"My dirty underwear."
She scoffed as she tried to touch him. "I don't want that. C'mon, Dev."
He shied away again. "C'mon Dev nothing. My thoughts are my own and I don't see you letting me mind meld you."
She kept trying to touch him, but he was really quick and darted just out of her grasp every time. "That's 'cause I have nothing to show you that's important to you. I just want to see what the Daimon looked like. That's the only thing I'll take. I promise."
"Yeah, right. Can you honestly control your powers that well?"
She blushed.
"Ah, see, I knew it. You're going to go digging in there and I'm going to forget how to do origami or something. Or worse, I'll start peeing in corners and burping at inappropriate times."
"Like you don't do that anyway."
"Are you profiling me because I'm a guy or a bear?" His tone was highly offended. "Lady, you don't know me well enough to make that comment and for the record, I have a lot of unbearish habits. I even drink tea in a crappy pink-flowered cup. Have I said how much my sister annoys me?"
She ignored his tirade as she brought him back on task. "It won't hurt."
"Yeah, and the flashy thing is just an eye test."
What in the world was he talking about now? "The what?"
"Flashy thing? Haven't you ever seen Will Smith in Men in Black?"
"Uh...no."
He sighed. "You're so deprived."
"And you're so peculiar. Is there anyone else who saw the Daimon who isn't afraid of me?"
"I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid of the brain damage you're going to give me. No offense, but I need my last three working brain cells."
"I've never given anyone brain damage by doing this."
"Uh-huh." He wrinkled his nose. "That you know of. Have you done CAT scans on everyone you've done this with? No. Do you know whether or not you took out their long-term or short-term memory portions of the brain?"
No, but that really wasn't an issue. She wasn't going to radiate him or anything. "Paranoid much?"
"Absolutely. You watch this door for a hundred years and see some of the shit that comes through here. You'd be paranoid too. I don't want no mojo hocus pocus stirring in my head. If I want to play head games, I'll download Sudoku on my iPhone."
Sam held her hands up in surrender. There was no use arguing with someone who was this stubborn. "Fine. I'll do it without touching you."
"Ah, now that's just rude." He narrowed his gaze on her.
Sam knew he had something in mind and when he spoke again, she gaped at his intentions. "Fine then if that's what you want. You go digging in my head and I'm going to stand here and undress you with my eyes until you're buck naked. Just so you know, I'm putting you in a sheer red thong. No bra...maybe a pair of red pasties...no, better yet, strawberry-flavored nipple paint and I'm coating your entire body in honey."
Sam grimaced. "You're a male pig."
"I'm a bearswain and you're lucky I'm tolerating you to pick through my brain. Last person tried that, I ate their head, and besides, I should get something out of this before you destroy my frontal lobe and make me drool on myself and relearn how to use eating utensils. Have you ever tried doing that when you're a bear? It wasn't easy the first time. Last thing I want to do is relearn it at my archaic age."
She had to roll her eyes again at his unwarranted hysteria. "I don't think that's the part of the brain that controls your drool."
"But you don't know for sure, now do you? No, you don't. 'Cause you're a Daimon necrologist, not a Were-Hunter neurologist. You don't know what damage you're going to do until it's too late and then an I'm-sorry-Dev-I-burned-out-your-brain ain't worth squat. Probably won't even understand the apology because you'll hose my Wernicke's area of the brain and set me back to infancy."
Ignoring him, she closed her eyes and reached out to him with her powers. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't like doing this."
"For the record, it don't. But while you're in there if you happen to see where I lost my nano, let me know. Been looking for it for days now. And the least you could do, Ms. Intrusive, is tell me where to find it."
He was so strange.
Sam drew a deep breath and while he was distracted, reached out and wrapped her hand in his hair before laying her bare fist on his neck. She laughed triumphantly while he cursed. But she had him now and he couldn't pull away without losing hair. She had no idea why getting something over on him made her feel so good, but it did.
Until she realized that she wasn't reading anything from him.
Nothing.
What the...?
It wasn't possible. She touched someone and they bled out thoughts. But not this time. Dev was completely blank to her.
She had nothing.
He snatched her hand away from his neck and grimaced as he lost some hair. "That was a dirty trick."
She ignored his anger. "You're empty."
"Well, you ain't so great yourself, lady."