While the friendlier half of the Sphinx recited her warning, peering off into the dark of night, I pushed a wriggling bundle of excitement over a paw and scrambled after. The disciplinarian half looked paler, less glowy, and her head drooped despite paw prints racing up and down her shoulder. Even so, there were a lot of excited sounds coming from both parties. Listening to them, I couldn’t doubt the kinship. Nor, as I surveyed the paler spots and listened to pants, could I doubt this half of the Sphinx was unwell.

Neither could the forty-one pessimistic seeds. “Menace, this is your doing. Your mischief has cost her much strength.”

I pulled my time-piece out from a shirt pocket and held it so I could see the hands by the wall's glow. “No, I made it by the deadline.” I tapped the glass circle hard, rattling the hands. They snapped back into proper place. “I wasn’t gone a full five hours.”

“Her master was in near proximity to you. She had to shield you from him. You had not five hours.”

Remembering the pain at Tamay’s, I touched my chest. My fingers fell through the rends in my shirt. That had been unpleasant. Seeing the fresh scratch marks on the rock before the Sphinx’s shivering body, I knew how much worse it had been for her. But at the moment, nose-to-nose with her kitten, she didn’t seem to care.

“Finish this.”

“What’s your hurry?” I didn’t bother asking after her sympathy; you didn’t grow weeds on that, after all. But she needed a crush course in it, anyway. You don’t interrupt family reunions. Not mine. Not theirs.

Not that she could impact sphinxes, anyway, the mother being now well-occupied with aiming a huge, wet tongue in her kitten’s direction. Kit meow-squealed as she fell over with a thump and splatter of paw prints; a happy squeal.

“You’ll still have plenty of time to wax ecstatic over your own down and dirty reunion--oh, wait!” I snapped my fingers. “I get it, goddess. Yours will be all one-sided, with you being the only one ecstatic over anything. No wonder you are jealous.”

“Fool, vain fool. My world eagerly awaits my return and will not be pleased with you trifling--”

Before I had time to shake her silent, Mesdames Sphinx lifted her head and nodded. “The One from Afar, Vrailne, is right.”

From the spot between the massive paws, Kit hissed.

I flicked the goddess’s pocket. “Stay out of this, or the only union you will have is with a mortar and pestle.” The mental vision of that threat cut the bitterness out of my next words by just a smidge. “I hate to agree with One I Desire Very Afar, Mesdames Sphinx, you have no idea how much I truly do, but the sooner I’m gone, the sooner our deal is done.” I extended my palm. “My soul, please, and then your daughter and I will be on our way.”

The paw did not move. Nor did any expression cross Mama Sphinx’s face, as she said, “You do not need your soul to travel these worlds.”

My smile strained. I dropped my hand. “Of course, Mesdames. Of course. Just thinking of easing some of your burden. Souls could be so hard to hide.”

“I will improve now that you have returned here.”

“Of course.”

Ill or not, sphinxes were not gullible--I suppose that was where having two heads came in handy. “Well, then make it ready for when I return. I have a much-anticipated reunion of my own ahead of me.” I picked up the end of the leash. “Kit?”

Mesdames Sphinx’s ears flicked back. “That apparatus is unnecessary.”

No leash? I looked down at it, standing out sharply against the collar and thin air. Then I looked at massive claws tipping in and out of massive paws. No leash, then. Gotcha. I unhooked it, rolled it up, and stuffed it away.

“I suggest leaving the collar for now. It’s Collector-proof, thanks to yours truly. Though that might be beside the point since . . . ” The collar faded from sight. “Or not.” I guess even young sphinxes can take care of their own visibility issues. “All right, then." I jerked my head. "Come along, Kit.”

Kit did not budge. The prints remained firmly planted on the sand, under Mesdames Sphinx’s hovering chin.

“We have to go to another world now, where you will be safe.”

Not so much as a sound.

“This is for the best.”

Nothing.

I made kissy noises. “Here, kitty, kitty?”

A soft-voiced, dirty word skittered around in my brain.

I sighed and gestured ahead of me. “Have at her then, Your Lowliness.”

A few more words skittered around unpleasantly in my head. Before I could return the favor, Mesdames was nodding, her ankle-bitter was mreowing, and a giant paw was lifting. The paw with my captive soul.

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As I watched, the amorphous thread began to take form. And shrink. And dim. Slowly.

“I’m getting my soul back? Damn, you are a good negotiator. Too good. What are you up to, Your Germiness?”

“It would be difficult on her for you to travel to another world, even for an hour.”

Ah, come on now. How long could it take to dump Kit off at the nearest cat-friendly world? Five minutes? Half an hour tops? I suspected longer than her ability to stay put at said drop-off point while her moms were trapped here.

