Allie chuckled as she watched him hurry away from the table, and then set her own cards down and sat back in her seat, her eyes sliding again to the clock. It was a little after noon. Magnus had been gone for a couple of hours.

“He’s fine.”

Allie glanced around with a start at those words and found herself peering at a young blonde she hadn’t yet met. All the immortals she’d met so far looked to be around twenty-five or thirty, but this woman looked a little younger. She would have said somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one. Leonora had given her a rundown of everyone in the house as she’d taken her temperature and blood pressure the last time. It had helped to pass the time, she supposed. But now she peered at the blonde and ran through the names and circumstances Leonora had given her and guessed, “Stephanie?”

Nodding, the blonde moved around the counter into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door to peer in at the contents. “Magnus is fine. He needed a few things and wanted time to think. He’ll be back.”

“Oh,” Allie murmured. She didn’t bother to ask how the girl had known what she was worrying about. Everyone here could read her mind. Except for the kids, of course.

“So far.”

“What?” Allie asked uncertainly.

“I said, so far. So far, the kids can’t read and control you,” she explained, retrieving juice from the fridge and pouring herself a glass. “That will change in another year or so.”

“So I gather,” Allie said unhappily, her mind turning to that worry. She kept a lot from Liam. She didn’t want him living in fear, so she kept their troubles to herself. He had no idea why they had to move so often. But she wouldn’t be able to keep it from him once he could read her mind.

Stephanie snorted, drawing Allie’s attention back to the young woman as she put the juice away and picked up her glass. “That’s the least of your worries.”

“Is it?” Allie asked warily.

Stephanie nodded and said solemnly, “You should be more concerned about when he starts being able to control you.”

“Liam?” Allie asked, her eyes widening, and then she shook her head. “He wouldn’t—”

“He’s a child,” Stephanie said with a shrug. “They make bad choices all the time. It’s why they need parents.”

“And he has one. Me,” Allie said firmly. “I’ll teach him that it’s wrong to control people and read their minds.”

“You can’t teach him it’s wrong to read minds,” Stephanie said firmly. “The nanos gave us that skill for a reason. Survival. He needs to know if the people he encounters are a threat.”

“But I’m not a threat. I’m his mother. He shouldn’t read me.”

“But he will,” she said with certainty. “And he’ll control you too. He won’t be able to help himself.”

Allie took a deep breath and shook her head. He wouldn’t. He loved her.