I’d added Bast’s cell to my contacts and attributed the most fitting song to her ringtone I could find. So when The Cure’s “The Love Cats” trilled from my cell, I knew exactly who was calling. She told me she’d found Chuck and was taking her out for a bite to eat, hoping to get more information out of her.

I met the pair of them at one of those fancy bars that couldn’t decide if it was a restaurant or a watering hole. Nineteen-forties chandeliers hung from high ceilings, black and white prints adorned the walls, and servers darted between tables with sliders on slates. I figured it was Bast’s favorite haunt and ordered the only thing on the menu I could afford—a black coffee—and dumped a ton of sugar in it.

Chuck looked at me through narrowed, darting eyes, suspicion radiating off her. I’d seen that look in wild cats, the ones that scratched the hand trying to help them. She was too pale, and up close, I wondered if her sharp features had more to do with malnourishment than godly genes.

“You’re the guy from the apartment,” she said by way of hello.

“You’re welcome.”

“Chuck, this is Ace. He’s a friend,” Bast replied, giving me a furtive look that probably meant something, but I had no idea what.

“You going to eat that?” Chuck asked Bast, nodding at the goddess’s scraps.

I’d arrived late, and the two of them had almost finished their meals. Without a word, Bast switched plates with Chuck, who quickly began vacuuming up the remains.

“What was that thing?” Chuck asked me around a mouthful of burger bun.

I flicked a questioning gaze at Bast.

“Wild dog,” she replied on my behalf. “It escaped from the zoo.”

Chuck snorted. “Uh-huh, and I’m the pope’s daughter.”

She gulped half her lemonade in one go and looked right at me again, her gaze trawling over my face but avoiding my eyes. Clever girl.

Done with her visual interrogation, she slumped back in her seat and raked her ringed fingers through her short hair.

“Did you kill it?” she asked me.

Killed it, devoured it—same thing. “It’s gone.”

Chuck nodded appreciatively. “I’ve been running from those things for weeks, so why don’t you two cut the Good Samaritan act and tell me what’s really going on?”

“Bast?” I asked, handing the baton over before she could do the same to me.

Chuck twisted in her seat to look Bast over. The goddess had toned down her allure and hidden her cat-like eyes behind a small human illusion, but that didn’t detract from her unusually striking appearance or her casual, but lethal elegance.

“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Bast replied. “They may seem strange.”

“Strange? Like a wild dog chasing me down the street? And that wasn’t the only thing after me. I saw a cat. A big one. I swear it. I only caught a glimpse when I climbed the ladder, but it was real.”

Silence descended over our table. I played with my spoon.

“I’m not nuts,” Chuck added. “I know what I saw.”

“You’re pregnant—” Bast began.

“So? Everyone at that shelter is.” She crossed her arms and glared at the goddess, daring an ageless Egyptian deity to judge her.

I hid my smile by tasting my sweet coffee.

“Who’s the father?” Bast asked calmly.

Chuck shrugged. Her gaze flicked back to me and then down at her empty plate. She wouldn’t answer anything, and I couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know us. She’d survived on the streets by her wits alone, and that meant not trusting anyone. I knew what that felt like. It was difficult to let people in after guarding yourself against them for what felt like forever. That was one of the reasons I’d only had the one friend in the last few decades.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“We’re here to help,” I said.

“Great. Got any cash? That’ll help.”

“What are you going to spend it on?” I asked.

“Louis Vuitton handbags and getting my nails done like Goth lady here. What do you think I’m going to spend it on?”

“Drugs?”

She clamped her mouth shut and folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t do that no more. I’m clean.”

“I know what addiction is,” I said, avoiding Bast’s pertinent look. “Tough to beat on your own.”

“Well, I don’t got nobody, so just give me the money and you can go back to your cozy little life knowing you did your good deed for the day.”

“The dogs will come again,” Bast butted in, sounding like a portent of doom. Goddesses and their drama.

Chuck bounced her teenage glare between us. “You won’t tell me what’s really going on here, so what’s left to talk about?”

Bast shared another beseeching look with me but our wordless conversations clearly weren’t helping.

“Chuck,” Bast said, her voice tipping toward authoritative. “There may be other women like you. Women in trouble.”

“More escaped dingoes, huh?”

I almost corrected her, but now both women were looking at me with varying degrees of contempt. Bast needed my help explaining, which, so far, I’d failed at, and Chuck knew it was all BS.

