"What's wrong with your hair?"
"I cut it," she told me, shaking her head at herself. "It used to be long and I cut most of it off. That was actually what I was thinking about when you..."
"Abducted you," I supplied when she didn't want to say the words.
"How can you say it so easily?" she asked, brows knitting. "Like it's nothing? It's a big deal to kidnap someone. Even to bikers."
"I've told you, and shown you through example time and time again, that I am not a good man, Josephine. I won't apologize for it. It's how we have all survived this long."
"Just barely though, right?" she asked, looking over toward where Red's room was. "Maybe if you tried to be better men, you would be able to take her to a hospital for proper treatment instead of snatching people off of the streets."
"Near-death experiences make you mouthy," I observed, getting a strange choking laugh sound out of her.
"Near-death experiences make me realize you must find me valuable enough not to kill, so I figure I can get away with a lot more than I have so far," she told me, climbing out of the bed, grabbing frantically at the waist of my pants when they immediately started to fall down when she stood.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Down to the... what the hell?" she asked, reaching into her pants, pulling out the rice bag I'd forgotten all about.
"Heated rice pack," I explained.
"For like... cramps?" she asked, testing the weight of it in her hands.
"And warming up hypothermic women who don't realize how fragile they are."
"I'm not fragile," she snapped, lowering her eyes at me.
Right.
We were in the evolution of womanhood where words like that no longer made them feel cherished, but condescended to. As much as I researched the changes in the world, the social ones were the hardest for me to wrap my head around.
Where I came from, everyone had been equal since the beginning of time. This shit with the humans since the beginning of time, hating on one another for race or sex or orientation, it was absurd. But it kept us busy down in hell, so we couldn't bitch too much.
"In terms of how easily your life could end, yes you are. No more fragile than the average man in that respect, but still fragile. What?" I asked when her brows scrunched together, her lips pursed.
"Sometimes you say things in a really strange way," she said, shaking her head. "Like you're not from here or from this time or something. Maybe it's because you read so much," she decided. "My mom used to accidentally adopt a southern accent if she watched too many movies based there."
That was the perk of more modern humans, I guessed. They were more far removed from the 'myths' and 'lore' of old. When they encountered something that didn't fit in with their world, they found easier explanations that didn't involve the supernatural, heaven, or hell.
It made it easier to exist among them. Easier than when having a birthmark in the wrong place could end up with you being dragged through the streets and hanged.
Red always took an immense amount of pleasure in the fact that she was found guilty of witchcraft three times during the Burning Times. Luckily for us, we'd always managed to get her out before they tied her to a stake, lit her up, and realized she couldn't die.
Remember that time they caught me rolling around with the priest? she would bring up randomly through the years. And since a priest couldn't possibly get horny, I must have spelled him into it. Humans were a lot of fun when they were so dumb.
Only Red would consider witch trials—both the inquisition sort and the physical tests—fun.
That was why it was so hard to watch her waste away. She'd always been so full of life, someone who managed to take every shitty hand she was dealt and make a win come out of it.
"Yeah," I agreed, snapping out of my swirling thoughts. "That must be it."
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Ancient," I answered honestly, but got a snort out of her.
"You look like you're in your mid-thirties."
I did.
As I had for hundreds of years.
"How old are you?" I asked instead of confirming or denying her assumption.
"Twenty-seven."
Twenty-seven.
Twenty-seven years passed in a blink for us. But it was enough time for her to be conceived, born, to go through all those formative years, go to college, lose everyone who ever meant anything to her, then find herself abducted and held captive.
She wasn't going to make it to twenty-eight.
That thought shouldn't have bothered me.
But I couldn't shake the dark mood it made course through me.
"What?" she asked, shifting feet.
"Nothing."
"You look angry."
"That's my face," I told her, feeling my lips twitch despite myself when she let out a small laugh. Light, girlish. It wasn't a sound many women shared with me. I liked it more than I had a right to.