Dogs and Goddesses Read online

  Abby tumbled into the kitchen after Christopher. The dogs were dancing around, barking in distress. “Fire!” Bailey yelped, jumping up and down. “Fire! Fire! Go!”

  Daisy ran to open the back door and the dogs scrambled out into the courtyard, into the pounding rain, barking at them to come, too, but Abby glanced back into the coffeehouse and caught a black shadow moving toward the front door. She yelled, “Hey!” and then the shadow escaped into the street and Abby could see her face in the light from the street lamp.

  “Mina!” Abby shrieked.

  “Come on!” Christopher wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her toward the courtyard door, and she grabbed Granny’s earthenware bowl off the counter as they passed.

  Daisy was soaked in the downpour, trying to calm the dogs as the lightning cracked, but she looked up when they ran out. “I called 911. What took you so long?”

  “Mina,” Abby said.

  Daisy looked confused for a second; then her eyes narrowed. “Should have known.”

  Something crashed inside and Abby’s mind whirled. Her world, her life, was in that coffeehouse. She started toward the French doors. “I have to see what I can—”

  “You can’t go in there,” Daisy said, blocking her, and Abby shoved open the back gate and ran down the alley in her bare feet, splashing through puddles as she raced around the corner to the storefront of the coffeehouse, Christopher and Daisy following behind. When she got to the sidewalk entrance, she saw that one interior wall was engulfed in flames, the smoke billowing out, thick and black and evil, impervious to the heavy rain.

  A blue SUV skidded to a halt in the deserted street, and Shar, her beautiful white hair wet from the storm, wrenched open the door and ran to her. Sam wasn’t far behind but much calmer, and behind him, in the windows of the SUV, Abby saw what she thought were four small dogs, all barking their heads off.

  “Is everyone all right?” Shar yelled over the barking and the crackle from the fire and the roar of the thunder above. “Did you get your dogs out?”

  “They’re safe.” Abby stared at the building as smoke began to curl against the windows inside, filling the place. “How did you know … ?”

  “Umma,” Shar said. “She’d been searching for one of us all night—”

  Ziggy’s keening wail cut through the cacophony: “Gen!”

  “Where’s Gen?” Daisy said, looking around frantically.

  “Gen!” Abby lunged for the front door, but Sam was there first, breaking the glass in the door and striding into the blaze like the god he was.

  Abby tried to follow him, shielding her face from the heat as she looked at the blaze, but Shar pulled her back. “It’s all on the mural wall, all in one place,” Shar said, but all Abby could think of was Gen; how could they not have noticed that Gen—

  Sam was back a moment later with Gen in his arms. She was covered with soot, her head was bleeding, and she was trying hard not to cry.

  “I’m okay,” she choked. “Mina…”

  “She was knocked out, on the floor,” Sam said, and Gen coughed.

  Christopher touched Gen on the arm, looking furious. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m sorry.” Gen coughed, looking at Abby. “I tried to stop her—”

  “Sweetie, no,” Abby said, trying not to cry. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  “Where the fuck is the fire department?” Christopher said.

  Abby looked at Daisy and Shar, despairing. Mina had hurt Gen. Her coffeehouse was burning. She had to do something—

  And then she remembered. She was the beginning.

  The rain pounded down on them, splashing into deep puddles in the street. She closed her eyes, held out Granny B’s bowl, and gathered the water to her, dark and dirty and swirling, filling the bowl, making it glow with golden light, overflowing.…

  “Okay,” Daisy said.

  Abby opened her eyes and watched Daisy pull the water from the bowl, wrapping it around a red glowing stick that appeared in her hand—a clicky pen? Abby thought—and she spun it out into the night air, arcing it in a stream high into the sky, faster and faster as Abby filled the bowl behind her.

  Then Shar stepped forward, and a sword of blue light sprang from between her hands, and she slashed it into the water and cast it into the coffeehouse, into the flames where it spattered and ran down onto the floor, and Abby gathered it again and Daisy spun and Shar slashed, the Three moving closer to the fire, a circle of Three that hummed with power, and by the third time the water returned to Abby, there was nothing but the hiss and smell of wet, cooling wood and the crash of the thunder above them as the rain kept falling.

  They stood panting in shocked silence and stared at the blackened wall.

  “The mural’s still there,” Daisy said, and Abby went to stand next to her and saw the faces of the Three shining out from the soot and scorch marks that had crawled up the wall beneath them, and something seemed to snap within her; the tension was broken.

  “Way fucking cool,” Abby said in awed disbelief. “I mean, not the coffeehouse almost burning down, but that power! The sword and the spindle and the bowl! I’m still going to kill Mina, but still … Just amazing.”

  From a distance they could hear the fire sirens. “That’s fine, guys; we got it,” Daisy said, looking at her empty, dirty hands.

  Sam stood there, still cradling Gen in his arms, while Ziggy jumped up and down at his feet, trying to reach his mistress. “Gen!” he barked. “Gen hurt?”

  “I’m fine, sweetie,” Gen said. “You can put me down, Sam.”

  “No, he can’t; there’s broken glass all over the street.” Shar moved toward them, her hands empty now, too. “You’re going to the emergency room and we’re going with you. Let Sam hold you until the EMTs get here.”

  “You’re not going with me,” Gen said firmly. “You can’t let Kammani get away with this. Just call Bun and tell her to meet me there. And take care of Ziggy for me. He’s worried.”

  “Gen!” Ziggy barked, a little frantic.

  “I’m fine, baby. Help Bowser take care of the others for me.”

  They watched in silence as the paramedics surrounded her, and then Daisy spoke. “Okay, Mina’s crazy, but what the hell? Why would she try to burn down a coffeehouse?” She walked over to the doorway and peered through the broken window, and Shar and Abby joined her as the fire trucks pulled up in front.

  “Not a coffeehouse, a temple,” Shar said, staring at the burned mural. “That’s what Kammani sees. A threat to her power. All the damage is to the wall, to our version of the bas-relief.” She set her jaw. “I’m repainting that in the morning.”

  Abby looked around her as Sam went over to meet the firefighters, to tell them god knew what. “You know, it isn’t so bad. If the dogs hadn’t called the alarm, it might have been far worse. We can fix this.” She looked at Christopher, standing a little apart from them, with the look of disbelief on his face, and for a moment she panicked. He’d seen her use her power; it was too much; he was going to leave; he was going to turn his back…

  He had a blank look on his face, the kind he had when he was working on an equation. And then he blinked, shook his head, and managed a crooked smile, and all she wanted to do was lean against him, letting the fear and anger wash away.

  “Let’s get out of the way,” Shar said, pulling them back as the firefighters swarmed past them. “They need to make sure the fire is out.”

  “Where can we go?” Daisy said, sounding lost for the first time since Abby had known her. She looked like a drowned rat—the rain had soaked her hair, flattening it against her skull, and she looked miserable.

  “Out of the rain,” Shar said. “Into the kitchen. Because we need to talk.”

  “Talk?” Abby said. “We need to take that bitch down. And her little arsonist with her.”

  “We need a plan,” Daisy said, a spark of her old life coming back.

  Shar shoved her sopping hair away from her wet face. “Good.