Dogs and Goddesses Read online

“What? Like death?” Daisy said, shocked.

  “No, that’s Mina.” Shar pulled the pictures out of iPhoto and resized them to line up all seven of them on the screen. “I think each priestess represented basic attributes of human existence. Like the two teenagers, Bun and Gen. The first one’s ancestor was Fertility, so she probably took care of people who wanted children. The other one—”

  “Bun,” Abby said. “Gen is the taller one and Bun is the rounder one.”

  “Bun’s ancestress was Birth, so pregnant women who prayed to Kammani would go to her. Then there’s our three, Hunger and Chaos and Finishing, whatever that meant, and the next one, Iltani, is Life, so sick people would go to her.”

  “Vera,” Daisy muttered. “Hawking vitamins since the dawn of time.”

  “And the dying, god help them, went through Mina’s predecessor.”

  “Always go to the expert,” Abby said, and took a cookie.

  Shar nodded. “I think this is why Kammani called us all to the dog obedience class; she wants priestesses again—”

  Somebody knocked on the door, and Abby looked up, frowning at the line outside, which had grown considerably since Shar had last looked. Abby picked up the plate of cookies and headed for the door.

  “So we just say no,” Daisy said.

  Shar looked at her, exasperated. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. She’s already changing us. Can you tell me that nothing weird has happened in your life in the last twenty-four hours?”

  “Aside from the talking dogs?” Daisy asked. “Does a magic clicky pen count?”

  Shar raised her eyebrows. “A what?”

  “Hang on,” Daisy said, and went to get her purse.

  At the door, Abby was passing out cookies to the crowd, saying, “One, you get one, and you go away and tell everybody in town how good they are, and then you come back when we open in an hour and buy a lot more. Go away now.”

  Daisy came back with a red pen that said: Summerville College—Magic Happens Here and clicked it.

  Nothing happened.

  Daisy clicked it a few more times.

  Abby came in from the outside and put the empty plate on the counter. “What is she doing?”

  “Clicking her magic pen,” Shar said.

  “Why does that sound dirty?” Abby asked.

  “The clicky-pen thing might have been my imagination.” Daisy sat down at the table by the counter, got out her notepad, and clicked her pen again. “Let’s focus on the facts. What does Kammani want from us? You said we’re Hunger, Chaos, and Finishing.” She wrote that down and then looked at it, tilting her head. “You know, that could also be Lust, Sex, and Orgasm. So we’re … what? Ancient sex counselors? Abby in charge of lust, helping people with foreplay, and me sex, doing the mechanics, and you …” She grinned at Shar. “You’d be telling people how to come.”

  “That can’t be right.” Shar sat down beside her.

  “There’s a pattern.” Daisy pointed at Abby behind the counter. “Abby just started baking and people are clawing at the door because they’re hungry for her work. I met Noah, things got chaotic and he gave me a piggyback ride, and …” Her voice trailed off and they watched her for a moment as she clicked her pen. “Never mind.” She leaned over the table to Shar. “So tell me about this god that rose in your bedroom, Shar. Did he … finish you?”

  “No,” Shar said. “I’ve never had an orgasm.”

  “Well, that sucks,” Daisy said.

  Shar shook her head. “I think it’s got something to do with this whole Kammani thing. Abby’s underweight, not eating, you’re trying to control Bailey, control chaos, and I don’t … finish. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “So you’ve never? Ever tried a—” Daisy held up her pen and clicked it fast, several times. A small breeze blew through the room.

  “Yes.” Shar pulled Daisy’s hand down. “The ones with four D batteries and the ones that plug in and the ones from Japan with the rabbit ears. No joy. Ever tried chaos?”

  Daisy drew back. “Are we talking euphemistically? Because, yes, I’ve had sex. Everyone’s had sex.”

  “I haven’t,” Abby said.

  Daisy turned to her, stunned, and Abby said, “I’ve just never wanted to,” but Shar’s eye was caught by movement outside the window. The woman in the frumpy gray sweater and the man in the sport coat with leather patches were staring intently at each other, cookies in hands; a man in a business suit was pulling at his tie as if it was strangling him; and a boy in a football jersey was standing too close to the boy in the baseball cap, glaring down at him.

  “Never?” Daisy said, and clicked her pen again, and Elbow-Patches Guy grabbed Gray Cardigan and planted a kiss on her just as the businessman tugged his tie open and the football jersey boy pushed the kid in the baseball cap.

  “Daisy, stop that,” Shar said, standing up.

  Daisy looked around, clicking her pen. “What?”

  The boy in the baseball cap hit the kid in the football jersey as the businessman ripped off his tie and Elbow Patches plastered Gray Cardigan up against the window.

  “Give me that pen!” Shar grabbed for it, but it was too late; chaos erupted outside, sweeping down the line, people tearing clothes off as if they’d been dying to do it for years, people bursting into song, people breaking into arguments, people sweeping other people into lip-locks as the wind whipped around them—

  “What the hell?” Daisy said as Wolfie came running out of the back room.

  “What?” he barked.

  “Kammani.” Shar watched as the people in line acted on their desires. “She’s reawakened some genetic memory in the two of you, and now Abby and her cookies make people realize what they want, what they’re hungry for, and you and your pen make them act to get it.”

  “I didn’t do that,” Abby said. “I have no clicky pen.”

  “You have cookies,” Shar said as Wolfie barked on. “And now I have to finish this. Except I don’t know how.”

  “No, it’s okay; you don’t have to. Look.” Abby pointed out the window.

  “What?” Shar said, and then she saw the two boys who’d been fighting, bruised and bleeding but no longer swinging, looking up into the face of the god who held them apart by their necks, his black hair like little commas across his furrowed forehead, his hooded eyes dark with displeasure.

  Oh, Shar thought.

  He spoke and the rest of the crowd melted back into line.

  I bet he’s using his god voice, Shar thought as Wolfie barked, “Sam’s here!”

  Sam looked through the store window and saw Shar, all that power looking right into her, and her heart stopped, and she thought, That’s a god, and gave up pretending she didn’t believe and, much worse, that she didn’t care.

  Sam dropped the boys and headed for the door, and Shar remembered that she’d eaten Abby’s cookies. Several of them. She looked at Daisy. “You click that pen, I’ll break your arm.”

  Daisy put the pen in her back pocket.

  Sam came in, scooping up Wolfie, and Shar told herself that he was just a god, nothing to get excited about, as her heart pounded and her breath went.

  “Thanks a lot for breaking up that fight,” Abby said to him. “Want a cookie?”

  “No,” Shar said, and turned to Sam. “This is Daisy and Abby. They’re my friends.” She turned to Daisy and Abby. “This is Sam. He’s a god.”

  Abby looked at her. “Your luck’s about to change, Shar.”

  “Oh, funny,” Shar said as Sam put an ecstatic Wolfie back on the floor. “So. You’re back.”

  “Kammani is here, in this town,” he said to her sternly. He looked great stern.

  “Yes, she is,” Shar said. “But until I know what you’re up to, I’m not helping you find her.” So there.

  He looked down at her, exasperated, and for the first time, he looked human. “If Kammani is here, she was called back by the people.”

  “I sincerely doubt that,” Shar said.