“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.

“Anyway, after a few moments where neither of us said anything, Stella said she knew the things she’d done since being turned were unforgiveable, and that she was a dead soulless monster now, but that she used to be a good person and was trying to be one again for her baby. She swore she’d never ever hurt me, and said she needed me in her life. And so did her baby. I was the godmother, the only person she would trust her baby to if anything happened to her.