She -- as she was now -- had a grace that wasn't inborn but was no less impressive for it. There was a shudder of his eyelids, close to a blink, a mimicry of human behavior.
There was something different about her, something other. If she was a human, she was not only human.
Perhaps like he was -- once human and now not. Or perhaps she'd never been human, but there was something other in her that his senses couldn't pin down. He glanced over her shoulder to the steadily lightening sky, a herald of doom for his race. He didn't have the time to search -- see, hear, smell -- to determine what she was.
"And hopefully no rotten stepsisters with an equally horrible stepmother," he quipped back with a small, tight smile. Whatever, or whoever, she was -- he wasn't going to trade her a magicked coin for anything and certainly not for nothing. "I trust you can get home safely." She wore capability like Marta did not and he trusted in that. "Have a good evening."
There was one last glance over her shoulder before he stepped back, turned, and sprinted for his car.