Chapter 1

"What do you think of the sign?"

Clare set down a box of desk supplies and a bouquet of fresh cut flowers, and frowned. "Well, to be honest, Sam, I wasn't going to say anything about it, but I don't think the crow landing on your head this morning is a good omen. It means your life is about to go crisis central. But I'm here to help, and you know I'll do what I can to keep you from going outright insane."

"No . . . I meant the sign on the door." I nodded to where a local sign painter was putting away her stencils and paints.

"Oh. Mmm." Clare tipped her head and considered the freshly painted words on the upper half of the open office door. "EYE SCRY, SAMANTHA COSSE AND CLARE BENNET, DISCREET PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. It's nice, but I still think it's a bit too strange. People are going to think we're not normal private investigators."

"We aren't normal, Clare."

"Speak for yourself. I'm as normal as they come." She plucked a tulip from the bouquet and went to the window, using her elbow to wipe a small clean patch on the grimy glass. "Isn't it a lovely morning?"

I glanced out the window at the grey, sodden-looking sky, and shrugged as I arranged paper in my new printer/copier/fax machine. "It's a typical Scottish May: grey, cold, and wet."

"When I woke up this morning," Clare said dreamily, unconsciously striking an elegant pose that made her a star on the fashion runways, "the dew had kissed all the sweet little flowers just as if faeries had danced upon them with damp little slippers. Don't you think that's lovely? I thought that up all by myself."

"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."

"You're a fine one to talk about denial!" she said, marching over to her desk, a trail of tulip petals gently drifting to the floor behind her. "You deny your heritage every chance you get."

I laughed. I couldn't help it—the mere thought of me being able to ignore who I was, was beyond ridiculous. "There's no way I could deny my parentage—not after growing up the only kid in my neighborhood whose mother is a bona fida poetry-spouting, pointy-eared, gonna-live-forever elf. Years of Keebler jokes made sure I knew just how different I was, and we won't even go into what a mention of Lord of the Rings does to me. What I've never understood is how you can accept the fact that my mother is an elf, and yet insist that there are no such things as faeries."

"I refuse to talk to you when you get in that mood," Clare said, and picked up an empty milk jug she'd brought to serve as a vase. "I won't let you ruin the excitement of the day with all that nonsense."

Copyright © 2006 by Marthe Arends