When I follow the others inside Abigail's home, it's almost unnoticed that Stefan stops at the door. Shooting him an awkward shrug, he clears his throat aloud. "If you don't mind, ma'am, could you invite me inside?"

A teary-eyed Bonnie understands the rules for this already, but Caroline giggles, perhaps the thought of that weakness applying here to be amusing. Elena stares with her sad, puppy dog eyes and looks pleadingly toward Bonnie's mother, who has her hand wrapped tightly in her daughter's grip. Sheila sits on Abby's other side, an arm draped carefully over the other's shoulder.

Three Bennett witches, together. It's hard not to think of the Halliwell sisters in this moment, but more pertinently, the spell Esther used to link her children together, channeling the entire Bennett line.

Sheila clears her throat, a burgeoning smile growing on her face. "He did come all this way, Abigail. Plus, he knows how to groove, and you don't want to miss that!"

Bonnie groans aloud, and I can't help but laugh at the joke no one else gets.

There's a moment of hesitation, before Abby turns to Bonnie, sunlight streaming into the room from a wide French window on their left. The steam from the warm coffee glints against the light. "You trust him?"

Bonnie turns to Elena and then to me before nodding. "He's not given me reason to mistrust him." Reasonable, at this stage. A year from now in canon, and they'd trust each other implicitly.

Stefan shrugs slightly from the doorway. "I can't blame you for your prejudices, if I'm being honest with myself."

Abby glances toward her mother and then nods to the vampire. "You can come in, Stefan." From the look on her face, she's still treating the situation with the utmost paranoia. Given the entombed vampire vampire hunter only a few miles away from here, I can't blame her either.

He strides inside and looks around, as the rest of us settle in near the growing family. "You have a lovely home, Ms. Bennett."

She smiles slightly before standing to her feet, fingers gripping Bonnie's for a few more seconds before she pulls away. "Can I get you all anything? Another coffee pot is already brewing if anyone wants to partake."

Stefan leans against the mantle slightly, with Elena sitting on the duvet beside him. The two look like they belong in a goddamn model catalogue. He shakes his head. "No thank you, ma'am."

As I prepare for my own cup to be brought to me, the room falls silent for a moment, Bonnie and Sheila looking a bit nervous and yet also relieved. The blonde turns to the vampire. "Do you…" Caroline stops her question for a moment and then continues. "Do you drink anything other than-" her voice lowers for no reason, "- blood?"

I can't help but laugh. "Bit of a mystery to me, too, but I think the body basically functions as it normally would. Hunger, sleep, sex." Elena blushes predictably, and Bonnie grimaces.

"I still get a craving for ice cream from time to time, Caroline." He smiles at her confusion. "Just need blood, not food, to sustain me."

"Human blood?"

He shakes his head. "It's not necessary. I'm on a strict animal diet." Not sure what she thinks about that, but the look on her face says wonders.

Abby returns after a few moments with a tray of drinks in glasses, alongside a mug of coffee for me and for Elena. "Not much of a party, but this is all I had to prepare."

"It's fine, Mom." Bonnie grins, and I wonder if she's surprised at the idea of saying that aloud, addressing the woman herself.

"We're just glad to be here for Bonnie, to share the moment with her, as friends," Elena adds, smiling affectionately.

Abby glances around the room before looking toward me and toward Stefan. "What's the occasion that a vampire and a few witches would be working together?"

"Logan is working with me to help Bonnie master her gift," Sheila explains. "Seems to have it in his head that she's important to the safety of Mystic Falls."

That was… oddly dismissive. "Don't want to get into all this business on a day like today."

Abby nods knowingly, staring more at Stefan than at me. "So you want something from me?"

"Not… particularly." I look around for a moment, and the room hesitates. "If you had time to do so, your theoretical knowledge would be a great boon for her training. Sheila said that you had lost your gift?"

Abby thinks for a few seconds. "Yes, but why are you so interested in Bonnie's life? Putting her on this… pedestal that you could easily stand on yourself to protect a town. Whatever that means."

The tension in the room spreads with every word.

"Have you ever had a feeling that something was going to happen right before it did?" She doesn't answer. "Imagine that feeling but accelerated tenfold. I know all sorts of things about the future of Mystic Falls, and your daughter is one of its key pieces."

Caroline clearly doesn't like this train of thought, but it's not the first time that she's heard it. Elena must have warned her.

"If you chose not to act on those feelings and something bad happened, how could you not feel responsible for it? I can't speak for you or for anyone else, but the guilt of that inaction would eat me alive from the inside out. So, I'm going to help Bonnie succeed and stand on this 'pedestal' together."

"I just don't understand. What have you seen?" Abby asks.

"What she said," Caroline interjects, glaring daggers. "If it's anything but the Lockwood Halloween party, then I don't know want to know."

