehow felt so right against her skin. Her hands were in her lap, devoid of jewelry, strong and capable and still slightly dusted with flour. “I wish I were like her.”
“You’re like her,” Daisy said. “That skirt looks great on—” Her voice cut off as the muffled sound of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” emerged from her pocket. “Hold on a sec.” She pulled out her cell phone, small and black and unadorned. A moment later she snapped it shut and rose. “That was Shar. She wants us to meet her at the temple to find out what the hell is going on.”
“What temple?”
“Where the class was. I think she’s right. We need to find a reasonable, rational explanation for all this.” She looked at Abby, her eyes a little wild. “There’s a reasonable, rational explanation.”
Daisy looked very determined, so Abby just nodded. “Sure.”
“Okay,” Daisy said. “I’m gonna run upstairs and change and then I’m on my way. You coming?”
Abby rose as well. “Just let me get the cookies.”
“Well, hey there,” Daisy said as she and Bailey met Shar and Wolfie in the dank corridor outside the history department auditorium. The dogs wagged tails and sniffed each other, but Shar seemed distracted as she handed Daisy a flashlight and said, “Where’s Abby?”
“She went to her car to get something. We checked and Kammani’s on the roof, sunbathing with Mina, if you can believe it. You’d think Mina would burst into flames.” Daisy glanced at the heavy wooden double doors that led inside. “You know, I heard the top two layers of this place are someplace else. Somebody’s actually using it for a house. Can you imagine living in something so creepy?”
“Yes,” Shar said, and pushed through the doors.
“Shouldn’t we wait for— Okay.”
Wolfie and Bailey followed Shar inside. Daisy slid in behind them, switching on her flashlight and peering into the darkness of the temple. The place was a pit.
Shar headed straight for the back wall, pushing her way through the curtain, so Daisy followed her and looked at the wall in the light of Shar’s flashlight. It was carved with a bunch of stone figures and had weird etchings that looked like impressions made from chicken feet.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Daisy asked.
“Explanations.” Shar moved in for a closer inspection.
“In the … wall?”
“I want to know what this damn wall means. I want to know what Kammani is doing with the dog class. I want to know why she gave us that tonic and what happened when we drank it. Has anything strange been happening to you?”
“Well.” Daisy looked down at Bailey. “Abby and I can hear dogs talk.”
“Right. Besides that.” Shar frowned at the wall. “You know, this bas-relief has to be authentic. It would be too expensive to fake. Plus, I just met—”
“We can hear dogs talk,” Daisy said again, louder, in case Shar hadn’t heard. “Abby and I. You know, with words. In their barking. Words.”
“I know.” Shar tilted her head at the relief. “That was one of the reasons why I called you.”
“One of the reasons?” Daisy took a deep breath, then motioned toward the wall. “What is this stuff, anyway?”
Shar pulled out her iPhone, stepped back from the wall, and snapped the first of the carvings, holding her flashlight in one hand and her phone in the other. “This is a bas-relief of the goddess Kammani Gula and her priestesses.” She took a step to the right and snapped a picture of the second carving.
“Uh-huh.” Daisy waited for Shar to go on, but instead she stepped to the right again and snapped another picture. “Does it say anything about talking dogs on there?”
“No.” Shar took another picture. “I think they just took that for granted.”
Right. Well, that was going nowhere, but Shar seemed invested, so Daisy said, “You go ahead and read the ancient wallpaper. I’m gonna find me a nice, modern invoice or something.”
Shar stopped and frowned at her, looking puzzled. “An invoice for what?”
“For something illegal.” Daisy walked toward the altar, shining her flashlight on the floor so she didn’t trip. “Something wrong. Something from the drug dealer that sold Kammani that tonic.”
“It’s not drugs.” Shar moved down the wall to snap another picture.
“Not drugs!” Bailey barked.
“Oh, here!” Daisy said, reaching for a slip of white paper on the floor.
“What?” Shar asked, turning to look.
“Crap. Nothing. Dunkin’ Donuts receipt.”
