Fairy Bad Day

chapter TWENTY-THREE

No, absolutely not,” Mrs. Barnes said as Emma stood with Curtis in front of her desk.

“But we haven’t even asked you anything yet,” Emma protested as Mrs. Barnes shook her head and continued to type, her green-framed glasses perched high on her head. “Besides, this has nothing to do with Principal Kessler and trying to find out when he’ll be back. All we want is a pass-out so we can do a Saturday patrol for our assignment.”

“And the answer is still no. Emma, you’re on detention, and also it’s Induction tomorrow, which means no one is doing any patrolling. Parents don’t like it when their children look all beaten up in the photos. It’s bad for yearbook sales.”

Emma, who was still struggling to catch her breath, just stared at her for a moment and wondered what her chances were of diving for the drawer where the passes were kept. After all, Mrs. Barnes had to be at least fifty; she’d never be able to catch them. Next to her Curtis seemed to stiffen as if reading her mind.

“Please, Mrs. Barnes, it’s really important,” he said in his smoothest voice before unleashing his lopsided grin and brushing his blond curls out of his eyes. “It’s just that I didn’t get to finish taking all my notes on this assignment the other day and it’s worth twenty percent of our final grades.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve already told you that Principal Kessler doesn’t—”

“Principal Kessler doesn’t what?” Professor Vanderbilt poked his head around the corner. Normally when Principal Kessler was away, the weapons teacher was acting principal.

“Curtis and Emma want a pass-out so they can do a Saturday-afternoon patrol at the mall,” Mrs. Barnes informed him in a foreboding voice. Ironic that when Emma didn’t want to go to the mall with Curtis, Principal Kessler couldn’t send her there fast enough. She paused and considered what would happen if she simply repeated this behavior.

“Hey, I never said I wanted to go,” she suddenly piped up as she winked at Curtis, hoping he would realize what she was doing. “I hate fairies. They are stupid and dumb, and if you think there is any chance I’m going to show Curtis how to slay them, you’re very much mistaken,” she said in a firm voice while shooting Curtis a disdainful glance. “In fact, I might call Principal Kessler right now and—”

Curtis looked at her and tried to hide a smile.

“Mrs. Barnes.” Professor Vanderbilt cut her off and turned to the secretary. “Give Emma Jones and Curtis Green a pass-out and make sure that the minibus takes them. They have two hours maximum.” Then he turned back to Emma and folded his arms. “And no more arguments.”

“Yes, Professor Vanderbilt.” Emma obediently dropped her head and studied her shoes as Mrs. Barnes slowly shook her head in disagreement and pulled two passes out of her drawer. She then called the driver to arrange for him to meet Emma and Curtis at the front gates in fifteen minutes.

“So?” Loni was waiting for them in the quad, as arranged. Emma had sent her friend a text the minute she and Curtis had left the library to let her know what Brenda had unwittingly told them about the soul box. “Did you get them? Tyler tried to bet that you wouldn’t.”

“Oh really. Well, I hope you got good odds on it,” Emma said as she pulled out the pass-outs and grinned. “So how did you guys do? Did the computer program narrow down the list?”

“Not yet,” Tyler said. “I’m pretty sure that the dinosaurs became extinct quicker than this thing is taking to download. But hey, hopefully by the time you come back here, the darkhel will be banished and we’ll just be able to use the extra paper to make airplanes to throw at Brenda when she tries to make an induction speech tomorrow.”

“Not that I don’t have complete faith in us, but I really don’t think we should be doing the chicken-counting thing just yet,” Emma said before glancing at her watch. “Anyway, we only have two hours before we’ve got to be back, so we’d better hurry.”





“So where do you find fairies at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon?” Curtis asked after the minibus dropped them off at the mall and the driver made arrangements to pick them up at four o’clock.

“They’ll be at the movie theater. Let’s see. What’s playing?” Emma rubbed her chin as she studied the list of movies that were showing before finally settling on the new James Bond flick.

The movie had already started, so it was dark as they made their way down the aisle of the half-empty theater. A couple of heads turned around and scowled at the sound of Curtis’s crutches. At that moment Emma’s phone started to beep and there were a few more angry hisses. Not exactly the stealthy approach she had been hoping for.

Emma paused for a moment to check the cell-phone screen. An e-mail from Nurse Reynes wanting to know why Emma hadn’t called to arrange a new appointment. Because she wasn’t a masochist. Delete. The second was from her dad, wanting to make sure everything was okay. Oh yeah, never been better. Except for killer invisible fairies and soul boxes and having to talk to annoying ten-inch fairies in the middle of a movie theater. She switched off her phone and scanned the theater; it took a while but she finally saw about eight fairies right up in front, sharing a giant Diet Coke.