“I’m not telling you anything until you tell me the truth. You two talk it out. I’m going to the rest room.” Chuck shuffled from the booth and strode to the back of the bar with the long-legged, powerful stride of a caged tiger. Chuck had more of her mother in her than looks alone. That was an uncomfortable thought. She clearly didn’t know about shape-shifting, but she would learn fast if she developed that curious gift from her mother.

I grinned. “She’s got sass.”

Bast rolled her eyes at me. “It’s all posturing. She’s scared.” She tapped her painted nails on the tabletop. “I need to find out where she’s been, who she’s been talking to, and who her friends are. There must be something.”

“Good luck with that.”

“You could help.”

“She won’t talk to us.”

“We could tell her—”

“No,” I cut her off. “You were right. The less contact we have with her, the more chance she has at having normal a life. If you mention gods, she’ll think you’re nuts, but she won’t forget it. Then she’ll start digging and connect the dots, and the picture she’ll draw will come back to bite her. Happens every time. People can’t help but poke at the unknown, and then it pokes back and gets them killed.” Or crippled for life, I finished mentally, thinking of Cujo and the many others whose paths I’d crossed over the years.

“And if she has the magic?” Bast whispered. “What then? We’re just going to let her flounder like an unclaimed godling?”

I winced and glared at my black coffee. Looking at Chuck was too much like looking in a mirror, but she could still escape her fate.

“She’ll make a mistake,” Bast said. “Osiris will notice. He’ll kill her.”

“If she’s lucky,” I mumbled.

Bast’s dark brows shot up and I regretted the words. Sure enough, Bast read the weight in them. She knew about my curse, but not all of it. Not the details. Seth ek em sra dasoerk. The devil is in the details.

Bast rested an arm on the table, leaning in and making damn sure I had to look at her. “You didn’t have to devour that demon.”

“Yes, I did.”

“When was the last time you devoured? Not the sword, you?”

“This morning, actually.” And I was still coming down from that one.

She recoiled the way I had known she would and lifted her lip in a disgusted snarl. “If Osiris learns—”

“Osiris—” I stopped myself, aware I’d raised my voice along with my heart rate. “Bast, back off. I’m dealing with it.”

“‘Dealing with it’?” She snorted a judgmental laugh. “I was right. You haven’t changed at all.”

I wanted to lay into her, to tell her how Osiris knew I was devouring souls because he was the one who’d broken my abstinence, but what good would it do? She wouldn’t believe me, and even if she did, there was nothing she could do. But she’d try and get herself tangled up in my mess. It would be easier for everyone if we all continued to believe what we wanted to. Liar. Thief.

“Let’s address the Sphinx in the room, shall we?” I said.

She side-eyed me.

“The jackals. Few gods have dominion over them.”

“Ammit traditionally controls them,” she confirmed.

“Can you think of any reason why she’d want to attack your blessed?”

“None. I’ve never crossed Ammit.” She shivered. “No sane god would.”

A sane god? Somehow I kept from laughing. “If it isn’t her, she’ll know more. Osiris told me my mother wants to take her slumber. He said he’d sanction my return to the underworld.”

Bast considered my words in silence. The sounds of people talking and laughing continued on around us, wrapping us in normalcy. I often forgot I wasn’t part of their world, not even after all the years I’d walked among them. I would never belong, even though I’d done my damnedest to fit in once I’d stopped pining for home.

“You’re going back?” Bast asked.

“I have to.” I’d have been lying if I said the thought of going home didn’t fill me with dread, as well as a deep, illicit thrill.

“How long has it been?” The compassion on her face and the regret in her eyes almost broke me down and had me telling her everything.

I remembered the white feather settling, the scales tipping, my heart falling, and the sounds of my own spell, spoken by Osiris, wrapping around me, through me, and binding my soul. The accusing eyes, the howls and screams from those I’d condemned—I remembered it all like it was yesterday. “Five hundred years, give or take a few.”

Bast reached across the table and closed her warm, smooth hand around mine. Gooseflesh lifted the fine hairs on my arms and up my neck. I’d have liked to pull her in, close my arms around her, and hide. It had always worked before.

“You’ll be okay.”

My lips twitched in a mockery of a smile that didn’t last. I pulled my hand from hers. “I always am.”

I told Bast to look out for Chuck, which I didn’t need to say but seemed like a decent enough goodbye, and left her alone at the table. Her gaze rode my back until I left the bar, but guilt clung to me, weighing me down with every step.