There was silence for a minute, and then Tybo suggested, “Their sire could have read their minds, realized they were planning an escape, and decided he liked the idea of Stella gone. You did say he didn’t like women much. Maybe he told Stephen he’d let Stella go if he remained.”
“Wait. What? Read their minds?” Allie asked with disbelief.
“Reading the minds of mortals is one of the abilities immortals have,” Magnus said almost apologetically. “An older immortal can also read a younger one as a rule.”
Allie sagged back in her seat with disbelief and gaped at the six people around the table. Then she snapped her mouth shut and asked sharply, “Then why the hell did I have to relive all of this for you? You could have just read my mind.”
“Magnus cannot read you at all, and the rest of us can only read your surface memories,” Lucian said mildly, and then for clarification, added, “Things you are thinking about.”
Allie stared at him briefly and then glanced to Magnus and back. “Why can’t Magnus read me? Is he not a full vampire or something?”
“Immortal,” Lucian corrected her tightly. “And yes, of course he is a full immortal, but as your—”
“Explanations later, you said,” Magnus interrupted sharply, looking stressed, and Allie presumed that whatever the reason that he couldn’t read her it must be embarrassing.
“Yes. Of course,” Lucian agreed.
Allie frowned from one man to the other, really wanting to learn why Magnus was the only one who couldn’t read her, but knowing she would have to wait for that explanation. She wasn’t willing to wait for the answer to another question, though. “Does that mean Liam can read me too?”
“No,” Tricia assured her. “Teddy and Liam are too young to be able to read minds yet.”
Allie was just relaxing at that reassurance when the woman added, “Immortal children do not start to pick that up until the age of five or six.”
“What?” she asked with dismay. Dear God, her little boy might be reading her mind in another year.
“There have been a few who have picked up the skill a little earlier,” Lucian countered. “Although I have never heard of one mastering mind control before five.”
Allie’s alarm immediately increased and she squawked, “Mind control?”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she recalled the sense she’d had the night before of not being in control when she’d walked out of the pizza joint and got in the car. Her eyes immediately shot to Magnus. “Oh, my God, you controlled me last night and made me get in the car.”
“No,” Lucian said with certainty. “That must have been Tybo. Magnus can no more control you than he can read you.”
“Sorry,” Tybo said when her gaze shot to him. “But we needed to leave quickly and you weren’t cooperating.”
When Allie opened her mouth to respond, Sam piped up with, “Explanations later. I want to know what happened with Stella. She was saying you were the only person she trusted, and then . . . ?”
Allie stared at her blankly for a minute, and then sagged in her seat and tried to find the thread of what she’d been telling. She didn’t know why, though, if they could just read it from her mind.
“Because we can only read it if you are thinking of it,” Sam reminded her. “And right now you’re freaking out about what we can and can’t do and not thinking about Stella.”
“Right,” Allie muttered, and then glanced at the other woman sharply as she realized Sam must have read her mind to know she was wondering about that.
“Sorry,” Sam said with a shrug, and then prompted, “Stella had no one to trust but you . . . ?”
Allie scowled at her, but forced herself back to the subject. “Right, so after telling me her concerns about Stephen . . . Well, I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d found it kind of funky that he hadn’t gone with her either, so I could hardly reassure her. And I didn’t know about the whole mind-reading thing, so didn’t even consider that their sire might have read theirs, realized what they were up to, and used the knowledge to force Stephen to stay,” she added in a steely voice, but then frowned and admitted, “I wish I had. The thought that Stephen might have become like the others was crushing to Stella.” She sighed at the memory of Stella weeping.