“Yes. Anything for you.” He glanced at my father. “For him.”
Daniel held his hands out to me. We stood side by side next to the hospital bed, and I placed Daniel’s hands on my father’s chest. “Concentrate on the positive. You need to channel all your good energy and love.”
Daniel closed his eyes, and so did I. I found myself digging deep down into my memory, pulling up every positive recollection of my father, and focused those thoughts into my hands. Only a few seconds passed before I could feel the energy buzzing between my hands and Daniel’s. It swelled and pulsed, growing in intensity. One of my memories of my father suddenly shifted to an image I didn’t remember at all—one of Daniel sitting in a chair across from my father at his desk in his office. They were alone, and I realized this wasn’t one of my memories at all. It was one of Daniel’s. We were connected once again. The images were murky, but I watched as my father told Daniel that he was going to help him find the cure to the werewolf curse, and I felt the gratitude Daniel experienced in that moment. The connection continued, and I saw little clips of Daniel’s life. And then I saw myself in one of his memories. Saw who I was to him from his mind’s eye, and I wondered how I could have ever doubted the way he felt about me.
My heart swelled with love, and a great burst of power ricocheted through every cell in my body, engulfing me until I didn’t know if I could hold it in any longer. With a great surge, all of that energy rushed through me, into Daniel’s hands, and then into my father. And then I felt myself let go of Daniel’s hands, and then I was falling. Collapsing next to the bed—only to be caught in Daniel’s arms.
“Are you okay?” he asked, cradling me against him. “That was intense.”
“Yes,” I tried to say, but my voice barely made a noise. I didn’t even have the strength to open my eyes.
A shrill chorus of beeping noises filled my ears. At first I didn’t know where they came from, but then with a shock of horror I realized it was the sound of every single one of my father’s monitor alarms. Indicating something was terribly wrong.
“Holy shit,” Daniel whispered.
I’d been so sure I could do this. So sure it would work this time like it had for Daniel. What have I done?
“Holy shit,” Daniel practically shouted. I felt the shift of his body as he turned me toward my father. “Look, Grace.”
I forced my eyes open, even though they wanted to stay clamped shut—afraid to see what damage I must have caused to send all those monitors into such a frenzy. But then I saw what it was, and I understood.
Dad was sitting there. Sitting up in his bed, and he’d pulled the oxygen mask from his face—both of which actions would have set off multiple alarms.
“Gracie?” he asked. “What happened? Where am I?”
I couldn’t believe it. He was awake. He was speaking. All the dark purple bruises on his face and arms had faded away.
“We did it.” Tears streamed from my eyes. “We actually did it.”
Daniel tried to set me on my feet, but I was too weak to stand, so he lifted me onto the bed, and I threw my arms around Dad’s neck. “You’re alive,” I said between happy sobs. “You’re alive, and you’re okay.”
Dad hugged me back. “Of course I’m alive. But what happened? Why am I here?”
Before I could answer his question, I heard the woosh of the sliding-glass door and an army of nurses swarmed into the room. “What’s going on here?” one of them shouted at me.
“Get away from him,” another nurse shouted, but then she stopped suddenly, staring at my father sitting up in his bed, looking perfectly healthy and uninjured.
She whispered something in what sounded like Spanish and made the sign of the cross in front of her chest and forehead. She went on in the language I didn’t quite understand, but I did catch something.
“A miracle,” she said. “It’s a miracle.”
Chapter Twenty-five
WORLDS COLLIDED