Well, duh, of course I knew the story of Sleeping Beauty. Only people with neglected childhoods or no contact with civilization had no notion of the story. But I kept those thoughts to myself—no point in scaring Mary away. My fingers went of their own will to fiddle with my hair as I gave the very safe "Yes".

A sheepish smile flickered at her lips as she slowly walked back to her desk. Her hippie braid was tangled at her shoulder. "I shouldn't have asked you that. I mean, who has not heard of Sleeping Beauty? I mean, she's famous and… well, you know."

I nodded. "I love fairy tales."

Any hope of a smile was instantly gone as a snippy wave blasted through Mary with a roll of her eyes and a gagging expression. "Of course you do. Everybody loves fairy tales."

I suddenly, fervently, and rather randomly hoped that Mary did not have some sort of gun under her desk. "Maybe we should talk another time, Mary." I tried to picture the page in my appointment book. I might have a girl to work on…"

"You don't," she said quickly. "Not for another seventeen minutes."

"But I haven't had my lunch…"

Mary snapped her fingers, and my peanut-butter sandwich and bottle of cranberry juice appeared on her desk. My sandwich. I could even see the missing crust I had torn away on the way to work. "Here. Eat." And with that, the shy little mouse returned. "Sorry. I didn't mean to explode like that. It's just that I really feel like talking sometimes. And I think I would rather you hear the story from me."

I barely heard her. All I could see was the magically appearing sandwich. Logically, I supposed that it was peanuts (no pun intended) next to the princesses and magic wands, but Mary hadn't used a magic wand. "Dude! How did you do that?"

She shrugged. "Magic. It's pretty easy. I know where the staff fridge is."

It would have taken me thirty seconds to grab it myself. "You can do magic?"

Another shrug. "Yeah. You can do hair. It's just one of my things. I'm not that good at it."

The girl had just transported my lunch. All thought of running, screaming, away from her vanished.

"I hope I didn't scare you, Tansy."

I laughed, then. I couldn't help it. My hand went to my face, somewhat out of embarrassment, and I laughed. "No, I'm sorry. You didn't. No, you did, but I can't understand why this would be scarier than anything else."

"I'm not very good at magic," she repeated.

She was better than I was. I walked to the desk and picked up the sandwich bag. I was still hungry. "What does that have to do with Sleeping Beauty?"

"That was me." Mary was back to staring at her feet. Nothing to look at. Her shoes were ugly and brown.

I thought of the princesses I had seen already. "That was you?" Mary was hardly the traditional princess. Not quite Cinder level, but still… Oh, I hoped I wasn't being judgmental. "You are Sleeping Beauty?"

Mary actually laughed. She looked up at me and laughed. "No, but thanks! I'm the idiot that made her fall asleep for a hundred years."

I stared. Suddenly Alexis' comment made perfect sense. "You what?"

"You said you knew the story. The infant princess is cursed to die by a slighted fairy. I was there."

I wasn't sure I understood. "You… went through one of the doors in the Salon?"

She sighed. "Tansy, this was over six hundred years ago." I must have kept staring, because she continued. "You're a human. One of the many humans that Rowan Maser has gathered to do things that don't require much magic. This was before he found the doors that led into the other worlds and times. This was the original Sleeping Beauty, not one of the followers. I'm not from this world. I'm a real fairy."

My peanut butter sandwich fell to the floor, and I was only glad I had not opened my cranberry juice.

She blushed. "No, that's not true."

Good. My pulse had jump started.

"I'm actually a half-fairy."

I failed to see the difference.

Mary gestured at her chair. "I'm so sorry. There I went again. Please, sit down."

I nodded faintly and made my way around the desk to her chair, into which I gratefully sat.

"Maybe I should stop talking. I just didn't want you to hear some of the gossip. None of it's slanderous, but no one knows the facts anymore."

I took a deep breath. It was remarkably helpful. "Actually, keep going. This is…" I forced a grin, "This is pretty cool." A true emotion I had found somewhere down deep in the shock.

She bit her lip. The half-fairy bit her lip. What the heck was a half-fairy? "Are you sure?"

I nodded again. "Yeah. I'll be fine. Just… keep talking, or else I'll suffer from curiosity." The good thing was that my body was coming into balance.

She finally fixed her awkward braid. "Like I said, I was never very good at magic. I was the youngest there. This adorable baby princess. We were all giving her gifts. I still remember mine. I wanted to make sure she never suffered a bad hair day." She giggled nervously. "Kinda silly, but I…"

"I think that's a perfect gift. To never experience uncooperative hair. Wow."

Mary beamed. "That's what I thought, too. But it never happened. That crazy old lady comes in, talks about this girl stabbing herself with a spindle, of all things, and dying. Who dies of a spindle? How dumb and clumsy do you have to be to kill yourself with a spindle?"

She had a point there.

