Chapter 4
When she regained consciousness, Delilah found herself lying on the floor. But this was not the first thing she noticed. The first thing she noticed was that she could breathe again – there was no more clogged sinuses, no more tickled throat, no more vague knocking at her temples. It appeared that she was cured. A feeling of satisfaction and glee descended over her before she even realized that the coolness she was feeling up and down her back was because she was spread out across a concrete floor.

She opened her eyes and found five sets of owlish gazes staring down at her. “I don’t think I introduced myself before. I’m Marjorie Sage but everyone just calls me Madge,” she nattered, reaching down a hand to help Delilah up off the floor.

“Whatever that was it sure packed a punch,” she murmured, putting a hand to her head to try and ward off the dizziness that was descending. But it wasn’t normal dizziness – it was something else entirely. She wasn’t having a hard time balancing herself; it was her senses that were throwing her off. The air seemed to be swarming around her, enveloping her in a tornado of sensations until she felt like she was a little girl, spinning and spinning in a circle out on the grass in her front yard before crumbling to the ground and watching the world try to right itself around her.

Delilah found herself being pushed into a chair. “Easy does it,” Madge murmured as she handed her a glass of water. She took it and drank greedily, parched as soon as the glass was in her hand, and it was refilled three times before she had had enough.

They were all still staring at her, looking more curious than concerned. “Well,” Delilah began, more as a way to fill the awkward silence than anything else, “just let me know how much I owe you for the miracle cure and I’ll be going.”

“Okay, off with the lot of you,” Madge said, shooing the collected crowd away as they exchanged worried glances.

“But Mom we want to stay,” one of the little boys whined, turning a very vivid blue set of pleading eyes at his mother.

“Yeah, we want to stay Mom,” the younger boy chimed in, his eyes magnified by the wire frames balanced on his nose.

“Mommy,” the little girl said in a stage whisper, “are you going to tell her about the necklace?”
Madge shook her head in agreement and the pigtailed little one grinned, showing a missing front tooth and the cause of her precious lisp.

“Can you keep them busy?” Madge asked, turning to the tall man beside her with sandy brown hair and a set of glasses that matched the little boy’s perfectly.

“Of course,” he replied in an overly confident voice. “Because we’re going upstairs to make dinner!” The kids cheered. “And to clean our rooms!” His enthusiasm stayed; the children’s waned. They made a racquet trudging up an unseen set of stairs, voices of descent floating back towards the two of them still in the shop.

Delilah stood and walked around to the front of the counter again, opening her purse as she did so. “How much?” she asked before adding, “and what about my necklace?” Her hand automatically went up to touch it and that trademark calmness descended over her again.

Madge looked at her for a second before sliding something across the counter to lay between them. “You came in here carrying this,” she said running her fingers gently over the cover. “Was there something you wanted to ask me about it?”

“I found this inside of it,” she said, taking the picture out of her pocket and placing it on top of the book.

Madge took it in her hands and a smile instantly appeared on her face. “I remember this,” she laughed, angling ever so slightly so that they could look at the picture together. “We were meeting to talk about the Bonfire and Petros had brought a camera. That’s me, Falen, Giorgio, Persephone, Kacie, and of course your mom. Oh, look how young Antonia looked with that hair.” She giggled.

“We had just convinced her to chop it all off and she had hated it short for the first few days but you know it saved her hours in the morning not having to pleat that long hair of hers. How she lived with five feet of hair for so long I’ll never know. I kept mine only as long as I had to and not a moment longer.”

Madge looked at the quizzical expression on Delilah’s face and stopped the tangential conversation before it started. She could tell the poor girl was confused and restless and they didn’t need any more random comments to have them straying into crazy conversational territory. It was a hard urge for Madge to fight but she could do it if her purpose was important enough and tonight it was.

“Delilah did your mother ever talk about me, about any of us?” she asked, gesturing towards the smiling faces in the picture.

“No,” she replied, taking it back and peering intently into their faces once more, “no I’ve never heard any of those names before.”

“And those names you’d remember,” Madge murmured to herself. After a moment she started rambling again. “Okay, I’m not good at this. As I’m sure you know we’re not good at lying and I never did master the art of evasiveness. Honesty just seems to like to sit on the tip of my tongue and jump out at people as they walk by which, you know, at times isn’t really great for the palm reading but that’s not the point.”

“Honey,” she tried again with a deep breath, “didn’t your mom ever tell you about the things that she could do?”

Delilah had gone from intrigued to slightly frightened. That sounded ominous; the whole conversation was ludicrous and it was starting to scare her. Because maybe she was still hallucinating, not hearing Madge correctly when she was spouting about waiting for her and having five feet of hair. What if she hadn’t walked into an eccentric little shop but some half-baked nightmare and was never going to get out of it.

Madge laughed. “Now, now, calm down there’s no reason to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid. Why would you say that?” Delilah gulped, trying to sound at ease and almost making it.

“I can smell it on the air. Can’t you? That sharp, metallic taste like aluminum.” And then, she could. She could feel it, the alloy on the back of her tongue and in the air. For a second as she pulled it to the forefront she couldn’t breathe, started choking on the intensity of it.

Madge grabbed the clay jar again and held it up under her nose. It didn’t make her pass out this time but she did swoon just a bit as it chased the tangy taste of metal away.
“What is that?” Delilah asked again as a stool appeared behind her and another glass of water was pressed into her hands.

“Honey, where’s the spaghetti?” a voice yelled from upstairs.

“In the pantry where everything else is,” she replied to her husband before answering Delilah. “It’s a form of the wasabi root that’s vapors are so potent you don’t have to eat it, just inhale. The Japanese think its magic and don’t use it in their regular cooking. In fact that’s what we call it, Magical Wasabi. It acts like a palette cleanser, the same way someone eating a fancy dinner would chow down on sorbet to get ready for the next course.”

