She nodded. “That would be good to know.” She gave him an odd look. “Why didn’t I even think to ask that?”

  He smiled at her gently. “You had enough to adjust to.”

  Through the phone Stefan offered, “I’ll phone the police department. Give me just a minute.”

  And, with that, Hurricane’s phone went blank. He pocketed it and turned to her, saying, “Stefan will look into it.”

  She walked over to a cupboard, opened it up, and pulled out two cups. “Why would there only be two regular cups here?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, looking at her oddly. “Why was there just enough coffee for a single pot?”

  “I know. It’s almost like I preplanned this.”

  He sucked in his breath. She whirled, stared at him, and asked, “I couldn’t have done that, right?”

  But he didn’t give her the answer she was looking for. He just stared back at her, then spoke. “Could you have? Yes, you could have. Did you? Now that’s what we don’t know. Not yet anyway.”

  She blew out her breath slowly, handed him a cup of coffee, and stated, “I’ll go see if a proper change of clothes is to be found.”

  He followed her into the bedroom.

  She pulled open the drawers and noted one pair of underwear and one bra. She lifted them up and turned and looked at him.

  He asked, “Only one of each?”

  She nodded slowly, and, in the same drawer, she found a pair of socks, a pair of jeans, and a T-shirt. One of everything. “Oh, my God.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly one change of clothing here,” she declared, her breath coming out in a rush. She shuddered. “I do not know what to think about this at all. Did I leave it …”

  “Or did somebody else leave it for you?” he interrupted.

  At that, everything inside her sank deep down into a pit of despair. “You mean, whoever did this to me?”

  “Possibly, yes. But we don’t know that for sure, so let’s not jump to any conclusions.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “A little hard not to, considering all that’s gone on.” She turned her back to him and pulled the man’s sweatshirt off over her head.

  He sucked in his breath.

  She twisted, looked at him, and frowned. “What’s the matter?”

  “Just hold it a minute,” he said, pulling out his phone. “I need to take a picture of your back.”

  She froze, and he took several photos while her back was turned, and then she quickly put on her bra and pulled the T-shirt over her head. Turning back around to face him, he held up the latest photo, and she stared at the pattern on her back.

  “Good God. … What is that?”

  “I have no idea,” Hurricane admitted.

  They both stared down at what looked like odd rope-shaped marks on her back. “Is that a bruise or a tattoo?” she asked hesitantly.

  He glanced at her and asked, “Do you mind?” She immediately pulled the shirt off her back and turned. He gently stroked across the skin. “It looks like bruising. … Besides, a tattoo like that, they should have seen at the hospital.”

  “They should have,” she murmured. “So why didn’t they?” She watched, as Hurricane sent the photos to Stefan. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” she cried out, looking at him.

  “I don’t know either,” he admitted, “but we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  With a wordless exclamation, she snatched up the rest of the clothing and walked into the bathroom. She stared into the mirror in shock. Her skin, which was normally peaches and cream, was now alabaster white. And her hair, normally strawberry blonde, was now the darkest it had ever been, not quite black but almost. In a way blacker than black though, almost jet-black, and it seemed to be getting darker all the time. She dressed quickly, opened up the door and looked at him. “Do you have a photo of me from before?”

  “No, I don’t. Why?” he asked.

  “Because everything is changing,” she whispered. “My skin is pure white. My hair is much darker.”

  He looked at her more intently and nodded. “I thought it was the light. But I think it’s gotten darker even since leaving the hospital.”

  “How can that be?” she whispered, staring at him, her eyes huge. “How is anything like this even possible? How can it even make sense?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, and I realize that seems completely inadequate, but I really don’t.”

  *

  Hurricane asked her for the umpteenth time as they refilled their coffee, “So you’re sure you didn’t just dye your hair?”

  “No, of course I’m not sure.” She glared at him in exasperation. “Obviously I’m not sure about anything. But my skin is pale too. Between here and hospital, I noticed it now.”

  He nodded.

  “Maybe we could focus on what we’ll do right now,” she muttered. “Or will you just leave, and I must deal with my world myself?”

  “What would you do if I did leave?” he asked.

  “You will leave eventually,” she snapped, glaring at him. “I’m not even sure why you’re here right now.”

  “Because I was told by Stefan to come and to assess the necklace. He wanted me to talk to you about what you’d found.”

  “Ah.” She paused for a moment and then nodded. “How is it I can remember Stefan so clearly?”

  “That would be another one of those questions that I would ask you, but, of course, you can’t answer.”

  She groaned. “Look. I’m not trying to be snappy, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you.”

  “You tell me only what is the truth.”

  “Unfortunately the truth appears to be completely movable, changeable, mutable,” she murmured. “So I don’t know what to say.”

  “We better just stick with what we know to be true, which at the moment is that you woke up in the hospital, having apparently died and come back to life, and, since you’ve come back to life, things have changed.”

  She stared and then nodded slowly. “I guess that’s as good a starting point as any.”