Shar was still. “And you thought it might be a receipt from a drug dealer?”
“What?” Daisy crumpled the receipt and threw it in the corner. “Drug dealers need to keep books, too.”
Shar turned back to her wall. Daisy went to the center of the room and up the three shallow steps to the dais and the podium there. It was scooped out in the center, its corners sticking up, a pile of tabloids resting in the middle. Not a podium.
“What is this big stone … thing?” she called back to Shar.
“It’s a horned altar.”
“Of course.” Daisy began to rifle through the tabloids, finding some celebrity mags, most with pictures of the latest celebribaby. Poor Camisole, Daisy thought. What kind of mom names a baby after underwear?
“Do you think maybe there’s something in the ink that can be boiled down and used to make hallucinogens?” Daisy asked.
“No,” Shar said.
“Yeah, that’s a stretch.” Daisy tossed the papers aside and found a small, beat-up laptop with black crystals glued in a skull shape on its lid. Yes. Daisy reached for it.
“I’m here.” Abby slipped into the room, Bowser lumbering beside her like a bodyguard. She looked around and said, “I think they filmed The Mummy here,” and then she pulled open her mammoth quilted bag and retrieved a Ziploc full of cookies. “I brought cookies.”
Daisy fiddled with the release on the laptop. “Kammani can afford drugs, but she can’t afford a decent computer?”
“Kammani has drugs?” Abby asked.
Daisy nodded. “I think she put hallucinogens in the tonic.”
Shar spoke from the back wall, around the zip-click of the camera in her phone. “I don’t think so. Hi, Abby.” Shar took a picture of the last figure on the wall and then joined them at the altar.
Abby looked at Daisy, her eyes wide. “You think Kammani put drugs in the tonic?”
“It’s a theory. I mean, dogs are talking.” Daisy set the laptop down and took a cookie from the bag Abby offered her and bit into it. The flavors popped in her mouth in little sugary explosions—honey and butter and a touch of something exotic. “Oh my god, Abby. These are amazing.”
Shar took a cookie, too. “So, has anything else interesting happened to you? Since last night? Maybe this morning?”
“No.” Abby sounded wary. “Is it gonna?”
Shar sighed. “A god rose in my bedroom last night.”
“Huh,” Abby said. “All I got was yelled at by a math professor.”
“That wasn’t a euphemism,” Shar said. “A god appeared out of nowhere in an explosion of light at the foot of my bed last night. Look.”
She walked back to the wall and put the flashlight on a male figure next to the central goddess, and Abby followed her.
“Oooh,” she said. “Who’s he?”
“He’s on the wall?” Daisy picked up the laptop, still fiddling with the release, and went to look, too.
“He’s Samu-la-el.” Shar stared at the relief. “He rose and told me he was looking for Kammani, so I sent him to LA so he couldn’t find her. The point is, either Sam and Kammani are the best con artists working this side of the Euphrates, or she’s really the goddess Kammani and he’s really the ancient god-king S
amu-la-el.”
“They’re real,” Wolfie said from Shar’s feet, and Bailey leapt up and barked, “Real!”
“So I think we better find out what they want.” Shar bit into her cookie, still staring at the god.
“Yes!” Daisy said as she popped open the laptop.
“What’s that?” Shar asked.
“Kammani’s laptop,” Daisy said, hitting the power button. “All her diabolical plans are in the recent documents file.” Daisy looked at Abby. “No one ever remembers to clear out the recent documents file.”
Abby bit into a cookie, and Shar angled the laptop to look at the skull and crossbones on the back.
“That’s Mina’s computer. She used to bring it to class.”
“Well, it’s here. Maybe Kammani stole it or Mina’s a minion. Let’s face it, she’s the type.” Daisy walked back to the altar and set the laptop down; it booted up to a password lock. “Crap. What do you think her password would be?”
Shar shrugged and turned back to her wall. “I don’t know. GrimReaper666?”
Daisy tried it. “Nope.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Shar took another picture of her precious wall. “The answers aren’t in there.”
