“Well? Come in. We’ve been waiting for you. Stop dragging your feet. Tsk, tsk. Lucky, lucky me.”
I looked around the apartment, bewildered. We? Did she mean the cats?
“Sorry for the intrusion,” I said, keeping my face serious, my voice hard, because I had no way of delivering what I had to say next. “My – my cat brought me here.”
She cocked an eyebrow at me, giving me another once over. I half expected her to burst into laughter, or to kick us out of her apartment before she called the cops. But she only sucked on her teeth and tutted again as she retreated into the kitchen, the curtain of beads clacking behind her.
“Yes, I know him. We all know him. Come into the kitchen where I can see you. And bring the book.”
I looked down at Dantaleon, then followed her through the curtain, the beads tickling at my skin as I stepped through the doorway. I didn’t feel anything beyond the physical as I entered, no telltale buzz in the air, no faint electricity of ambient magic on my skin. Yet I knew, instinctively, that something here wasn’t simply of the mortal realm. The woman’s kitchen looked normal enough, replete with spices and fresh ingredients, an enormous skillet on the stove bubbling with pureed tomato and gorgeous eggs.
“You like shakshouka?” the woman asked. “Because it’s what’s for dinner.”
I nodded, taking the opportunity to study her. The green of her eyes pierced me each time she looked at my face, her own features so sharply sculpted that she put me in mind of a cat herself. Her afro did, in fact, evoke the image of a lion’s mane. The numerous bangles running down her arms and the silken, lustrous yellow of her robe made her more than just beautiful, more than just elegant. She was regal. Almost like –
“A goddess,” Dantaleon croaked.
I looked down at him, puzzled at his sudden consciousness, then back up into the woman’s face. Surely, not?
“A goddess?” I said, echoing Dantaleon.
The woman set down her wooden spoon, folding her arms and shaking her head at me. “Didn’t you know? I thought that was why your cat brought you here.” She made an expression with her lips that was somewhere between a frown and a knowing, resigned smile. “My name is Bastet. Today’s your lucky day.”
23
The Egyptian goddess of cats, tucked away in some rundown apartment in Valero?
I wasn’t surprised by her mere existence, no. A world with celestial and infernal forces running amok has plenty of room for the greatest powers of the earth: the ancient gods of myth themselves. Entities, as they were known, collectively. I just wasn’t expecting to find an entity in such, shall we say, humble trappings.
Maybe my expectations had been raised too much. I’d never had a necessity to curry favor from a god, and so my interactions with them were limited at best. We’d been taught well enough at Madame Grayhaven’s academy that meeting an entity was very much a grandiose affair. Accessing their home realms or domiciles involved complex rituals and offerings, and those strange dimensions were often as eldritch as the deities themselves. A goddess of the hunt might live in a verdant forest, a god of fire in the heart of a volcano.
By those standards, I suppose it wasn’t entirely bizarre to find that the cat goddess of old Egypt was, in fact, surrounded by a horde of cats.
Bastet narrowed her eyes at me. “I know what you’re thinking, princeling brat.”
I shook my head, wishing that my spoiled upbringing wasn’t so evident in virtually every aspect of my being. “I highly doubt it.”
She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Times have changed. You think all the gods have it easy? Hah. We’re not as famous as your bog-standard Greek and Norse gods. Nobody makes movies about us, you know? It’s Thor this, and Loki that, and maybe sometimes, they’ll throw old Zeus a bone. But Osiris? Hatshepsut? Ra? Who gives a shit, right? Not Hollywood, and certainly not humanity.”
I set my jaw, trying not to look so caught off guard. “I didn’t say anything.”
Bastet pointed her wooden spoon in my face. “But you were thinking it. We’re just like fairies, if you want to simplify things. If nobody believes in us, worships us, we lose our power. Just like that.” She went back to poking at her skillet. “That’s why those two angels are so desperate to develop their own followings. Imagine that. An angel cult. The people upstairs must be too busy to notice what they’re up to.”
“So you know about the angels?”
“I know lots of things. We’ve fallen on hard times, but you can’t say that we aren’t resourceful.”
I looked around the apartment. “You keep saying ‘we,’ and I’m guessing you’re referring to all these cats.”
She pressed her lips together in annoyance, pointing towards one end of the living room with her spoon. “I meant him.”
I hadn’t noticed the older man before. He must have been in his sixties, his housecoat the same brownish gray as the upholstery, blending him into the sofa. A pair of glasses balanced precariously on the bridge of his oddly thin and hooked nose as he hunched over a huge book, squinted accusingly at its pages. If he realized that he and Bastet had guests, he made no indication.
“Not another god, surely?” I said, keeping my voice low.
Bastet nodded. “The very reason your cat brought you here. Where is that little rascal, anyway?”
Mr. Wrinkles leapt up onto the counter, cautiously pawing at the steam rising from the stovetop. “Bastet,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
She broke into a smile for the first time, lighting up the drabness of the apartment as she favored Mr. Wrinkles
