The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 585

Chapter 585: 585 | It’s Supposed to Make You Feel Watched [CASTLE BONUS]

The thing about Vivienne Cross is that she says "I’m not going to ask" and somehow makes it sound worse than an interrogation. Most people threaten you by promising to dig. She threatened me by promising not to.

"That’s supposed to make me feel better?" I said.

"No. It’s supposed to make you feel watched." She said it warm, like a compliment, and stepped closer until the grey cardigan brushed the doorframe. "Those are different feelings. People confuse them all the time."

Up close she smelled like nothing, which was somehow the most unsettling thing about her. Every other woman in my life came with a scent I’d catalogued against my will. Sloane and her vanilla and scorched cotton. Diane and her expensive botanical thing. Felicity and her vanilla-and-floral. Petra and the cleanser. Camille and cardamom. Rina and chamomile and wool. Vivienne wore nothing at all, and I understood after half a second that this was also on purpose, because a woman whose entire game was reading signals wasn’t about to hand anyone a signal for free.

The Oracle Feed pulled up her profile before I could stop it.

〘 Vivienne Cross. Legendary. Cipher / Cascade / Resonance Read / Static Field. Temptation Gauge: 12% — Curious. Note: subject is running her own read on you in real time. Her read is more accurate than mine. I find this concerning. 〙

Great. When the System finds something concerning, that’s my cue to walk backward into a wall and stay there.

"Twelve percent," I said, mostly to myself.

Vivienne’s smile didn’t move but something behind her eyes did. "You just did the thing," she said. "Eyes left. Lips moving. You read something that isn’t in the room."

"I zone out."

"You zone out at fixed intervals with fixed left-drift and your pupils don’t dilate the way a daydreaming person’s do. A daydream loses focus. You gain it." She let that sit. "Whatever you’re reading, it’s giving you information. I’ve watched Percy do the version where he mutters and it’s the same tell wearing a different coat."

I kept my face doing the thing faces are supposed to do when they’re not confirming that a dating-sim interface just told me a girl was more dangerous than the dating-sim interface.

"You should get some sleep," I said. "Classes Wednesday."

"That’s a deflection. A good one. You lower your voice at the end so it lands like a decision instead of an escape." She tilted her head the other way, which meant she was recataloguing me from a new angle, which meant I was standing in a hallway getting biopsied by a seventeen-year-old in a cardigan. "I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to notice that I’m telling you instead of using it."

"That sounds like a threat."

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