by Lynsay Sands
“I had just asked him about life mates before you came in,” Allie admitted. “I’ve heard the word used a couple of times and wondered if it just means ‘mate’ to immortals, or is something special.”
“Oh, life mates are definitely something special,” Leonora assured her.
“Why?” Allie asked at once.
“Because immortals mate for life,” Leonora said simply, and then popped the thermometer in Allie’s mouth. “That isn’t to say that if their life mate dies they won’t ever find another one. But while the first life mate lives, they will be devoted to her or him and never stray. For immortals, having a life mate really means until death parts them.”
Allie’s eyebrows rose at this news as Leonora took her wrist in hand. In this day and age when half the marriages failed, and the young weren’t even bothering to marry much anymore, mating for life seemed a rare and unusual thing. She wanted to ask why that was the case, but couldn’t with the thermometer in her mouth, so thought the question in her head, actually hoping, for a change, that Leonora would read her mind.
Apparently, she was too busy taking her pulse, however, because she didn’t suddenly spit out the answer.
Sighing inwardly, Allie resigned herself to waiting until the thermometer was out of her mouth to ask her questions.
“You’re trying to think of a way to avoid explaining life mates to Allie and admitting she’s yours until you can woo her a bit.”
Magnus glanced up and around from the cup he was rinsing and stared at Stephanie. He wasn’t surprised to find her staring back, her eyes glowing and then fading and then glowing again as she peered at him.
“It won’t work,” Stephanie said when he remained silent and simply waited. “She is already attracted to you and feels unaccountably safe with you, but she won’t trust that or allow it to develop into love. She’s afraid of love after what it did to her sister and mother.”
Magnus was startled at the mention of a sister, but held his tongue again. He knew it was better not to interrupt.
“Stephen’s abandoning Stella and making her flee on her own has not helped either. Allie will not be wooed. She is afraid of what love can do to her, so is afraid to love.”
Setting down the cup he’d been rinsing, Magnus turned off the tap and dried his hands on the dish towel as he turned to face the young woman.
“Except the boy. She has given up everything for him,” Stephanie said slowly. “She does love Liam . . . and would do anything for him.” She paused briefly, and then nodded. “She’ll come to trust and love you in time if you can keep her close, but you’ll have to use the boy to do that.”
Movement to the side drew his gaze to the table. Elvi, Victor, DJ, Mabel, and Alessandro all still sat there and every one of them was watching Stephanie with concern. But the movement he’d noted was the arrival of another couple, who now hesitated in the archway between the dining room and the entry, their attention locked on Stephanie with equal concern. Drina and Harpernus Stoyan. Magnus had met Drina on several occasions, and had known Harper for centuries. He knew they had taken Stephanie into their hearts and home as a teenager, sharing her care with Elvi and Victor while Dani and Decker had hunted for Leonius Livius, the monster who had turned both sisters. They were all family to the young woman now, filling the holes left by losing contact with her birth family.
“Oh, stop looking so worried. I was just giving Magnus some pointers to help him claim his life mate,” Stephanie said suddenly, sounding half amused and half annoyed.
Magnus turned to her again, unsurprised to see that the pulsing glow was gone from her eyes. They were simply a pretty green again and she looked as normal as any other young woman.
“Thank you,” he said solemnly.
“No problem,” she said lightly, and started to turn away, but then paused and swung back to warn, “Don’t let her see the passion life mates enjoy until she agrees to be your life mate and turns.”
“Why?” Magnus asked with surprise.
“Because she would run,” Stephanie said abruptly and with certainty. “Once she has promised to be your life mate and taken the vows, she will keep that promise, but if you let her experience life mate passion before she does . . .” She shook her head. “It would scare her silly. She would take Liam with her and flee. If that happens, she will be dead within a matter of hours, and Liam will be left to Abaddon’s mercies.”
Turning abruptly away, Stephanie moved around the counter and through the dining room, murmuring, “I have a headache. I’m going back up to bed to lie down for a while.”
Everyone remained still and silent as they listened to her mount the stairs, and remained that way until they heard a door close and the muffled sound of her mounting the stairs to the attic rooms. Only then did they lower their gazes to exchange worried glances.
“She has the sight,” Magnus said quietly.
“No,” Elvi said tightly. “She just can’t shut out the thoughts of everyone around her. Immortal or mortal, our thoughts bombard her constantly unless she’s in her room. Harper fitted it out special with several different linings to help block our thoughts and it seems to work. But it means she spends a lot of time alone, which is worrisome.”
Magnus hesitated, but then decided to let it go. He was quite sure Stephanie had the sight, that she could see the possible futures of those around her. But these people were already worried about the young woman and he didn’t want to add to it. Turning back to the sink, he finished rinsing the coffee cups, but his mind was on what Stephanie had said. If he showed Allie the passion life mates enjoyed, she would run . . . apparently to her death. Unless he got her to promise to be his life mate first. And wooing would not work. He needed to use her love for Liam to do that.