"But what else were we supposed to think? And she was a powerful fairy, she could make it happen. I panicked. I was next, and how was great hair supposed to matter when you were dead? I just wanted to stop her from dying."

"So you weakened it?" I suggested.

She shook her head. "You know how the story always reads that a fairy is incapable of breaking another's fairy's spell? So not true. But I didn't know that until it was too late. I just cast an entirely different spell. Fall asleep for a hundred years. Not a few hours, not a few years. A century. An entire century."

I guess I had read the tale so many times that the idea didn't really faze me. "But you saved her life."

Mary's hand shot to her eyes. A few tears had escaped. "Saved her life? How? She's a kid when this happens. Sixteen years old. She wakes up to find herself with a complete stranger. Everyone she knew and cared about was long dead." She sighed and paused a moment, thinking. "You know what, Tansy? That the fairy tale doesn't tell you? She had a boyfriend before all of that happened. A really sweet guy she really liked. He wound up marrying someone else because he couldn't reach his girlfriend through the greenhouse disaster I had erected. And then he died of old age, and Sleeping Beauty was still sleeping away."

Boy. I had never thought of that before. "I had no idea. Mary, I'm so sorry."

She wiped her eyes again and nodded. "No, it's okay. It was my own fault, I was stupid, and now I'm getting the punishment I deserve."

"Punishment?" I echoed. "For that?"

"No one is really happy with me," she muttered. "Besides, you started this by asking how long I've worked here. I've been with Rowan Maser since the beginning of this little operation he has going on."

I almost from the chair. "Mr. Maser's evil?"

The sadness was gone, replaced by confusion. "What? No, no, he has nothing to do with this! I just have to help people, and for the time being I have to help Mr. Maser. He didn't ask for me, and he can't release me until my time with him is up and I move on to helping someone else, or my curse is broken."

I thought momentarily of how well I was taking this. "How is your curse broken?"

She smiled sweetly, one of the original Mary smiles I remembered. "I can't say. That's part of the curse."

This was supremely awkward. "Is… is there anything I can do to help?"

She shook her head, then looked at her watch. "You really ought to be getting back soon. You have an appointment."

I took a deep breath and stood up. Well. It had been a most informative lunch break. "Okay, then. I guess I'll talk to you later."

"Sorry for being such a pain."

"You're… you're fine." You're a half-fairy.

I headed back to the Salon, wondering if this had been another example of hazing.

The remainder of my afternoon was relatively mild. My batch of princesses and servant girls were no one truly extraordinary, though one did have the most wonderfully thick hair to which I had ever set scissors and blonde highlights. Another girl let me do her nails. French manicure. They looked fantastic when I was finished. There are few things in this world more satisfying than turning a chair to the mirror and listening to a girl squeal about how gorgeous she is. One girl had asked for red streaks, thick, vibrant, and noticeable. No one could notice streaks in a pile of wet hair—not until I parted the hair. It was like a switch of opera masks in that girl.

Linda told me I did too well for a girl from a local beauty school. Did no one appreciate that Monica's was the best in the state?

The day ended. I cleaned up my area, grabbed my things, and headed out to Mary's desk.

She wasn't there. Apparently she had already left.

I frowned. I had come up with a few more questions for her… like they were ever going to return to my mind again. I sighed and set my bag on her desk. Maybe I could leave her a note.

The door opened. Crap, Mary was back and I was fishing through her stuff.

But it wasn't Mary. It was Mr. Maser's son.

And there I was, leaning over the desk with a pack of sticky notes in my hand. Most awkward. "Hi."

He stared at me. "Hi. You're… Tansy, right?"

I held up the sticky notes. "I needed these."

"I can guess that."

I quickly stepped away from the desk and straightened my outfit. "It's nice to see you again. Really nice. We didn't get much of a conversation last time, did we?" I was very glad I had just freshened up my lip gloss.

He shrugged. "No, not really. But I was running late."

"Are you running late now?" I hoped my hair was decent. "Or did you just pop in to see your dad? I think he's still in his office."

The guy blinked. He was wearing faded jeans and an old t-shirt. It was amazingly sexy. "My dad? Oh… yeah. I mean no. I just came into…"

I realized that he had no idea what he was talking about. I laughed. "Lost, are we?"

He shrugged again.

"Listen, I don't even know your name. Just that you're Mr. Maser's son."

He grinned. It was positively the most adorable thing I had ever seen. "You can just call me Rowe. I hate the whole junior thing."

"Rowe," I repeated. Not too bad. He wasn't running off yet. I decided to make my move. "You aren't busy today, are you? I mean, I'm off work, and I missed my lunch so…"

"I'm not really supposed to date the fairy godmothers," he said quickly.

Ooh. Shy. Little boy. I loved it. "It's not a date. We will simply be eating at the same table."

He seemed to consider that, then gave his third shrug. "Okay."