“By taking it until I’m changed and walking across the Border.”

“And if you take it ‘til you’re dead, that’ll prove it doesn’t work, and much good it’ll do you.”

“No. That’ll just prove it doesn’t work on me.”

We stared at each other again. Her grasp of the scientific method beat the hell out of mine, and her need to believe trumped that. She needed to believe in this transformation, even if it killed her.

“Where are you getting it?”

“If it doesn’t work, why do you care?” she asked, with a haughty little smile that said she knew exactly why I cared, and she wasn’t going to tell me anything.

“He’s right,” said Tick-Tick over my shoulder, in an unsteady voice. Not a voice I was used to from her. I turned and found her face was pretty unsteady, too. “You have… what’s been done to you is unnatural. You must stop taking this—no good can come of going on.”

Tiamat gave the Ticker the once-over; the sullen anger that seemed to be her most common expression mixed with envy and a terrible wistfulness. “Where do you get off?”

“I’m… I’m sorry. I can tell___What could make you do this to yourself?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t know. Coming from the Elflands, where everybody is so beautiful that nobody thinks it’s important. Well, in the World it’s different. If you’re not beautiful, they make sure you know it’s the most important thing ever. So what if you’re smart, or nice? If you’re not pretty, they tell you to settle for what you can get, and what the hell did you expect, anyway? So don’t tell me to settle, pretty girl. Pretty elf girl. I’ve tried that.” Tiamat bit her lip suddenly and grabbed up the rack of pencils. For a moment I thought they’d spill, but she righted them and slammed them onto a shelf.

I almost said, “I’m sorry;” I confess I was that stupid. Not stupid enough to let the words get to my tongue, though.

“Better think twice about trying to cut off the passport,” Tiamat said, still with her back to us. “There’s a lot of us who think it’s our big chance. People don’t like losing their big chance.”

The passport. Well, everything had a name. “It’s not a passport to the Elflands,” I said. “If you change your mind, just ask around. I’m not hard to find.”

I had to take Tick-Tick by the arm and propel her out of the store, because she seemed to have forgotten how to go by herself.