  “According to what you’ve told me, you have no idea how you came to be at the hospital. You have no idea what happened to put you in this condition, and yet you remember something about a necklace, that you use love in your work and you definitely remember Stefan.”

  She gave a half laugh at that. “I asked how it’s possible that I could remember Stefan, but the real question is how would it even be possible to forget him.”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “In real life, or whatever that means, no.”

  Again Hurricane just studied her face carefully.

  “And, if you’re looking for truth in that statement, that’s all I can give you,” she murmured. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him face-to-face.”

  “Good enough,” Hurricane replied cheerfully.

  She looked at him, puzzled. “Have you?”

  “Yeah, a couple times. He is pretty hard to forget.”

  “Even for those of us who haven’t met him,” she murmured. She groaned, as she slowly lifted her arms over her head and rotated her neck and shoulders, letting her arms stretch as high as they would go and then back down again.

  “Sore?” he asked.

  “The bruises,” she noted, “they’re sore.”

  He nodded, his gaze going to her bare arms. “They are fascinating, as bruises go.”

  “I don’t know that I like that term.” She followed the direction of his gaze. She held out her arms, twisting them slightly to get a better look at them. “I mean, they’re sore, but, if I’ve been beaten to within an inch of my life, which is what these bruises appear to indicate, they aren’t that sore.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing at the moment,” he suggested. “The mind has a tendency to only remember what it can cope with.”

  She stared at him and then nodded. “Meaning, it’s a self-defense mechanism, and maybe what happened was so horrific that I’m not ready to face it.”

  “That would be one guess, yes.”

  She looked around the kitchen. “Where to from here?”

  “You tell me,” he replied, a note of humor in his voice. “I brought you to what I thought was your home.”

  “It’s apparently the house, but it’s not home, and that’s a pretty important distinction at this point.”

  “So, you tell me,” he prodded. “What I’ve come to understand about you in this short time is that you really care about and were obsessed with your work.” She pondered that and nodded. “So, in that case, why don’t we go to where your work is.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a completely different story.” Puzzled, he watched as she got up, pulled a travel mug out of a different cupboard, filled it with coffee, and then walked to the front door. When he didn’t move, she called back, “Are you coming?”

  “Sure. Why not?” With that and a disgusted sigh, he got up and headed toward her. “You want to tell me where we’re going?”

  “I’m not sure,” she began. “But, if you drive, I’ll give you directions.”

  His eyebrows shot up at that, but he didn’t say another word, hopped into the vehicle outside, and asked, “Are you okay to leave the house unlocked?”

  She nodded. “Nothing for anybody to find.”

  “Glad to hear that,” he noted. “So now we need to know where everything you care about really is.”

  “I think it’s in my head,” she shared. “But that doesn’t explain where the rest of it is.”

  He turned on the engine and waited for her to speak. She hesitated a moment, and he watched as she appeared to almost meditate, looking for some answer. Then she stated, “Drive up to the next corner and take a left.”

  Following that vague statement was hard. The rest of the instructions came a little clearer each and every time, though sometimes right on top of each other. By the time he pulled up in front of what looked like a warehouse, he was staring at her, then back at the warehouse. “Does this make sense? You remember this place?”

  “I’m not sure,” she murmured. “But it’s all we have to go on.” She hopped out, still sipping the coffee in her hand, and waited for him to come around. When he did so, she smiled and pointed. “The left one.”

  “How is it that you’re getting here? What are you following for a trail?”

  She hesitated and then just shrugged, and he knew that whatever came out of her mouth wouldn’t be the truth.

  He immediately called out, “Stop.”

  She froze, looked at him, and asked, “What?”

  “I only want the truth. If you don’t have the truth to give me, or you’re not ready to give it to me, then don’t, but do not insult me with lies.”

  She slowly closed her mouth and shrugged. “Fine,” she agreed. And, with that, she cut in front of him, her steps smart, clipped, and she was clearly irritated.

  He grinned and followed. At least she hadn’t followed through with the lie. He wasn’t getting any information at all now, and maybe the lies would have told him something. However, for the moment, it looked like they had a truce. He just didn’t know what the fight had been about.

  Chapter 4

  How did Jewel explain that she didn’t really understand where any of this information was coming from, yet something inside her was following something, yet all just too nebulous to tell Hurricane? That was bound to trigger more of his questions, and, if their positions were reversed, she would have done the exact same thing. But that necklace? Just something about it. She also didn’t fully understand what energy work entailed with anybody else.

  As she walked, she pulled out her borrowed phone, and, when Stefan answered, she asked, “What did I tell you about that necklace?”

  “Where are you?” Stefan asked curiously. She hesitated. “The truth is always a good way to deal with this,” he replied, his tone mild but very aware.

  She groaned. “The truth would be nice, but I’m not exactly sure what the truth is in this instance.”

  “Yet to me, it feels like you know more than you’re telling.”

