She isn’t the kind of woman I’m attracted to at all.

For one thing, she’s about a foot taller than me. I’m fairly tall, as my people go; it’s disconcerting to be the one looked down on. She’s also skinny as hell. She looks as if a stiff breeze would snap her in half. She’s all bones; all hard angles and sharp lines. There’s nothing soft about her.

Her skin is landwight-dark, and her hair is a rich blond, both of which would be fine on any other woman. Her eyes, though… They’re gold, which is always an uncanny color for eyes. Perhaps even that wouldn’t be so bad, except that she doesn’t blink, and she sees everything. I swear, assassins’ knives are duller than her gaze.

Then there’s that damnable grin. She’s always grinning – in a toothy, I’m-going-to-rake-you-over-hot-coals-and-laugh-about-it manner. Okay, she’s not always grinning, but when she isn’t, she’s wearing that insufferably smug I-still-know-more-than-you-do expression that makes me want to slap her, except if I did I wouldn’t live long.

More than anything else though, she’s creepy. She’s the stereotypical creep in the dark alley, made even more unnerving by her preference for broad daylight. She sees everything, and forgets none of it, which triggers a constant caught-with-the-hand-in-the-cookie-jar reaction in everyone around her. Her whole attitude is dismissive; the world is a dark joke to her – and yet you know just by looking at her that to mess with her is to risk life and limb.

No, I’m not attracted to her at all.

Not even if she is intelligent, with a wry sense of humor and scathing wit, an admirable inability to abide fools, and an odd magnetism that draws everyone to her like moths to a flame…

Oh, damn.

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