A Quick Bite by Lynsay Sands Page B

years older than she, but Thomas was only four years older, and yet he could, too? Why couldn’t she read the man?
    Aware that her cousins in the back of the van were now leaning eagerly forward to hear what was being said, she asked, “And?”
    “He was mad.”
    “Why?” she asked with surprise.
    “I gather he asked what your phobia was after we’d left to change?” Thomas asked. “And you told him it was hemaphobia?”
    When Lissianna nodded, he said, “That’s why he was mad.”
    Juli was the first to speak. “I don’t get it. Why would that make him mad?”
    “Aunt Marguerite interrupted his vacation and dragged him to the house where she tied him to a bed, all in an effort to get him to help cure Lissi’s phobia,” Thomas pointed out. “Then we all insisted her phobia was bad and ruining her life.”
    “Well, it is,” Elspeth said grimly.

    “Yes, but hemaphobia wouldn’t be that bad an affliction for a mortal,” he pointed out.
    “But Lissianna isn’t a mortal,” Jeanne Louise said. “She needs blood to survive. Blood is food to her.”
    “Exactly,” Thomas agreed. “But Hewitt doesn’t know that, does he.”
    “Ohhh.” It was Juli and Vicki together who murmured the word, but it was silently echoed by the older women as realization dawned.
    “We have to tell him you’re a vamp, Lissi,” Vicki said. “Then he’ll understand.”
    “Oh yeah, he’d understand all right.” Mirabeau snorted. “He’d think we were crazy. Besides, do you really think he’d allow us to get close enough to tell him? Geez, the guy’s probably arranging to move house even as we speak.”
    “Mirabeau’s right,” Jeanne Louise said. “He probably will arrange to move, and he won’t help.” She frowned. “What I don’t understand, Thomas, is—if you knew all this—why did you just let him leave?”
    Thomas didn’t answer Jeanne Louise, but glanced at Lissianna instead. “Would you still want to let him go?”
    “Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “He couldn’t be controlled or calmed. Mother made a mistake in kidnapping him.” Usually they could submerge the wills of mortals and put thoughts and suggestions into their heads. With most people, Marguerite would have been able to keep them pliant, pleased to be there, and eager to help. It would have been safe to leave them free to wander the house without fear they’d try to leave, or even want to until she released their wills…and by then she would have wiped the whole episode from their memories, leaving vague alternate memories in their place. In effect, they’d have been stealing time from the person,but it was time the person wouldn’t even know was missing. Lissianna could have accepted that as a necessary evil to cure her phobia.
    But Greg wasn’t most people. He appeared strong-willed and resistant to control. He would have had to be kept tied up during his entire stay, and they would have had to force him to treat her phobia using threats and the promise of freedom. That wasn’t acceptable to her…and she knew her mother would agree—once she got over her initial anger at their having set Greg free.
    “Yes,” she repeated. “I’d still want to let him go, even if I’d known it meant he wouldn’t come back and treat me.”
    “I knew you’d say that,” Thomas told her, then glanced in the rearview mirror at his sister, and added, “and that’s why I didn’t stop his leaving.”
    No one said anything, and they remained silent for the rest of the return journey. It wasn’t until Thomas was parking the van in the garage several moments later that anyone spoke, and then it was Julianna.
    “Uh-oh. She looks mad.” The words were a half whisper.
    Lissianna glanced up from unbuckling her seat belt and grimaced when she spotted her mother in the open door between the garage and the house. Marguerite Argeneau did indeed look angry. Furious even. It seemed Mother was up early, too. Sighing, Lissianna let her seat