“How did ‘Magic Wasabi’ get rid of my cold?”

“Well when it’s a magic cold, remedies are a little different.”

Delilah just stared at her, her gray eyes narrowing ever so slightly. No one else would have noticed but Madge did, her own eyes moving imperceptibly to match. “Oh, I’m not good at this,” she relented, throwing her hands up in the air. “Here’s the skinny. You’re special, just like I’m special, just like your mother was special. We can know things, feel things, understand things that other people can’t. Honey, you’re an Intuit.”

There was a pause. “I’m the maker of small business accounting software?” she asked slowly. Delilah shook her head and got up to leave, throwing a ten down on the counter as she did. “For your Magic Wasabi” came out dripping with sarcasm.

“Wait,” Madge said, stopping her before she had reached the door. “You forgot your book.” Delilah trudged back over to get it but when she laid her hand upon the cover Madge’s hand held hers against it. “Read the cover,” she demanded.

“It’s written in gibberish,” said Delilah, growing weary of these strange little games.

“Read the cover,” Madge insisted, locking eyes with Delilah again. The air started to hum around them again.

“Fine,” she relented with much attitude, grabbing the book to hold it in mid-air. “We smell the blood before the wound is struck. We see the rent of the arm before the arrow strikes. We hear the thud before the apple falls. We know whence danger comes before it takes a single step. Into you, Into all, Intuit.”

She dropped the book and it created a loud thud, reverberating not only along the counter but along the walls, along the building, along space itself. “Honey, you okay down there?” that male voice called from above again as items shook from their places and crashed to the ground.

“We’re just fine Colin dear,” yelled back Madge, never taking her eyes of off Delilah whose breathing had become quick and labored, like it was her body running a marathon and not just the thoughts in her mind racing about.

“How did you . . . how did I . . . ?” Her questions didn’t form, she didn’t let them, her mind dashing to find some non-magical explanation for why words she couldn’t read an hour ago she could read now, see as clear as day, as clear as glass, as clear as crystal. But there wasn’t one.

She didn’t move for almost two minutes; the world itself seemed to have fallen silent and she couldn’t bring herself to budge in fear that it would start tumbling again and the next truth would be even worse than the last. It was Madge who pushed her forward out of her hiccup in time, grabbing her hand and placing it against the cool orange stone at the hollow of her throat. A burst of energy surged through her, making her feel suddenly more alive and alert than she had before.

“This is part of it too?” asked Delilah, tracing her finger carefully around the edge.

Madge laughed. “That is all of it, the beginning and the end.” She reached under the neckline of her own blouse and pulled out a necklace of her own. Her stone was deep purple, shaped in a perfect circle, but they were the same. The same ornate frame, the same translucent look, the same glowing power.

“Hmm,” Madge said finally, taking a seat across from her. “You’re still not sure. Indecision is just hanging all over you. You can smell it, can’t you? Like mothballs in the back of a closet that hasn’t been opened for eons? I’ll just start talking and you can stop me when I’m wrong.”

Madge studied her face for a moment more before continuing. “You had that cold since the day you put on that necklace, I’d say the day before your birthday with only hours to spare if I’m not mistaken. And nothing you did could get rid of it, medicine and vitamin C and more bed rest than any normal person could take but your senses still buzzed and your head was a bit woozy and you just thought it would go away but it never did. And –”

“Mom, did you feel the earthquake?” the little boy with the glasses yelled, running into the shop at full tilt with a fire engine in his hand before seeing Delilah and stopping in his tracks.

“Jordan, what did I say about staying upstairs when Delilah is here?”

“That I should,” he replied, looking down with a guilty face and scuffing his feet against the floor in a truly endearing ‘aw shucks’ manner.

“That’s right, I did. Now what –” Madge began as she hoisted her son up into her arms.

“Sorry, sorry,” Colin interrupted, jogging down the stairs and grabbing the boy from his mother’s arms. Madge gave him a stern look with her vividly violet eyes but he didn’t seem affected, turning a helpless one right back at her. “I can’t help it. Chad and Jam created a distraction by managing to get spaghetti sauce on the ceiling. Plus they like you better, all your fault.” He smiled, gave her a quick kiss, and hoisted his son over his shoulder.

“Come on sack of potatoes,” he said, “maybe we should have you for dinner since you haven’t learned to obey yet. What do you think about that, huh?” Jordan’s laughter filled the whole shop as they trudged back upstairs.

“What a handful,” Madge said with apologetic eyes.

“Oh I think your kids are cute,” Delilah said with sincerity.

“Kids? I was talking about my husband. Wouldn’t be able to put his shoes on the right feet if I wasn’t standing next to him with the answer but he’s got the kids covered. Yeah right.”
“How long have you been married?”

“Fourteen years. He gets more handsome ever year, I get more harried but that’s how it goes I suppose. But we’re off topic. This is not what we’re supposed to be talking about. My love life, lord child you really must hate change to go there.”

“I don’t hate change,” she protested with good effort but Madge just laughed.

“I told you we were bad liars right? That’s because we can always spot lies, from miles away and that’s the biggest one to cross my path since Chad told me the rabbit dyed itself orange for Halloween.

“Hating change is good though,” she said as she reached under the counter and started placing different sized jars between them, “I can work with hating change. Much easier than being skeptical of the supernatural or rigid in your role in the world or agoraphobic. Yes hating change is positively a piece of cake.”

“Why?” Delilah asked, mesmerized by Madge’s quick hands combining things into a bowl, not even needing to keep her attention on them since her eyes were still staring at Delilah’s face.

