Chapter 11
Eden woke to a warm sense of well-being and a curious happiness inside.
The feeling was so unfamiliar that she considered it for a long moment—until everything came rushing back again as to where she was and why she was here.
Her sense of belonging and her joy all disappeared, as if snapped away. “Shit.”
Of course the whole point of meditating was to find that center of balance, that space where she could just let go, could relax, and wouldn’t be stressed out by everything going on around her.
However, that was easier said than done, particularly in these circumstances.
Yet not impossible, since she had just woken up in the perfect zone, only to have something kill the mood.
She groaned as she shifted on the bed. Right now, as opposed to mere minutes before, her bed felt nowhere near as comfortable as it had when she first awoke. She wasn’t sure how that trick worked, but it had happened to her enough times to realize it was all about mind-set.
And the mind-set angle was fine and dandy if everything in your world was going well.
But the mind-set, as soon as anything shifted, was much less than ideal.
She was all about mind over matter, but there were always limitations to what you could will into your life.
It’s what she had to work with, so that was all there was to it.
When her phone buzzed, her screen confirmed Eric was contacting her. She answered in a sleepy tone, still struggling to get the rest of her worries out of her mind.
“Good morning.”
She smiled. “Good morning to you too, Detective.” She tried for a neutral tone, but the playfulness in her tone was unmistakable. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
He hesitated, then replied, “I got some.”
“Which probably means you got none,” she suggested, surprised.
“I’ll explain later, but definitely not something I want to do over the phone.”
She bolted upright. “What happened?” she snapped. “You can’t just leave that hanging.”
“I won’t. Are you up for an early morning walk?”
“Yes, particularly if I get an explanation for what you just said.”
His reply was half laughter and half bark. “Fine. I’ll meet you downstairs in about, what, … ten minutes?”
“Make that fifteen. I’m not out of bed yet.”
An obvious smile filled his tone as he spoke. “Fine. And then we’ll get breakfast afterward.”
“Do we have time?” she asked.
“Yes, we’re fine. The seminar doesn’t start quite so early this morning.”
“Good.” She yawned again. “Can’t say I’m quite ready for that yet.”
“I’ll meet you downstairs.” With that, he ended the call.
She didn’t know him well enough to really understand all his moods, but he seemed a little curt, or at least more so than usual, based on what she knew.
If something else was going on, obviously he needed to fill her in.
She pulled herself out of bed and quickly dressed in leggings and a long T-shirt.
She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and laughed at her image in the mirror.
She looked like a teenager. Ready to start the day, she walked downstairs to the lobby, not sure if she would see Eric there or if he would already be outside.
But, sure enough, there he was, waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
He smiled, and real humor was in his gaze as he took in her outfit.
She shrugged. “I know. I look like I’m about sixteen. It was the best I could do this morning.”
He burst out laughing. “I would give you a few more years than that but not many for sure.”
She smiled. “Sometimes it’s just nice to be carefree. I woke up in an absolutely great mood this morning, and then somehow that feeling just died almost as quickly.”
He nodded somberly. “As soon as you woke up and remembered, right?”
“Yeah,” she muttered. “That’s exactly what happened.”
He reached out with an open hand, and instinctively she placed hers in it.
As they walked outside, the receptionist called out, “Good morning.” She smiled at them. “Enjoy your walk.”
“Will do,” Eden called back.
Together, the two of them walked out into the morning sun.
They kept walking until they got to the place where they had sat before. “If we plan to sit here for a while, we should have brought coffee,” she suggested.
“I thought about it,” he replied in a low tone, “and then realized that it might be nice to just enjoy being outside for a bit, then go in for coffee when we’re ready.”
She didn’t say anything but nodded. An obvious silence followed for a long moment, and then she finally asked, “Okay, so what’s going on?” She turned to him and waited.
He sighed and then began, “I came out here around midnight, just to clear my head. I wanted to be in this spot and to rethink this whole thing.”
She stared at him. “You could have called me. I would have come out with you.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “Part of that was I just needed to be alone to try and … maybe assess the whole scenario.”
She sank back and looked at him. “Why do I feel a whole lot more is involved in assessing the scenario?”
