“Eric, is everything okay?” shouted Anabel from the kitchen. She was checking in on me after hearing I had answered the door to this person claiming to be my cousin.

“Yeah, everything’s fine Annie,” I hollered back before stepping outside and closing the door behind me.

The young girl stood there in front of me smiling. I’m positive I had never seen her before in my life but she certainly looked familiar. Hearing the name Delilah immediately set off some alarm bells, but how could this be.

“I’m sorry, could you elaborate please?” I asked.

“Sure. I’m your long lost cousin, Delilah!”

That response simply perplexed me even more. I noted, “But I don’t have a long lost cousin Delilah.”

Her smile broadened and she closed her eyes gleefully before stating, “Teehee, well you do now!”

Okay, clearly this was the Goddess of Second Chances herself, Delilah, incarnated in a human form. But what they hell was she doing here on my doorstep.

“Alright, Delilah. I don’t mean to be rude. But could you possibly explain what’s going on, please?”

“Of course. After I aided you in your quest for a third time I was banished to a lower realm. This just happens to be a lower realm in comparison to the spirit realm for deities. Being that I am the Goddess of Second Chances and that I fulfilled my duties, I was allowed to choose what form I would incarnate as until I ascended once again to the heavens. Sooooo, I decided to do a little extra work when I rewrote the events of history.”

“What exactly did you do?” I dared to ask.

“Okay, this is the best part,” she giddily proclaimed, “in the old timeline, your Great Uncle Cornelius never had children. That’s why he left the estate and the family duty to your father. But he did have a romantic relationship with a former maid who worked here at this house later in life. So I simply edited this reality to where she bore a son for him but kept it a secret in fear that the child would one day have to pick up the Noble family burden.” “What?! That’s spooky as hell!” I declared.

“I know, it’s great isn’t it? Anyway, there was a lonely woman who just a week ago died in a tragic car accident in Cambridge. So I altered reality to where she wasn’t lonely anymore! She died with her husband, the lost son of Cornelius Noble, my father!” Her tone and cadence in her voice was awfully excited sounding given the subject matter.

“You’ve got to be kidding. Is something like that even possible?”

She crossed her arms and nodded her head saying, “Mhmm, it is when you have the power of the gods. So now that I’m an orphan, I came here to live with you, my long lost cousin!”

“Wait wait wait wait wait, let’s talk about this for a moment. First of all, why would you do something like this? Second, are you really the same goddess that helped me in Callist. Forgive me, but she seemed rather…mature, and wise. Her voice wasn’t so…”

“Cheerful?”

Well I was leaning towards annoying but we’ll settle for that.

“It’s okay, Eric, let me clear things up. I did it because like I told you back at the shrine, I really liked observing you and your friends. You all seem so happy together. Being a deity is surprisingly limiting and I wanted to experience this for myself. And to answer your second question, that’s correct. In my heavenly body, I was perfection personified. But in this body, I’m just a normal teenage girl. I’ve got hormones and emotions. I’m naive and I don’t have a fully developed brain. It’s wonderful!”

Now I’ve heard everything. An all knowing, all powerful goddess that’s happy she got turned into a dumb adolescent.

“Okay,” I said, “I see where you’re coming from with this. You want to experience life as a mortal because it’s not the same experience as it is in the heavens?”

“Right?”

“So you decided to rewrite my family tree, creepily mind you, so that you could come live here with me and the girls? Correct?”

“Thaaaat’s right!”

“Well, you can’t,” I said sternly, “I’ve got enough going on here and don’t forget, I still have to find a way to defeat the Devil King.”

Her face turned to shock for a moment before she said, “Just hang on a moment, Eric.

Before you get carried away, hear me out. I could’ve incarnated as another harem girl for you. But I saw that it would put me in direct confrontation with Emily, so I decided against it. The feelings I had and the bond I felt in this household was something I wanted to feel more intimately than even that.”

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It was strange. She did look a lot like me. But something about how all this came to be just felt so…artificial to me.

“Delilah, you can’t possibly think that just because you moved a few things around in history that you somehow fit into place here do you?”

“I do! Maybe you’re not fully understanding. I’m not just here on paper. I’m actually an eighteen year old girl that has lived and went to school and has friends. Just because you’re experiencing all this at once doesn’t make me any less a part of this reality and I have been for a long time as far as everyone else is concerned.”

“Hmm, hold on a second. If you’ve been here this whole time then how come you don’t have an English accent? I mean, come on, Anabel sounds more British than you!”

She grinned and said, “That’s because I went to boarding school in the States. I had just come back here to start college when the accident happened.”

“Okay, but that still doesn’t mean that we’re somehow family.”

She paused for a moment and let me think before she smiled big again and continued with, “Eric, I want you to take a deep breath, exhale and look within for a moment. Do you feel that? That’s real. It’s the familial bond between us. The same blood courses through our veins. I really am your little cousin.”

