“Yes,” Kammani said, wishing she could smite somebody. It explained where the rest of her damn temple was and why Samu-la-el had not come to her in the altar room. He probably rose in the top of the temple as usual, saw Sharrat, and stayed to try his luck.
“I have your symbol painted on my bedroom wall,” Mina said. “I painted it on there. Professor Summer does not know you, but I have waited for you since my birth.”
Kammani felt … she searched for the word … sad. No, lost. No, hopeless … No, that wasn’t it, either.
She sighed. Mina was hers and Bun and Gen would follow at her command, but it wasn’t enough. Samu-la-el had risen to Sharrat, not her, and no one was flocking to her worship except the Worthams, a sizable family, but not numbering in the thousands, not in the numbers that had called her name to raise her. She needed those thousands—
Mina grabbed Umma and dragged her out from under Kammani’s chair.
Umma barked, “Unhand me, insane one!” and struggled until Bikka barked, “It’s good.”
“I am your most faithful priestess,” Mina said, glopping lotion on Umma.
Kammani thought again of the Three. If she had them with her …”None of the Three have families, children?”
“No.” Mina massaged the lotion carefully into Umma’s skin. “They’re all only-children and they’re all the last of their lines.” She smiled over the dog’s little head. “The Wortham line has many descendents. We are strong.”
How fortunate, Kammani thought. Many Minas.
She had to have the Three. “What do they want? What are their hearts’ dreams?”
Mina rolled her eyes. “To run a coffee shop, make websites, and teach history. They don’t have dreams.” The contempt was thick in her voice. “They’re just … there.” She let go of Umma, who crawled back under Kammani’s chair, redolent of coconut now, too. “But I—”
“Professor Summer wants to finish her grandmother’s book,” Gen said from beside them, and Kammani started, surprised Gen had been listening. “It’s all she talks about when she’s not in class. ‘This damn book,’ she says.” Gen patted her little fox hound. “How hard can it be to finish a book?”
“You never even finished your paper for her class,” Bun said, giggling.
“That’s different,” Gen said, giggling, too. “I was thinking about other things.”
“Guys,” Bun said, and punched her.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think Professor Summer is thinking about guys,” Gen said, and they both collapsed laughing.
“Why not?” Kammani said.
Bun and Gen giggled harder.
“She’s old,” Mina said, drawing Kammani’s attention back to her. “She’s almost fifty. The days she can serve you are numbered, but I am—”
“I am over four thousand years old,” Kammani told her.
“But you are the goddess,” Mina said, bowing her head. “You are eternally young.”
“I am eternal,” Kammani said. “Young has nothing to do with it.”
Mina sat back. “So what’s our plan? Because I—”
“Plan?” Kammani frowned at her. “My priestesses will return to the temple in four days and recognize their destinies, and then we will draw together the people of this world who called me to them.”
“Right,” Mina said. “How will the people come?”
“They called me,” Kammani said, annoyed. “I am their goddess. They must come. They are born to serve me.”
“Yeah, that changed,” Mina said. “People don’t live to serve anymore. They have free will.”
Kammani frowned. “What?”
“Free will changed everything,” Mina said. “People make choices now and most of them put themselves first. They are not worthy.”
Free will. That made no sense. Mortals were born to serve the gods. Kammani looked around at the sun worshipers and began to feel … unsure. It was a new feeling for her, closely akin to the other new feeling she couldn’t name. This damn world. “The temple. They’ll come to the temple.”
“How will they know?” Mina lifted her chin again, the gleam back in her eye. “If they wanted to serve you, how would they know you’re here? You’re going to have to reach them. You can’t send out three hundred million flyers. I can—”
“How many?” Kammani said, shocked.
“Three hundred million just in this country.” Mina leaned forward. “That’s why television is the way to go. You can’t just announce that you’re the goddess and start bossing people around. But don’t worry; I have a plan.”
Kammani nodded, trying to process the immensity of the number as Mina leaned in even closer, avid now.