But how? Magnus wondered over that briefly as he finished washing and then drying the coffee cups. By the time he’d returned them to the open shelf on the wall, he’d decided he needed to get away to think for a bit and come up with a plan. Hanging the dish towel over the oven handle where he’d got it from, he glanced to the people now talking quietly at the table and announced, “I need to nip out and pick up a few things. Is there a vehicle I could use?”
Ten
“Mom? Do you have a seven?”
Allie looked over the cards in her hand and then smiled evilly. “Go fish.”
“Ahhh,” Liam complained, and reached out to take a card. Once he had it and was placing it in with the cards fanned out in his small hand, Allie glanced at Sunita. The pretty little girl had red hair and huge eyes like her mother, but her eye color was the same blue as her father’s.
“Your turn, Sunny,” she said with an encouraging smile.
The girl beamed back and then turned to the pretty little blonde at her side. “Gracie, do you have a king?”
Gracie wrinkled her nose and clucked her tongue with irritation as she handed over a king faceup for all to see.
Sunny took it with a grin and then looked at Teddy Jr. “Teddy, do you have a king?”
“Go fish,” he said with glee, and Allie chuckled as Sunny scowled at the boy and reached for a card.
“Your turn, Gracie,” Allie said then as her gaze wandered to the clock on the dining room wall. She and the children were seated at the table playing cards while the other adults were off performing various tasks. Elvi had gone to buy groceries, something she hadn’t had a chance to do before she’d suddenly found herself flooded with extra people in her home. Mabel had gone to check on things at a Mexican restaurant named Bella Black’s that Allie had been told the two women owned. Stephanie was resting up in her room, and Drina, Harper, Alessandro, Leonora, DJ, and Victor were all in the large living room in the back corner of the house discussing “some matters to do with logistics.” At least, that’s what they’d said when they’d left her playing cards with the children and slipped away.
Magnus, though, was apparently shopping or something. That’s what Allie had been told when she and Leonora had come out of
the salon after the other woman had finished taking her vitals. But that was hours ago and he still wasn’t back. Not that she was worried, she assured herself. She hardly knew the man, but for some reason she did feel more comfortable when he was around.
“I have to pee.”
Allie blinked her thoughts away and glanced to Liam at that announcement.
“Okay. Do you know where the bathroom is?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said at once with a slight blush.
“Don’t worry,” Teddy said as Liam slid off his chair. “I’ll watch your cards and make sure the girls don’t cheat.”
“We wouldn’t cheat,” Sunita protested at once.
Teddy grinned at her annoyance, but merely shrugged and said, “Well, now you can’t because I’m watching.”
“Boys,” Gracie muttered, and gave a long-suffering sigh before setting her own cards facedown on the table and announcing, “I have to go too.”
“All right,” Allie said mildly. “Go ahead. I’ll watch your cards.”
“And mine, please,” Sunita said, slipping from her own seat. “I’m going with her.”
“Oh, boy,” Teddy said with some exasperation as the two girls ran up the curving staircase, presumably to use one of the upper bathrooms. “Why do girls always go to the bathroom together?”
“Maybe they both have to go,” Allie suggested mildly.
“Maybe,” he allowed, and then sighed with resignation and set his own cards down. “’Cause now I have to go too.”
Allie chuckled as she watched him hurry away from the table, and then set her own cards down and sat back in her seat, her eyes sliding again to the clock. It was a little after noon. Magnus had been gone for a couple of hours.
“He’s fine.”
Allie glanced around with a start at those words and found herself peering at a young blonde she hadn’t yet met. All the immortals she’d met so far looked to be around twenty-five or thirty, but this woman looked a little younger. She would have said somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one. Leonora had given her a rundown of everyone in the house as she’d taken her temperature and blood pressure the last time. It had helped to pass the time, she supposed. But now she peered at the blonde and ran through the names and circumstances Leonora had given her and guessed, “Stephanie?”
Nodding, the blonde moved around the counter into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door to peer in at the contents. “Magnus is fine. He needed a few things and wanted time to think. He’ll be back.”
“Oh,” Allie murmured. She didn’t bother to ask how the girl had known what she was worrying about. Everyone here could read her mind. Except for the kids, of course.
“So far.”
“What?” Allie asked uncertainly.
“I said, so far. So far, the kids can’t read and control you,” she explained, retrieving juice from the fridge and pouring herself a glass. “That will change in another year or so.”
“So I gather,” Allie said unhappily, her mind turning to that worry. She kept a lot from Liam. She didn’t want him living in fear, so she kept their troubles to herself. He had no idea why they had to move so often. But she wouldn’t be able to keep it from him once he could read her mind.
Stephanie snorted, drawing Allie’s attention back to the young woman as she put the juice away and picked up her glass. “That’s the least of your worries.”
“Is it?” Allie asked warily.
Stephanie nodded and said solemnly, “You should be more concerned about when he starts being able to control you.”
“Liam?” Allie asked, her eyes widening, and then she shook her head. “He wouldn’t—”
“He’s a child,” Stephanie said with a shrug. “They make bad choices all the time. It’s why they need parents.”
“And he has one. Me,” Allie said firmly. “I’ll teach him that it’s wrong to control people and read their minds.”
