The Reluctant Vampire(66)

Drina glanced to Mirabeau and saw the troubled expression on her face and knew without a doubt that it reflected her own expression.

“Well, we already knew you had mad skills when it comes to reading thoughts,” Harper said mildly, apparently awoken by their discussion. His hand covered Drina’s and squeezed gently in warning.

Getting the message, she tried to blank out the worry from both her mind and expression and noted Mirabeau’s suddenly clearing her own expression as well. Harper continued, “You’re a whiz at reading minds. Have you noticed any other new skills since your turn?”

“Like what?” Stephanie asked, looking uncomfortable.

“Anything that is different now that you’ve been turned,” Harper said easily. “Some edentates have special talents other immortals don’t. Maybe you’re one of the gifted ones.”

She bit her lip briefly, but then admitted tentatively, “Well, I know when life mates are around, and usually who is whose. Like I knew Dawn and Edward were mated and Alessandro and Leonora were each other’s mates before you guys introduced them even though Dawn was helping Leonora in the kitchen while Alessandro and Edward set the table.”

“Really?” Drina asked with amazement. “How?”

“There’s this kind of electricity between them, and this energy that comes from them,” she said, and then frowned and tried to explain, “The closest thing I can compare it to is what comes from cell phones and satellites and stuff. I sense these kind of . . . waves or streams of something coming from cells and satellites. It’s the same kind of thing that flows between life mates. Like a million nanos are sending out text messages back and forth between them.”

Frustration crossed her face, and she said, “I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. But anyway, I knew the minute you got here, Dree, that you were Harper’s because both your nanos started buzzing.”

“I wonder if that’s how Marguerite zeroes in on finding life mates for each other,” Mirabeau said thoughtfully. “Maybe she picks up on these waves too.”

“But Marguerite can find them without their being in the same room. I was in New York, and Harper was here in Canada when she decided I would suit him. She wouldn’t have sensed waves between us,” Drina said with a frown.

Stephanie shrugged. “Well, she probably recognized that the sounds are the same from both of you.”

“Sounds?” Harper queried gently.

She looked frustrated again. “I don’t know what to call it. Frequencies maybe.”

“Marguerite can’t be finding life mates by zeroing in on these frequencies,” Mirabeau realized suddenly. “Tiny is mortal. In fact, most of the life mates she’s put with immortals have been mortal. There wouldn’t yet be nanos in the mortal to communicate with.”

“True,” Drina murmured, then glanced to Stephanie and said, “Were you able to tell that Tiny and Mirabeau were life mates?”

She nodded.

“How?” Mirabeau asked.

“The electricity you each give off is the same.”

“Electricity?” Drina asked with a frown. The girl had mentioned electricity and energy earlier, but she’d thought she’d just been using two different terms to try to describe one thing.

“Yeah. Well, I call it electricity,” she said with a sigh that spoke of her frustration with not knowing the proper terms for what she was trying to explain.

Drina supposed it was like trying to explain color to a blind person. The teenager struggled to try to make them understand, though.

“It’s energy too, but different than the waves thing. This energy is more physical, like a shock wave. It makes my hair stand on end on the back of my neck. It’s not so bad when there’s only one life-mate couple around, but tonight, with so many mated couples here in the house”— Stephanie grimaced—“it’s like my finger is stuck in a plug socket.”

“That doesn’t sound very pleasant,” Drina said with concern.

“It isn’t,” she said wearily. “But then neither are all the voices in my head. It’s easier when there are only a couple of you around at a time. With so many of you in the house, it’s like several radio stations playing at the same time, all with a different talk program on. It gets maddening and exhausts me.”

“You should have said something,” Mirabeau said with a frown.

“Why?” Stephanie asked, almost with resentment. “It’s not like you could do anything about it.”

“We don’t know that,” Mirabeau said at once. “Maybe if you went up on the top floor, and the rest of us stayed on the main floor, it would make it better.”