“You need something to get people’s attention. Like ‘Thin Thighs in Thirty Days,’ or ‘Make a Million Dollars at Home in Your Spare Time,’or ‘Get Younger-Looking Skin.’ I’ve been researching for the things that people are most interested in, and they’ll come to hear about those things, and then when they’re in, you can tell them that they must follow you.”
Kammani looked at her, truly angry now. “But they called me. I am their goddess. They shouldn’t need to be told.”
“People don’t want another religion,” Mina said, with obvious patience. “And they sure as hell don’t want to serve. They want to be thin; they want to be rich; they want to be young. Give them one of those, and they’ll worship you forever. I can show you how to bring them in, I have researched on the Internet and found a way. I will be—”
“Is this a diet thing?” Bun said, sounding alert for the first time, and Kammani pulled back from Mina again. “Because I might come to that.”
“No, you won’t,” Gen said. “You don’t go anywhere that doesn’t have French fries.”
Bun giggled.
“But I will be there, so you must be present to serve me,” Kammani said to them, and both girls looked at her, nodded politely, rolled their eyes at each other, and stretched out in the sun again.
Two grease spots on the stone, Kammani thought, and restrained herself with difficulty. If she kept blasting priestesses, she’d end up doing everything for herself. That would be a nightmare. But this damn free will. Whose blasphemous idea was that? She looked down at Gen and Bun as they lay in the sun, peaceful and mindless. “YOU WILL COME TO ME WHEN I CALL YOU AND YOU WILL OBEY AND SERVE ME.”
Bun looked up at Kammani, blinking as if she was unsure about what was happening. “Okay.”
Gen didn’t say anything—she looked as if she was trying to puzzle something out, but she didn’t object.
“We don’t need them,” Mina snapped.
“Yes, we do,” Kammani said, looking at Bun, who smiled back, dumb as sand but now obedient, plus cheerful and sane, a huge improvement over Mina.
“Not them,” Mina hissed to Kammani. “I can—”
“You will come to me Tuesday at the next class,” Kammani said to Bun and Gen, and then she noticed Baby panting heavily under her tiara. “Take your dogs out of the sun now.”
“Yes.” Bun stood up, her healthy round body practically bursting with youth and fertility. “We’ll come when you call.”
“We’re really good at posters and stuff like that,” Gen said, still looking confused but game. “We’ll be your right-hand women.”
“No.“ Mina’s face twisted as the girls folded their blanket to go. “I serve at your right hand,” she said under her breath to Kammani.
“You are but one of seven,” Kammani said, thinking, And not for long if you don’t stop overreaching.
Mina drew back, stung.
“Come on, Baby.” Bun walked toward the stone stairs, and the fat old poodle sighed and waddled across the roof after her. “See you tomorrow, Mina,” she called back. “You can help with the posters.”
Mina reached out her hand and closed it into a fist, and Baby collapsed.
Bun screamed, “Baby!” and Mina said, “Maybe if you concentrated on taking care of your dog instead of interfering—”
&nbs
p; “Stay,” Kammani said to Mina, and then stood and went to the old poodle. She put her hand on Baby’s chest and whispered, “RISE,” in her ear and felt the little heart lurch to life again.
Baby rolled over and shook herself and then looked up at Kammani, indignant. “What the hell was that for?” she barked, a rasp in her voice as if she’d been smoking cigarettes for seventy years.
“It was a mistake,” Kammani said. “Rest tonight. You will be well by morning.”
“I thought she was dead,” Bun said, scooping Baby up in her arms.
“Just resting.” Kammani watched Baby try to rub her tiara off on Bun’s chest. “Take the tiara off, it’s stressful for her, and keep her cool, and give her much quiet tonight.”
Bun snatched the tiara from Baby’s head, and Baby looked up at Kammani gratefully.
“You should have told me you didn’t like the tiara,” Bun said to Baby. “Poor Baby!”
“It’s okay,” Baby rasped. “You’re a good girl.”
“Much better without it,” Kammani said, warming to Bun, who was cradling Baby and cooing to her now, clearly concerned for her dog. “She will be fine.”
“Ohmigod, thank you,” Bun said.
