Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [118]
I did not nod. I did not move.
Like any other vampire, I can do the spooky no-motion thing, the one Adrian had already called me out over. If I’m paying attention, I can hide it fairly well, though not perfectly. If I’m not paying attention, or if I’m perfectly happy to have it noticed, I stick out like a dead squirrel in a pile of puppies.
So I did my best to stick out. And although I got the intermittent side-eye glance or outright leer, at no point did I feel that I was making anyone nervous, or interested in any fashion beyond the prurient.
GI Bolton continued. “After this general introduction, we’ll be adjourning to Rock Creek Park for some low-level introductory parkour—by which I mean, the kind that isn’t likely to get you killed, but ought to be fun.”
More nods. More murmurs. Not from me.
But I caught the lieutenant’s eye. Or he caught mine, as the case may be. Regardless, I saw him looking just a smidge too long, and something about the gaze felt intensely curious beyond the expected. I wanted to close my eyes—they were getting dry, pried open corpse-like as I sat there—but I didn’t. I held my unblinking ground and tried to use my psychic feelers, even though they were kind of shit in this sort of situation.
Too many people. Hard to single out just one. Too many shit-head boys thinking inappropriate (yet immensely flattering) thoughts about me.
Mostly I made them uncertain, it seemed. They didn’t know girls were invited into this clubhouse, and at least one asshole in the front row was hoping that I wasn’t any good at this parkour thing. I swear, some men just can’t stand the thought of being beaten by a woman. At anything. Funny. In my experience, and as a matter of irony, they’re the men who most desperately need a good ass-kicking.
I was aware of Cal’s … well, not his thoughts exactly. More like the presence of thoughts, or the presence of him—sitting ramrod-straight in his chair, displaying better posture than I’d seen him use yet. He was antsy, and fighting the impulse to look over his shoulder at me. For reassurance? For confirmation that I was present? I couldn’t tell. His motives were too tangled for me to do more than scan him. I wished for a second that I had Ian’s link with him, and I could pass along a tiny nudge of encouragement. But I didn’t have that link, so when I concentrated hard and thought, right at the back of his head, You’re doing a good job. Keep your eyes on the beefy grunt up front. I had no way of knowing whether or not he’d heard me.
“We have a van outside to take us to the park,” the grunt up front announced, and I realized I’d probably missed a few key phrases while I was doing my amateur-hour psychic spelunking. “Though the park is open to the public, we have special permission from the park service to cordon off one acre for use with our activities. Some of you guys who’ve been doing this longer can go ahead and get your pissing and moaning out of the way now, but the newbies have to start somewhere, and this is a safe place to test your physical capacity and your commitment to the sport. Any questions?”
I raised my hand so swiftly that it would’ve shocked anyone who’d watched me do it. But no one was watching, much to my chagrin. The hand successfully drew Bolton’s attention, though, and he pointed at me. The finger-point was accompanied by that gaze, the same one that I’d felt earlier. It was not exactly a knowing gaze, but a suspicious one.
I had the floor, so I asked, “I know what parkour is and I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine, but I want to know what that other thing is.”
“What other thing?”
“The other thing you said, at the beginning. Urban exploring. What’s that?” As if I didn’t know. I thought of my storehouse, and of Domino and Pepper, and it was all I could do to keep from seething.
I felt it more intensely, when he looked at me now. His interest was less a vague fog in a room full of mist, and more like a flashlight