The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 180: What We All Want

Cat smell! Run!

Giant shadow moving, paw smack.

Dazed. Scrambling up. Run!

Different furry monster. Paw smack. Sharp teeth.

Hurt! Hurt hurt hurt.

More sharp teeth. Being bitten, being lifted, being dropped, paw smack.

Run! Hole in wall is right there! Limp, limp, limp.

Sharp teeth. Being bitten, being smacked. Lots of monsters. Lots of paws.

Dazed, hurting, bleeding. Hurting too much to move.

Smack smack smack smack smack.

Blackness.

This was really too much! I fumed to myself when I regained consciousness in the archival box. Reincarnating me not once, but twice in the cats' spy school! The cat spirits weren't even good at pretending to be mortal cats. Their torment of me had been way too coordinated, way too sadistic. Only an awakened creature could be so deliberately cruel.

I should know.

Had my victims in Cassius' court felt the way I had as a rat trapped in a circle of cats? With safety right before their eyes, believing they had a chance of escape despite their wounds (either figurative or literal, depending on the person), dragging themselves towards it, nearly reaching it, before the paw came down and their last hope was chewed to nothing? Was that how Marcius had felt? Aurelia?

Cassius himself?

No. No no no. Who cared about Cassius? He was doing just fine, getting his revenge with a, well, vengeance. Aurelia, too, was doing well in her new life as an influential star goddess. She even had a new love interest who was worth so much more than Cassius, in my opinion if not the consensus of Heaven. And my opinion was the one that mattered.

But Marcius.... He hadn't adjusted well to life after death, had he? He'd applied that same reform-minded spirit to Heaven and been kicked out for it, which, when you thought about it, was akin to execution for a god.

I wish you'd succeeded, I thought for the first time. Cassius would never have been confirmed as Assistant Director of anything if you'd succeeded. Heaven would be a better place. For me, for Flicker, for Aurelia, for everyone under its control, which is to say, everyone on Earth too. You should have played the game better, Marcius, or whatever or whoever you are now. You should have won.

Funny, wasn't it, to find myself rooting for my old enemy?

I was entertaining myself by remembering all the tedious things he'd said when a line of light fell across me. Wood squeaked. The line turned into a rectangle, then a square, then the open top of my box. Flicker's face filled it.

Oh, hey, Flicker! Is it time already?

It didn't feel like it was time. I'd re-coalesced, but I still felt raw, as if I were one big patch of tender new skin all over and throughout my soul.

A finger cut his lips in half. "Shh. It's not time. But there's someone to whom you should talk, and this is the safest way to do it."

The Goddess of Life? I asked, but he didn't answer.

His face disappeared and was replaced by his hands, reaching in and scooping me up. I flopped. I couldn't seem to hold my shape as a ball. Flicker tucked me into his sleeve, slid the box back onto the shelf, and left the archives. Unable to see through the fabric, I stayed quiet until the drop in temperature told me that we were outside.