“Gouge out his eyes,” yelled Rupert, who was wearing a tiny David Bowie T-shirt and some skinny-legged emo jeans. “That’s right, James, you’re a tough guy, show them who’s the man . . . hey, these seats are . . . oh, it’s you.” He folded his tiny arms and glared at Emma. “Are you here to violate my other wing?”

“Not if you tell me what I need to know,” Emma whispered as she sat down next to him and held the nail file up to his little neck. The other fairies started to head for the ceiling just as Curtis appeared, also holding a nail file in his hand, the ugly white glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose in case the fairies hit him with more glamour powder.

“Not so fast.” He grinned and Trevor and Gilbert muttered a string of expletives before joining their fellow fairy on the seat. Curtis put down his crutches and settled into the chair on the other side of them, nail file still at the ready.

“What do you want?” a sulky Gilbert demanded. “Because whatever it is, make it snappy. We’ve had a very bad week and we’ve been looking forward to this movie for a long time.”

“You’ve had a bad week?” Emma dug the nail file into Rupert’s jugular and felt her voice raise an octave. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I heard you right, because how could your week possibly have been worse than mine?”

“Keep it down,” someone from behind them yelled out, but Emma ignored them.

“So here’s the deal,” Emma started. “I want to know everything about this darkhel and please don’t leave out the important stuff. Like where it keeps its soul box.”

“Like we’re really going to tell you that.” Trevor lifted up his tiny chin in a stubborn gesture as he elevated several inches off the chair. “What do you think we are? Stupid?”

“Curtis. Get the Skittles for Stupid and his friends.” While Emma was gathering the nail files, Curtis had been in charge of getting ten bags of candy. She was going to feed the little beasts so full of sugar that they would sing like hyperactive canaries.

Curtis pulled out a packet and handed it over.

“I don’t believe it. They’re trying to kill us.” Gilbert suddenly burst into noisy sobs and Emma stared at him. “It’s just too much.”

“I warned you that he was a worrier. Now look what you’ve done.” Trevor shot both Emma and Curtis a venomous look before returning his attention to the other fairy. “Hey, don’t let the emotions of the week get to you. Especially not in front of humans.”

“Um, I’m sorry, but am I missing something here?” Emma demanded as she opened up the packet with her teeth and held it out to the fairies. “Because while it’s great to see you three so caring and sharing, we’re on a bit of a timetable, so just take your Skittles and tell me about the soul box.”

The three fairies shrank away from the packet.

Emma blinked before narrowing her eyes at them. “What? You don’t like Skittles now? Let me guess, after lunch you prefer Tic Tacs?”

“Hey, if you’re trying to throw doubt on our Skittle-eating ability, you can forget it. We can eat those perfect little circles of candy goodness twenty-four/seven. But those . . . abominations . . . that you’re trying to give us are not real Skittles.”

“Huh?” Curtis lifted up the packet. “Yes, they are. They’re just sour ones.” At the very mention of the word “sour” the fairies shrank even farther back.

“They hate Sour Skittles,” Emma hissed in a low voice.

“You’re seriously not going to eat those just because they’re sour?” Curtis demanded. “It was all they had left in the store.”

“We would never eat those poison things in a million years. Veronica merely sniffed one once and she was dead before she knew it. I tell you, that candy is the work of the devil,” Gilbert informed them. “Besides, if you wanted help with the soul box you just had to ask, you didn’t need to threaten us.”

“Gilbert—” Rupert started to say, but he was cut off by Trevor, who performed an aerial somersault before hovering in front of the other fairy.

“Rupert, we talked about this, remember? We decided.”

“Fine.” Rupert still didn’t look very happy as he settled back into the seat and pushed out his lower lip in a sulky pout. “But I’m not going to be the one to tell them.”

“Tell us what?” Emma turned to Curtis to see if he was following what was going on, but he looked equally baffled.

“Tell you where the soul box is,” Trevor explained while he ignored the daggers that Rupert seemed to be mentally throwing at him. “We want to help you.”

“Okay, so now I’m really confused.” Curtis lifted up his glasses for a second and rubbed his eyes before lowering them back down onto his nose. “I mean, don’t get me wrong: we want you to help us, but we didn’t think that you would roll over quite so easily. What’s going on?”

The small fairies exchanged a look, and then Gilbert fluttered up so he was right in front of their faces.

“Look, here’s the deal,” the fairy said. “When we first heard our dark brother was going to attempt to open the gate again, we were pretty excited. I mean, it’s always nice to see family, but then he told us how much they were looking forward to destroying the whole world and turning it into another dark realm, and, well... the truth is that we like it here. To begin with, the mall is the best invention in the world except for the Internet. And I just don’t think it would as much fun if we couldn’t go to Starbucks or read pinkisthenewblog every day online.”

Emma shook her head. “You know, you three are the worst evil fairies in the world.”

“See, I told you this would happen.” Rupert glared at his fellow fairies before narrowing his tiny eyes and staring at Emma and Curtis. “And for the record, just because we’re helping you doesn’t mean we like you guys. We’re still hard-core bad.”