All eyes are on me, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I trust everyone but perhaps Abby in the room. But, weighing the pros and cons, it has to be done at the right time.

"When I act on my visions," I begin, turning to each of them, "the less people that know about their outcome, the better. The future is uncertain, and prophecy is tricky business. If I told you all about a specific event and trusted you to help me prevent it, then there're so many factors involved that one of you might end up ensuring that event happens, or that something worse will happen."

Sheila shrugs slightly and then nods. "I don't have much talent for it, but if I understand it correctly, it's like throwing a pebble into a lake, near a leaf floating nearby. One pebble creates a ripple pattern as it splashes, but two pebbles create two separate patterns, and so on. It's really hard to predict where that leaf will end up with that many ripples."

"That is astute of you, ma'am."

"You mentioned this earlier." Elena leans forward, resting her elbow on her knee. "But everything is always making a ripple. How is anything set in stone?"

Surprisingly insightful.

"To borrow the lake analogy, if I may, picture a lake with a small island in the center of it. No matter what you do, throwing pebbles is never going to move that island, no matter how many ripples you make."

That doesn't seem to satisfy everyone in the room, but Sheila seems impressed. Though that could be more from the whole idea that she's in this room right now, with her daughter and her granddaughter. She's had a similar pleasant look to her all day.

"What kind of events are islands?" Bonnie asks.

"Well… everyone dies eventually." I give a pointed look to Stefan, who regretfully nods. "Sorry for being morbid, but the details leading up to that death can shift and change, the rippling waves may erode away at the island, but the island will ultimately still exist, even if it's underwater."

"God this is all so weird." Caroline stands from her seat and leaves the room, prompting Elena to stand and head after her. The screen door creaks shut, whining throughout the house.

"Why did you bring her into all of this?" Abby asks her daughter after a moment, somewhat disappointed. "The sheriff is her mom, right?"

"She's my best friend." Bonnie looks a bit annoyed, standing to follow her friends. "If I'm going to be a part of all of this, then Caroline needed to know."

"But why?" Bonnie's brow rises. "Why would you want all of this? To practice at all? You'll be in danger."

"You sound like Dad."

"Don't buy into all this mess. It's not your problem."

"Serving nature is my birthright."

"You're not serving nature working with a vampire! Nature fights back, Bonnie, trust me!"

Stefan catches my eye and then calmly rises from his nearly stationary position, following out the door. He gestures with a lazy hand for me to follow him, and the screen door creaks once more.

Not wanting to listen to this, to be reminded that this may have been a mistake, I follow his lead.

He finds a tree nearby and leans against it slightly, the sun granting odd patterns through the thick oak tree branches. I can faintly hear arguing going on in two separate directions, from Elena and Caroline and from the three Bennetts inside, and I don't envy his ability to hear all of it if he wanted to.

"This may have been a mistake."

"Connecting the three of them was worth it," I say after a moment, trying to block out the faint bit of conversation. "If only because mothers and daughters need each other."

"That's not the only reason though, is it?"

I shake my head. "No. No, it isn't."

"What you said in there. About fixed events." He gestures for a moment toward Elena around the side of the porch, her back turned as she discusses the situation, almost pleading with a nigh-furious Caroline. "She's part of it, is she not?"

I smile slightly. "She is."

He twists to look me in the eye for a moment, almost close enough to compel me if that were possible. I don't flinch away. "Tell me."

"It might mess with the –"

"I don't care. Tell me."

Letting out a heavy breath, I steel myself, ignoring the nagging thought that he didn't accept the offer to share a vision earlier. "You love her, right?"

Stefan hesitates for a moment, likely caught off-guard by the sudden shift. "I do."

True love, and they haven't known each other much longer than a few weeks. Doppelganger – Traveler bullshit or just an infatuation with Nina Dobrev lookalikes? Though, for him, it's been a few months, after he saved her life.

"It's somewhat unclear for the who and the why, but your girlfriend's life is in danger, Stefan. Those powerful people I mentioned, coming to town? Their identities might be unknown, but many of them are vampires, and they want her dead."

He whips his head to look at Elena, who has her arms wrapped around Caroline in a tight hug.

"I wish I knew more, but I'm convinced that she's in the crosshairs of some nasty people."

His eyes never leave her. "So this trip, training Bonnie, bringing me. It was a plan, then, to keep her alive."

"Bonnie needs to know how to defend herself, so that she can defend Elena from threats unknown. And if you know, then you'll definitely keep her safe."

Stefan turns his hero hair in my direction. "What's so important about her that she'd have people trying to hurt her?"

"I wish I knew. All I know for sure is that my visions are telling me that we have to keep this girl alive and out of harm's way." I've considered the option of having someone turn her already, but all that does is force her to live a life that she'll hate, running from Klaus as badly as Katherine does.

"We?"

Hmm. "You wouldn't let someone that you love die, would you?"