Daisy huffed. “Look, computers are real. Goddesses are not. So, my working theory is … con artists.”
“Sam burned a hole in somebody’s forehead this morning,” Shar said. “With his finger. I don’t think he’s a con artist.”
“There’s a laptop on an altar. Gods don’t need technology.” Daisy tapped her fingers against the stone and stared at the stupid password lock. “I’m sticking with con artists.”
“Can we argue back at my place?” Abby said. “My dough is rising. Kind of like Shar’s god. Also, I want out of here.”
Daisy typed into the computer. Death. Rigor mortis. Decomposition. Nothing. “Damn it. Oooh—‘damned.’ ” She hit the keys again; no joy. “I hate this girl.”
“You have to see this.” Shar moved to the beginning of the bas-relief and pointed at the first two figures. “Does this remind you of anybody?”
Daisy left the laptop and walked over, squinting at the two round, brainless-looking faces. “Looks like Gen and Bun 1.0.”
Abby looked over her shoulder. “Does it say ‘Ohmigod’ next to them in those hieroglyph things?”
“No,” Shar said. “It says ‘fertility’ and ‘birth.’ ”
“So it looks like Gen and Bun, big deal—” Daisy broke off as Shar moved down the line, putting her flashlight beam on the next-larger figure, one with Abby’s round eyes and generous smile.
Daisy moved in closer. “That’s you, Abby.”
“Abi-simti,” Shar said.
“Abigail,” Abby said. “But I don’t go by that.”
Shar moved to the fourth figure, putting the light on the face with its almond-shaped eyes and pointed chin. “Humusi. Look familiar?”
Daisy stopped chewing. This one looked a lot like her mother. And she looked a lot like her mother. “Oh, now that’s just not playing fair,” she said, and felt a chill, then looked past the central goddess and the god-king. “Who’s that on the other side of Sam whosis?”
Shar moved down the wall and put the light on the next figure. “Sharrat.” Her eyes locked on her stone doppelgänger. “The same name as my grandmother, so it must be a family name. I think these women are our ancestors. Four-thousand-years-ago ancestors.”
Daisy’s eyes caught on the last two figures. “Who are these?”
Shar moved the flashlight beam and read, “ ‘Iltani’ and ‘Munawirtum.’ ”
“The one on the end that looks like a bug-eyed vampire has to be Mina,” Abby said. “Who’s the other one?”
Daisy sighed, taking in the squinty eyes and chipmunk cheeks. “That’s Vera. I work with her. She missed the class last night because her dog was sick. Don’t ask.” She looked at the line of faces staring at them from thousands of years ago and stepped closer to Shar, and Abby moved in as well, until the three of them were close together in the dark temple, and Daisy felt a little better.
“Okay, this is fascinating,” Abby said. “Sort of. But we need to get back to the coffee shop, since I have to open up in about six hours.”
Oh, yeah. The coffee shop. Open mike night. Noah.
“One sec,” Daisy said, heading back to the altar. “What was Mina’s stone name?”
“Munawirtum,” Shar said.
Daisy typed it in; the screen flickered and opened up to the desktop. “Oh my god, guys, I—” She twirled around, the beam of her flashlight landing on the wall while Shar snapped a few last pictures, and Daisy went quiet as her ancient likeness stared back at her with hollowed, stone eyes. A powerful wash of déjà vu hit her like a hard wind, and she felt a familiarity so strong and primal that she knew she’d never be able to understand it entirely.
But it was real.
“What’s that, Daisy?” Shar asked.
“Huh? Nothing.” Daisy turned back to the laptop and shut it down. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Right behind you,” Shar said, hooking Wolfie’s leash to his collar.
“Hate it here,” Wolfie said, and strained for the door.
Daisy grabbed Bailey’s leash and then, unable to stop herself, looked behind her at the wall again. There they were—Abby, Daisy, and Shar—etched in stone thousands of years before their births.
“Why couldn’t it be drugs?” Daisy muttered, and followed Abby out the door.
