The Reluctant Vampire - Lynsay Sands [75]
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.”
“She can’t be left alone,” Drina reminded her.
“Besides, it wouldn’t matter as long as I’m in the house with you all,” Stephanie assured her. “The floors and walls don’t seem to stop it, at least not inside. Although going outside helps muffle it quite a bit if you’re all inside. I’m not sure why, though.”
“This is an old Victorian house with connected double outer walls,” Harper said quietly, and when Drina raised an eyebrow, he explained, “If you’ve ever looked at the bricks on the outside of the house, each row has three or four normal-sized or uniform bricks and then a small end piece, then more normal sized and another small one and so on. It’s because they built an outer wall and an inner wall. The small bricks are actually ones that connect the outer wall to the inner. It made for good insulation or something . . . or perhaps just sturdier buildings. But that was how they were built when this house was erected.” He shrugged, and then suggested, “The double brick, and then plaster on top of that probably creates more of a barrier for whatever Stephanie is picking up.”
“I don’t suppose you guys would let me just step out on the deck for a couple of minutes?” Stephanie asked hopefully. “Even a few minutes respite would help.”
Drina exchanged a glance with Mirabeau and knew at once that the other hunter, like herself, wanted to say yes but just couldn’t. Especially when they were on high alert. They had to consider Stephanie’s safety first.
“That isn’t necessary,” Harper said suddenly, sitting upright in his seat. “The porch off Elvi and Victor’s bedroom was an add-on sometime after the house was built. They’ve insulated it and put in an electric heater, but the wall between it and Elvi’s room is the original double-walled construction. It’s as