The next couple of weeks were really interesting as I awaited Wraith’s report on the Devil King and his army. I wasn’t gonna try to push it because I knew we needed to be cautious going into our conflict with him. Not only that, but we were teetering on conflict here at the house anyway. The only one not upset about Delilah’s presence was Arduwan, who was quite busy with Mischief and watching cartoons. She had also told me that during her visit back home that King Ardu had a solution to her Life Debt to me but that it could wait until next time Wraith and I were with her back at the village.

“Eric,” said Anabel, “could you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Could you please tell Delilah to stop taking snacks to her room? Every time I gather the laundry, I find crumbs everywhere.”

“Oh, Anabel. You don’t have to clean up after her. I’ll go right up and tell her to take care of it herself, okay?”

“Thank you.”

I went upstairs and to the end of the hall where Delilah had been staying. The room that formerly belonged to Stephanie before she had moved into Anabel’s room. I could hear music coming out of the room and the chatter of teenage girls. It was April but Delilah was already shopping for a sorority. Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t really a thing in the UK the way it was in the US. So she put together her own little band hell raisers.

I knocked on the door and got the response from Delilah, “Come on in.”

When I opened the door, I saw Delilah and three other girls about eighteen years old sitting on the bed. The window was cracked open and they were smoking cigarettes.

“Hey! Don’t smoke in here!” I scolded.

“It’s fine,” she said, “I’ve got the window open.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’ll stain the curtains and the sheets. Besides, you shouldn’t smoke anyway.”

“Why not? Emily does?” she copped back.

She had a point, but still. I said, “Emily’s an adult. You kids have your whole life ahead of you to decide if you wanna kill yourself slowly or not.” God I sounded ancient.

“Fine. We’ll put them out,” she said, as the four girls all put out their cigarettes on the window sill.

“Okay, but that wasn’t what I came here for. Anabel says to stop bringing food up here.

You’ve been making a mess and she works really hard to keep this place up.”

“Okay, I’ll do that too,” she said. It wasn’t a defiant tone or mocking. She was agreeable. But she just wanted me out of the room.

So I simply said, “Thanks,” and saw myself out. There was a barrage of laughter from inside as I left.

I went downstairs to where Emily was reading and said, “Do you believe this? They were smoking up there. You’ve been here more than a year and never tried smoking in the house.

We’ve got four chimneys up there right now!”

“Don’t care,” she said, without looking up from her book. She had been really cold to me since the night Delilah moved in.

“Hey. Don’t be like that. I’m trying to make it work for all of us ya know.” She didn’t look up from her book. She just gave the silent treatment.

“Emily. Please. Let me know what’s wrong.”

She huffed and finally acknowledged me. She said, “Ugh, I’m pissed, Eric. Something really weird is going on here and I don’t have enough pieces to figure it out. I know for a fact you lied to me last week when I asked you what the deal was.”

I breathed in deeply and let out a sigh before saying, “Emily. I know it’s bothering you and I wish I could tell you what it was. But I just can’t. Just trust me on this until the Callist operation is over. Then we’ll come back to it and try to figure something out. Okay?”

Maybe once the Devil king was dead I could get Delilah out of here.

“Alright. I’m sorry I’ve been so cold and irritable. I should believe you when you say there’s a reason you can’t say something. It’s just…that girl. She eats our food, she leaves a mess, she comes and goes at all hours of the night. You know, me and Stephanie didn’t see eye to eye when she first came here, but we sure as hell have gotten a lot closer thanks to Delilah being our common enemy.”

"Well that’s a positive, isn't it?”

She shot me a smile and said, “By the way. Steph’s on the phone in the library. She said she wanted to talk to you when you got a chance.”

“Okay, I’ll go see what other Delilah fire needs put out.”

I quietly went into the library so as to not disturb her phone call but she was hanging up right as I came in anyway.

“Emily said you wanted to talk to me?”

She turned after hanging the phone up and said, “Yeah, Eric. I’m just stressed.”

“Is it a Delilah thing?”

“Oh, psshh, no. I mean, I’m stressed about that too. But that’s not it.”

I closed the door behind me and approached her, asking, “What can I do to help?”

She told me, “Okay, so I just got off the phone with my mom. I finally told her I was getting married to a chick and she took it a lot better than I thought. At first she thought I was getting married to you since I had moved here with you. But I explained to her that we were just friends still and that you were basically my boss. She’s gonna break the news about Anabel to the rest of my family, but I think that’ll be okay.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Okay, so what’s the problem?”

She sighed and continued, “It’s just. I don’t know. Should I wear a dress, should I wear a suit? Would that make me look butch? There’s a whole bunch of stuff with this that I hadn’t really thought about before…you know, taking the plunge.”

“Hey, you wear whatever it is you want to wear. You’re in safe company here and I’m not gonna let anyone belittle either of you if they come here as my guests.”

She smiled and wrapped her arms around my neck. As she choked back a tear she said, “Thanks, Eric. I can always count on you.” But when she broke away she added, “That’s not all. I was making arrangements for that paperwork you wanted me to get taken care of and I think I found someone useful.”

She was referring to the power of attorney and executor of estate transfer. Just as my father had done with Higgins, I wanted to do with Stephanie. She was my most trusted friend and the only one in the house with real solid foundational knowledge of the world. If something happened to me, I’d be leaving it up to her to carry things forward and find a successor since I didn’t have children of my own. Arduwan would probably go back to Callist but I wanted to ensure Stephanie had the ability to take care of Anabel and Emily without any problems.

“So whatcha got?” I asked.

