Chapter 6

H arriet wandered through the maze, and she knew where she was, a familiar place, whether she liked it or not. She’d spent her life here. But she was on a mission—her mission to help her granddaughter before it was too late. Danica needed help, whether she liked it or not. “Damn it, Stefan, where are you?” A muted grumble came, and she grinned. “Nice to know you’re still around.”

“As if I have a choice,” Stefan muttered, slowly showing up in front of her. “What’s going on?”

“I told you that trouble is coming.”

“I know. You have a time frame or any other information?”

“No, I don’t. I just know it’s coming, faster and faster.”

“And you still think it has to do with your daughter?”

“I know so,” Harriet murmured. It was hard to see him in this frozen state.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

She hesitated. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know who did it, but I don’t think it’s related.”

“How can you think it’s not related?” Stefan asked, no humor in his tone. “You were attacked, and now here you are, walking in our frozen world, trying to warn me about your granddaughter. Yet I need you to look after her.”

Immediately Harriet gave him a headshake.

“You know you should,” Stefan stated.

“No, I don’t know,” argued Harriet. “I also understand it’s a task I cannot complete, as you well know. Looking after Danica requires more than I can do.” Harriet nodded slowly. “She needs help.”

“Help she will get,” Stefan agreed gently, “but I can’t protect her from here.”

“Cameron owns the property, the old part of the property,” Harriet said. “I asked Danica to see if he would sell it back to us, so we could be whole again.”

“Yet it’s not about the property,” Stefan pointed out.

“No, no, it’s not,” Harriet whispered. “As you well know, it’s about keeping things safe.”

“You think it’s connected to the property? Have there been any incidents since Cameron showed up, since he bought the place?”

“Yes and no,” Harriet replied. “I’m not sure what the problem is, really. If I knew, I would tell you. But I figured that, if Danica can buy it from Cameron, maybe that would close the loop.”

“It might not have anything to do with the ownership of the property,” he reminded her.

“People are often attached to a place,” Harriet noted.

“Do you think your daughter is being threatened?” Stefan asked.

“I don’t know,” Harriet replied, almost frantic, “but something is very wrong.”

“ That I agree with,” Stefan said, his tone soothing. “You know that your time’s coming,”

She shook her head violently. “It can’t. I can’t go yet,” she cried out. “Don’t you understand? Danica’s not ready.”

“I hear you, but some things happen in their own way.”

“But not this. She’s already paid enough. She doesn’t need this too.”

Stefan sighed, a gentle whisper of a sound that crossed time and distance effortlessly.

With that, Harriet finally smiled. “I know you think I’m just a crazy old lady,” she murmured, “but this crazy old lady has one goal in life, and that is to keep her granddaughter safe.”

“For that reason alone,” Stefan replied, “I am here talking to you now. You know she’s gifted. You’ve watched her. You’ve kept an eye on her.” He chuckled. “It’s instinctive. Whenever somebody moves through the ethers who has power yet isn’t trained—you and I both know how dangerous it is.”

“Sure, but I couldn’t train her. I didn’t have the time or energy, and then she left. She wouldn’t have anything to do with us. Even now, I’m sure she would fight tooth and nail to not acknowledge even the basics of her gift.”

“She might surprise you,” Stefan stated.

Harriet felt the intensity of his gaze, the strangeness of it, even though he wasn’t anywhere close to her. “You’re checking me over,” she murmured.

“Of course. You are a constant in my world these days,” Stefan shared. “I’m trying to see where and what is going on.”

“If you figure it out, let me know,” she murmured. “Some days are good, and some days I feel as if I’ve lost it.”

“Some days are good, and some days you have lost it,” he agreed, a smile in his tone. “That doesn’t mean it’s bad though.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s good either,” she whispered in despair. “Danica’s suffered enough.”

“Yet she’s grown stronger,” Stefan declared, keeping his tone calm and contained. “She has grown stronger, but, without training, that in itself just isn’t enough.”

Silence came, as if he were peering into the distance. He very well could be, as he was incredibly powerful. Harriet didn’t know anything about him, except that she managed to communicate with him, and that, in itself, had been a gift.

Over all this time, she’d never met him in real life, had never seen him in person in her conscious world, had no clue what he really looked like—only that he was here on the ethers. He was a lifeline for those like her, who couldn’t easily work within the world anymore, who struggled to find normalcy in a life that just wasn’t normal, who struggled to find any commonality with the world around her. For that reason Harriet spent a lot of time in the ethers.

“You have taken grave chances coming here at this time,” he murmured.

“I had to,” she whispered. “I had to. It’s all about keeping Danica safe. It’s all about keeping her gifts safe.”

“But does she even know about her gifts ?”

“She knows, just not the extent, not the depth. In truth, not really any of the details.” Harriet released a hard sigh. “She never wanted to, not with her mother acting out, setting bad examples of what not to do.”

“Of course,” he acknowledged gently, “but hiding isn’t an answer.”

“Might not be an answer, but it sure seems to be a solution for Danica. You need to help her.”

Within the silence he contemplated her words.

Harriet knew Stefan wouldn’t walk away. No way he could. It just wasn’t in him. Neither did it affect just him.

He groaned and added, “She needs to know.”

“I know she needs to know, but she won’t accept it. So, anything I tell her, she will refute, before even giving it a chance for her to listen, to agree, much less to understand just how intricately woven she is in this world of energy.”

“Yet that in itself isn’t easy either,” he whispered. “It won’t be easy for her.”

“It will never be easy for her,” Harriet noted sadly. “What her mother did to Danica caused such heartache that I don’t know if Danica can ever open herself up to this again.”

“Did Danica ever open up her gifts in the first place?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she did and kept it all hidden. Maybe it was already beyond her at that time.”

“What about your daughter? How were Daisy’s gifts?”

“Crazy, wild, uncontrolled.”

“How much of that was her own personality?”

“A lot of it,” Harriet whispered. “Daisy didn’t want anything to do with her gifts if they wouldn’t bring her fame and fortune. She didn’t understand helping others for the sake of helping others. She wanted us to be free, to have things.” Harriet’s tears clogged her throat. “She was my daughter, and I loved her, but I never understood her, and I couldn’t get her to understand me. The harder I tried, the more she balked. I would like to think, had she lived, that we would have found a way to communicate, but we never had that chance.”

“Daisy was tormented,” Stefan said.

“Too tormented,” Harriet murmured. “And nothing I could do seemed to help her. It was the one and only time that I despaired of these gifts. What’s the point of gifts if you can’t do any good for the people you love? I lost her, but I will not lose Danica.”

And, with that, she waved her hands, sending off and out of the way both Stefan and the world she was in. She slowly opened her eyes and woke up, staring around at a sterile white room, knowing with a sinking heart exactly where she was.