Nisha pulled all her clothes back on, found an excuse to leave the party, and seized Jared by the collar.
He felt mild surprise until she produced a leash out of nowhere and attached it to his collar. "Come, boy," she commanded.
Jared got into his increasingly familiar quadrupedal stance and waited at her side.
"Nisha, we don't even know who the dog belongs to," Rachel protested.
"He belongs to me now," Nisha said and walked out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house.
Jared felt the odor of sulphur and cinnamon almost like a physical wave. Wepwawet waited for them at the sidewalk. Oddly, Nisha didn't seem at all surprised to encounter a wolf-headed Egyptian god.
"Good evening, Kali," the deity said, addressing her by her true name.
"Heel, boy," Nisha said with a determined tug on his chain.
Jared sat.
"Don't call me that, you old jackal," she said. "I'm trying to assimilate."
"And you know what I think of that idea," the deity sniffed.
Nisha leaned down and petted Jared.
"He's perfect," she said. "I should thank you. He's what I have been missing."
Wepwawet knew that the thrill of owning a dog who had been a man would pale quickly, but he stayed silent.
"You do seem to have a way with the beast," he said.
Nisha chuckled. "All men are beasts," she said. "On him, it's a little more self-evident."
Wepwawet chuckled and addressed Jared through the mingled instincts of the dogs and the jumbled processing of the adolescent human male. "You will make the Great Kali an interesting diversion," the deity decided.
Kali? Wasn't she some sort of Hindu goddess? Jared whimpered and wished he had paid more attention in his World Mythology class.
"He's only begun to glimpse the ways he will debase himself to honor my inextinguishable glory," the deity in the form of a young Hindu woman remarked.
Wepwawet found Kali ponderous and pompous, but he found Jared boring and barely a blip in his universe now.
"Best of luck, boy," the Egyptian god said. "You're going to need it."
Jared whimpered. "Stop that, you miscreant," Kali said. "He's going to think he's died and gone to heaven."
She kneeled in front of the sheepdog, right at breast level, and scratched his ears with her long nails.
"Oh, the joys I see ahead for you," Wepwawet said before vanishing.