“My father was mortal,” Sam said. “I’m a god.”
She looked at him, naked and magnificent, tangled in her sheets. “Yes, you are, baby.”
He grinned at her, and she wondered how it was possible that any woman had ever said no to him.
Sharrat had.
“What?” Sam said. “Your smile went away.”
Sharrat was stupid. Thank god. “So tell me what it was like back in the day. With Kammani.”
“Kammani,” he said, losing his own smile.
“Or you,” she added hastily. “Tell me about you. You were a king.”
“Only for the last four years.” He leaned forward and snagged a cookie off her plate. “I was raised to be a soldier and that’s what I did. I liked it. Fighting, drinking, fu—” He stopped. “Women.”
“Good times,” Shar said, annoyed. “So, I’m confused. How did you end up king?”
“My father got bored,” Sam said. “He’d taken over Kamesh when the old king stopped paying attention to Kammani.”
“I’m assuming she helped him take over,” Shar said. “And he was…”
“The great king Lugal,” Sam said. “The king is always consort to the goddess. He got tired of her demands, especially when she began asking for a sacrifice, and he gave it all to me.”
“What a great guy,” Shar said, thinking, Do not get Lugal the “World’s Greatest Dad” mug, the bastard.
“The last I heard, he was invading the Assyrians.” Sam took another bite of cookie. “That’s like kicking a cobra. I figure he’s dead by now.” He stopped, a strange look on his face. “Of course he’s dead by now. They’re all dead. I keep forgetting.”
“Right,” Shar said. “He must have been a real prize.” Unbidden, a memory came back of her sharp-faced grandmother, swearing because something had not gone her way. “Son of that pig of a king Lugal.”
Sam laughed. “Sharrat.”
Shar nodded, trying to ignore the affection in his voice. “She used to say that whenever she was really angry.”
“She was angry a lot.”
“You should have seen her once she started to age.”
“Taking mortal form is dangerous for a god,” Sam said around his cookie. “It can become more real than the divine. And then you are trapped, as she was here. She wouldn’t have liked being trapped.”
“You knew her really well,” Shar said, hating that.
“No,” Sam said, meeting her eyes. “Not like this.” Shar stuck her chin out. “Because you didn’t sleep with her.”
“No,” Sam said. “I told you. Because she wasn’t you.” Tell me again. Shar picked up another cookie, trying not to be pathetic and vulnerable. He was still taking off after dinner in the evenings and not coming back until midnight, so really, how special could she be to him? Get back to work. “So, is Kammani trapped?” Can we untrap her and send her someplace else?
“I don’t know. She has remained in that body whenever I have been with her, in the old world and this one.”
Define “with.” “How did she get here? I mean, we know that the Seven were in some kind of deep sleep until my grandfather woke up Sharrat by knocking over her sarcophagus”—there was a movie meet for you—“but there were only seven coffins in the temple. Sharrat must have woken the other six, but where was Kammani?”
“Within them, probably,” Sam said, not sounding interested. “Or in the ether, waiting to be called. Gods live on belief. If no one believes, they can’t be called back.”
“But there were seven who believed.” Shar saw him frown and said, “Look, if you don’t want to talk about this—”
“Why do you want to know?” Sam said. “For your book?”
Shar started to say, Yes, and then thought, If you love him, you trust him. “No. I want to know how she got here so we can reverse it and send her back.”
Sam nodded. “She was called. I don’t think the Seven had enough power to call her back from wherever Ishtar sent her, but something happened here, and many people called out her name, and she came back.”
“Many people.” Shar hesitated, but he hadn’t seemed upset when she’d said “send her back.” “If we could get many people to yell, ‘Go home, Kammani,’ would that do it?”
“No, she’s here now.” Sam shifted on the bed, looking uncomfortable.
“Is this bad?” Shar asked. “Does it upset you to talk about sending her back?”
“No.” Sam looked tired. “I think she has to go back. She doesn’t understand this world at all. I’ve tried to tell her, but she only listens to Mina now.”
“You’ve tried to tell her?” Shar put down her cookie, stunned. “You’re trying to get her out of here?”
“She doesn’t belong,” Sam said. “But I was with Ereshkigal in the Underworld when Ishtar banished her, so I don’t know how Ishtar did it.”
“Thank you for trying to get rid of her,” Shar said, trying not to lunge for him in gratitude. “You are just the best god ever.”
“If you knew the gods, you’d know that wasn’t much of a compliment.”
“So, you know Ereshkigal?” Shar said, diverted in spite of herself.
“I was stuck with her four months of every year for three years,” Sam said gloomily. “Talk about a buzzkill.”
Shar laughed and he smiled, too, and she thought, I don’t ever want to leave this bedroom.
Except they had to save the world.
“You said Sharrat was trapped here.” Shar swallowed. “Are you trapped?” Do you want to leave?
“I’ve always had mortal form.” Sam looked content with that. “I was born to my mother when she was in mortal form. The divine is within me.”
It was within me an hour ago, and it was divine then, too, Shar thought, knowing she should get back to vanquishing Kammani, but just wanting to look at him in her bed.
Sam crooked a finger at her. “Come here.”
