“Livy?” Paul said with concern.
“My head,” she groaned miserably.
Jeanne Louise immediately shifted sideways to get a glimpse of the girl again and focus on her thoughts. A second later Livy straightened her slumping body and blinked her eyes with something like confusion.
“It’s gone again, Daddy,” she whispered as if afraid speaking at all would bring it back.
“Gone?” Paul asked and then glanced over his shoulder toward Jeanne Louise to see that she too had shifted to see the girl.
She was aware of his staring at her, but concentrated on the girl while trying to sort out how best to ease the pain for both of them. Jeanne Louise had no desire to suffer any more than she wanted the child to.
“What are you doing?” Paul finally asked, uncertainty in his voice.
Jeanne Louise hesitated and then forced Livy into sleep. It was the only thing she could think to do at that point. Paul caught the child to his chest with concern as she slid limply against him. He then glanced to Jeanne Louise in question.
“She’s sleeping,” she said quietly. “She won’t feel the pain now. The human body sends out endorphins while sleeping that will prevent her suffering.”
“You made her sleep?” he asked uncertainly.
“It was the only thing I could think to do,” Jeanne Louise said quietly.
“Will she stay asleep if you aren’t with her?” Paul asked with a frown, easing his daughter into his arms.
“She should. If you jostle her and wake her up when you put her to bed, come get me and I’ll put her to sleep again,” she said simply.
Paul hesitated, but then nodded and stood to carry his daughter into the house. Boomer followed, jogging along at his side, his attention on the sleeping girl as much as Paul’s was.
The moment he was gone, Jeanne Louise raised a hand to rub her own forehead. While in the child’s mind, she’d suffered the pain as clearly as she knew Livy normally suffered it. That pain had been unbearable. She didn’t know how the child handled it. She’d barely been able to stand it herself and she was not only a grown woman, but an immortal. The nanos would have been flushing endorphins into her system to try to ease her discomfort. She couldn’t imagine having such repeated, crushing headaches over days, let alone weeks. Surely there was something they could give the girl?
Jeanne Louise lay back on the picnic blanket Paul had spread over the wooden floor of the gazebo. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead unhappily as the memory of the pain began to fade. She then turned her attention to what had to be done. She couldn’t read Paul and food tasted amazing since she’d woken up chained to the bed. She was 90 percent sure that Paul was her life mate. She just needed that last bit of proof. The food she’d eaten since being here was ten, perhaps even a hundred times tastier than it had been a day ago. If it was the same way with sex with Paul . . .
Well, life mates were said to faint from the sheer passion that overwhelmed them during sex, and she could understand how that might be if sex was a hundred times more powerful too. She would have to find out, and quickly. Jeanne Louise’s conscience simply wouldn’t allow her to leave Livy to suffer as she was. And she couldn’t turn her either. She had to step up her courting. She had to seduce the man and get that final proof that he was her life mate. And then she had to somehow make him love her and agree to spend eternity with her before explaining that she could turn only one, that it would be either Livy or he. But that if she turned him, he could then use his one turn to save his daughter.
If she succeeded at it, everything would be fine. They would be a family. She would have her life mate, and a daughter too. The thought made her smile faintly. It was like a dream come true. Jeanne Louise had not only always wanted a family of her own, she loved children. She’d been feeling a pining for one the last decade or so. But it had worsened with first the birth of Lissianna and Greg’s little Lucy, and then with Uncle Lucian and Leigh’s announcement that Leigh was pregnant again. While Leigh had lost their first child in the second month, she was now seven months along and mother and child were apparently well. Everyone was waiting eagerly for the child’s birth.
Jeanne Louise didn’t care that she hadn’t given birth to Livy. She would accept her as her own and mother her as best she knew how. Which wasn’t really well at all, she supposed. She hadn’t a clue how to be a mother, other than what she’d seen with Lissianna and Greg.
Actually, Jeanne Louise realized suddenly, Livy was about the same age as Lucy. They were both beautiful little blondes too, she thought with a smile. They could go through training to feed together, would no doubt be in the same grade, might even end up the best of friends. The fantasy of a happy home life with Paul and Livy was building in her head when the scuff of a foot made her open her eyes. She blinked at the sight of Paul standing over her, his expression grim.
“You have some explaining to do,” he said coldly and Jeanne Louise’s fantasies of a happy future burst like a bubble.
Four
Jeanne Louise sat up slowly, her expression unperturbed, but her nerves suddenly jangling. He was worried, and his worry was coming out as anger. And he was worried because he didn’t understand what she’d done.
“The nanos give us the ability to block a person’s pain receptors or make them sleep. I presume it was considered necessary to aid in the hunt for blood,” she said calmly before he could ask anything. “While biting them, they won’t feel pain, and if we make them sleep, they don’t feel the bite either. I did that for Livy to ease her pain.”
“You blocked the pain, and then put her to sleep?” Paul asked slowly as if wanting to be sure he had it right.
Jeanne Louise nodded.
“How?” he asked quietly.
She hesitated. While Jeanne Louise knew she had to go into the person’s mind to do it, she didn’t know much more than that, really. It was sort of instinctual. It didn’t matter though, she didn’t think it would probably be good to admit that she could go into minds as she did. Finally she gave him a half truth. “I don’t know exactly how it’s done. It’s sort of instinctual. But I have to be able to at least see her to do it. With some you have to actually be in physical contact to manage it.”
Paul was silent for a minute, processing that, and then asked, “And her eating the whole sandwich?”
Jeanne Louise hesitated. She knew he was asking her if she’d had anything to do with that, but admitting she had would mean admitting to being able to control minds and she wasn’t willing to do that. So, she simply said, “She’s obviously ill. Perhaps her illness is affecting her taste buds somehow, like when you get a cold or flu. Nothing tastes the same as it normally does when you’re sick. I’d try different foods with her.”