“You can’t teach him it’s wrong to read minds,” Stephanie said firmly. “The nanos gave us that skill for a reason. Survival. He needs to know if the people he encounters are a threat.”
“But I’m not a threat. I’m his mother. He shouldn’t read me.”
“But he will,” she said with certainty. “And he’ll control you too. He won’t be able to help himself.”
Allie took a deep breath and shook her head. He wouldn’t. He loved her.
“Of course he loves you,” Stephanie said with amusement. “But that won’t stop him from . . .” She hesitated a moment, and then said, “Think about when you were a child. Your mother used to make cherry pie every Sunday.”
Allie blinked in surprise at the words. Leonora had mentioned that Stephanie had a “gift.” That where the others could only read the things you were thinking about, Stephanie seemed to be able to read everything in a person’s head. They were all open books to her, and this seemed proof to Allie. She hadn’t been thinking about it—in fact, she hadn’t thought about it for years—but her mother had made cherry pie every Sunday. To please her father. He’d loved cherry pie.
“And you loved it too,” Stephanie said as if she’d spoken aloud. “But you were never allowed more than one piece. Not even the next day if there was pie left, because it was your father’s. You and your sister each got one very small slice apiece on Sunday, but your father ate the rest over the next couple of days in front of you and you two weren’t allowed to have any more.”
Stephanie took a drink of juice before continuing. “Now, imagine you could have controlled your parents. Imagine you could have put it in their minds that you should be allowed another piece of that pie. It wouldn’t hurt anyone. Your father was getting a belly anyway, and it would probably be good if he cut back.” She arched one eyebrow. “Tell me you wouldn’t have controlled them and made sure you had a second piece of pie.”
Allie looked away from the young woman. She wished she could say she wouldn’t have, but she had really liked cherry pie.
“Or say your mother was making liver for dinner. You and your sister always hated liver. But they made you sit at the table until you ate every last bite of what was put on your plate, didn’t they?”
Allie nodded slowly and glanced back to her, amazed the woman could pull these things from her mind.
“Now, imagine you could have made your mother decide to make spaghetti for you and your sister instead. And you could put it in your father’s head that it was okay if you and your sister had spaghetti instead of the liver.” She let her think about that for a minute, and then said, “That’s how it would start. Just a food he wanted, or candy you didn’t think he should have. Nothing big or important. But it would move on from there to things Liam wanted to do that you didn’t approve of, or places he wanted to go and so on, until you were just a puppet, unable to stop him from doing whatever he wanted. Hell, not even aware that you didn’t want him to do these things in the end.”
Allie stared at her with mounting dismay. If what Stephanie was saying was true . . . She couldn’t be an effective mother to Liam if he could just take control of her when he chose. He was a good boy, but even a saint would find it difficult not to abuse that kind of power.
“And then it wouldn’t take long for others to realize what was happening. They’d decide that Liam should be taken from you and given to an immortal couple, so that he could be raised properly.”
“What? No!” Allie said with dismay.
“And then they’d wipe your mind so you had no memory of Liam, or immortals or anything.”
“No,” she said, standing abruptly. “I won’t allow that. He’s my son.”
“You couldn’t stop it,” Stephanie said solemnly, and then added, “The only way to prevent it is to become immortal yourself.”
Allie froze. “To be . . .”
“Turned,” Stephanie said, and then pointed out, “If you were immortal, Liam wouldn’t be able to control you. There’d be no reason to take him away from you then.”
Allie
stared at her blankly. She’d never considered becoming immortal. It just hadn’t occurred to her as a possibility. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure she wanted to consider it now. Immortal? A vampire?
Stephanie shrugged. “I guess you have to decide how much you love Liam. Do you want to remain in his life?” she asked. “Because the only way to do that is to turn.”
Allie stared at her silently for a moment, and then sagged back into her seat in defeat. She did love Liam. She might not have given birth to him, but he was her son. She couldn’t lose him. Running a hand wearily through her hair, she asked, “How do I become immortal?”
“Someone has to agree to turn you,” Stephanie said simply.
Allie bit her lip, and then asked, “Would you—?”
“Oh, no,” she said firmly, and then added, “Trust me, you wouldn’t want me to. I’m Edentate, not immortal.”
She had no idea what that meant, but simply asked, “Do you think someone else would, then? Someone who was immortal?”
“Unfortunately, immortals are only allowed to turn one mortal in a lifetime . . . and they tend to save that for a life mate.”
“Life mate,” Allie muttered with frustration. “Everyone keeps throwing that word out, but I have no idea what it means other than that they’re a mate for life. I presume there’s more to it than that?”
“Much more,” Stephanie agreed. “Life mates can’t read or control each other. They can sit in a room together and not worry that their mind is being read, or that they’ll hear a hurtful stray thought from their partner’s mind, because they just can’t. A life mate is an oasis of peace in a very noisy and stressful world.”
“I see,” Allie said slowly.
“No, you don’t, because you have no idea what I’m talking about,” Stephanie assured her wearily, and then suddenly narrowed her eyes. “But you could.”
“I could what?” Allie asked warily when Stephanie started walking toward her.
“See what it means to be without a life mate. The noise you have to constantly block out.”