by Lynsay Sands
“They might be,” Inez said as they walked to the stairs. “This is a high-tourist area, so they might stay open later to cater to tourists.”
“Well, if we come across the store, we can check their hours,” Thomas said as he followed her down the stairs. “But for tonight, we’ll just walk around and try to come up with ways to find her. I’d suggest checking anywhere they might have archives, but those definitely won’t be open at this hour. I suspect Tiny would have to do those kind of searches.”
“Which makes Marguerite rather de trop,” she said wryly.
“Yes,” Thomas agreed. “And she wouldn’t like that. I’m sure she’d have found some way to go with him, either going during daylight or finding a way to get in at night.”
Inez nodded as she stepped off the bottom step. She took two steps forward and then stopped and glanced around.
“What is it?” Thomas asked, stepping off the last step and moving to her side.
“I was just wondering where the ladies’ room is,” she answered with a grimace.
“You have to go again?” Thomas asked with surprise before he quite realized that if she had, she should know where they were.
“Again? I haven’t been since we left the hotel,” Inez said on a laugh. “Oh, there it is. I’ll be right back.”
Thomas stared after her with bewilderment, watching until she disappeared through the door labeled toilets. Turning away then, he moved to the counter and peered absently at the goodies in the glass display, but his mind was with Inez.
Again? I haven’t been since we left the hotel, she’d said, but she’d excused herself to find the ladies’ room earlier.
“Women.”
Thomas glanced up from the display to find himself peering at Mr. Ginger-hair who had taken such note of Inez earlier.
The fellow grinned and shrugged as he nodded toward the door to the bathrooms. “They’re forever in the bathroom, aren’t they?” he said wryly and then asked, “Did you want something to go?”
Thomas stared at the man, but rather than answer, he slipped into his mind. It was a quagmire of dissatisfaction with his job, his life and his love life, but Thomas eventually plucked out the memory of Inez coming below earlier and his showing her where the bathrooms were. He also picked up a couple of rather x-rated thoughts the guy had enjoyed at the time about following her in there and—
“I’m ready.”
Thomas quickly withdrew his mind and glanced to the side to find Inez there, smiling at him brightly.
“Shall we go?”
Thomas nodded and gestured for her to lead the way, taking the time to cast a scowl at Mr. Ginger-hair before following her. He waited until they were outside and walking again before saying, “Inez?”
“Yes?” She glanced at him quizzically.
He hesitated and then said, “Tell me what happened from the time we entered the coffee shop until we left, please.”
“Tell you what happened?” she echoed with surprise.
“Yes. I know it sounds an odd request, but it might be important.”
Inez stared at him with bewilderment for a minute and then apparently decided to humor him and shrugged. “Okay…well…we walked in, went up to the counter, you suggested I tell you what I wanted and leave you to order while I went to find a table. There were no free tables on the main floor, so I went upstairs, spotted two, picked one by the windows and sat down. You came up a minute later with our order. We drank, ate, and talked, and then came down to leave. I went to the ladies’ room, joined you at the counter, and we left.” She raised an eyebrow. “Now, tell me why I just said all that.”
Thomas glanced away to hide his troubled expression. He couldn’t read her mind to tell if she was lying, but there was no reason to. She had absolutely no recall of the first trip she’d made to find the ladies’ room. A trip that should have been successful because he knew the coffee shop guy had pointed it out to her and had seen in his memory that she’d gone through the door marked toilets, but apparently something—someone, he corrected himself grimly, an immortal, had stopped her from going to the bathroom because she’d still had to go on the way out.
Inez had been controlled again and her mind wiped.
“Thomas,” she said, grabbing his arm with a laugh. “Why did you want me to tell you that?”
Thomas opened his mouth to answer and then hesitated as he recalled how upset and vulnerable she’d appeared after realizing she’d been controlled in Amsterdam. He didn’t want to see her upset again. In fact, at that moment, he wanted to grab her up and rush her back to the townhouse and keep her safe from being controlled again.
Halting, he suddenly peered quickly around, taking note of the few people on the street. No one seemed to be paying them undo attention or following them, but he suspected someone was.
“Thomas?”
He glanced down to her again, noting that she was starting to look worried. Inez wasn’t a stupid woman. She would realize something was wrong. Forcing a smile, Thomas slid his arm around her shoulder and urged her to walk again as he lied, “I just like to hear the sound of your voice. You have an interesting accent; Portuguese with an overlay of British. It’s quite charming.”
Inez laughed and the relief in her voice made him glad he’d lied as she said, “I’m not the one with the accent. You are.”
“No. I have no accent at all,” he assured her, glancing—nonchalantly, he hoped—around the street again. Now that he was aware that someone must be following them, his back was creeping as if it could sense eyes on it, though he couldn’t really, he just knew they must be there. “You are the one with the accent.”
Inez just shook her head and said, “Maybe we both do. Now, we should really talk about Marguerite and try to sort out ways to find her.”