That was why, upon divesting myself of a weedy bane to my existence, I’d strike a new deal. Clip one Sphinx's magical bindings, get one goddess’s homeworld erased from this white-walled map in return.

I smiled. My plan was cementing before my eyes . . .

. . . faster than my soul was cementing into any shape.

The restless mass looked like one of two things now; I couldn’t decide which. The first was a sihat, the Sih religious icon. Also, good for long-distance attacks on or manipulations of the person it represented. In the twice-conquered nation of Sih, one’s ancestors and gods spent a lot of time in pain, or otherwise.

The other comparison was a cookie or rather a restless blob of one. “How yummy.”

Laughter sprouted in my ear, and a set of eight paws dashed toward my soul-cookie, lifted it in mid-air, and made it disappear.

No, not disappear.

I knew exactly where it was. In her mouth, one step away from being swallowed down.

“Hey,” I yelled and rushed toward her. “Not yummy! Not yummy at all.”

Kit leapt away, landed, and then left a long trail of prints down the sandy corridor, a few feet from the corner. Oh, I knew this game. But my soul was not to be the object of "keep away."

“Bad girl, bad. That’s bad.”

That gained me a hiss in reply, a rather articulate sound, given that her mouth was full. With my soul.

Images of teeth and tongue filled my head. I had a feeling wet and well-chewed was not good for souls.

Neither was the next stop down from a mouth.

Especially not if it was now a sihat.

“My soul is not, not a kitty biscuit.” I stabbed a finger in the delinquent’s direction. “Not!” Then I whirled on the bigger sphinx at hand. “Some help here! You’re her mother. One of them. The disciplinarian, anyway.”

The Sphinx dipped her head. “The goddess Vrailne has informed me of your nature, and I deem the wisest course is for my kitten to pick her own safe haven.”

“By holding my soul hostage.”

She lifted her head. “I sense Master’s return to his property.”

“Tarry not, thief.” A seed snicked: a snicker. “Follow the kitten and the dross you deem a soul.”

“If I were you, I’d be holding back on the advice-giving and counting your luck--and seeds--instead, goddess, because trust me, they aren’t going to number forty-one after this.”

“Murderer, it was our only recourse,” she said, a little more quietly and far less laughingly. “You would have abandoned her on the first world you set foot upon.”

How well she knew me in this short time she thought she knew me. Too well. Dangerously well.

But what recourse did I have? I glanced back at Mama Sphinx, who stared past me. Now that she had safely delivered both warning and blackmail, she had adopted her serene statue-like guise.

Speaking of blackmail . . . I turned in the direction her young accomplice had taken. The trail of paw prints remained down the corridor, many more than eight.

Cute.

Knew I should have followed my instinct and whipped up a batch of “special” milk for Kit. That little something-something extra I planned to put in it being a soporific that looked quite pretty, hid well in any beverage, and worked like a charm at making humans, animals, and well anything, plants even go sleepy-bye.

It even helped me out a time or dozen, till it forgot its function around me.

Most people thought Lacy Blue just a pretty flower my eldest sister had invented and later named my now five-year-old niece after. Actually, probably everyone but Genovie and I believed that. There was a stall dedicated to Lacy Blue in the flower market. The Pickers of the Park kept helping themselves to whatever patch I planted there. Not to mention, it was a favorite on the grounds of the elite. Although, I had a feeling that if I had went on such a flower-picking session along the way back to the Lab, I would have had a much larger problem to deal with. I rubbed my chest through my rends. Times eight.

Not that my problems weren’t large enough already.

I shelved the fantasy of a peacefully snoring kitty and turned back to my least favorite of her mothers. “You should be more careful whom you listen to. After all, there is a good reason why the goddess resides in a tiny, little bottle.”

Mesdames Sphinx just did her “just lying here, alone in the world” act. I didn’t take it personal. She was, after all, feline. Doubly so.

With a sigh, I turned back to the only way left to me.

The prints nearest me were fading, and the longer the culprit was left alone, the more likely she would be inclined to indulge in a little nibble of retaliation.

After all, I hadn’t exactly been attentive to her concerns while passing out my own mischief this night. Or while eavesdropping. Nor had I been soft toward either of her mothers.

“Don’t nap, Mesdames,” I said, giving her a wave that she didn’t even blink at. “I’ll return before your barrel of milk is squeezed out of the bovine herd.”

On that parting shot, I stalked down the path of glowing, white walls, white sand, and . . . paw prints. Funny how they stood out so well against all that flooring.

Funny that Collector had a penchant for invisible kitties.

Funny that I was doing exactly what said invisible kitties and their multi-shelled accomplice wanted.

Funniest yet would be when both kitties were doing exactly what I wanted instead, and Collector famously had none.