Dogs and Goddesses Read online

  She was going to need some answers, and fast. But in the meantime the Anise Stars were ready, the Cinnamon Daisies were ready to go, and she had people to feed. Answers could wait.

  For the first fifteen minutes of their conversation, Shar had tried to get an explanation out of Sam that made sense, but all he knew was that Kammani had called him, as usual, and he’d risen in the room of the sun, as usual, except that now it was Shar’s bedroom and the temple was in Ohio. On that part, he was as confused as she was.

  “So you just do whatever she tells you?” Shar said, annoyed.

  “Everyone does what the gods decree. But I am a god, also, so first I do what is best for my people.”

  Shar squinted at him, trying to find some clue that he was shining her on, but his face was serious, almost bland in its rough-hewn sincerity. “Your people,” Shar said. “Okay, about them. They’re not around anymore. I think they were in Turkey. About four thousand years ago.”

  Sam looked around the coffee shop as Abby opened the doors and said, “The people will come, Sharrat,” and sure enough, the place began to fill up.

  “For the last time, I am not Sharrat. My grandmother was Sharrat; she was probably descended from your Sharrat… .” Shar’s voice trailed off as a new thought hit.

  Grandma Sharrat had known a hell of a lot about Kammani Gula. Without sources.

  “So, your Sharrat,” Shar said uneasily. “Did she have any scars, any marks, any distinguishing—”

  “A scar,” Sam said, drawing his finger down the side of his face. “A knife cut from a temple invasion.”

  Shar felt cold. “She told me that was from a fall.” Okay, maybe it was from a fall. One lousy scar—

  Sam nodded, unperturbed. “And marks from lamp sputters on her hands. All the priestesses had those.”

  Shar thought of the shiny oval marks on the backs of her grandmother’s hands, of how there were no pictures of Sharrat before 1925, of how her grandfather had said that Sharrat was the most important treasure he’d found in Turkey—

  “Oh my god,” Shar said as it all fell together. “He dug her up.”

  EIGHT

  “Dug her up?” Sam said as Shar tried to wrap her mind around the enormity of her family history.

  “My grandfather went on a dig in Turkey in 1925 and came back with a step temple and my grandmother and her six sisters.” Shar put her head in her hands. “He brought everything Kammani needed back here. They weren’t sisters; they were Kammani’s priestesses. My grandmother was four thousand years old.”

  “Shar?” Sam said, watching her warily.

  Her mother must have known. They’d both known, her grandmother Sharrat and her mother, Sharon, but they hadn’t bothered to tell her. “Goddammit,” Shar said, thinking about forty-eight years of boring duty and non-stop study, and all the time this huge family secret was heaving under her….

  She looked at the god across from her, mad as hell. Her life might have been boring, but it had been her life and now he was screwing it up. Yes, okay, she’d wanted change, but not this, not a god in a bowling shirt….

  She looked at him more closely. He was wearing a vintage cream-colored bowling shirt with the name Dick embroidered in red over the pocket.

  “Where do you get these clothes?” she said, and when he looked confused, she added, “The red flannel shirt yesterday and now this … Dick shirt. Where have you been going? What have you been doing?”

  He looked down at the expanse of cream polyester. “Kar-en gave me the red shirt. And Lisa gave me this.”

  “Karen. Who’s Karen?” And who the hell is Lisa?

  “I met Kar-en walking down your road last night after I rose, and she took me to her home. She said it would be better in this world if I were clothed so that the people would recognize me as one of them.”

  “ ‘Oh, yeah, you blend,’ ” Shar said. “She didn’t know you; she picked you up in the street; why would she …” Shar pulled back a little, remembering the gist of most of the myths that had gods dropping in to chat with humans. “Uh, you didn’t … have sex with her, did you?”

  “Yes,” Sam said, with a lot of of course in his voice.

  Shar closed her eyes. Karen was damn lucky the Mesopotamians didn’t go in for bulls and swans. “Tell me she had condoms. No, let me explain condoms to you—”

  “Kar-en explained.”

  “Oh, good. So was the sex her idea or yours? Because this world is different—”

  “All women want to have sex with a god.” Sam looked at the empty cookie plate. “Fetch me another cookie.”

  Shar took a deep breath. “Here’s something that’s different about this world: women don’t fetch.” He looked at her steadily, and she got up and got a cinnamon cookie out of Abby’s glass display case—not a butter cookie—dropped it on the plate in front of him, and then sat down again. “Okay, another thing that’s different: you can’t just assume women will have sex with you just because you want them—”

  “Hungry,” Wolfie barked at their feet.

  “They ask.” Sam broke off a piece of cookie and gave it to Wolfie.

  She regrouped. “So, this woman you spent the night with—”

  “No.” Sam bit into his cookie. “I did not pass the night with Kar-en.”

  “You had sex and left. Nice. And what did you do between earning your new wardrobe and showing up in my kitchen this morning?”

  “There was a tavern.”

  “A bar. You spent the night in a bar?”

  “No,” Sam said. “There were women who said I should go with them.”

  “And of course you did.” Shar rubbed her forehead.

  “Did you tell them you were a god?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they said …”

  “‘Prove it.’ ” Sam bit into the cookie again.

  The Ghostbusters Theory of Dating: if somebody asks you if you’re a god, say yes.

  Shar considered him in the dim light. As problems went, he was huge. Not only was he planning on helping a wingnut goddess gather followers, he was also sleeping with the general populace, and when women started to look for him again—

  “Sam, how many women did you sleep with last night?”

  He squinted for a moment as if thinking. Or counting.

  “Oh, my god.” Shar went back to damage control. “Listen, when you find Kammani, you both have to remember that this is a different world from yours. You can’t use people; you can’t make them serve you. It’s … immoral.”

  “But it’s our world now,” Sam said, looking perplexed again. “Kammani has been called to rule it, and we are all called to help her.”

  Wonderful, Shar thought. Magic tonic and divine sex, that’s how they’re going to rule the world. She looked at Sam again and realized that it wasn’t a completely bad idea.

  “Okay.” She kept her eyes on his shirt in case he could look into her eyes and read her mind, and then realized she was staring at the embroidered name above his pocket. “Dick?”

  Sam looked down at the shirt. “Lisa gave me this. She said it was fitting.”

  “Oh.” Change the subject. “So explain to me why Abby and Daisy have powers and I don’t—”

  “Sam!”

  Shar looked up to see her grad student Leesa coming toward them, a goofy grin on her pretty face, and the other shoe dropped.

  Shar glared at Sam. “That Leesa?”

  Sam looked at Leesa as she pushed past people to get to the table. “I think so.”

  “Oh, for the love of god—”

  Sam smiled at her.

  “Not you,” Shar said. “Another god. Any other god.” Leesa arrived, beaming. “Sam!” Then she noticed Shar and lost some of her bounce. “And Professor Summer.”

  Sam nodded to her and then said to Shar, “I must have another cookie. I will bring you one also.” He got up and walked into the kitchen, Wolfie on his heels.

  Leesa watched him go. “He’s not, like, your boyfriend, is