Thomas nodded solemnly, but his mind was on why she might have been controlled again. She hadn’t been controlled long enough on either occasion for anything untoward to have been done to her. She’d only been gone ten or fifteen minutes the first time and maybe a little more than five in the coffee shop.
Had she seen or heard something someone didn’t want her to? Perhaps she’d seen Marguerite, he thought and then suddenly recalled that this had been his first thought when he’d realized she’d been controlled in Amsterdam, but Marguerite hadn’t even been the one with the phone in the first place.
Frowning, Thomas recalled that Inez had suggested that perhaps someone hadn’t wanted her to realize that they were chasing the mugger with the phone, not Marguerite. Thomas reconsidered the idea now.
“You’ve gone suddenly silent and grim,” Inez murmured, bringing his attention away from his thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”
Thomas hesitated, but finally admitted, “I was thinking about the first time you were controlled in Amsterdam.”
Inez stopped walking abruptly. “The first time?”
Thomas cursed himself for the slip of the tongue.
Light suddenly splashed over them and the street was filled with the sound of voices and laughter as a door opened behind them. Thomas glanced around to see they were standing outside a pub. It seemed fortuitous, he suddenly needed a drink and suspected Inez was going to need one too.
“Come on,” he said, taking her arm to urge her toward the door, “we’ll have a drink and I’ll explain everything.”
“So you think someone controlled me again,” Inez murmured, peering down into the glass of ale she’d barely sipped at since the waitress had set it before her. The pub was a small, crowded affair with people sitting around tables, or standing around in groups talking. It was the real deal, a true English pub, not one of the ones opened for tourists.
Thomas had just finished telling her his version of their stop at the café. It was quite similar to her own except for the part about her getting up in the middle to go find the ladies’ room. She believed him, but had no recall of that whatsoever.
Thomas reached out and squeezed her hand comfortingl
y. “Yes.”
She nodded a slow acknowledgment. “Okay. Well, either I saw someone or something I shouldn’t have when I went to the ladies’ room, or…” Or what? she wondered helplessly.
“Back in Amsterdam, you suggested you were controlled and your memory wiped because someone didn’t want us to realize that the mugger had the phone, not Aunt Marguerite,” he reminded her. “I think you might be right about that now. So long as we thought Aunt Marguerite was in Amsterdam, we would have stayed there searching for her. But finding out the mugger had the phone and not her made us immediately head back to England. And it turns out she was here in York the whole time.”
“So you think I was right and whoever controlled me just now might have done so for a similar reason?”
He nodded.
Inez peered into her glass again, and then raised her eyes and said, “That would suggest that this last time I was controlled because I either saw or was about to see something that might lead us to Marguerite.”
Thomas nodded and sat back in his seat, irritation on his face as he said, “But this time we don’t have any idea what.”
“No,” she agreed and then added, “But it tells us we might be on the right track now.”
“Yes, it does,” he said with surprise and smiled at her.
“So, let’s try to put together what we do know,” Inez suggested and reached into her purse to pull out a notepad and pen. Setting the pad on the tabletop, she pushed the button to eject the pen nib and wrote at the top of the first page, “Things we know.”
She glanced up at Thomas. “We know she drove to London with Tiny and stayed at the Dorchester.”
Thomas sat forward as she wrote that down and added, “And we know Notte rented two suites of two rooms, requesting three have twin beds.”
Inez nodded as she wrote that down, commenting, “That has kind of bothered me since I heard it.”
“I know. You said,” Thomas murmured, sounding distracted.
Inez glanced up with surprise, but he was looking thoughtful, obviously considering what the next point should be. Shrugging to herself, she glanced down to the notepad, muttering, “I didn’t realize I’d mentioned it to you.”
“What?”
Inez raised her head again surprised to see the frozen look on his face, but told him, “I said I hadn’t thought I’d mentioned it to you.”
Thomas sat forward, leaning on the table as he said, “We talked about it in the café.”
Inez was silent, her mind now chasing the memory of such a conversation, but there was no memory to be found. In fact, she just had some vague recollection that they’d chatted amicably but couldn’t say what about. When she told him that now, Thomas sat back again, his expression thoughtful.
“Why would our conversation be removed from my memory?” she asked uncertainly.
“Maybe we were getting too close to figuring something out,” Thomas said slowly.
That seemed a good possibility, Inez supposed. “What did we say?”
“You said that even though there were only five tickets to York, the two suites of two rooms with the request that at least three of them have twin beds suggested there were seven people in London. We tried to figure out who they were, but don’t know enough and came up three short.”
“Who were the four we came up with?” Inez asked and then said, “Marguerite, Tiny, and Christian and his father?”
“Yes, but we couldn’t come up with anyone else and then you got up to go find the ladies’ room.”
“I was probably still thinking about it then.”
“Yes,” Thomas agreed and then said, “I think Bastien mentioned Christian having a couple of cousins with him in California. They might have been among the group.”
Inez reached for her drink to take a sip as she considered this, and grimaced as the flat, tepid beer filled her mouth.
