Fairy Bad Day

Fairy Bad Day - By Amanda Ashby

CHAPTER ONE

Demon, definitely,” Emma Jones whispered as another sophomore made his way from Principal Kessler’s office to where everyone was waiting on the grassy quad. It was late afternoon and the sun was still lingering. Two seconds later the student lifted both his index fingers up onto his head to mimic demon horns and let everyone know that he was now a demon slayer.

“That’s incredible. How do you do it?” Loni demanded, her dark violet eyes almost as wide as the large silver hoops that were hanging from her ears. (The same earrings that Loni had dragged Emma all around town searching for, before finally deciding to buy them from the first store they’d looked in.)

“It’s a gift.” Emma grinned and shrugged as she marked her chart. So far she had managed to correctly call the designation of eighty of their fellow Burtonwood Academy classmates. Though to be fair, it wasn’t that difficult. For instance, Loni, with her small frame and sharp mind, was always going to be much better at killing wily goblins than brawny harpies, whereas their friend Tyler, who was long and lean, was perfectly suited to hunt the six-foot firebreathing salamanders to which he had just been designated. Then there were the overbulked guys like the Lewis twins, who had ogre slayer written all over them.

“Well, it’s a gift that should be harnessed.” Tyler looked at the chart, his bright red shaggy hair poking out in all directions like an untamed lion’s mane. “I mean, if you’d told me sooner how good you were at predicting this stuff, I would’ve gotten some bets going. We could’ve cleaned up.”

“Tyler,” Loni chided, “not everything has to be about making money and gambling.”

“Want to bet?” Tyler grinned at his own joke as Loni rolled her eyes. “Besides, considering the amount you spent on that weird-looking purple coat the other day, I thought you would appreciate the extra cash.”

“It’s not weird, it’s gorgeous,” Loni corrected him in a stern voice. “Anyway, my horoscope said purple was my lucky color. What was I supposed to do? Ignore the sign?”

“Er, when the sign makes you spend a hundred dollars? Then yes, definitely just ignore it,” he retorted, causing Loni to give him a swift punch in the arm.

Emma turned her attention back to her chart. Loni and Tyler had been bickering ever since they’d started Burtonwood Academy when they were eight years old (apparently it was because they were a Taurus and Leo, respectively), and so she hadn’t really expected them to take a break just because they’d both received their dream designations. Of course the designations wouldn’t be formally confirmed until the induction ceremony in six weeks, but everyone knew that once Principal Kessler had given you the all-important piece of paper, there was no going back.

“Earth to Emma.” Tyler suddenly waved a hand in front of her eyes, causing her to blink. “So has anyone been given dragons yet?”

She shook her head. “Nope, not yet.” Which wasn’t really a surprise, since not only were dragons the hardest to kill out of all the elementals, they were also the creatures that the fewest people showed an affinity for. And there had never been more than one dragon slayer inducted in any given year.

“But of course that’s going to change soon,” Loni chimed in. “Since Emma’s next to go in. Plus, she’s an Aries, so it’s only right that a fire sign should get a fire elemental to slay.”

Emma couldn’t resist smiling. She was one of those few people who did have an affinity for them.

While Burtonwood liked to wait until tenth grade before designating which of the twelve elemental creatures each of the sight-gifted students would spend their life tracking and hunting, there was no denying that Emma’s natural talent for dragons had come out early. And even though Loni was convinced it was because of her star sign, Emma was fairly sure it was more due to the fact that her mom had been one of the greatest dragon slayers ever. Whatever the reason, from the moment Emma’s sight had come through at the age of eight and she’d seen her first dragon (a bad-tempered yellow ridgeback that was terrorizing a camping ground over at the edge of the national park off State Highway 25), she’d been able to instinctively and silently track them.

Emma let her fingers skim the heavy crystal pendant that was hanging around her neck, neatly tucked under her school uniform. Her dad had brought it to her last week as a surprise. It had been one of her mom’s favorites, and he thought she might want to wear it for good luck. He’d been right, and Emma, who still missed her mom every single day, hadn’t taken it off since.

“Emma, he’s ready for you.” A voice shook her from her reverie, and she looked up to see Mrs. Barnes, Principal Kessler’s right-hand woman, standing in front of her. She was about fifty and, as usual, her eyes were covered in purple eye shadow and topped off with a pair of green-framed glasses, which had led to her nickname “Barney.”

Emma nodded and scrambled to her feet.

“Good luck.” Loni reached out and squeezed her hand. “In less than five minutes, all your dreams will come true.”

“And then we can celebrate,” Tyler added in a low voice. “Glen and Garry are organizing a party behind the practice fields. Unless Miss Zodiac thinks the stars might not be in alignment.”

“The stars are perfectly in alignment, thank you very much,” Loni retorted in a prim voice, and Emma grinned. There was something ridiculously reassuring about their bickering that made her feel more relaxed.

“Thanks, guys.” She smoothed down her skirt and walked inside behind Barney. The first time she’d come to Burtonwood, she’d expected it to be some sort of Gothic castle full of turrets and winding corridors, maybe even on a treeless, gloomy hill. But instead it was a sprawling two-story Spanish Mission–style campus just north of San Francisco, complete with a bright orange roof and white stucco walls all perennially covered in piercing purple bougainvillea flowers—no turrets or winding corridors in sight. In fact, if it weren’t for the large stuffed jungler demon in the reception area and the collection of antique slaying weapons on the walls, it could’ve been just about any other high school in America.

Which was probably lucky since, according to the outside world, Burtonwood was just a regular high school that specialized in languages and had a reputation for keeping to itself. Also, thanks to the fact that nearly all civilians were sight-blind and couldn’t see any of the elementals that roamed the Earth, the deception was easier to keep up than most people might think.

