“Interpreters dress better than I expected for people who are heard but rarely seen.” The comment popped out of his mouth.
She gave him a glance that clearly said she found the comment odd, but shrugged. “Sorry you had to bother wearing a suit. We’re professionals. Plus, on occasion, we are asked to perform individual interpretation, which requires being seen.”
He rumbled an unintelligible reply. The suit didn’t bug him. In his line of work, disguises were often necessary, so he wore suits with practiced ease. That wasn’t why he’d said it. He knew exactly where the thought originated. From the way her skirt hugged her curves and how her heels made her legs incredibly sexy. But saying it out loud? What on earth was wrong with him today?
“In here.” She turned the handle on one of a series of doors spaced across one wall and led the way into the French interpreter’s booth. The space was glass-fronted, impersonal, and well lit, about the size of a jail cell. In the cramped area, Quinn’s light scent, flowery and sweet, stole around him. Through the one-way glass, the desks of the delegate hall spread out in a semi-circle, sloping, stadium-style, to the podium center stage below. The delegate hall was currently about half-full, occupied mostly by men in suits.
Quinn took one of the two seats and pulled her computer out of her bag, setting it on the desk. “Sarah will be in any second, which means, unfortunately, you’ll have to stand.”
Disregarding her, he took the other seat. “No, she won’t.”
She swung her gaze away from her computer screen to stare at him. “What do you mean?”
“Sarah’s on paid vacation. I take it she won an all-expenses paid trip to Paris. I’m your partner for the foreseeable future.”
Crossed arms and narrowed eyes greeted his statement. “I assumed you were here for protection.”
“Too conspicuous. Better if I’m here in a professional capacity.”
“Fan-frickin-tastic,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?”
She flicked a wide-eyed glance, full of surprise, his way. Then her expression blanked and she went all professional on him. “What languages do you speak?”
Unaccustomed amusement tickled at him. He got the impression she hadn’t meant to say her first comment out loud. “English.”
She waited for him to continue. “And…?”
“That’s all.”
Quinn’s lips flattened. “So how will you be translating, exactly?”
“I’m going to borrow your power.”
She straightened in her seat. “How?”
“My ability is psychometry. Among other things, I have Ability Learning and Knowledge Replication. As long as I’m touching you, I can mimic your abilities, including anything you’ve learned through experience.”
She sat back in her seat, mollified. “I see. Handy trick.”
“It has its uses.” Why wasn’t she more impressed? In the Psy world, psychometry was a rare and coveted skill.
“As long as you don’t—” Quinn broke off with a barely audible gasp. If he’d been an empath, he’d bet anger would be sparking off her now.
Cain turned to follow the direction of her gaze to find a group of men entering the delegation hall. “Is that them?”
“Yes.” The word came out like an expletive.
Despite himself, Cain was impressed. Most would cower and hide in the face of that kind of danger. Not Quinn Ridley. Instead she was fuming. As fast as she’d jumped at the opportunity to help take the demons down, he got the impression this was a personal vendetta for her.
At the same time, he had to wonder if her sense of self-preservation was off. Not only was she willing to go after demons, but she showed zero trepidation around him. Most of the time, people avoided him, gave him a wide birth. Not that he deliberately pushed them away. Max said he had one of those faces. However, Quinn didn’t act intimidated or nervous of him. Annoyed—yes. Intimidated—no.
She pulled her glare away from the Mauritollan delegation and raised her hands to the keyboard. Hands which trembled uncontrollably. So Quinn was afraid. The strangest urge to protect her thrummed through Cain, and a bitter tang hit his tongue. If he didn’t know better, he’d say he tasted fear, but that couldn’t be right. Granted, his original job was to get Quinn out of the situation safely, but he never got personally involved. Never.
“Don’t worry. I’m here.” The words were out before he consciously thought them. Another odd reaction, all these thoughts coming out as words. Did she have another power he wasn’t aware of yet?
Cain almost laughed out loud at the incredulous glare she slowly turned his way, those grey-blue eyes disbelieving.
“Lucky me.”
He couldn’t miss the sarcasm. Strangely, instead of finding her sass annoying, he fought another urge to chuckle. Damn, he must finally be losing it. Psys had a higher rate of mental illness than most. Still, the fear that had her shaking needed to be addressed. She needed to know he had her back.
He held her gaze with his steady one until her shoulders dropped slightly. After a deep breath, she nodded, and the acceptance of his offer of protection hit him like an arrow to the heart. He would protect her from harm, he silently vowed, at the same time perplexed about his unusual reaction to her. While he helped a lot of people in his line of work, emotional attachment wasn’t his thing.
“Time to get to work,” she murmured, businesslike demeanor firmly in place, and she tuned him out as she turned back to her computer and flipped on her microphone.
Almost immediately she began translating, taking notes here or there, he guessed to help her remember what the delegate had said. Cain watched and listened in fascination as, real-time, she took what was being said in English and repeated it in French with hardly a pause and no ums or uhs or other verbal fillers. Making it more difficult in this instance, the delegate from China was speaking. Consequently, the Chinese interpreter would first interpret any spoken Chinese into English, and Quinn would translate into French. Not that she needed the assist, but still.
After twenty minutes, she indicated he should switch on his own microphone. Before he did, he took her hand—warm and delicate under his grasp. Momentarily, he was distracted by an odd sense of peace that washed through him at her touch, but shook it off and closed his eyes, concentrating. A sensation like ice slithered up his fingertips, through his nerves, up his spine and, like shards splintering through him, into his brain. Gaining someone else’s knowledge, even temporarily, was never pleasant. Agony might be a better term.
Suddenly, a cacophony of noise fractured through his mind as her ability to understand all communications kicked in. Holy crap. She hadn’t been kidding. What she hadn’t mentioned, however, was she received everything, like every radio station playing at the same time. Even phone calls, the computer thinking through its programming. Everything. The urge to slap his hands over his ears and make it stop was overwhelming. How had she not gone crazy listening to all the noise?
His Knowledge Replication took over next. That part usually took longer to sink in. Gradually, he found he could tune out the noises, focusing only on what he wished. He wondered how long it had taken her to master the skill? How long had she lived with the voices and chaos inside her head?
As the pain of his ability faded to prickling, he had everything he needed. After what constituted ages to him, but probably only a minute to her, he opened his eyes to find Quinn watching with avid curiosity. Like a seasoned vet, he switched on his microphone and started interpreting the words being said in the delegation hall on the other side of the glass.