“Remember when I mentioned Stefan?”
“Yes, I do remember that, and I did look him up,” she stated.
“I talked to him.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I’ve worked with him a little bit,” he said, with a snort, “in a purely professional capacity.”
“I get that.”
“But what you don’t know is that I am also working with him personally, trying to increase my own skills and abilities.
I didn’t tell Captain Louis that. I haven’t told anybody.
I had seen and heard of some of Stefan’s work through other cases, and he contacted me.
He recognized what skills I had, and I asked him if he knew of any way to build upon, you know, a cop’s intuition or whatever you want to call it, and, if so, would he help me,” he shared, with a smirk.
She stared at him and could see that this clearly wasn’t an easy thing for him to share.
Eric continued. “He confirmed that I had a lot of abilities, but I wasn’t the best at opening up about them.”
She continued to stare at him.
Though she didn’t shift back, he almost felt her recoiling, even though she didn’t mean to. “That reaction is exactly why I don’t tell people.”
She blinked at him several times and then added, “I guess I can see what a challenge that would be.”
“It would be a challenge, but I’m really not too bothered about how people view me,” he replied, yet his tone was a little harsher.
She winced. “I’m sorry. I’m not judging you. I don’t want you to think that. It’s just a lot to take in.”
“Look. The only reason I’m even thinking along those lines is because, having talked with Stefan, I now understand that it’s possible to connect with the deceased, and I guess I’m wondering about trying to connect with Debbie myself.” He studied her for a moment, waiting for her reaction.
She frowned. “Through Stefan?”
“He doesn’t do that, not that I know of anyway,” he noted, “but that does go along with what I was about to say.”
She grimaced. “And I keep interrupting, so I’m sorry for that.”
He snorted. “It’s not about interrupting at all,” he clarified. “It’s more about keeping an open mind.”
“Which you’re already afraid I don’t have, right?”
“Not necessarily,” he conceded. “I’m not looking for anyone’s approval, but I do need information. Have you ever felt as if Debbie was at your house?”
Eden winced because she would rather not answer that. “I have spent some time yelling and screaming and calling out to her to tell me what the hell was going on, what she got herself into, and whether or not Richard had anything to do with her death.”
“And did you ever hear a response?”
She stared at him, carefully considering whether she wanted him to know the truth.
The answer was not an easy one, but who knows what he would think of the windows shutting, doors banging, and papers swirling.
“I really didn’t hear anything,” she hedged, her tone sharp, “but then I wasn’t expecting to hear anything either. ”
The look on his face revealed a lot of what he was thinking.
“Other than her calling out my name the other night.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m damn serious,” she snapped. “And I get that I sound like I’m off my rocker now.” She thought about it and then chuckled. “To a certain extent, you’re right. I do,” she agreed, “but I can’t stop wondering if you contacted her. Did you get any answers?”
“I didn’t come out here to contact Debbie, and, no, I didn’t have more contact with her,” he explained. “However, something did happen, and it was a fairly bizarre scenario.”
“Scenario?” she repeated. “That sounds—”
He sat back. “I opened my senses, and a maelstrom hit me, strong, buffeting me from side to side.”
She stared at him, not even sure if she wanted to know more. It was pretty far-fetched, yet he was a really down-to-earth guy. “So, what did you do?”
“I didn’t have a clue what was going on, so I did nothing, though I ended up hearing from Stefan. He has a unique way of contacting you when you’re in trouble, and he stepped in and gave me a hand to control whatever that was.”
She stared at him. “This is starting to sound pretty scary.”
“He called it potentially something like an Origin, but I don’t really know what that means.”
“I don’t know what it means either,” she replied.
She wanted to refute what he was saying and to just flat-out not believe him, but so such sincerity filled his tone that she knew she couldn’t easily walk away from it.
Plus, she did feel Debbie was around, and lately that became more of a norm than anything else.
Eden’s sense of normalcy was gone, and she was always expecting things to fly around her, but that had happened only once, and she was pretty sure she imagined it all.
But if Eric felt something too … “When you say, maelstrom, energies buffeting—”