Ingram hardly looked up from his plate, but Kenyon offered an excited wave that didn’t all at fit the way he looked.
“This is Shear.”
Andthat onecaught my full attention.The last member of the squad, the one I hadn’t met yet.I understood why, and for a moment, wondered if they’d hidden him on purpose to keep me from running out the moment I’d laid eyes on him.
He had eyes so bright blue that they could pass for neon.He had dark, curly hair piled on top of his head in a messy bun, the sides of his head shaved, and stark angles on his face that would have been fantastic on the cover of a magazine but seemed like way too much in real life.He was startling in his appearance, but even more so in the intensity of his gaze.He didn’t say hi to me, didn’t seem to acknowledge me—just stared.
“She’s lying,” he said softly, his voice distant.
“About what?”Carter asked.
“Everything.”Shear blinked quickly, as though waking up, then peered down at his plate and picked at the items there.
“Stay out of my head,” I snapped when his words made sense.He must have been a mentalist, one of the rare espers capable of telepathy, of mind reading, of any number of scary-as-shit skills.I turned my gaze on Carter, anger thrumming through my blood.“You never said you had a mentalist here.”
“I figured you’d know who we had, and I didn’t think it would matter.”
I pressed my lips together, hating the way I felt violated by just that tiny bit of interaction.Mentalists were theworst.I’d only dealt with one, and after that?
I’d refused to take jobs that forced me to interact with them.If I’d known…
Then I’d have done nothing, since this was my only option.It was easy to be up in arms when a person had choices, but I sure as fuck didn’t.
So instead, I just cast another glare in Shear’s direction.“Don’t get into my thoughts.”
“They’re messy,” Shear said, his gaze down.“I don’t want to be in there.”
Yeah, well, neither do I.
At least we could agree on that.
“So, let me give you the rundown,” Carter said.“Kenyon is a healer, and Ingram over there is a stealth specialist.”
I nodded, though I had to admit it surprised me a bit.Kenyon was so boisterous, large and rather dumb, I’d assumed he was combat.Ingram, with his flashy tattoos, hadn’t struck me as stealth based at all.In fact, I couldn’t imagine that man blending inanywhere.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I am?”Carter asked, a hint of false hurt in his voice.
“Why would I?”
“Curiosity?”
I made a point of rolling my eyes in as least a respectful way as possible.“It’s obvious.You have to be combat specialized.It’s the only thing missing to be a functional squad.Plus, given all the weapons were right behind your desk, it makes sense that you’d be the one using them.”
Carter grinned widely, and it seemed an honest smile for once.“Well, good to know we haven’t been saddled with an idiot.”
“If it was an idiot I could fuck, I’d prefer it,” Ingram added on.
Carter offered him an exasperated look, then returned his gaze to me.“On that subject, you’re sure about the whole no-touching thing?I mean, that’s a pretty hard line there.I’ve never seen a guide able to hold on to something like that.”
I shook my head in a quick jerk that caused my hair to spill forward from behind my ear.“Absolutely not.No touching at all.”
“What if you change your mind during?”Kenyon asked.“I mean, guides do that, right?They think they want one thing, then get into the mood halfway through.”The way he said it implied he’d experienced that before.
And he wasn’t wrong.
At least not about normal guides.
I just wasn’t normal.
