“If you want me to come quietly, you’re going to have to stop carrying me over your shoulder,” I say.
The Bluecap flops onto his back so he’s next to me, turning his head to look in my eyes.
“What if I like it?”
“What if I don’t?”
He seems to contemplate this suggestion, blinking slowly, like a drunkard when presented with a simple problem his brain is too intoxicated to process.
“If you don’t like it…” he says slowly, “then I’ll not do it?”
When he said he was my worst nightmare, did he mean he was also the worst assassin? And probably the worst ever kidnapper?
“I can walk, if you let me.”
“I like carrying you.”
“I think we’ve established that isn’t a good thing.”
He huffs out a breath at the sky above us as if I’m asking him very hard questions.
“Can I carry you a bit?” he suggests, hopefully.
I contemplate whether this is a compromise or not and if any of it really matters as it seems I’m going to end up dead at the end of the day.
“Yes, but not over your shoulder, and I also get to walk too,” I say quickly.
He turns his head to me again, grinning wildly and rather wetly, as if I’ve given him all the riches in the world and he’s a gold addict.
“I like that idea.”
“Not under your arm either or any other weird positions which might make me sick,” I say in a warning tone.
“I know how to carry females,” he says in a tone which suggests he has probably never been near a female in his entire life.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
The Bluecap gives me another long stare with a slow blink at the end. I’m wondering if he is drunk, although given the monsters I met when my friend got married to her Barghest mate, they have a default which could be mistaken for intoxication.
“I will let you judge my carrying, Kaitlyn,” he says at last, sitting up, his antennae rising from his hair and catching the wind.
“How do you know my name?”
He turns to look at me. “I watch,” he says, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
“What’s your name, given I haven’t been able to watch you?” I demand.
The Bluecap lets out a brief pant of breath. “You’d watch me?”
“I like watching people…and Bluecaps,” I say, which is not completely untrue. “Beyond the veil, I loved nothing better than sitting with a cup of coffee in a cafe and watching people go by. Making up stories about who they were and where they were going.”
His eyes are huge saucers. “What’s a cafe?” he asks. “And what’s coffee?”
“A cafe is where people go to get something to eat or drink or both. Coffee is a hot drink humans like, although it doesn’t seem to have made it to the Yeavering,” I explain.
“Eat or drink…” he says carefully while his blood red eyes search my face. “Is it good, this coffee?”
“I like it. Lots of humans like it.”
