Savannah had, uncharacteristically, fucked up. Innanna briefly considered telling her "everything she knew" about the sorceress supreme, which would have included the history of every atom in Regina's and Aziza's bodies since the big bang. Forced by her own spell to listen, Savannah would have died of old age even in her post-Great Change perfect body long before Innanna finished the story of the atom at the tip of Regina's longest hair. But Innanna was rather fond of Savannah, seeing her transformation from man of action to femme fatale as her own handiwork.
"Be real, Savannah. You really want me to tell you all I know? Goddess, remember? If you don't have all eternity, I would recommend you narrow your focus a bit."
"OK. How about telling me what happened to Ophelia Thorfinnson to start with?"
"That part's easy. She was turned into a tomcat by a woman named Regina Chung."
"And Regina Chung is the Sorceress Supreme?"
"Regina Chung is *a* Sorceress Supreme. Right now there are two, which is unusual."
++++++++++++
"People say the Great Change changed everything" said Katerina philosophically "But it hasn't. Before the Change I had a stupid brother; now I have a stupid sister. Yeah, big difference."
"You've got to help me." said the trembling woman, who was still carefully maintaining a distance of two meters from Katerina.
"First thing everyone learns in sorcerer school is 'never deal with demons.'"
"OK, I screwed up! But I don't want to go to Hell!"
"I can't promise anything, but I'll see what I can do. Demons are smarter than idiots like you, but not as smart as they think they are, so that's one thing in our favor."
++++++++++++++
Savannah was stunned. Her whole life since the sergeant had picked her out for "special training" was to get behind the curtain, to know the truths that only the inner elite knew. And when she reached a senior position in Occ-opps, she thought she had. She, well, he at the time, had become an initiate, knowing the real secrets that the vast masses of ignorant humanity would never know.
And now it turned out that she wasn't part of the real inner circle at all. The earth's real protectors weren't her friends, colleagues and rivals in Occ-Opps, the R.O.S.S, Haiti's Loa Patrol, Japan's Order of the Ninefold Lotus, Mexico's Quetzalcoatl Society, Britain's Laundry, or the numerous other occult bureaucracies. No, the real players were these completely freelance operators.
She wondered if either Regina or Aziza was looking for a disciple.
++++++++++++++
Aziza had been a virgin before the change (she occasionally regretted the fact that she had hever experienced sex as a male while that was still possible) and Kylie was her first lover. She had worried that Kylie, coming from a world where there were still two sexes, wouldn't adjust to the universal lesbianism of Aziza's earth. However, Kylie apparently had her own complicated gender history, and the stoner showed a great enthusiasm for Aziza's body, really the first person ever to do so.
But was hot sex and Aziza's lingering feeling of responsibility a sufficient basis for a relationship?
++++++++++++
One of Innanna's long term projects was the raising of the intelligence of the common house cat, and she was gratified to know that "Oliver" had sired several litters, some of whom would inherit traces of his human intelligence.