Kammani sat on the roof of the temple—now two stories shorter than it had been four thousand years ago; somebody was going to pay for that—in the lawn chair that Mina had brought for her, watching an assortment of college students sunbathing on blankets on the stone surface. They should have been worshiping her, but they didn’t even notice she was there. They were going to pay for that, too. In fact, that alone was cause for extermination, but she needed more worshipers than she had to get enough power to blow that many people off a roof, and those who’d called her to return still hadn’t shown up to greet her. She was going to have to make new converts if she was ever going to rule again. Maybe these sunbathers. Better to spare them until she knew if she needed them.
Needed them. Goddesses didn’t need things; this world was all wrong. Even her priestesses Bun and Gen, practically bouncing out of their bikinis, were more interested in keeping a water dish full for Baby in her tiara and Ziggy in his camouflage bandanna than they were in providing for Kammani.
“Sun worshipers,” Mina said scornfully from Kammani’s feet, where she was spreading lotion on Bikka.
Kammani drew back. “Worshipers?”
Mina looked up. “It’s an expression. The people laying out here, they’re not really worshiping the sun. They have no understanding of true worship. I understand.” She let go of Bikka, now gleaming and smelling of coconuts, to try to coax Umma out from under Kammani’s chair.
“What are you doing?” Kammani said, feeling her temper rise. The dogs were getting more attention than she was.
“Sunscreen.” Mina patted the stone with her hand, and Umma ignored her. “They’re hairless; they’ll burn out here in the sun.” She looked up at Kammani. “So might you, my goddess.” She held up the bottle. “It would be my honor to—”
“I am the Goddess of the Light,” Kammani snapped. “I do not burn.” Touch me and die.
“Maybe,” Mina said, looking sulky. “Things changed while you were in outer darkness. We blasted a hole in the ozone layer and now the sun can kill you.”
Kammani shook her head at the heavens. This was why mortals needed gods. She’d see to it that the sky was healed when she had enough worshipers again. There would be many changes when her temple was filled again and her power fully returned.
She sipped the lemonade Mina had brought. These people had made their world a mess, but their drink was delicious. She’d be keeping lemonade when she ruled again. As soon as she had her power back …
Kam
mani looked at Mina. “Speak to me of the Three.”
SEVEN
“They’re worthless,” Mina said, almost snarling. “Dull. Ignorant.”
Kammani narrowed her eyes. “What did you find out?”
Mina took a deep breath. “Abby’s mother took her away when she was three and she never returned until this week.” Mina lifted her chin. “She was not faithful.” She brightened. “Since Abby didn’t grow up near the temple, maybe she doesn’t have any power. And she’s the last of her line. Maybe her power will come to—”
“She has power,” Kammani said, remembering all that juicy, untapped virginal energy. “And Daisy?”
Mina looked sulky. “Daisy works here at the college building websites. She brought her mother’s dog to the class last night. Her neighbor said her mother went to New York to see a specialist for allergies to dogs.”
Kammani frowned. “Her mother is not allergic to dogs.”
“She’s not worthy,” Mina said. “Something is wrong with the bloodline. It’s weak. I—”
“Daisy is not allergic. Where does she live?”
“In an apartment over Abby’s grandmother’s coffeehouse.”
Kammani nodded. “Good. The power of the Three draws them together—”
“It was the cheap rent,” Mina said.
A scorch mark on the stone, Kammani thought. “Does Sharrat live far from the temple?”
“She lives in the temple, the top part of it,” Mina said.
Kammani sat straighter. “She lives where?”
Mina sighed. “When her grandfather brought the temple back, he put the first three levels here at the college and rebuilt the top two levels down the street as a house because his wife wanted to live in the temple and he wouldn’t sleep in a place where people were sacrificed.” She sniffed. “He didn’t understand, and she was weak and allowed him—”
Kammani silenced her with a glare. “Shar lives in the top two levels of the temple?”
“Yes. The top layer is her bedroom. Your symbol is on the wall there. They had an open house once and my mother made me go.” She looked up at Kammani. “Is that important?”
Dogs and Goddesses Page 10