Ruby Red

She approached me again today.

"I've been watching you," she said. "I was too hasty last time."

"I'm still not interested," I said.

"Yes, I know," she said. She smiled and her lips were a very vivid shade of red. "I've noticed a lot. You don't seem to worry about much. Even when when Scarlet-marked were here, you didn't worry. You do know what I am?"

"I try to keep up," I said. "They call you the Red Cap, right?"

She smiled. "Well, right now I'm Ruby, but that's right."

"Wikipedia says you're a murderous little dwarf."

She laughed and her laughter echoed across the silent pavement and shuttered windows. "Well," she said, "perhaps I was long ago. But I think I prefer...different forms these days. Do you know what they used to call me, back in the old days? Back when they would find desiccated corpses empty of blood and assume it was some supernatural creature?" Her eyes bored into mine. "They called us a vampire back then. No silly notions about sunlight or sparkling. We were a beast to them, foreign and strange, with ravenous appetites." She licked her lips. "And they were so afraid of us. But you are not afraid. Tell me why?"

"Maybe later," I said.

Ruby Tuesday laughed again and said, "Yes, later. I believe I shall come back later." She stepped away quickly into the shadows.

She's wrong. I am afraid. Not of her, but of what she might make me reveal. That she might force me to open the box.