It was true, I did feel some kind of connection to her but at the same time it gave me the willies. There’s just no way I could just let her move in here. I mean, we just got a dog. Did we really need another pet? A freakin teenager? But then again. Having a goddess here would be an excellent ally! Surely she could help me keep the evil at bay even if she was a fallen deity. “Okay,” I sighed, “you can stay.”

“Yay!” she expressed, as she leapt forward and squeezed me tightly with a bear hug.

“Alright, alright. Come on in and meet the girls.”

I started to help her inside with her suitcase before she added, “Oh! That’s right. There’s one more really important detail. You can’t tell anyone that I’m a goddess. You can know because you were present when I edited reality. But if anyone else finds out, then I will die. Or worse, it could mean the fabric of the universe gets torn apart!”

“Ah! Really?! If slaying devils wasn’t bad enough. Now I hold secrets that could annihilate us all!”

We stepped into the house and Anabel was just coming down the hall to see what was taking me so long. “Everything okay? Oh, who’s this, Eric?” she asked.

“Anabel, this is Delilah, my little cousin!”

“Oh, Anabel!” she said, as she rushed over to hold her hands, “Dear, sweet, innocent

Anabel.”

Umm, what the hell? Was she literally reciting things she’d heard me say to her in the past?

“Eric!” Anabel happily replied, “I didn’t know you had a little cousin?”

“Neither did I,” Emily said, as she came down the stairs. She had an air of suspicion in her voice.

“Oh, hey, Emily. Yeah, this is Delilah. She’s the granddaughter of my Great Uncle Cornelius.”

“Funny. I was under the impression you had no other living relatives.”

Dammit, that’s right. Emily had read the journal as much as I had. We’d talked about my family history a lot too.

“You must be Emily!” Delilah noted, “I think it’s great that I’ll have someone my own age to hang out with. We can have slumber parties and do each other's hair!”

“Err, you know, I’m actually thirty. And what do you mean ‘have someone’?”

“Oh!” I interjected, “Delilah is moving in with us. You see, her parents just died and she’s got nowhere else to go while she’s in school.”

“Interesting. She seems to be taking it rather well. Wouldn’t you agree?” Goddammit, nothing slips by Detective Grimwood.

Just then, Arduwan came in from out back with Mischief. She had been playing with him while I was getting the scoop from Delilah.

“Aww, puppy! Eric, I didn’t know you had a puppy!” she said, as she knelt down to pet him. He seemed to really like her.

“His name’s Mischief,” Arduwan stated, “Stephanie says I should’ve been named that since I break stuff all the time.”

“Oh, and you are the lovely Arduwan I’ve heard so much about! Sorry I couldn’t have come to help sooner back at the…”

Delilah stopped. She almost spilled the beans about the battle with the black knights. Emily darted her eyes at me and then back to Delilah.

She saved herself by saying, “back on the patio. I know it’s no fun to scoop up little doggies poops.”

“That’s okay,” Arduwan replied, “I just let him go in the garden. Dogshit’s not the worst thing to get buried out there!”

I facepalmed.

Finally, Stephanie came downstairs. She was the last to be introduced to Delilah.

“Stephanie! It’s so good to meet you in person. I’ve heard so much about you. I think it’s wonderful how you and Eric get along so swimmingly despite your rough history together.”

Steph had an uneasy look on her face as she shook Delilah’s hand and said, “Yeah…it’s great isn’t it. Though I’m sure I know nearly as much about you as you do me. Wanna introduce us, Eric?”

“Ah, yes. Steph, this is my long lost cousin Delilah. She’s gonna be staying with us for a while. Anabel, do you mind getting the attic room ready for her.”

Stephanie interrupted, “oh, we can’t put her up there. It’s too small. Besides, all of Wraith’s stuff is up there. She needs her own space. Why doesn't she take my room? I’ve pretty well moved into Anabel's room now anyway.”

“Aww, thanks Stephanie. That’s awful kind of you,” I praised. Maybe things would work out with her here after all.

* * *

That night, just before turning in, there was a knock at my bedroom door. It was Emily. “Got a minute?” she asked, as she stepped inside.

“Only a minute this time?”

She shot me a look and said, “I’m not here for that. We need to talk,” before shutting the door behind her, “I’m not sure what the deal is with ‘cousin Delilah’ but something is off. I just had to wait an hour to get my hairbrush out of the bathroom and do you know what she asked me?”

“What?”

“She asked if she was supposed to use a whole tube of toothpaste everytime she brushed her teeth. And the bathroom was a fuckin mess too. Ugh,I don’t know what’s going on here. But I expect you to tell me, now!”

I moved in for a save by saying, “Whoa whoa, easy. It’s not that serious. She’s just dealt with some trauma lately. Her head’s probably not on straight. Just give it some time, okay?”

The look she gave me could shatter glass if she stared long enough. She told me, “you know I can’t be deceived, Eric. I will get to the bottom of this.” Then she abruptly turned around and left my room.