“Uh-uh,” Shar said. “I bow to no god’s command. Tell me about the family.”
“Family?” Sam frowned.
“So Mom was…”
“Nanshe.” Sam pushed himself up to lean back against the headboard.
“Whoa,” Shar said, in part for Nanshe and in part because he looked great flexing. “Uh, Nanshe. Lady of Dreams. Major goddess there.”
Sam nodded. “She saw my father in battle and went to his tent that night.”
“Smarter than Ishtar with Gilgamesh,” Shar said, and took another bite of cookie. Cookies and Sam telling Kami to beat it. Life is good.
“Ishtar takes what she wants,” Sam said in the same kind of voice most people use to talk about Aunt Gladys who steals the silverware. “And Gilgamesh was a fool. Why do you want to know about my family?”
“Oh,” Shar said, and realized she’d been thinking about marrying in. Yeah, that’s going to happen. This is Sam the God, not Sam the Guy Next Door. “Just curious. I don’t have any family, so I like hearing about others.”
“Hey,” Wolfie said from under the bed.
“Just me and Wolfie,” Shar said hastily.
“Hey,” Milton said from under the bed.
“And Milton.”
“Hey,” Sam said, and she smiled and said, “And you,” and felt herself expand a little inside because he wanted to be with them.
“And maybe there’s a clue in your history,” she said, trying to be honest. “We really need to get her out of here. I think she sent the bees that swarmed yesterday.”
“That sounds like her,” Sam said. “She tried to send locusts to Kamesh once, but I stopped her.”
“How?” Shar said.
“I said, ‘No.’ She needed me, so she didn’t do it.” Sam’s forehead creased. “But I think she did something while I was dead this last time. I saw Ray yesterday at the college—”
“You talked to Ray?” Shar said, astonished.
“—and asked him to find out what happened to Kamesh.” He met her eyes. “There’s no history of it. At a
ll. It’s not in any books in your library; there’s nothing on the Internet; it’s as if it never existed.”
“You think Kammani did something?”
Sam nodded. “Something went so wrong that the people turned from her and let Ishtar take her. And then they all disappeared from history.” His face was dark now. “And I wasn’t there to save them.”
“I doubt they died from swarms of bees,” Shar said. “Maybe their records just got lost. I’m always amazed that we have what we do have from then. The clay is so fragile and there’s so much destruction…”
“If they were conquered, the victors would have kept a record,” Sam said. “But everything is just … gone.”
His voice was so bleak that Shar stopped in mid-bite. “We have to stop her.”
Sam nodded. “I don’t know how to send her back, but if we find out why she fell the first time, that might help you do it. The three of you.”
“It will take all three of us, won’t it?” Shar said. “Three demi-goddesses against one goddess.”
“Three is a very powerful number. The ancient goddess my uncle told me of was a triple goddess, three in one.” He stopped and smiled and was Sam the Guy again. “You can take her.”
“We have to.” Shar thought about Her, not a goddess with a bas-relief, but a force in the universe so great She was Three. “Three with no name.”
“My uncle called her Al-Lat,” Sam said.
“That just means ‘the goddess.’ ”
“One goddess,” Sam said. “One divine spark with three mortal forms.”
“Who disappeared,” Shar said. “Like your people. Did her mortality overtake her? If we knew how she became lost, maybe we could shove Kammani in that direction.”
“Nobody knows,” Sam said, settling back against the covers again. “So this book you’re working on. It’s only about goddesses?”
“Yes,” Shar said, thinking of Al-Lat. Maybe Kammani had destroyed her, too. Kammani didn’t seem like the kind of goddess who invited other goddesses in to share the wealth.
“Maybe you should study a god,” Sam said.
“I have enough troubles with the goddesses, thank y—,” Shar began, and then caught his grin. “Oh.”
“Let’s go chew up something they like,” Wolfie said to Milton under the bed.
“Chew!” Milton said, and followed him out the door.
Shar crawled off the bed and closed the door behind them.
“So,” she said, standing naked with her hands on her hips. “You think you’ve got something good enough for me to write about?” Sam grinned.
“Yes, you do,” she said, and went to him.
FIFTEEN
For Abby, things had been mercifully quiet since Vera’s funeral. The swarm of bees had been successfully corralled into beehives and they were now busy making honey, the coffeehouse was booming, and Gen was a genius in the kitchen, creating new and wonderful desserts. Dough seemed to rise faster around Gen, pastries were lighter, and when Bun starting coming by daily to help, things came out of the oven faster, too.
Unfortunately, Christopher Mackenzie had been stopping by just as often, on some made-up excuse or another, but since Thursday he hadn’t tried to talk to Abby alone, and she could almost think she was beginning to relax around him. Unless he showed up when she wasn’t on her guard or she happened to brush against him, and then she was an emotional mess all over again, her stomach aching, her skin prickling.
But she’d get over it. Granny B had probably lost track of all the lovers she’d gone through, and Abby had every intention of following in her colorful, free-spirited footsteps. As soon as she found someone even half as appealing as Christopher Mackenzie, she was going for it.
Assuming that was even a possibility.