“Yes,” Gen said, slower, looking at Mina. “Thank you.”
Kammani turned to Mina.
Mina lifted her chin, defiant.
You stupid little girl, Kammani thought.
Bun carried Baby down the steps, followed by Gen, gently tugging on her little foxhound, who said, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” as Gen kept an eye on Mina.
“You disobeyed me,” Kammani said to Mina, putting enough chill in her voice to drop the temperature ten degrees.
Several sunbathers shivered and began to pick up their things.
“I am Death; it is my nature to end things,” Mina said, but her voice was less sure now. Probably because she’d just realized she couldn’t move.
“I am Life,” Kammani said, drawing closer. “And it is time you learned to respect me.”
Beyond them the sunbathers had stopped moving, frozen under the same spell but unaware.
Kammani walked around Mina, and the girl’s eyes darted, trying to follow her.
“I am the Goddess of All,” Kammani said. “All things come from me.”
“All things end with me,” Mina whispered back.
“You think this is true?” Kammani stopped in front of the girl who was now completely immobilized, only her eyes alive. “Then end me, Munawirtum. If you are Death, END ME NOW.”
She met Mina’s eyes, saw the girl try, saw the death behind the irises, but it was only a cold wind, sufficient to collapse an ancient dog, freeze a houseplant. “EVEN AT THE HEIGHT OF YOUR POWER YOU COULD NOT HARM ME, MUNAWIRTUM. YOU SERVE ME. IF YOU DO NOT, I WILL END YOU.” She met Mina’s eyes and then drew a long, slow breath, drawing the air from Mina’s lungs, watching Mina’s eyes widen in panic as she began to suffocate. Kammani waited until she felt Mina’s grasp on life loosen and then exhaled into her, releasing her body at the same time, and Mina fell to her hands and knees, sucking in air, her body arching and heaving as her fingernails scratched at the stone floor.
Mort skittered away, making frantic little panting sounds.
Kammani watched Mina. Her old priestesses would never have disobeyed her. Those were the good days, when she’d had all seven around her and none of them had been fruitcakes.
Fruitcakes? She shook her head. This world and its words.
Mina gagged, still trying to get enough oxygen to her brain.
“GET UP.”
Mina climbed to her feet, her shoulders still heaving.
“WHO ARE YOU?”
Mina drew a long shuddering breath and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “I am … Mina Wortham.”
Kammani nodded. “IF YOU DISOBEY ME AGAIN, I WILL SHOW YOU NO MERCY.”
Mina nodded, her chest heaving.
“IF YOU OBEY ME, I WILL INCREASE YOUR POWER.”
The gleam came back in Mina’s eyes, dark and greedy.
Kammani walked over to Mina, and Umma came with her, pressing close as she made her voice gentle this time.
“Remember this, Mina. You serve me. You have no free will, you have no will at all, you are my handmaiden, my servant, my slave, and my desires are your only desires. If you cannot curb yourself, if you think of yourself before me again, I will end you and choose another from your family.”
Mina looked up, anger in her eyes, and Kammani tried again.
“I AM THE GODDESS OF ALL THINGS, I BRING THIS WORLD LIFE AND I BRING THIS WORLD DEATH, AND ALL THINGS ARE AS I WISH THEM. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
Mina nodded.
She’d nod if I said, I bring this world a Dunkin’ Donut and a Slurpee, Kammani thought, and then wondered what the hell a Dunkin’ Donut and a Slurpee were.
Mina shuddered in front of her, and Kammani took pity on her.
“Mina, go home and make your plan for drawing my people to the temple. You may tell me about it tomorrow. Do not kill anything on the way.”
Mina scooped up Mort and tottered for the stairs as Kammani released the rest of the students on the roof from sleep.
Mina looked back at the last minute. “I will not fail you, O Goddess, for I am your handmaiden, Death.”
Several of the sunbathers looked up at that, saw it was Mina, shook their heads, and went back to basking.
When Mina was gone, Kammani looked at Umma. “My handmaiden Death is a slow learner.”
“Crazy,” Umma said.
