Bitten by Cupid(17)
Pushing that thought aside, she glanced at Stephanie, and said, “Of course we can shave. It doesn’t grow right back. Hairs are strands of dead cells or whatever, nanos don’t bother with them.”
“Oh.” Stephanie looked relieved, and asked, “So why don’t you shave?”
“I do, I just haven’t bothered in a while,” she muttered. Mirabeau had started shaving along with every other woman in the world when it had become popular. But it had been so long since she’d been interested in dating or anything of that nature that she’d stopped bothering.
“What’s it like?” Stephanie asked, as Mirabeau finished donning the joggers and reached for the black tank top.
“What?” she asked absently as she pulled the top on over her head.
“Being so old?”
Mirabeau turned on the girl with exasperation as she tugged the tank into place. Before she could snap at her, however, Stephanie said quickly, “I’m not trying to insult you, I just mean, you know…what’s it like to live so long?”
Mirabeau forced herself to relax and shrugged. “I don’t know. It just is. I guess you’ll find out in time.”
“Yeah, in a century or so,” Stephanie said dryly, then fell silent and watched as Mirabeau moved to the mirror over the dresser to run her fingers through her damp hair, trying to bring some order to the tangled strands.
It was an impossible task without any sort of brush, Mirabeau decided, scowling at her reflection and wondering if she could remove the remaining extensions or if had to be done by a hairdresser. It had hurt like the devil when the fellow in the sewers had ripped out that clump of extensions, but she’d checked and didn’t appear to have been snatched bald back there. Perhaps she could just yank out the remaining extensions as well.
“Does it ever get better?”
“What?” Mirabeau asked with distraction.
“The pain of losing them?” Stephanie said quietly, and Mirabeau was just wondering if she meant her hair extensions, when the girl added, “Tiny told me you lost your family too, and I…It hurts so much sometimes, and I can tell you still hurt, and I…”
Mirabeau stopped messing with her hair and turned to peer at the girl. There was real agony on her face, which made panic well up inside Mirabeau. She wasn’t good with emotional stuff. In fact, she generally avoided situations that involved it like the plague. However, Stephanie was hurting, and there was no one else there to help her. Swallowing thickly, she moved to the side of Stephanie’s bed to sit on the edge…and stared at her briefly before reluctantly raising a hand to set on the girl’s leg in what she hoped was a comforting touch. Clearing her throat, she said, “It does hurt, and I am hurting right now because your situation reminds me of my own, and it hurts me at holidays and special occasions too, but it eases a bit, gets easier to bear…and you do have Dani for those holidays.”
Stephanie swallowed and nodded solemnly. “You don’t even have that, do you?”
Mirabeau felt her throat close up. She grimly swallowed away the lump and tried desperately to change the subject by asking, “Do you want me to put one of your tattoos on for you?”
Stephanie hesitated, eyeing her silently, and Mirabeau knew the little brat was wading through her thoughts. It made her wonder how the hell the kid kept doing that. She was a new turn. New turns couldn’t read even mortals as a rule. It was a skill they had to learn. She shouldn’t be able to read at all yet, let alone someone as old as Mirabeau.
“Really?” Stephanie asked, sitting up a little straighter and pleasure twitching the corners of her mouth. “I know Dani can’t read minds yet, but I thought that was just her.”
“No, it’s not just her,” Mirabeau assured her quietly, relieved to have the subject changed and the kid looking less weepy. She didn’t know what she would have done if the girl had turned on the waterworks. Seeing that she was pleased by her unusual ability, Mirabeau added, “You seem to be a special case. A natural reader. It’s rare.”
Stephanie grinned and held up the sheet of tattoos she had been clutching. “Which one do you want?”
Mirabeau blinked. “I didn’t mean I’d put a tattoo on me. I meant I’d put one on you for you.”
“Oh I know,” Stephanie said with a grin. “But I don’t want you to mess it up. We’ll do you first. That way we can figure out what we’re doing.”
Mirabeau gave a small, disbelieving laugh at the words. “So we experiment on me so that we don’t mess up when we put on yours?”