“Well because I only need to point out that nothing is really changing. Your whole life you’ve been able to do this and it has been leading you to this very spot. Like a tree growing branches, you might not like it but you can’t chose to not grow. I used that one on Jordan to get him to wear the new glasses and it worked pretty well – he doesn’t like change either.

“Of course I also pointed out that he’d look dashing just like his Dad. Hmmm, I can use that one here too. This has been your destiny, passed down from your mother a long time ago, something very special that the two of you shared and will join you forever. Plus if you let me help you I’ll give you the letter she left for you.”

Madge opened the book Delilah had and turned to the very back page to where the picture had been. She tapped around the edge of the book a few times before stopping in the top right corner. She dipped her thumb in the purple powder she had made from memory while they had been talking and smeared it across the page while her other hand very lightly traced a line down the center of her own necklace.

Delilah was expecting something magical to happen with glowing lights or charged air or even some spiritual apparitions wafting up between them but nothing did. Madge just ran her fingernail over the corner, scratching away until the backing popped up and she could grip it firmly between her fingers. She ripped it like she was removing wallpaper from a crumbling old wall, all in one quick line, and revealed an envelope hidden behind it. The ink was glowing bright green against the faded parchment and Delilah could make out her mother’s handwriting, now small and flowery like she had remembered it, spelling out her name.

“Okay,” she said with a deep breath, “I’m ready. Tell me everything.”

Chapter 3
Delilah wasn’t sure she wanted to go back. “I’ll go get it later,” she told Amelia for the third time in the last twenty minutes as they made their way back to her apartment. “Really, I will.”
“I could go pick it up for you if you want?”

“I’m a big girl, I can do it myself,” she laughed, pocketing the prescription and trying to appear unaffected.

“All I know is you better do it soon because the sooner you get better the sooner you can go out with Hot Doc and the sooner I can get all the details,” said Amelia with a salacious smile. Delilah grinned along but it didn’t really reach her eyes. What had gotten into her? She wasn’t one to come on so strong, or even at all – she’d always been much more passive when it came to matters of the heart. She had started acting so out of character, so strange that she just wanted to scream the question and demand an answer: What was happening to her? Instinctively she reached up and stroked the necklace around her neck, feeling better almost instantly, a calm seeming to descend over her just at the touch.

“I know, I know. And don’t worry it’ll get done faster than Bubblegum Peterson can say ‘tacky’ with fringe.”

“Ugh, did you have to bring her up. Well I better go – have lots of shopping to do – but only if you feel better.” She bit her lip in worry.

“I’m fine – now shoo!” Delilah cried, ushering her away from the apartment building with a wide, amused smile that sat tremulously upon her face. She walked up the stairs biting the corner of her lip in contemplation. She sneezed up the stairs as well, having to stop every three steps so she wouldn’t fall up or down them, neither direction would do.

“Maybe I should just go and get those herbs,” she murmured to herself in exasperation after standing at her apartment door for ten minutes, prevented from entering by a coughing spell probably triggered by a fly on the wall or the fact that it was late afternoon. She took the prescription out of her pocket and stuck it to the middle of the fridge with a bright pink magnet. She pushed everything else out of the way, creating a magnet pile-up on the edges of her refrigerator with all the brightly colored shapes. Taking a step back and leaning against her kitchen counter, she nibbled her nail in thought, not able to take her eyes off of the crumpled, illegible scrap of paper in the great white expanse she had made. What to do, what to do . . . ?

“Later,” she finally commanded in a loudly surprising voice. The longer she stared the less sense it made; she was going to get no revelation trying to decipher Stephen’s handwriting, uncover not one hidden message there. She sat down on her sofa, since it conveniently faced away from the kitchen, and drummed her fingers against her leg in thinly veiled agitation. Her eyes, roaming around the room at light speed to find something that would hold her attention, spotted a book of her mother’s across the room and in little more than a second the journal was in her lap.

The cover was unintelligible, a long title sitting deep into the leather that could have been written in some long dead language for all the sense it made to her. She fingered the pages reverently, treating them ever so gently, as if it was in fact a piece of her mother she had laid out before her and not a vaguely haphazard set of words and pictures that she couldn’t quite understand. Delilah had simply moved from one puzzle to the next, applying not only a loving eye but a critical one to the heavy pages and gilded words.

Delilah couldn’t decide if her mother’s penmanship was simply atrocious or if she was writing in some kind of shorthand that she didn’t understand. Something was tugging at her; that vaguely familiar feeling rustling the leaves of her consciousness again like little children jumping into well raked piles in the street and throwing it all into disarray. She flipped aimlessly, doing more wishing that it made sense than anything else, running her fingers down the length of the page, lightly tracing over the places her mother’s pen had touched. She bent down at times, so close her nose has almost pressed into the spine, trying to peer directly into its meaning, wondering if maybe just a knock would send a greeter out to open the door and spill all the secrets inside.

Pictures were stuck at random between pages, probably just a rushed hiding place but Delilah was excited to uncover them, greedily taking in everything that they had to say. Her family had never really been big on photographs; it hadn’t seemed like a big thing when she was eight but she still couldn’t shake that well of sadness that she didn’t have nearly enough snapshots of her and her mother, some physical reminder of memories she was sure to have forgotten. Every picture she came across was another smile on her mother’s face, another sparkle of her eyes, another thing to look on fondly and keep safe.

It was the last picture, stuck between the final chicken-scratched page and the back cover, that fell into her lap and caught her completely by surprise. It was a group shot; not of their family but of what must have been a gathering of her mother’s friends. It was taken from above, looking down onto a circle of people sitting on a patch of grass somewhere. Five or six faces were laughing up at the camera along with her mother’s, all of them looking happy and content whatever they were up to. And they had to have been up to something, the hint of mischief hanging about not only them but the scene as well.

