He shook his head.
"Not even Aunt Martine could do it?" she asked with disbelief. Martine was the younger sister of her father and Uncle Lucian. Younger than the two men she might have been, but she was still way older than Lissianna's mother and one of the most powerful females of their kind. It was incomprehensible that she hadn't been able to wipe his memory.
"Not even Aunt Martine," Thomas confirmed.
"Oh dear." Lissianna considered the implications for a moment, then asked, "What are they going to do?"
He shrugged. 'They wouldn't tell us. They brought him back, put him in your room, then closeted themselves in the study most of the night. Victoria and Julianna listened outside the door, but they could only catch a word here or there. They heard Uncle Lucian and the council mentioned though."
"Oh no," Lissianna breathed. "What about Greg? How is he taking all of this? He must be furious."
"He was," Thomas acknowledged, then grinned. "He was bellowing at the top of his lungs about being kidnapped by a pair of soulless, blood-sucking, vampire bitches. I presume he was referring to Aunt Marguerite and Aunt Martine," he added deadpan, but Lissianna wasn't laughing.
"He knows what we are?" she asked with horror. "How?"
"How do you think? It wouldn't have been that hard to figure out. Aunt Marguerite said right in front of him that he wasn't your dinner but your therapist, and you girls were talking about biting him and bagged blood in the back of the van on the way into the city."
"He heard us?" she asked with dismay.
Thomas nodded. "And no doubt he saw the bite marks."
Lissianna groaned inwardly. Her bite marks. Dammit, she'd caused part of this problem herself. Now he'd figured out what they were and her mother and Martine couldn't wipe his memory and Uncle Lucian and the council might be pulled into it.
"I should go check on him." Lissianna started to get up, but Thomas stopped her with a hand on her arm.
"Wait, I want to talk to you first," he said, then waited for her to settle back in her seat to say, "Something occurred to me on the way back from dropping him off, and it's been bothering me ever since."
Lissianna raised her eyebrows curiously.
Thomas frowned slightly, as if unsure how to proceed, then asked, "What is the problem that makes it difficult for us to have a serious relationship with mortals?"
"With our ability to read their minds and control their behavior, they become nothing more than puppets," Lissianna answered, without even having to think about it. It was a problem she'd encountered repeatedly over the last two centuries. They all had. In some ways, being able to read minds wasn't a blessing, but a curse. Everyone had a critical thought once in a while, or found someone other than their partner attractive in passing. It was hard not be hurt when you could hear your boyfriend's irritated thought that you were being dense or stubborn. Or that you were no good at something, or even just looked rough that day. Even worse was when he noticed how cute the waitress was and wondered what it would be like to bed her. He might not even intend to do it, it could just be a passing thought, but still it could cut.
It was also difficult to resist the impulse to control a mate when you wanted to do something he didn't, or change his mind for him when you had a disagreement. With the wrong mate, her kind could be tyrannical control freaks. She'd seen it firsthand, with her parents.
"And what does Aunt Marguerite always say about a true life mate?" Thomas queried.
"That our true life mate will be the one we can't read," Lissianna answered promptly.
Thomas nodded and pointed out, "You can't read Greg."
Lissianna blinked, then slowly shook her head. "That's different, Thomas. He's different. Resistant, strong-minded. You just finished telling me that even Aunt Mar-tine can't wipe his memory, and Mom struggled to control him from the start. He's not--"
"But they can still both read his mind, and so can I," he interrupted.
Lissianna stared at her cousin, her thoughts suddenly awhirl. Greg... her true life mate? Sure, she couldn't read him, and her mother had always counseled them that not being able to read a person was the sign of a true life mate, but it hadn't even occurred to her that Greg could be it. Now she considered it.
She could admit Dr. Hewitt seemed to have a singularly unusual effect on her. In two hundred years, Lissianna had never experienced the level of pleasure and excitement in another man's arms that Greg had managed with a couple of kisses. Until him, she'd never found biting to be erotic either. And it was true that in two hundred years she'd never encountered another whose thoughts she couldn't read, but still... Greg was different. Her mother couldn't control him as fully as others, and Aunt Martine couldn't wipe his memory. She wasn't sure what to think. Lissianna was tired and hungry and couldn't really seem to accept the suggestion.
"I know I've taken you by surprise with this idea, I just want you to keep it in mind," Thomas finally said, then tilted his head, his expression concerned. "You look pale, you didn't feed tonight did you?"
"I didn't get the chance," she admitted wearily.
Thomas hesitated, then stood. "I have an idea. Wait here."
Lissianna watched him walk to the bar, then glanced around the living room. It was where they'd held the impromptu pajama party the morning before, and where she'd expected the others to sleep again this morning. She may even have joined them just to be sociable, but he'd said everyone else had gone to bed. "Where is everyone?"
"In bed. Everyone's gone home except for Aunt Mar-tine, the girls, and us, so we all have bedrooms now. Aunt Marguerite said you should sleep in the rose room tonight," Thomas added as he opened the bar fridge.