A Quick Bite by Lynsay Sands Page A

of the house without Mom stopping us.”
    “Oh. Well, maybe that’s all it is.” Elspeth sounded doubtful.
    “Do you want me to read him for you?” came Mirabeau’s quiet voice.
    “What? Lissianna, you haven’t read him?” There was no mistaking that half whisper, half squeal as coming from anyone but one of the twins. He thought it was probably Juli since she seemed always to be the first of the pair to speak.
    “She couldn’t read him, remember?” Jeanne Louise joined the conversation. “It’s why she bit him.”
    Juli heaved a sigh. “I wish we could ‘feed off the hoof,’ too. Just once, at least, to see what it’s like. It sounds much nicer than bagged blood.”
    “You will,” Elspeth said. “Mom’s taking you out when you’re eighteen.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Juli sighed impatiently. “So we’ll know how to feed naturally should an emergency ever arise where we only have that recourse.”
    She spoke the words by rote, as if having heard them a thousand times before. Greg noted absently, but his brain was trying to make sense of what they were saying. He didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. Lissianna hadn’t bitten him; a small nip maybe, but mostly she’d sucked on his neck and probably given him a huge hickey. Speaking of which, he wished he’d checked it while he’d been in the bathroom, but his thoughts had been so scattered by the knowledge that the dreaded phobia was nothing more than hemaphobia that he hadn’t even thought of it.
    “But what if we have an emergency before we turn eighteen?” Vicki asked.

    “You’ll just have to hope you don’t have one until after your eighteenth birthday,” Elspeth said shortly.
    “This is so not fair.” Juli sounded sulky. “You guys got to feed ‘off the hoof’ when you were way younger than we are.”
    “Juli, there was no other way to feed then,” Jeanne Louise said patiently.
    “Do you want me to read him for you and see if there’s any problem?” Greg was positive that was Mirabeau speaking. Her words brought an immediate end to Juli’s complaints. In fact, it seemed to end all conversation. Greg found himself holding his breath during the silence that followed, and wondered if he could somehow block the woman from reading his thoughts. Maybe if he made his mind blank? Or if he—
    “Here we are!” That cheerful announcement made Greg glance around. Thomas was squinting out the window as he pulled the van to a stop. Not that he should have had to squint, the van windows were all treated with some blackening agent. It was like the vehicle itself wore sunglasses, and yet Thomas still seemed bothered by the light filtering through the screen.
    Greg peered out the window at his high-rise apartment building. After the briefest hesitation, he opened the door and stepped out, shuddering as the cold air hit him. He almost left just like that, but something made him turn to peer back into the van. His gaze swept the occupants. They all stared back with solemn expressions.
    “Thanks, for untying me and for the ride,” he muttered reluctantly, then, with a nod, he closed the door and turned to hurry up the walk and into the building, positive with every step that one of them would leap out and try to drag him back. It was with a sigh of relief that he slid through the glass doors to the lobby.

     
    “Lissi, take the front seat,” Thomas said, as Greg slipped into his building.
    Lissianna unbuckled her seat belt and shifted to the front passenger seat. The moment she’d pulled on her seat belt there, Thomas shifted the van into drive and steered them back into traffic.
    “I read him on the drive in,” he announced.
    “You can read him, too?” Lissianna asked with a frown. It was bad enough that her mother could read Greg where she couldn’t, Marguerite was loads older than Lissianna, so much more powerful. She could even have accepted if Mirabeau had been able to read him, since her friend was over two hundred