Her mother, with her short mop of brown curls looked exactly as Delilah’s memory of her. None of the other faces in the picture looked familiar at first. She turned it over in curiosity, searching out a date or list of names on the back but there was nothing there. It was as she flipped it back over that another face caught her eye. In the bottom left there was only about half a face, really just a profile of someone looking over their shoulder and not prepared for the camera.

The longer she stared at it the more she was sure that she knew who that was until she finally gasped in surprise and dropped the photo like it was burning her skin. That woman in the corner with the short, wavy blond hair bobbed just under her chin, she had seen her before. Seen those vividly violet eyes and felt them boring through her. It was that woman at the shop, the one that seemed too familiar to be real; she was in the photograph, laughing with her mother and looking exactly the same.

Before she even realized that she was doing it, that a decision had been made in the back of her mind as the front had been preoccupied with the gasp and the shock and the disbelief, Delilah was halfway through the door. With one backward grab at the prescription on the fridge, she was hopping down the stairs and flying down the street, the book and photo clutched to her chest though whether out of safety or fear she wasn’t even sure.

It had taken what seemed like only a smattering of moments before she was suddenly out in front of the shop, almost as if instead of her rushing towards it, it had rushed towards her and she’d arrived here just by standing still. It was an unnerving thought but it had been the day for them so she just stacked it on the pile with the rest and continued fidgeting outside, the desire to enter and the desire to stay put fighting an equally matched battle inside of her. Her hand reached up to stroke the necklace and it suddenly became clear what she had to do next.

She didn’t even have to reach for the handle; the door opened up before her and she stepped inside with only a slightly hesitant backwards glance. After what had happened earlier, Delilah was suddenly much too aware that no one knew where she was at this very moment and a small trickle of nervousness dripped down her spine.

But the gypsy woman wasn’t waiting to devour her at the door and there didn’t seem to be anything else inherently scary waiting in the wings for her. For the first time she noticed the rich colors of her surroundings, deep orange walls here, deep purple walls there, serving as a vibrant backdrop for the eclectic things that had been strewn about. Glass bottles and figurines, most in translucent green and iridescent blue, set the whole place up to sparkle like a true diamond in the rough. It was as if the whole store was twinkling at her. The old books were still there where she could barely see them from the door, beckoning her over to the back.

Delilah was the only soul in the store so it should have been eerily quiet but it wasn’t; the place, the very walls and every object between them, seemed to pulse with its own energy, its own story. She felt the energy humming against her skin, running along the seams of her clothes and the tips of her shoes, but ignored it with little else than a buzzing white noise crinkling in her mind.

She was standing right in front of the long front counter, mindlessly running her fingers across the glass top when a rattling sound startled her. She jumped in fright as the gypsy came out from behind lines of beads and metal that separated the back and front parts of the quirky little place. She tried not to meet her eyes but the urge was too strong to see what would happen.

But nothing did. “Well, it’s about time I should say.” The woman smiled brightly at her and crossed behind to set her tray of interesting things down on the counter before leaning conspiratorially over on her elbows towards her. “How long have I been waiting for you now? Years, years I think. Ten if I’m not mistaken. Oh it must be ten, ten if it’s even one I think. Lots has happened since then, lots.

“What took you so long? I swear.” She shook her head in a bit of exasperation before looking closely at her face, like she was trying to read something off of the curve of Delilah’s eyebrows and the apples of her cheeks. “Well, I should say that you squeaked in just in the nick of time I think. Let’s be happy you’re not as bad as my kids. Then you would have tried to arrive ten minutes late, swearing you were actually here the whole time and that never would have done. Not at all. Lost forever then.”

She paused for a moment, for Delilah to say something probably but she was so struck by what was happening that she couldn’t manage to get anything out, didn’t know what she wanted to get out. She’d expected some kind of confrontation or some lying disguise. If she was such a friend of her mother’s than why didn’t Delilah know her, of her, about her? If she was expected and this close to her apartment then why had she been waiting on her just a few miles away?

“You don’t have anything to say?” the lady laughed as she straightened, the very color of her violet eyes seeming to crinkle with humor. “I do remember you being a tad bit more chatty miss.”

“I . . . when I came in here earlier and you . . .”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she apologized with her fingers now drumming rhythmically against the counter, “but you caught me off guard. I know I said that I’ve been waiting on you for ten years but I’d written you off as not interested. Well, I hadn’t seen you before your birthday so I’d written you off in permanent black marker to be sure. And then you walk in here and, well, I was just so surprised I lost control. That happens to me sometimes.”

Delilah just continued to gape. “So what happened earlier – the wind and the hillside? You did that to me?” She nodded her head in agreement, looking only slightly chagrined as if for pretense’s sake. “How? Why? Who are you?!”

The gypsy tilted her head to the side and seemed to stare right through Delilah before her eyes appeared to lighten considerably, the dawn of a realization breaking across them. “My stars, you don’t know anything, do you?”

“About what’s going on and why you’ve been waiting ten years for me? Yeah, no clue.” Even though she felt so close, tiptoeing along the edge of a mountain ridge, she couldn’t bring herself to jump, to find out what was at the bottom because she knew, somewhere in mid-air, that everything would change. Delilah didn’t run towards change – she ran away from it.

“You know,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment to clear her head, “I don’t care. This is ridiculous. Nothing happened and you’re just agreeing with me, who knows why. I’m just sick, and it’s making me crazy. That’s it.” She took the prescription out of her pocket and handed it across to her. “Could you just sell me this so I can get rid of this damn cold and get on with my life.”

The old friend grabbed the piece of paper and a faintly knowing smile settled on her face. “I could sell you these but I have something even better for you. Guaranteed to work.” She turned and grabbed a small clay jar from a shelf above her head, just within her reach, and removed the lid.