  “If I am, it’s because I don’t know how to tell it or I don’t really know what part of it is real and what isn’t.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” he noted carefully. “I can get behind that. Just remember that Hurricane is there to help.”

  “Is he?” she asked curiously. “I got the impression he was here because of the necklace.”

  “That’s why I sent him initially, yes,” Stefan agreed, “but we never walk away from somebody in need. Particularly when that somebody is like us.”

  “Am I though?” she whispered, hating the doubt rippling through her. She didn’t know who she was right now.

  “You are,” he declared, his voice strong with conviction.

  “What if it turns out that this is all something I manufactured? What if it’s not the truth?”

  “If you did, you must have a reason for it,” Stefan offered. “So why don’t we assume that, even if you did, you needed to do something. We still need to find out the what and the why. Now, to your predicament, I can tell you exactly what that necklace conversation was about.” Then he told her the details from when she’d phoned him.

  “Had I talked to you before that?”

  “About this, no,” he murmured.

  “About anything?” He hesitated. “Now it’s your turn to tell the truth,” she snapped. She glared at Hurricane, who was standing beside her, one eyebrow raised. “It’s really frustrating when everybody else knows things that I don’t know.”

  “It goes along with that how much do you want to know thing,” Stefan explained, with a note of amusement in his voice. “We’ve never spoken on the phone before this.”

  “You’re making a distinction there.”

  “Yes, because we have spoken on the ether.”

  She frowned at that. “Recently?” At that, she watched as Hurricane’s eyebrows shot way up and realized he’d heard Stefan’s conversation. “I think we’ve shocked Hurricane.”

  At that, Stefan laughed. “It takes a lot to shock Hurricane, and, if you need to tell either one of us anything, Hurricane can absolutely be trusted.”

  “Maybe,” she murmured, studying the man in front of her. “He’s awfully big.”

  At that, Hurricane glared at her. “So my size is against me now?” He leaned forward and spoke into the phone. “Stefan, her hair and her skin has changed color.”

  “In what way?” Stefan asked, his voice calm but curious. She quickly explained the little bit she knew. “And you don’t think you dyed it beforehand?”

  “Since I don’t know what I did beforehand, I have no idea,” she admitted.

  “Right, well, that’s an interesting twist,” he murmured quietly but giving nothing away–if there was anything there to give.

  “I’m not sure interesting is quite the word I would use, but, when I look in the mirror, I don’t see what I expected to see.”

  “Uh-huh. … Just keep in mind that sometimes we do things that make total sense at the time, but ever after we wonder why.”

  “That won’t be very helpful,” she argued.

  “Nothing is, until we get to the bottom of this. Where are you now?”

  “I’m outside a series of warehouses,” she replied, “and they look to be mostly empty.”

  “Do you have an address?” At that, Hurricane piped up with that info. Stefan replied, “Ah, that’s a newly renovated area. They were turned mostly into artists’ lofts. Maybe you own one there.”

  “It would certainly be appealing,” she murmured, as she studied the area. “Huge bright windows, a completely different look to them. On the up-and-up, I can see myself working here.”

  “So, as an artist, I can see that might suit you very well,” Stefan stated. “Go in, take a look, and see where you’re directed in your mind to go.”

  “I managed to find my way here already, so certainly no point in not going inside. I’ll call you in a bit.” And, with that, she hung up. She stood here in front of the building, staring up.

  Hurricane faced her and asked, “You ready to go in?”

  She winced and exhaled. “I feel like the answer to that is a yes but, at the same time, a very strong no.”

  He chuckled. “I can go in and take a look around, if you want.”

  “What good would that do?” she asked, frowning at him.

  “I can assess any danger that might be there.”

  “I’m tempted,” she admitted, “very tempted, particularly since I don’t know what happened to me. But it has to be me.”

  Chapter 5

  Jewel took a deep breath, looked over at Hurricane, and asked, “You ready?”

  His lips twitched. “Always.” When he reached out a hand, she stared at it. “You’re really not used to having anybody around, are you?”

  She frowned at that question and immediately placed her hand in his. “I don’t know, but this doesn’t feel like a natural move.”

  “No, I would say it isn’t,” he replied. “Let’s go.”

  He moved forward at a steady pace, and she wasn’t hard-pressed to keep up, but, at the same time, the pace wasn’t allowing her to look around. “Are we in a hurry?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” he said, as he looked down at her. “Do you sense the energy?”

  “I sense something, but I’m not sure what.”

  “Yeah, and it’s that ‘not sure what’ part that bothers me. I sense something too.”

  Frowning at that, she picked up the pace, until she was almost running. He smiled at her. “Are we in a hurry?”

  She groaned at his attempt at humor, especially since they both were uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Everything’s just weird.”

  As they got to the front exterior stairwell to avoid the working warehouses and to access the artists’ lofts above, she started up, and he followed, their hands still entwined. She looked down at their hands. “It feels very much like I am wrong to use you as a crutch.”