Marguerite had bent to move things around in the refrigerator, but froze now and slowly straightened. If her mother had looked horrified before, it was nothing compared to her expression now. "Excuse me?" she said faintly. "You didn't what? Please tell me you didn't leave that man wandering around with full knowledge of our existence in his head? Please tell me that you wiped his memory and gave him new ones to replace them as you've been taught to do."
Lissianna sighed. She'd been raised from childhood having it drummed into her head that mortals always had to have their memories wiped. Mortals could not be left with any knowledge at all of their people's existence. It was a threat to all of them. After two hundred years, that was a lot of drumming. Yet, she'd let him go without doing so.
"I couldn't have if I'd wanted to. I couldn't get into his thoughts, not even to read his mind, remember," she said.
Aunt Martine looked startled. "You could not read his mind?"
"No."
Aunt Martine glanced toward Marguerite. Lissianna's mother opened her mouth, probably to explode with vitriol, but Elspeth rushed to Lissianna's defense, saying, "It's okay Aunt Marguerite, Greg doesn't know anything about us or what we are."
"Right. As far as he's concerned we're just crackpots, not vampires," Thomas put in, the comment making Lis-sianna frown.
"Besides," Elspeth said, "if he did try to claim he was kidnapped or anything, no one would believe him. He climbed into the trunk under his own free will, and that shows on the security tapes in the parking garage."
"The only thing he could complain about is being kept overnight and missing his flight," Jeanne Louise pointed out. "And the authorities would just think it was some sex game that went overtime, and he wanted to get a refund on his ticket."
Marguerite closed the refrigerator door with a snap. "That would be his argument, of course."
Lissianna silently cursed. The moment she'd heard Jeanne spout the bit about sex games, she'd known it was a mistake. Jeanne Louise was the most conservative of the group and the last one to normally go around spouting terms like sex games.
Marguerite walked back around the bar to face them. "What about his neck?"
"His neck?" Lissianna stared at her in confusion.
"You bit him," Thomas reminded her under his breath, his tone of voice making it obvious he, too, had forgotten that fact.
"Oh... yes." Lissianna felt her heart sink. She usually made sure to put it in a host's head that her bite mark was a shaving cut and to keep it bandaged until it healed. Or that it was the result of some fluke accident with a two-pronged barbecue fork. She hadn't been able to put that thought into Greg's mind though. She'd forgotten all about the bite. This was bad. He would see it and wonder. He might even go to a hospital or the doctor's to have it checked out, allowing others to see it. Her expression became worried, and she admitted miserably, "I forgot all about biting him. I didn't--"
"Never mind," Marguerite interrupted with a sigh. "I will take care of it."
"How?" Lissianna asked anxiously.
Her mother considered, then said, "I'll pay him a quick visit and wipe his memory as well as plant a viable explanation for the bite marks."
"I'm sorry," Lissianna murmured, feeling bad. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten about biting him. It had been an unforgettable experience at the time.
"Not as sorry as I am, dear," Marguerite said. "I was really counting on his being able to cure your phobia." Her disappointment was obvious and just added to Lis-sianna's guilt, especially when she scowled at her, and added, "How many times have I told you it's rude to return a gift?"
"I can make an appointment with him for after his vacation," Lissianna suggested, trying to make amends.
"Lissianna, if it were that easy, I would have made an appointment for you ages ago," Marguerite pointed out. "But you know we can't veil a memory more than a cou-ple of times without risking the veil failing altogether. They build up a resistance. Some part of them recognizes you and it gets harder and harder each time. Once or twice is fine, but more than that isn't recommended. That's why I was so excited about Dr. Hewitt being able to cure phobias in one or two visits. I thought we could bring him here, let him cure you, keep him till the end of his vacation to be sure it took, then wipe his memory and send him on his way."
"Well, I'll just--" Lissianna shrugged helplessly. "Til make an appointment with someone else. There must be another therapist who knows the technique," she pointed out. "If it only takes a try or two, then we can wipe his memory afterward."
"Yes, but who?"
There was silence in the room for a moment, then Aunt Martine said calmly, "We can ask Dr. Hewitt for the name of a competent psychologist who deals with this sort of thing before we wipe his memory."
Marguerite turned to glance at her sister-in-law as she got to her feet. "We?"
"Well." Martine shrugged. "You didn't think I'd leave you to have to deal with this on your own, did you? My girls helped set him free, so I'll help you clean up the mess the children have made."
When Marguerite hesitated, Martine said, "It shouldn't take long. Perhaps on the way back we could stop for a manicure and do some shopping. Everything here is so much less expensive than in England."
The tension eased from Marguerite's shoulders, and she nodded. "That would be nice. Then we can drop into the grocery store. I need to pick up food for the twins for your stay here."
Lissianna began to relax as the women moved toward the door, then stiffened again when her mother glanced back, catching her with a piercing look. "I know you have to go to work soon, Lissianna, but you will come back here afterward, won't you? I think you should stay here this week so that you can visit with your cousins, don't you?"