“Here, take a whiff. It will clear you right up.” Delilah was uncertain but she leaned forward just the same. She couldn’t smell anything anyway so it didn’t much matter if it was something rotten – it wasn’t about to offend her stymied senses. “Take a deep breath Delilah,” the gypsy ordered. And she listened. And it changed everything.

Chapter 2
Delilah shook her leg restlessly, causing tremors of movement on the paper beneath her with a screechy sound effect to match. She bit her lip nervously and reconsidered whether telling Amelia she’d be fine by herself had been such a good idea. But she had a cold, that’s it. She didn’t need Amelia there to hold her hand when Stephen prescribed more orange juice and bed-rest.

But in the ten minutes she’d been in the sterile exam room, staring at the loudly ticking clock and the stark white walls, worst-case scenarios were playing hide and go seek in the recesses of her mind. Every time she thought she’d uncovered all the reasons she should be scared and began to calm down she happened across another one and it sent her reeling again. What if she had tuberculosis or consumption? Been bitten by something and contracted West Nile virus or the Avian flu? Hadn’t she seen an episode of some medical drama where a perpetual cold meant cerebral fluid was leaking from the brain?!

And then there was that weird hallucination where she had pictured herself with that strangely familiar woman, standing on some kind of lush hillside. For a moment she could have sworn she smelt crisp grass and fresh morning dew and even an impending rainstorm in the air. Which was crazy on so many levels, not least of which was that she hadn’t been able to smell anything for the last three months thanks to this damn cold.

Should she even mention her ‘vision problems’ to Stephen? She wasn’t delirious due to fever – she’d made sure Amelia checked – so what did that leave? Crazy, insane, delusional, what? She could picture Stephen now with that same infuriatingly patronizing way his sister got sometimes. He’d listen to her story, say he was going to help her and then get her committed to the mental hospital for sure. He’d probably even help them throw away the key. She’d be better off confiding in Jack the Ripper than him. Not that Stephen was a bad guy; he was just hyper-rational. Evidently doctors had to be.

The door opened and she stopped shaking, as still as a stone. For a moment she thought she was hallucinating again – maybe delusions really had taken over her life and she was trapped in some perpetual dream sequence. Next thing you know she’d be liable to break out into show tunes and the medical staff would start doing a conga line across her exam room. Because the person that entered was not Stephen the doctor or Amelia her friend or even Nancy the nurse; the only way he could be described was Man of Her Dreams.

“Hi, I’m Doctor Michaels. And you’re Delilah, right?” He turned and gave her an affectionate smile, his mouth curving up into a deliciously provocative curl, and reached his hand out in greeting. For a moment she didn’t move, too stunned and speechless to react at all. When time finally did start again, her manners catching up with the pounding of her heart, she still could manage little more than a head nod and an apprehensive smile.

“You’re not Stephen,” she said, glancing nervously at the door like she was sixteen again and he was going to bust in and embarrass her in front of a cute boy.

“No, I’m not,” he smiled, leaning nonchalantly against the counter, ankles crossed, her chart open in his hands.

“Sorry,” she blushed with a self-deprecating roll of the eyes, “It’s just Stephen is an old friend and he was squeezing me in so I’m just a little surprised that it’s you doing the squeezing and not him.”

He smiled a little bit wider and his eyes crinkled just a bit. “We all try to chip in around here. And I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress.” He paused for a moment and a look passed between them though what is was supposed to mean, only the color expanding across her cheeks knew. “Well now, what seems to be the problem?”

“I just,” she waved her hand dismissively, an attitude so engrained by now she still couldn’t seem to make herself take her illness seriously whenever an audience was around, “have this little cold I think. But it’s been around for three months now and I just can’t shake it.”

“Hmm, three months. That is a long time,” he murmured, stepping closer to examine her. His hands came down on the side of her neck, his finger probing gently along her jaw line and that sensitive spot under her ears. She knew it was for some purely medical reason, probably checking for some grossly horrifying symptom of something deadly serious, but it took all of her strength to not start purring at the feel of his hands on her. It had been so long since anyone had touched her that she had to curl her hands tightly against the edge of the examination table to not reach for him or lean into his purely clinical embrace.

She peeked her eyes up at him and his face was deceptively close, his dark emerald eyes peering down into her own. She tried not to look too content but it must not have worked very well because he flashed his own smile, a quick slash of his straight white teeth, before dropping his hands away. “No swelling,” he murmured with a slight hitch in his voice. She bit her lip to try and stop a satisfied smile from breaking out across her face.

Never before had Delilah wished that her throat and back were sexy but now she did as the dreamy doctor peered down her throat and rolled up her shirt. “Oh, cold,” she yelped in surprise with a little laugh as he touched the stethoscope to her skin.

“Sorry,” he replied, pulling it back. Delilah turned to look over her shoulder and saw him raise it to his mouth and blow slowly, letting the warmth of his voice wash over it. “Is that better?” he asked as he touched it to her skin again, no longer that stinging cold.

“Mmhmm,” she answered, shaking her head. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t know what was coming over her but suddenly the moment just seemed provocatively sensual. She’d felt especially raw since she’d stepped into that store, feeling like she could feel and hear everything more than she did before. The colors on the sidewalk, the sounds in the silent exam room, and now the brush of his fingers against her skin.

“Good, now take a deep breath.” His voice grazed across her skin and she felt her temperature go up a few degrees. “Now out.” She felt like she was going to hyperventilate, forcing herself to close her eyes and concentrate on the feel of the air against her lips, small round bubbles moving against the current of her tongue.

