Drina shifted her gaze back to the McGills’ home. There were lights glowing on the ground floor too, she saw, but all the activity was in the kitchen. She could see into the room quite clearly through a pair of sliding glass doors that led out onto a deck. The vertical blinds were open, revealing a dining-room table and a kitchen beyond. There were three kids and a man who she guessed was Stephanie’s father at the table. An adult female, no doubt her mother, and more kids, older ones, were moving around the kitchen, pouring coffee and toasting toast.
“The blinds were closed, but Mom opened them when they got up. She likes to watch the sun rise,” Stephanie said quietly.
Drina focused on the mother, but said, “You controlled the man from the gas station and made him drive you here.”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“You didn’t tell me you could control people already,” Drina said quietly.
Stephanie shrugged. “I didn’t really know until I tried tonight.”
Drina closed her eyes. If making a man drive her two hours to Windsor was her baby step at mind control, the kid was scary skilled. It just made her worry more for her. Pushing that thought aside, she said, “I’m surprised you just stood out here and didn’t go in.”
Stephanie smiled bitterly. “I was going to. That was the plan on the way down here. I’d come home, and Mom would put her arms around me and tell me she loved me and that everything was going to be all right. And Dad would call me his little girl, which I always used to hate, but would kill to hear now.”
The yearning in her voice was painful to hear, and Drina had to swallow a lump in her throat. Stephanie was just a kid. She wanted her family. She’d asked for none of this. Clearing her throat, Drina asked, “What stopped you?”
“I’d just be messing up their lives,” Stephanie said with a shrug. “I know Lucian did something to them to make them forget me. I’d just mess that up.”
“They haven’t forgotten you, Stephanie,” Drina said firmly, shrugging out of her coat and moving closer to drape it over her shoulders. The nanos would be using up blood at an accelerated rate keeping her from freezing in this weather, and they didn’t have any blood to give the girl. Sighing, she rubbed her arms briefly, and added, “Lucian just sent people to veil their memories and probably alter them a bit.”
“I know the veiling bit is so they don’t suffer so much from losing Dani and me, but how did they alter their memories and why?” she asked quietly.
“They would have made their memories of your faces fuzzier, more vague, so that they wouldn’t recognize you if they came across you accidentally.”
“Accidentally?” Stephanie asked dryly. “You mean so they wouldn’t recognize me if I came knocking.”
“No,” Drina assured her. “If you walked up to the door, and knocked and said, ‘Mommy, it’s me, Stephanie,’ the veil would be torn. They would remember. But if they happened to see you on a street, or bumped into you in passing and never spoke, chances are they wouldn’t. That’s why it’s done. So that you aren’t accidentally revealed to be alive.”
“So if I walked up right now and knocked on the sliding glass door, I could make them remember me?” she asked, staring at the people in the house.
“Yes,” Drina admitted.
“But you’d stop me from doing that, wouldn’t you?”
Drina hesitated, and then shook her head. “No. If you really want to, I won’t stop you.”
Stephanie turned to look at her sharply, her eyes widening with surprise. “You mean that.”
Drina shrugged. “Why stop you now? If you’re determined to do it, you’d just come back and do it at a later date.”
“Right.” Stephanie frowned and glanced back to the house. “But trying to have any kind of contact with them would be superselfish, wouldn’t it?”
Stephanie said grimly, “They’d have to be taken into protective custody to keep them safe from Leonius in case he got wind of them. My brothers and sisters would lose all their friends, and my parents would lose their jobs and friends, and everyone would lose our aunts and uncles and cousins. No more family picnics, or trips up north. Their whole lives would be disrupted and wrecked like mine was. And it would be my fault.”
Drina glanced to the house. They looked like a big, busy but happy family from here, like millions of other families in the world, chattering and smiling over their breakfast. She couldn’t blame Stephanie for wanting to stay a part of that. But even being here was endangering that very normalcy. Stephanie and Dani had been kidnapped up north, six or seven hours from Windsor. Lucian didn’t think Leonius knew where Stephanie and Dani’s family lived. But even if he’d sought out that information, he hadn’t shown up to bother them, probably because he knew the family believed the two females dead and knew nothing. But her coming here could change things if he found out about it.