"Oh, I figured outthe whole not-quite-Human thing a while ago. I just never confronted them with it."Bethany blushed and looked at her hands clasped on the table in front of her.

Something dropped insidehis chest and warmth stole over him. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to takethe paparazzi and the other bozos stealing her privacy, and send them to the DungeonDimensions for a couple hundred years. Nobody he knew blushed. The simple littlereaction made her seem small and delicate and vulnerable.

Which she was anythingbut. He had seen her first movie, the tough chick who turned her world upside downto save it, who devised bombs and weapons from nothing to protect innocents. Evenwith that blush fading from her cheeks, he sensed a lot of similarities betweenthe Bethany sitting before him now and the girl on the screen. It made nosense, but Harry didn't care.

"So, say something."Her smile went crooked.

"You're pretty calmabout it. A lot of people would probably be freaking out, faced with the fact ofa lot of other dimensions of reality, side-by-side with the one they know. I'vealways wondered what the CIA and FBI and all those foreign intelligence agenciesand governments would do, if they knew about the Fae realms. If they'd maybe tryto bomb us out of existence, or prosecute us as illegal aliens or whatever."

"So, who was herefirst? Fae or Humans?"

Harry sat for five secondswith his mouth hanging open, stumped by that question. That was definitely somethingfor the Ether Lexicon. For all he knew, that was part of the no-need-to-know informationthe Lexicon sometimes stubbornly refused to divulge. Then he laughed. Bethany blushedagain, but she grinned.

How come girls like herdon't exist in the Enclaves?