He stepped back, away from her, and it all stopped. Delilah brought a hand up and ran it distractedly through her hair. He walked back around to the counter, leaning against it unconcerned, and started to talk to her but she didn’t hear any of it; she was too distracted by the images racing around in her head. Her walking across the room to take her chart out of his hand and throw it across the room. Running her hands through his wavy chocolate hair. Ripping open his lab coat, buttons popping here and there, to find him bare-chested and beckoning her to touch him.

She closed her eyes and shook her head to clear it away before opening them to find the good doctor staring at her quizzically. “Sorry,” she blushed again, even more color rising to her cheeks, “I’m just a little distracted. You were saying?”

“Well,” he started, moving across the room to stand closer to her, hoping that would hold her attention, “I was saying that I don’t think it’s a bacterial infection but I’ll do some tests if you like just to be sure. The strain this year has a little bit of Epstein Bar in it so it’s been hanging around a little longer than usual. I’m not sure it’s anything to worry about.”

“Just one thing,” she murmured in a low sultry voice, prompting him to step a bit closer to hear her.

“And what’s that?”

“If I don’t need any more tests then when do I get to see you again?” she asked, holding tighter to the table to stop the urge she had to slip his pen out of his coat pocket and scribble her phone number across some obscured part of his body that she’d have fun uncovering.

His eyes widened just a bit and he stepped back, seeing the need to clear his throat as he did. “You know doctors can’t date their patients.”

“I had heard that somewhere,” she responded with a smile. Their eyes met and she wasn’t quite sure why but she laughed a little.

“You know, on second thought I really think that Stephen should have a look at you. He was the doctor you wanted, wasn’t he?”

“Oh yes, I definitely want to see Stephen.”

“Okay, well, it was very nice to meet you. And if you ever feel like a change – of the medical kind,” he clarified needlessly with a highly charged look, pulling something from his back pocket and scrawling a number across the back, “here’s my card. Call me, anytime.” He flashed her a mega-watt smile and dropped his card into her outstretched hand. Their fingertips grazed each other and she felt electricity blow through her. From the look on his face as he exited the room, he had felt it to.

“Wow,” she exhaled shakily, sneaking a peek at the door like she could see through it and follow him around the building to his next patient. “Jensen Michaels,” she read aloud. “Dreamboat MD.”

She was only waiting a few more minutes before there was a knock on the door and Stephen’s head peaked inside. “Hey De – sorry to keep you waiting.” He looked at her for a moment with that clinical doctor detachment before he blew the image by laughing in that disbelieving way he had that stretched his mouth wide like a monkey. “Seriously, can’t you manage to keep the flirting to a minimum ever?”

“I don’t flirt with you,” she replied.

“Ew, stop being disgusting,” he said, opening her chart and starting to read. He looked up just in time to see her stick her tongue out at him. “Oh, very ladylike De-lirium.” She had forgotten he used to call her that. She didn’t used to have hallucinations, did she?

“Okay, even though he’s too easily swayed by a pretty young thing, looks like Jensen examined you fine. Common cold. Here,” he said, tearing a piece of paper off of his prescription pad and writing something down, “I can’t give you anything for it but some of our other patients have been swearing by these herbs that are helping with the symptoms.”

“Why didn’t Dr. Michaels mention these to me?” Delilah sniffled, staring down at the barely legible writing with a critical eye.

“Because Jensen thinks that holistic medicine is for quacks while I on the other hand am horribly enlightened.” He looked at her confused face and sighed, stepping a bit closer to her. “Seriously De, I wouldn’t be telling you about them if they didn’t work. Just try them out, they won’t kill you.”

He opened the door and she followed him, winding their way through the back towards the lobby. “Stephen what does this even say?” she asked, turning the square this way and that to try and make some kind of meaning appear between the lines of his horrible handwriting.

“It’s a mixture of Chinese herbs called Shen Ti Hao. You drink them in a tea. Evidently it tastes really good with honey and a splash of milk.”

“Thank you Ste. I really appreciate you getting me in here today,” Delilah said, having to grab his arm to deliver her thank you since he was already off to another patient.

The smile he returned was sincere. “No worries little one. I’ve got you covered. Don’t break too many hearts now and I need my partner so don’t wear him out.”

“Can’t make any promises,” she answered with a devilish smile. Stephen just shook his head and ushered her out into the lobby, waving his hand at his sister in a quick greeting.

“Stephen, wait, you didn’t tell me where I can get these?” Delilah remembered, sticking her head back through the door. He had already disappeared.

He popped up a moment later behind the reception desk, leaning forward so they could see him. “There’s this one place downtown. Has a funny sounding name. What was it, what was it . . . something with the word Alternative in the title. It’s right next to that organic ice cream shop and that old bookstore with the picture of Sigmund Freud out front.”

“I know where that is,” Amelia piped up, “Remember, that cute little orange shop with all the blown glass? In fact, that’s where we were earlier when you got sick suddenly. What a coincidence.”

Prologue
Delilah’s life would have been a whole lot different if she had decided to do something else on that Saturday. Gone to a movie, went camping in the dusty mountains, sat in the corner of the couch in that patch of sunlight knitting Amelia that blue wrap she had requested. But she didn’t go to the movies or the great outdoors or the craft store down the road. No, Delilah did something seemingly innocuous, something that was only supposed to hold meaning because it was a task that she avoided like the plague, something that would signify just to her that she was maturing. Delilah was spring cleaning.

And though it sounds completely routine and expected, of her it was not. She was a pathological pack rat, hating to part with anything and everything. She liked to claim that it was the eco-friendly part of her, the part that decried excess, the part that wanted to “waste not, want not.” And part of it might have been, but that part was probably very small, just large enough to make her own excuse plausible so that it wasn’t a lie, so that she wasn’t hiding anything.