“Bad huh?” Thomas asked with sympathy. “Mine has gone warm too.” He glanced around and then grimaced. “The waitress probably won’t return so long as our glasses are full. I’ll go up to the bar and get us a couple more drinks. Keep thinking about this and try to come up with what you might have thought of the first time. They can take away the memory of figuring it out, but not the reasoning skills that got you there and you have excellent reasoning skills,” he added encouragingly, then patted her hand and stood to move to the bar.
Inez smiled faintly as she watched him go. He always knew the right thing to say. And she enjoyed just looking at the man, she acknowledged, her eyes dropping over his tapered back to his derrière in the tight jeans.
A little sigh slid from her lips as she wished that they had time just to be together. She’d really rather be back at the hotel Dorchester making love with him than here trying to sort out what had been stolen from her memory.
Unfortunately, until they found Marguerite, they didn’t have the time for what she wanted, Inez reminded herself and set her thoughts on the matter of who the others in Marguerite’s party might have been. Bastien had said that there had been only five tickets to York, so the party had dropped in number. She doubted Marguerite and Tiny had left the group, they were the ones who were supposed to find the mother. Christian would have been one too, and probably his father, but since she had no idea who the others might have been, she had no idea who had left the party.
Inez considered the cousins Thomas had mentioned being in California with Christian and wondered if Bastien had thought to try to contact them. If it was one of those men who had dropped out of the group when it moved on to York, they might be able to lead them in the right direct—
Inez thoughts died abruptly as she suddenly found herself standing up and turning away from the table. She wasn’t doing either thing herself, it was simply happening, as if a puppet master were directing her movements.
That thought sent a wave of panic through her as she recalled Christian’s description of most mortal women being nothing better than blow up dolls or puppets to immortals. She was being controlled again, Inez realized, and wondered if the first two times it had happened she’d been aware and felt the panic now claiming her. And Inez was most definitely feeling panic. Her heart was thumping wildly in her chest, her mind racing with desperate ideas to end this. She tried to take back control and force her body to stop, but couldn’t even manage to slow her steps. Inez then tried screaming or even whispering, but her mouth was tight closed, not a sound coming from her throat.
Don’t panic, she ordered herself. It will be all right. So what if your mind is erased again? You haven’t been hurt by it before, she told herself, but the thoughts had a hollow ring to them. The previous two times she’d been controlled she’d been returned to Thomas, the first time back to the hotel in Amsterdam, and just an hour ago in the café she’d been sent back to their table—but now she was being led away from Thomas. Surely if they just wanted to erase her mind, they didn’t have to take her away to do it!
Inez had no idea, she didn’t know how it was done, but for some reason this time felt different. She didn’t think the intention was to just erase her memory and let her go again.
She was walking through the middle of the pub on a path to the door, weaving her way around groups and individuals and no one seemed to notice the least little problem. Surely her eyes showed her panic?
Inez tried to find Thomas with her eyes. He at least would realize something was wrong, he would see her fear, she thought, but couldn’t find him in the crowd. She couldn’t even see the bar for the people between her and it. Inez kept trying, though; right up until she reached the pub door and her hand rose to push it open. As she stepped out into the cool night breeze, Inez knew she was lost.
The area around the bar was thick with people waiting their turn. The man pulling the draft was being worked off his feet, but was cheerful despite all that. Thomas waited, trying to be patient. It was always difficult to wait when you knew that, ultimately, you didn’t have to. He could easily have taken control of th
e man and had him serve up their drinks in front of the others, and then could have stopped anyone who took issue with his being served before them, but he didn’t. At least, he didn’t until he saw the waitress who had served them on their arrival, slip behind the bar to collect drinks.
Pursing his lips, Thomas glanced at the long line still in front of him, and then slipped into the waitress’s mind, deposited his order there for her to bring to their table, and then headed back to Inez. Crowded as it was, Thomas was almost back at the table before he realized Inez was no longer there.
Surprise flickered through him, but was quickly followed by alarm when he saw that her purse was still at the table, sitting out in the open for anyone to take. In fact, someone was approaching now and reaching for it, he realized and narrowed his eyes on the woman.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Thomas growled as he reached the table.
The woman snatched her hand back, saying quickly, “I was just going to take it to the bar. I thought the girl forgot it when she left.”
Thomas didn’t bother to argue with the mortal woman. Lips twisting, he snatched up the purse and started to turn away, but then frowned as he realized what she’d said. Swiveling back, he stabbed her mind with his own, entering swiftly and found a vision of Inez walking stiffly out of the bar, her expression blank.
Cursing, Thomas whirled away and hurried for the door, Inez’s pursed tucked under his arm like a football. It never occurred to him that he might look like a mugger fleeing the scene of a crime until a man stepped in his path, snarling, “Give it ’ere ye lousy t’ief.”
Thomas nearly mowed the man down, but then quickly slipped into his mind and moved him aside instead. It was rare enough others troubled themselves to stop a criminal; and while the man had misunderstood the situation, he thought he was stepping up to help a lady in distress. Thomas thought he should be rewarded, not plowed down.
No one else got in his way, and Thomas crashed through the pub door and out onto the street without further hindrance.