Of all the lines he could have opened with, that was not at all what she’d expected. Ages? Was he trying to make her feel old? She’d lived enough human lifetimes to know that while older men were seen as distinguished, older women were hags. And she might well have been the original hag in so many ways.
Her eyes hardened, and she tried not to breath too deeply. The smell of unwashed body, dirt, mildew, and rodent that was the redolent scent of poverty was coming off him in waves, although she could ignore that smell. She was almost used to it, seeing as it hadn’t changed in all the thousands of years she’d moved among humans. No. What made her not want to smell him was the scent of burned ozone that still seemed to crackle around him, whether it was from the drugs or his power. It reminded her too strongly of the Zeus-that-was, rather than this wreck in front of her. And now, face to face with him, she found she still hated that man.