But the more important truth was that Delilah was impossibly afraid of letting go. It had happened too many times in her life – discovering right after she had let go that letting go would never do. Her patchwork doll when she was four, her puppy Max when she was eight, her dream of being an equestrian star when she twelve, her mother when she was sixteen. All things that had left her long before their necessity was gone. So she kept the magazines with recipes for elaborate dinners that she would never make and college textbooks from classes she hadn’t even liked and enough Tupperware to send the whole building leftovers of her green enchiladas even though only half the apartments would get lids to match. Delilah kept, Delilah saved, Delilah put away.

But she was determined to turn over a new leaf. For the last year, even since her last birthday, she’d been making promises to herself to get it done – to clean the back of her closet and the spare bedroom and that corner of the laundry room she avoided whenever possible. And here it was, 364 days later and she had thrown not one thing away, not opened one box or completed one task. But she was not about to have another year consumed by those boxes she’ll get to tomorrow, or next week, or sometime, someday. And, as it turned out, this was a very, very, good decision.

Because buried under the useless, behind the arcane, and kitty corner to the sentimental was something that had been waiting, only mildly patiently, to be found. It had been waiting almost 10 years, underestimating the extent of Delilah’s possessions. It had been sitting, jauntily if truth be told, on top of a linen square, in a battered jewelry box, daring her to find it. It was trying to speak to her, from depths unknown, in the only way it knew how. But Delilah hadn’t been taught to listen, yet.

Chapter 1
“Come on, out into the world,” Amelia ordered with a gentle knocking at the door and an insistent tapping of her foot. Delilah just looked at her, a little bemused, wrapped up tighter than a present under the Christmas tree, all tinsel and sparkles hanging this way and that off of her new winter coat. If she’d been wearing ornaments as earrings she’d have sworn she really was a Christmas tree, albeit a talking and mildly annoyed one.

“You think I’m going out with you looking like that?” she replied with a skeptical laugh that ended in an amused cough.

“This is fabulous. Just because the world hasn’t noticed yet doesn’t mean it isn’t.” Delilah just gave her a disbelieving look, all of it in the corners of her dove gray eyes, before Amelia let out a sigh and pushed past her into the apartment. “Okay, yeah, I know I look like a reject from a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade but this is my job.”

“You really need a better job,” Delilah said as she closed the door, wrapping her red flannel bathrobe tighter around her as she followed Amelia deeper into her apartment.

“Well as I try to make a career as a cracker-jack artist I need to take jobs to pay my rent. Don’t scoff at me, you know what I’m talking about.”

“What?” she asked with that barely perceptible movement, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards just slightly. It always gave her away, that liar smile. Everyone in her family had it and couldn’t keep a secret to save their lives because of it. They were very skilled at walking the line between truth and evasiveness though and they could spin a bad fact so that it barely stung, came off as little more than a mosquito nuisance.

“Oh don’t give me that Delilah Ann Connors, you know you can’t get away with it. Me working for a fashion designer I hate while waiting to break into interior design is exactly the same as you doing techy web stuff for that online magazine while waiting to become an ace journalist.”

“It’s entirely different,” she argued fruitlessly, plopping down on the sofa across from her with a cup of steaming tea. “I’m just waiting for the right time to strike. Bianca told me that some of the writers are getting ready to leave and I think she’s right. How are you going to get into interior design by working for Bubblegum Peterson?”

“If you must know,” Amelia replied with a faux air of irritation, “Bubblegum is doing a photo spread of her new winter collection in some kitschy independent magazine and she said she’d let me style the shoot. So there you go assignment one: make her clothes look good.” Her hopefulness had fizzled out by the end, falling over into silence. They both cast their eyes across the room where Amelia had unceremoniously dropped the ghastly coat across a wicker chair. It looked like a plant trying to eat a trellis.

“Well if you can do that, you can do anything,” Delilah offered.

“So true,” she responded with a laugh. “Why aren’t you dressed? Why are you still sitting here looking at me? Go get dressed, we have to go out on the town and get appropriately kitschy accessories. I did not put on that sorry imitation of an evergreen for nothing. Come on.”

“No way. And not because I wouldn’t be caught dead walking around with you in that because I think it would be so hilarious.”

“So then why are you still sitting there?”

Delilah sighed and gave her steamrolling friend a frustrated look “You know why I can’t go,” she said, ending on a cough, having to quickly set her tea on the end table so she didn’t find herself and the apartment dusted with a light covering of hot water and tea leaves.

Amelia rolled her eyes. “De – either this cold isn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be and for some weird reason you’ve decided to become a hermit and I as your best friend am required to save you from yourself or your cold is truly horrible and then I as your best friend am required to haul your skinny ass to a doctor so we can figure out why you’ve been sick for so long. Either way when I’m leaving this apartment, you’re coming with me.”

Delilah looked at her for a moment, accessing, trying to figure out if Amelia was bluffing and she’d get some peace or completely serious and there was no way out. It was another moment or so before she rolled her eyes in mock annoyance and hoisted herself up out of her seat. “Give me five minutes,” she murmured as she crossed the room to her bedroom, “and don’t you dare rearrange my furniture while I’m gone.”

“Man,” Delilah heard Amelia sigh as the door closed. But Amelia didn’t have very long to sit and stare forlornly at the bookcase that needed to be better styled or the space planning disasters in her living room that created roadblocks instead of throughways or the vases standing empty awaiting something unique to drop inside them. Because in no time Delilah was all set, standing at the open doorway with her handmade jeweled scarf and matching knit cap, layers upon layers making Amelia wonder for a moment if maybe they should be taking a trip to the doctor instead of downtown.

“That’s new,” she said instead as they made their way out into the fresh sunshine, a hazy cloud or two trapping the predictably bright glare away from the street.

“What?”

“That necklace. It’s gorgeous – where’d you get it?”