Kammani nodded. “But the Worthams are the only ones who believe. Until we find the thousands who called me, it is their belief alone that makes me whole… .” Memories of millennia sleeping fitfully under the sand rose up before her. Never again. Even if it meant keeping Mina close, never again.
Bikka picked her way through the sunbathing bodies to join them, her little white muzzle dusted with orange.
“Cheetos,” she said, and Kammani frowned at her.
Umma sighed and lay down on the warm stone, and Kammani settled back into her lawn chair to consider her return to power.
I need the Three, she thought, and realized that she’d never needed anything before. Wanted, yes, taken, yes, but needed …
She picked up her lemonade, feeling that strange new feeling again.
“I hate this world,” she told Umma, and comforted herself with planning its domination.
At quarter after six, Shar surveyed the coffeehouse and thought, Kammani’s probably going to eat our brains, but at least this place looks good.
The coffee shop was bigger inside than it looked from its shabby little lavender storefront, the front room going back a good thirty feet from the windows. The pastry shelves and counters were a mismatch of old wooden display cases and the linoleum was peeling up as fast as the old wallpaper was peeling down, but the big windows across the front of the store flooded the place with light now that Daisy was polishing them, and the tin ceiling was high and …
“I like this place,” Wolfie barked.
Bailey leapt up and barked, “This place!” and Abby came out of the kitchen to see what was going on.
“I’m trying to think of a rational explanation for Kammani showing up and the dogs talking,” Shar said as she bent to clean the dust off another chair seat. “So I’m thinking fraud or delusion or demonic possession… .”But the bas-relief is real. And I saw Sam smite—
The street door opened and a man came in.
Daisy zipped across the floor to stop him. “We’re closed,” she said, blocking him. “We open at seven.”
“Something in here smells really good,” he said. “Like butter cookies, only—”
“We’re closed.” Daisy shoved him out the door and locked it, and as she turned away, Shar saw a woman in a gray cardigan and tweed skirt stop to talk to the windbreaker guy, and then some guy in a jacket with elbow patches came to stand behind her, and she turned and blushed and smiled, and then a boy
in a baseball cap lined up behind him, looking impatient.
“What is it with these people?” Daisy said. “What do they want?”
“I don’t care.” Shar put down the dust cloth she’d been using to clean the chair seats. “I want to know what Kammani wants and how she’s making all of this happen. A nice, sane, non-supernatural explanation …” She picked up a cookie from the counter and bit into it, starving. Another bite of cookie, buttery and light and heavenly, and thought of Sam, tall and broad and bronzed and dark-eyed—
I shouldn’t have sent Sam away. I want him back.
She took another bite of cookie and chewed faster, thinking of those crisp curls across his forehead, remembering the hint of equally crisp chest hair from his open collar, her imagination dropping lower….
I want Sam.
Shar started to take another bite of cookie before she’d swallowed the last one and then stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Daisy said. “You’re not wiping chairs.”
“I was all right before I ate this damn cookie.” Shar put the last bite on the counter, got her laptop out of her bag, and opened it to bring up iPhoto and the pictures of the bas-relief.
“What cookie?” Daisy said, coming over. “There’s a cookie in your computer?”
“I was reading the inscriptions back in the temple, and next to Abby’s ancestor it said ‘hunger.’ ”
“Dig it,” Daisy said to Abby. “You’re the priestess of hunger.”
“Me?” Abby said, her eyes narrowed.
“Your last ancestor was.” Shar absentmindedly picked up the last of her cookie. “And whenever I’m with you, I’m hungry. For something.” She popped the cookie in her mouth and chewed, and Sam rose up her in mind, shirtless this time.
She glared at Abby. “Do not give me any more of those cookies.”
“Okay,” Abby said.
“Where’s my ancestor?” Daisy said, looking closer at the computer screen.
“Right there,” Shar said, trying to figure out the markings. “Yours said ‘great action, chaos,’ something like that.”
Daisy grabbed another cookie. “Oh, that’s not disturbing at all. What’s yours?”
Shar pulled up the Sharrat photo. “ ‘Ending, finishing—’ ”
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