“Ah,” Paul murmured, and she glanced at him sharply, noting that his lips were twitching.
“Ah?” Jeanne Louise asked suspiciously. The man was trying not to laugh. “Ah what?”
He glanced to her, then away and cleared his throat, “That explains why you and Boomer look like you’ve been mud-wrestling.”
Jeanne Louise glanced down at herself and the dog and sighed. Boomer’s fur was matted with mud from wiggling under the wall. She was also mud-covered. Her hands and arms were the worst; they were coated with quickly drying mud, and the rest of her wasn’t much better. Her white silk blouse was wet and muddy, probably ruined, and her dress pants were caked as well. She’d been first kneeling and then lying in the muddy garden after all.
“You can’t be comfortable like that,” Paul said quietly. “We’ll have to stop and get you a change of clothes. Maybe we could rent a hotel room long enough for you to shower.”
“A change of clothes will do,” Jeanne Louise said quietly. “We shouldn’t risk a motel until we’re farther away from Toronto. In fact, I don’t think you should stop for clothes here either. I can stand it for an hour or so.”
“An hour away north or south?” he asked with a frown.
“Do you have any property in the south?” she asked. When he shook his head, she shrugged. “Then south.”
“An hour southwest on the Highway 427 will take us to the Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge area,” Paul announced.
“That’s good enough,” Jeanne Louise decided. There were a few immortals who she knew lived in the area, but then there were few places where there weren’t at least one or two immortals anymore. They would just have to be careful.
Paul nodded and for the next few minutes they were silent as he concentrated on getting them to and onto Highway 427 headed southwest, and then they both relaxed a little. After a moment, he said, “Thank you for helping Livy.”
Jeanne Louise noted the solemn gratitude on his face, and glanced away with a shrug. “She has to eat.”
“Yes, and I appreciate your seeing to it that she does,” he murmured. “I know it causes you pain to help her.”
Jeanne Louise didn’t comment, her gaze on Boomer as he finally gave up trying to lick her and curled into a ball on her lap to sleep.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to realize what was happening. I noticed that your face was pale and pinched while we were at Chuck E. Cheese’s. But I wasn’t sure what was happening. I thought maybe you just needed more blood,” he said quietly. “And then I recalled that it got the same way when she was having her headache in the yard and it stopped.” Paul paused for a minute, and then asked delicately, “To make her not feel it, you have to?”
Jeanne Louise sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “I have to be in her head and that’s where the pain is. To mask it I have to stay there.”
“You said it’s instinctual, that you do the same thing when biting people . . . so when you bite people you feel their pain too?”
“That pain isn’t in their head. Usually it’s in the neck,” she murmured, and then frowned and said, “Although pain receptors are in the head.” Jeanne Louise puzzled over that briefly and then admitted, “I don’t know how it works, Paul. Like I said, it’s instinct more than anything else.”
“Usually it’s in the neck?” Paul asked, sounding perplexed. “Are there other places you can bite?”
“Sure, anywhere the veins are strong and close to the surface. The crook of the elbow, the wrist, the genitals, the ankle . . .” She shrugged. “There are loads of places you can bite a person.”
“The genitals?” Paul asked with disbelief.
Jeanne Louise grimaced, aware that she was suddenly blushing, but said, “Some used to swear it was the best place to bite. No one is likely to see the marks.”
“Right,” he muttered, and then fell silent for a while. She suspected he was thinking about her biting someone in the genitals. Men tended to have one-track minds, at least the men she’d read did.
“Do you want an aspirin or something?” Paul asked suddenly. “I think I have a bottle in the glove compartment. Or if you need something stronger, the bag in the backseat has Livy’s meds, including some pretty powerful ones for pain.” He frowned and added in a mutter, “Though they don’t help her much.”
“No, I’m okay,” Jeanne Louise assured him. It wasn’t completely true. Her head still hurt, but mortal medicines weren’t likely to help. The nanos would just see them as foreign substances to be removed from the body, which would use up more blood and no doubt increase her discomfort. She’d have to feed soon though if she wanted to be pain free, and she’d have to do it off the hoof. She would actually have to bite a mortal to feed, a practice that was forbidden except in emergencies where blood banks weren’t accessible.
This counted as an emergency, Jeanne Louise decided and hoped the council would see it that way too. However, they might argue that all she had to do was make Paul take her to the Enforcer house or anywhere else where she could get blood.
“You know,” Paul mused, “When I was a kid, my parents used to rent a cottage on Lake Huron, a little place this side of the Kettle Point Indian reserve. Ipperwash. I’ve often thought I should take Livy there.”
“That’s what? Two or three hours southwest of here?” Jeanne Louise asked.
“About that,” he agreed.
Jeanne Louise considered it. The beach would be busy this time of year, crawling with mortals. It would make it difficult for the Enforcers to grab them without drawing attention if they tracked them down. It would also make it easier for her to feed with so many snack options available, and it was looking like she might be feeding off the hoof for a while. At least until she sorted out things with Paul, had got him to agree to be her life mate, had turned him, had him turn Livy, and had returned to town to see what they could do to mitigate the trouble Paul was in.