Delilah looked down at it for a moment and smiled. It wasn’t something that she would have been drawn to before with the huge iridescent orange stone shaped like a teardrop and an ornate gold setting like an old Victorian frame. Too busy for her – she preferred silver, circles, small. She ran her fingertips over the stone, cool to the touch, and it made her feel better, just ever so slightly.

“I found it. When I was cleaning out all those boxes before my birthday I found some of my Mom’s old things. Most of the stuff was just junk but I kept some vases, some really cool glass bottles, some kind of weird old diary and this. It is cool, huh?”

The streets were bustling with people coming and going. Delilah had forgotten how busy it was now that Samson’s had decided to open up shop downtown instead of near the outlets and strip malls near the freeway. It had been like an adrenaline shot for all the homegrown shops and boutiques downtown. She hadn’t really been out much since they’d opened and was surprised at all the good they seemed to be doing just by being nearby.

“That brings us to another thing I wanted to talk about– your birthday.”

“What about my birthday?” she asked, stopping to peer inside the window of a lighting store, standing in awe of the truly gorgeous chandeliers on the ceiling. She saw Amelia through the glass, doing a double-take for a moment that she was no longer standing next to her, and laughed out loud at the looks her outlandish coat was garnering. She stood next to three floor laps and posed, looking to Delilah for input but it was hard for her to keep a straight face when Amelia was doing her best impression of Tyra Banks through a department store window.

“Well, which one looked the best?” Amelia appeared next to her on the sidewalk as Delilah was wiping tears of mirth out of her eyes.

“Truthfully they all made you look like you were waiting for a bus or a pimp after a truly memorable Halloween party.”

“Okay, no floor lamps, good to know.” They continued on down the street, popping here and there into shops when the moment moved them. “Okay, about your birthday,” Amelia started again when they had crossed to the other side of the street.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Delilah sniffled. She peaked at Amelia beside her as they quickened their pace down the street. She had that look in her eyes, the one that suggested it would be futile to argue.

“The big deal is that it’s been almost three months and we haven’t gone out to celebrate. That is a dire situation that needs correcting. I know you don’t like a fuss but we can’t just ignore the whole thing.”

“It’s been so long now that my birthday doesn’t need to be celebrated. It came, it went, let’s just let it go.”

“No,” Amelia replied nonchalantly as if she’d just been asked if she thought it might rain tomorrow, raising her chin up a bit in defiance. A door opened into her path and she peaked back at Delilah before gliding through it, an implication to be sure that the matter was closed.
Delilah sighed but followed. There was really no use in arguing with Amelia about this – she was going to do what she wanted no matter what Delilah had to say about it, that’s just the way she was. She said it was “for her own good” but that phrase could be awfully misleading. Some amazing experiences happened because of it but Delilah couldn’t help but think that sometimes she’d much rather be less exciting and more sure of what was going to happen next. Truth be told, Delilah was not a big fan of change.

She sneezed as she entered the shop, violently, needing to grab the doorjamb to steady herself, and sniffled again. Not because it was dusty even though there were very old books scattered about everywhere, ones that tugged slightly at her heartstrings and seemed to be begging for a long, leisurely look. Not because the air was stale; anything but, seeming almost to taste crisp and clean like it was being piped right in from a mountain glen somewhere. If she didn’t know any better she’d swear she was standing in the middle of a field of sunflowers or poppies, happy flowers grinning up to meet her.

No, Delilah sneezed because of her cold, her horrendously bad cold, that she just couldn’t shake. It was the reason that they hadn’t gone out to celebrate her birthday, the reason that most of her friends thought she’d dropped off the face of the earth. It had lingered for three months, never really getting any better. That tickle in the back of her throat, the headache gently pounding behind her closed eyes, it all kept her at home nights. If she didn’t know any better she’d think toxic dust had been living in those boxes she’d never wanted to open and it had incubated to super strength since she’d let it sit for so long. Or here could be the consequences of spring cleaning, best to let stuff be.

“Bless you,” a slightly awed voice said. Delilah looked up to find it, making herself as flat as possible against the doorframe so someone could pass by, and for a moment she was speechless. Something weird was going on, she was sure of it, because those eyes she met set off strange bells of knowledge in her head. Her skin felt hot and started tingling, little prickles of sensation working themselves up into a frenzy. And then a wind was there to cool her, like she had stepped in front of an industrial fan or the breath of the universe. Her hair, all of the red shoulder length strands, rose from her back and started twirling in intricate dances. Something inside of her was glowing, incandescent, radiant. She could feel it – everything – all at once. What was happening to her?

“Delilah? Are you okay?” Amelia asked. And then it was over, the connection broken. She blinked, shook her head to clear away the sudden crazy hallucinations, and tentatively met Amelia’s eyes, looking drained and a little scared.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she replied weakly, “let’s get out of here.” Amelia cast a sideways glance at the gypsy there who was watching at her with an unbelieving look but didn’t dare meet her eyes again, she seemed too familiar as it was. She shivered involuntarily as she crossed out into the street again and felt impossibly cold, like all of the warmth seeped out of her and stayed behind, inside.

“On second thought,” Delilah began weakly, “I think I’d really like to go see that doctor now.”

“You got it,” Amelia answered quickly, taking her by the shoulders and turning her around.

“We’ll go see Stephen right now. That’ll be fun to go catch up with my brother, right? You haven’t seen him forever. How long has it been? I think it was . . .”

Amelia kept rambling but Delilah stopped listening. She looked back over her shoulder to get a better look at where she had been, something inside of her and against her better judgment insisting with absolute certainty that she would find her way back there. The gypsy woman had come to stand in the doorway and was watching her still, standing under a sign that just confused her even more. Colin All Alternatives. What kind of place was that and who was that lady that she seemed to know?