"Very, um…" Clare blinked silver-tipped lashes at me. I relented under her hopeful expression. "Very poetic. But not terribly accurate, is it?"

She blinked again, her large blue eyes clouded with confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Well… just look at you." I waved a hand toward her torso. "You're the opposite of short, sturdy, dark-haired me—you're tall, lovely, elegant, and have that silver blond hair that everyone seems to rave about, but you're hardly in a dancing-on-the-dew-kissed-flowers sort of form, are you? You'd squash the little buggers flat were you to try it in your human form."

She rolled her expressive eyes and bopped me on the arm with her tulip. Clare always had flowers with her—she couldn't help it any more than my mother could. It was just part of their genetic makeup. "You're going to start that silly business again, and I won't listen to it, I simply won't listen to it."

I took her by both arms and shook her gently. "You're a faery, Clare. It's time you face up to that fact. You're a faery, your real name is Glimmerharp, and you were left with my aunt and uncle because your faery parents wanted you to have a better life than running around in wet shoes, stamping dew onto flowers. I doubt if they would have done so had they known that your idea of a better life is to parade up and down in scanty lingerie in front of strangers with cameras, but that's neither here nor there. You are a faery, and the sooner you admit that, the happier everyone around you will be."

"I am not a faery; I am an underwear model."

"You're both."

"Oh!" She plucked a piece of the smooth red tulip's flower and popped it in her mouth. "You take that back!"

"I won't," I said calmly, releasing her to hook the printer up to the laptop that sat on the scarred and battered oak desk I'd claimed as my own. "It's the truth, and you know it, even if you are in denial."