She held up a printout of a lawyer she found and explained, “Arthur Edwards, fresh out of law school, University of Birmingham. He’s up to his neck in student loans, gambling debts, and a little birdie found out he cheated on his Bar exam by bribing the common law barrister of his jurisdiction. We can sweep in, pay his debts, and ransom his freedom in exchange for some favors in the event we run into any more legal trouble. No magic required.”

“Unbelievable. You’d make Higgins proud. How’d you find a little birdie though?”

She hesitated and then said with a smile, “Okay, it was Emily. I had her look into the guy when I ran a check on lawyers in the UK with the most student debt.”

“Ha! So you two really are getting along better,” I laughed.

* * *

That evening, we decided to have a come to Jesus moment with Delilah about her behavior. She was getting ready to go out for the night but I insisted she talk with us in the drawing room.

“What’s everybody looking so serious for?” she questioned.

“Delilah, it’s about your behavior. We took you in and made you a part of this household under the assumption that you be respectful and do your part.”

She replied in a really dramatic tone with, “But I am really respectful. I always thank Anabel for the food and doing my laundry. And I do my best to play with Mischief when everyone else is busy doing something.”

“I’m afraid that’s not what we mean, dear,” Stephanie said.

“Well, then what’re you guys talking about?”

Emily chimed in with, “What we’re saying is, that Eric’s gonna send you back to where you came from if you don’t shape up.”

Delilah looked at me with a horrified expression on her face and said, “Oh my god. You told them!” She then grabbed her neck and started dramatically pretending to choke as she fell to her knees behind the couch and made gagging noises.

Everyone in the room was confused but I just sighed and said, “No, I didn’t tell them.

Stop it! I know you’re faking it.”

“Tell us what, Eric?” said Arduwan, who had Mischief on her lap while Anabel sat near her petting him.

Delilah popped up from behind the couch with a shocked expression and said, “Wait!

You can’t!”

“It’s too late Delilah. I know you weren’t serious about that whole bit about the universe getting destroyed if they found out you were a goddess.”

Emily’s eyes lit up. The memories came flooding back to her. She said, “Wait a minute.

That's right. That Goddess of Second Chances that revived Stephanie and undid the Devil King’s curse name was Delilah. Is this here? How did I not piece this together before?”

I sighed a deep and regretful sigh before explaining, “Because I used a Forget spell on you so you wouldn’t remember. She told me she’d die or the world would end if anyone found out. But she was just being immature.”

“I was not! I just wanted everyone to treat me like normal so I could get an authentic mortal experience here.”

“Hold up!” Emily intervened, “You used Forget spells on all of us? Isn’t that incredibly risky since you’d forget four extremely important things by doing so?”

“Well, actually,” I confessed, “I only used one. Just on you because I knew you’d figure out the truth.”

“What?!” she barked, angrily.

“Look at it from my point of view. Stephanie was dead, Anabel wasn’t there, Arduwan was…Arduwan. You were the only one that knew Apollo was beseeching her by name. For the record, I was going to cast another one on Wraith when he got here, but that hadn’t happened yet.”

Emily got up from her seat and marched right past me up to her room. I tried to grab her by the arm as she went by but she flung it upwards to avoid me. “This is your fault,” I said to Delilah as I went up after her.

When I got upstairs, Emily was face down on her bed crying her eyes out. She rarely expressed emotion in this way. I came into the room and flicked the lightswitch on. The bulbs had been replaced with black light bulbs, so I don’t know why I expected it to brighten the room up.

“Why don’t you just go cast Forget on yourself to forget all about me?” she said when she noticed me there.

“Emily, what was I supposed to do? She told me it would be the end of us all if anyone learned she was a goddess. If anything, it’s a compliment that I knew you’d figure it out without the intervention of magic.”

She sniffled a little and then sat upright and said, “No, you’re right. I’ve just been on edge, waiting to snap for a while now.”

“Why?” I asked, as I sat on the bed next to her.

“Because. I can feel my usefulness evaporating.”

“What? How?”

“Because everyone else has a permanent role but me these days. Anabel keeps this house going. Stephanie is getting control of the estate…rightfully so, by the way. She’s good at it. Arduwan fights heroically by your side. But ever since Brasshaven, there’s been nothing I could do to help. I couldn’t do anything to prevent the hell you went through under that curse either. Then you moved in this girl out of nowhere, saying she was your cousin, and she got away with everything with only a mild scolding. I felt so left out. I know I said I should’ve trusted you that you had your reasons for keeping it from me and as it turns out, you did. But I still just feel like my usefulness has run its course.”

“That’s not true at all! Stephanie told me earlier that you got the scoop on that lawyer. No one else here could’ve done that.”

She sniffled a little more and forced a smile then said, “That’s true.”

“Emily, no one can replace you.”

She leaned her head on my shoulder as I put my arm around her. We were then interrupted by someone in the doorway. It was Delilah. She asked, “Eric, could I talk to Emily alone for a minute?”

I looked at Emily and she nodded, so I got up and left the two of them alone.

“Emily, I’m sorry I tricked Eric into hiding my identity for no reason. It’s my fault you got upset with him.”

“No, not totally. My self esteem is partially to blame.”

“I want to tell you something,” Delilah said, with a seriousness Emily had not yet heard from her, “This is what I told Eric on the battlefield in Callist. When Apollo summoned me to revive Stephanie, I took an interest in everyone who lived in this Mansion. I was fascinated by all of you. For millennia, the gods have enjoyed watching mortals play their lives out. But something was different about all of you for me. I wanted to experience it myself. I thought if I could just insert myself into the house but not have you all know that I was a goddess, then I could feel the way all of you did. But I was wrong. Because of my deception, I drove a rift between you. Please forgive me.”

“I do,” Emily said, “I forgive you. But not because of what you just told me. I forgive you because you’re the Goddess of Second Chances and you gave Stephanie and Eric one. So you deserve one too.”