At this point every time he appeared, she chose that moment to duck into Granny B’s storeroom and go through the boxes of papers, looking for even the most remote mention of Kammani, tonic, or Mesopotamia.
On Sunday she found the mother lode.
It was one of those marbled composition books that no one used anymore, filled with Granny B’s familiar hen-scratch handwriting that Abby had learned to decipher days ago, full of notes and drawing and cryptic references to “sacred geometry” and “hot spots” and “ley lines.” She found a map she recognized as Summerville in an earlier incarnation—no strip mall off the highway, only half the college buildings present, even before Temple Street had been populated with small businesses—but some things were constant. The history building–slash–temple, Shar’s house, the wide swath of green, and Christopher’s house. Which told her exactly nothing, except that his house had been in the town as long as the ancient history building.
She thumbed through the pages, catching a phrase here, a note there, until she came to another drawing, of someone like Kammani standing over a crowned man, a knife raised, with seven women surrounding them who looked very familiar, including poor dead Vera. It looked eerily like a sketch from an ancient temple but done with modern sensibilities. As if someone had looked four thousand years into the past and drawn it in lifelike detail.
A shiver ran across Abby’s skin. There was no reason it should make her uncomfortable—it was from a time long ago, and most likely it had simply come from Granny B’s overfertile imagination. But there was no denying that the scene could fit inside the auditorium of the history building.
She shoved the book away from her, shuddering, and a slip of paper fell on the floor. She was half-tempted to leave it there—she’d always had a thing about human sacrifice and public execution—but she opened it anyway. It was a diagram, again in Granny B’s handwriting with her usual peacock blue ink, a series of numbers set in a box that made absolutely no sense.
And there was only one person who really understood numbers, and she was hiding from him.
She was a grown-up, wasn’t she? She was over him, or at least well on her way. She was her grandmother’s descendent, not a sniveling romantic coward hiding in a storeroom.
He was sitting at the wide wooden counter, laughing at something Gen had said, and emotion hit Abby so hard she couldn’t breathe for a moment. And then he turned to look at her, the laughter dying, and she still wanted to storm across the room and kiss him.
“I found something,” she said.
Gen and Christopher just looked at her.
“Anything good?” Bun asked as she pulled a tray of pastries from the massive oven.
“I’m not sure.” She should go back into the storeroom, wait until he left, wait until her heart started beating normally.
Hell, no! She was Granny B’s offspring—she could face down math professors with one hand tied behind her back. “Numbers,” she said before she could chicken out.
Shit, it was like handing a sandwich to a starving man. He practically sailed across the room, whisked the paper out of her hand, and a moment later he was in a completely different world.
Good thing she wasn’t in love with him. Marrying a man who could lose himself that completely in whatever interested him would make for a very frustrating life. Unless, of course, he applied that much intensity and concentration to making love as he did to numbers. Which, at least by Abby’s brief experience, was unfortunately true.
And if he was as good at numbers as he was at sex, it was no wonder he was Good Will Hunting and A Beautiful Mind all rolled into one.
He looked up from the paper, and she realized he hadn’t moved that far away from her. In fact, he was dangerously close, at least to her frame of mind.
She took a step back, coming up against a countertop. “Do the numbers mean anything to you?” She cleared her throat nervously.
“Coordinates, maybe. Was there anything else?”
“There’s a notebook.…” She gestured back toward the storeroom, and Christopher took her hand and pulled her into it, slamming the door behind them.
She had the fleeting hope he might pull her into his arms, but he had more important
things on his mind, which was a good thing, she reminded herself. Or she might have had to push him away, and that would complicate things. Or even worse, she might not have pushed him away, and…
But he’d forgotten about her in his hunger for math. “Where’s the notebook?”
She handed it to him, watching as he sank down into the chair she’d abandoned, and silence reigned for an endless two minutes. Minutes she could stand and watch him without him being even remotely aware of her.
He wasn’t that gorgeous—hell, Brad Pitt had him beat by a mile. His tousled dark blond hair was pushed back, his wire-rimmed glasses set firmly on his strong nose, and even with his mouth thinned in concentration, it was still distractably luscious. And he had the kind of body she’d always liked: tall and lean and strong. It was just an unfortunate combination of genetics that she’d find him so irresistibly attractive. She could get over it; she would get over it. Particularly since he seemed to be having no trouble getting over her.
“What are you looking at?” He lifted his head to look at her. “I don’t have measles, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
The non sequitur startled her. “Why would you have measles?”
“There’s an outbreak in town. Most everyone’s been vaccinated, but some people’s immunization has worn off. I wanted to make sure Gen and Bun were all right.”
Of course he did. She was simply imagining he was making excuses to see her. “And they’re okay?”
“Yes.” He looked at her. “What about you?”
“I had measles when I was six.”
“You could get them again, you know. I can check.”
“Check how?”
“See if you have any spots. They usually start on the stomach or the back.” He started to rise.
“Get away from me!” she snapped.
“Just offering in the interests of science,” he said in an even tone.
“I’m fine,” she said, ignoring the thought of those intense eyes sweeping over her naked body. It was too hot in the storeroom with the door closed. “What about the notebook? Does it make any sense to you?”
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