Prologue: Introduction

I dropped out of college three years in, and didn't go back until the summer I was 28.

By the time I decided to go back to school, I'd already bought a house in Phoenix, so my only reasonable choice was Arizona State. I'd never settled on a major the last time around. This time, I'd decided to put two degrees on my plate: Architecture and Urban Design. As a professional sculptor, I considered a minor in sculpture, but that made things too complicated, so instead I just took as many sculpture classes as I could get away with.

On the bright side, I kind of had a baby face; I managed to fit in with most of the 18-24 crowd, mostly surprising them when I revealed my actual age.

My mother was Italian, and I'd picked up enough of the language from her and from my uncle to coast through the basic levels of Italian, but in order to finish my language requirements, I had to take the advanced levels. Mom had died before the family could visit Italy, and they say immersion is the best way to learn a new language, so I decided to do a summer abroad in Italy, and drown myself in my mother's tongue, so to speak. Sure, Spanish might have been a smarter choice - definitely more useful in Arizona - but Italian was the easier choice.

It was the first weekend on that trip that things started to go haywire. A small group of us arranged a trip across the Mediterranean to Africa - Tunis. It involved an overnight ferry ride, followed by a night in Tunisia, and ended with another overnight ferry ride.

I walked out of the shop, unsure what had just happened. I looked at the crystal scorpion amulet I'd purchased, using up the last of my Euros. The proprietor's broken English had confused me, but he seemed earnest enough to be genuine. At least, that's what I told myself so I wouldn't feel ripped off.

I figured even if it wasn't really a charm that'd give me better luck with women (and what were the chances of that?), it was a very pretty trinket - a worthwhile souvenir of my time in Africa, as well as a reminder to not let myself get hustled like that again. But there were those other things the guy had said...

I checked my watch - there was at least another hour of "free time" in the marketplace before we had to meet up with the tour guide again. I dropped the last of my American money on some food from a street merchant - I didn't examine the food too closely, but whatever the meat was, it was delicious. Food in hand, I decided to wander around. Maybe I'd run into some of the other students on the trip.

I turned a corner and caught a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of my eyes. Almost immediately, I recognized the voluptuous curves of one Valerie Kindle, the walking wet dream that had joined the student trip. She was walking down the winding African streets, lugging a couple shopping bags. "Hey, Val," I called, but she didn't seem to hear me. I was a little tired of being lost, so I picked up my pace, almost trotting so that I wouldn't lose her. I clutched the amulet in my free hand, waving it at her.

All of a sudden, the crowds parted before me. They began to point at me and mutter, but I didn't know any language they spoke. Just fragments of broken words. Whatever it was, it made it easier to catch up to Valerie. "Val!"

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