Principal Kessler’s office was just off to the left of the entrance, and Emma knocked first before going in. He was sitting behind his desk, his long gray hair pushed back off his tanned face and his thin lips tight, but Emma hardly noticed, as her eyes were drawn, as always, to the photographs hanging behind him.

She immediately honed in on the one of her mom. Apparently they looked alike, with matching green eyes, dark brown hair, and olive skin, but Emma was more excited about the elation that was spread across her mom’s face as a group of Amazon villagers hugged her for slaying the ruchiac dragon that had been hunting in the area for years. Not that the villagers knew it was a ruchiac dragon. According to her mom, they had called it a sun god and thought it had been sent to collect human sacrifices. In fact, there were numerous names for what sight-blind people called elementals—ghosts, yetis, the devil. Still, it didn’t really matter what people thought they were; all that mattered was that the elementals were stopped. And that’s where the slayers came in.

“Emma, I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.”

Only three hours.

“Not really,” she said as she sat down on the other side of the desk and forced herself to stop looking at the photograph.

“Good.” He picked up a clipboard, then knitted his brow and coughed uncomfortably. “First of all, I just want to say that no matter how successful your mother was as a dragon slayer, this decision has been based on the numerous physical and psychological exams you’ve completed during your time at Burtonwood. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” she assured him, since everyone knew that nepotism was a big no-no at Burtonwood. Besides, she really did have the skill, speed, and accuracy to be a dragon slayer. Now all she needed was one small slip of paper and this would become the greatest day of her life. She took one last peek at the photograph of her mom on the wall and then allowed herself a small smile.

“Which is why, after careful consideration . . . ” Principal Kessler continued, and Emma gave him an encouraging nod, “it’s been decided that your designation is with . . . fairies.”

“Thank you so mu—” she started to say, just the way she had rehearsed it for the last seven years, before she suddenly paused and wrinkled her nose. “Um, excuse me?” Okay, so obviously Principal Kessler needed to rehearse his part a little more because for a minute she thought he said fairies.

“Now, before you get upset, just let me say that this wasn’t an easy decision.” He pushed the clipboard away and handed over the results. For a moment Emma just stared at the word in front of her.

Fairies.

She slowly shook her head. This made no sense. No one slayed fairies. Fairies were dumb. . . and small. In fact, she didn’t even know why they were listed as one of the twelve elementals that had come through the Gate of Linaria, since the worst she’d ever seen them do was change the food labels at the supermarket.

Which meant Kessler must be joking.

“I’m not joking,” he suddenly said, as if somehow reading her mind. She carefully folded the slip of paper and put it in her lap before letting her fingers tighten around her mom’s necklace.

“But you have to be,” she finally said. “Maybe you got the name mixed up and you’re thinking of Erin Juniper. I mean, we have the same initials. Just check again and I think you’ll see it should say dragons. My designation is dragons,” she repeated in a firm voice.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Emma. It’s no mistake. I’ve discussed this carefully with the other training academies, and shown them your results, and they all agree that it points to the same thing. Fairies.”

“Yes, but fairies are only ten inches tall and don’t kill things. There’s no need to slay them,” Emma pointed out as she tried to make sense of a situation that quite clearly made no sense whatsoever.

“They’re one of the elementals, and if they came through the Gate of Linaria, then they’re dangerous,” Principal Kessler said firmly. Then he softened his expression. “Look, Emma, no one knows more than I do how much you wanted to follow in your mom’s footsteps, but my decision is final. You can’t argue with results.”

“Of course I can, especially when the results make no sense. Please, you can’t do this to me. Aren’t you always telling us that Sir Francis created those designation tests over four hundred years ago? I mean, if we did everything he said, we’d still be slaying things using arrows wrapped in sage leaves. Not everything he wrote has to be right,” she pleaded, but she could tell by the stern expression that was morphing across the principal’s face that he wasn’t impressed with her argument.

Probably because Sir Francis was the man who had not only first seen the Gate of Linaria and then singlehandedly closed it to stop any more elemental creatures from slithering and sliming their way onto Earth, way back in the seventeenth century. But he had also traveled the world to bring together those who shared his gift of sight and power, and then he set up the first training academy to teach them how to slay the creatures that had already made their way through the gate before it had been closed. Oh, and according to the records, he had also been the most powerful slayer that had ever existed, and since then, no one had even come close to matching his skill or strength.

In other words, as far as elemental training academies went, Sir Francis was God, and dissing him wasn’t really such a smart move.

“Look, Emma”—Principal Kessler’s lips went thin, which was a sure sign that the interview was over—“I’ve known you a long time, but I’m still the principal here and you’re still the student, so I want you to accept your designation and get on with your training. Understood?”

No, not remotely, Emma wanted to yell. The ridiculous thing was that if someone had told her this morning that she would’ve guessed eighty out of eighty-one designations correctly, she would’ve been quite impressed. In fact, she probably would’ve even made a bet with Tyler, but now that she was the “one,” she realized that being wrong definitely didn’t feel so good.

“And can you please tell Curtis Green that I’m ready to see him,” Principal Kessler said, but she hardly heard as she continued to stare numbly at the photograph of her mom’s beaming smile. Then it clicked, and she quickly got up and left, realizing what she had to do.

Induction wasn’t for another six weeks. So she had six weeks to get Principal Kessler to change his mind. She owed it to herself. She owed it to her mom’s legacy. She didn’t care what anyone said. She was a dragon slayer, because there was no way in the world that she was going to become the world’s first fairy slayer. No way at all.