Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [761]
I was so interested in her—she was projecting her sexuality so strongly, she was so very much a prostitute—that I slipped through the crowd to track her more closely. Absorbed in my goal, I didn’t think about her noticing me, but she seemed to feel my eyes on her and she looked over her shoulder to watch me approach. The man she was with was talking to another vampire, and she didn’t have to kowtow to him just for the moment, so she had time to eye me with sharp suspicion. I stood a few feet away to listen to her, out of sheer ill-bred curiosity.
Freaky girl, not one of us, does she want him? She can have him; I can’t stand that thing he does with his tongue, and after he does me he’ll want me to do him and that other guy—geez, do I have some spare batteries? Maybe she could go away and stop staring?
“Sure, sorry,” I said, ashamed of myself, and plunged back into the crowd. Next I went over the servers hired by the hotel, who were busy circulating through the crowd with trays of glasses filled with blood and a few actual drinks for the humans scattered around. The servers were all preoccupied with dodging the milling crowd, not spilling, sore backs and tender feet, things like that. Barry and I exchanged nods, and I caught a trailing thought that had Quinn’s name embedded, so I followed that trail until I found it led to an employee of E(E)E. I knew this because she was wearing the company T-shirt. This gal was a young woman with a very short haircut and very long legs. She was talking to one of the servers, and it was definitely a one-sided conversation. In a crowd that was noticeably dressed up, this woman’s jeans and sneakers stood out.
“—and a case of iced soft drinks,” she was saying. “A tray of sandwiches, and some chips. Okay? In the ballroom, within an hour.” She swung around abruptly and came face-to-face with me. She scanned me up and down and was little impressed.
“You dating one of the vamps, blondie?” she asked. Her voice was harsh to my ears, a northeastern clipped accent.
“No, I’m dating Quinn,” I said. “Blondie, yourself.” Though at least I was naturally blond. Well, assisted natural. This gal’s hair looked like straw . . . if straw had dark roots.
She didn’t like that at all, though I wasn’t sure which part of it displeased her most. “He didn’t say he had a new woman,” she said, and of course she said it in the most insulting way possible.
I felt free to dip into her skull, and I found there a deep affection for Quinn. She didn’t think any other women were worthy of him. She thought I was a slow southern girl who hid behind men.
Since this was based on our conversation of less than sixty seconds, I could excuse her for being wrong. I could excuse her for loving Quinn. I couldn’t forgive her overwhelming contempt.
“Quinn doesn’t have to tell you his personal information,” I said. What I really wanted was to ask her where Quinn was now, but that would definitely hand the advantage to her, so I was going to keep that question to myself. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work, and I assume you do, too.”
Her dark eyes flashed at me, and she strode off. She was at least four inches taller than me, and very slim. She hadn’t bothered with a bra, and she had little plum-like boobs that jiggled in an eye-catching way. This was a gal who’d always want to be on top. I wasn’t the only one who watched her cross the room. Barry had jettisoned his fantasy about me for a brand-new