When Lana had been selected, she’d been lucky enough to move not that far away, a three hour drive. She was home all the time. My move was a two hour plane ride.
I thought they’d feel my absence but the whirlwind of “I have a lunch date…”, “We’re about to catch a movie…”, “I have a facial in twenty minutes…”, “If I don’t get to that sale, that pair of shoes is going to be gone and I’ll just die if I don’t own them…” (that was Aunt Nadia, she liked shoes nearly as much as me) was all I heard.
Not a single, “So, Leah, how are you getting on with the Mighty Vampire Lucien who you so desperately did not want to be separated from your adored family and pack of friends to go and service? Are you okay? Do you need, per chance, to talk to a beloved, trusted family member?”
Silly, mean, awful Buchanan bitches.
Now I find my mother, my mother, was chatting with Lucien.
I was going to disown her. As soon as she talked to me long enough for me to share that morsel that was.
Stephanie’s amazed words brought me back to my chore of just woken up eavesdropping.
“Like last night?”
“No, I talked to Lydia this morning and she said that never happened to Leah,” Cosmo put in. “She said often her dreams would be frightening and she’d be nearly inconsolable afterwards but she only cried or screamed, sometimes fought. Nothing like what you described last night.”
So, Mom was also not too busy to have a natter with Cosmo either.
Totally disowned.
“She’s very concerned,” Cosmo continued.
Yeah right, I seethed.
“She should be concerned,” Stephanie clipped. “It was f**king scary.”
“I’m concerned,” Edwina said quietly and I knew she meant it.
I liked Edwina and at that moment I liked her even more. Maybe I’d ask her to be my new Mom.
“She has abilities,” Lucien shared and you could tell he didn’t much like it.
My body tensed and my ears perked up.
“Abilities?” Cosmo prompted.
I imagined Lucien nodding before he spoke. “She can fight mesmerization. Not long, seconds, but longer than anyone else. She can talk back when you’re communicating with her, hold entire conversations, like you.” I didn’t know who he meant but I guessed it was either Stephanie or Cosmo. “She can also get into my head, speak to me without me calling to her. She can do it on her own, again, like you.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not everyone could do that?
Lucien continued, “Her senses are advanced, particularly her sense of danger. Either that or she has the reciprocal ability to mark me, making me attune to her in a way that I don’t feel it and she doesn’t know she’s doing it. Either way, when there’s danger or a situation is uncertain, she senses it.”
“Fucking hell,” Cosmo muttered.
“You’re joking,” Stephanie whispered.
“I knew she was special,” Edwina stated.
Edwina was so… totally… my new Mom.
“I think it’s marking,” Lucien decreed and my heart started tripping. “I’ve never been marked. I do the marking but twice I’ve felt her trying to attune herself to me, sense my thoughts, my mood. It took effort to hold her back.”
Oh my God.
That whole pulsating thing. I remembered wanting to know his mood. I thought he was trying to probe mine but I was probing his!
And he was blocking me out which must have been why I was pulsating.