“You’d rather read gossip blogs and watch movies,” Curtis pointed out, causing Rupert to sigh.

“Okay, fine. The truth is that we’re just regular, extremely stylish, paranormal beings, but if you two know what’s good for you, you’ll keep it to yourself,” Rupert conceded.

“Now,” Trevor said as he nodded toward the other fairies, who were still hovering by the ceiling, looking down on them all with interest. “If you want the three of us to help you, we need to make it look like you are forcing us against our will because if word gets out that we helped you guys . . . well, let’s just say that things might not be so pleasant.”

“Fine.” Emma rose to her feet and held the nail file up before saying in a loud voice so that the other fairies who were looking on from up by the ceiling could hear her. “Okay, try anything funny and it’s a long slow death.”

“Nice.” Rupert nodded in approval and pretended to shudder in fear while Curtis retrieved his crutches. “Now go to the escalators and head down to the food court.”

“The food court?” Emma blinked in surprise. “That’s where I followed you on Saturday and almost got blown up. What’s going on?”

“This is the person who is going to save us from our dark brother?” Trevor didn’t look impressed as he flew around in spirals. “Because I don’t mean to be negative but I think we might be in trouble.”

“Just answer the question,” Emma retorted as she waved the nail file at him.

“I thought you would’ve figured it out by now,” Gilbert said in a low voice as he checked to see if the other fairies were following. They weren’t.

“Figured out what?” Emma asked as they crossed the faux-marble floor of the food court and tried to ignore the competing smells of burgers and fried chicken.

“That the explosion was caused by our dark brother breaking through from the Gate of Linaria. The first time he got through, it was thanks to an earthquake that managed to jolt the gate open, but this time apparently he had a hundred warlocks conjure up a spell to let him come back through. It took years—not to mention a lot of dieting, since the gate is only open for three seconds and let’s just say that our dark brothers aren’t always the slimmest of creatures. Comes from all the bones they insist on eating.”

Emma stopped and stared at them in horror as Curtis narrowed his eyes at the fairies.

“Are you seriously trying to tell me that the Gate of Linaria is down at the food court?” he asked.

“Well, yeah. I mean it moves around a lot but right now that’s where it is. Anyway, you’re here now, so our job is done.”

“Hang on, we still don’t know what the soul box looks like,” Curtis said. “Or if it’s even there.”

“Just wave the key in the air and it will appear. It’s not usually visible to the human eye but the key will reveal it. You do have a key, don’t you?”

“Yes, we have the key,” Emma confirmed, still trying to get her mind around the fact that they were about to go and see the Gate of Linaria.

“Good. Oh, and there’s one more thing. Once you release the darkhel’s soul, it will still take another twenty-four hours before he’s banished back to the other side of the gate.”

“What?” Curtis didn’t look impressed. “Who makes up these ridiculous rules? Why won’t it just be banished right away?”

“Okay, do you really want a lecture on elemental banishing or do you just want to accept that what I’m telling you is true?” Gilbert had lost his worried look as he fluttered his wings in an annoyed fashion and folded his tiny arms in front of him. “Because if you want a lecture, I can give you a lecture.”

“We don’t want the lecture.” Emma quickly put up her hands to stop him from talking any more than was strictly necessary. “Besides, we’ve already fought this creature twice. I’m sure we can contain it for one more day,” she said, but the fairy made a clicking noise with his tongue.

“Slayer-girl,” Gilbert said with dead seriousness, “what you fought was a shadow. A creature that was only at half strength. When his soul returns, he’ll be like nothing you’ve ever fought before. Besides, before he couldn’t fight for very long without having to go off and restore his power, but now, let’s just say that having his soul back is like giving him a turbo-powered booster to work with.”

Emma felt her eyes widen. “Please tell me that you’re joking.”

Rupert and Trevor shook their heads. “Gilbert is a darkhel expert. If he is says our dark brother will come back stronger once it regains its soul, then that’s what will happen.”

“It’s true,” Gilbert acknowledged, puffing out his chest.

Emma tried to contain her panic. Her two meetings with the giant fairy had been the toughest fights of her life, and the thought of having to face it again, when it was supersized with soul-induced über-powers, was hardly something to look forward to. Especially since the creature couldn’t be killed.

However, if the darkhel did manage to find the Pure One in the next twenty-four hours, then it would create a future that wasn’t even worth thinking about, and so she bit back her fear as she and Curtis walked toward the Chinese-food counter, which, since the explosion, was covered in heavy black plastic to hide it from the rest of the food court.

Besides, the darkhel would only be at its full strength for a day. What was some lost sleep and potential fighting compared to saving the world from being overrun by elemental fairies?

“So can we go now?” Trevor wanted to know as he pretended to skateboard across the air.

“Not yet,” Emma suddenly said. “We have a few more questions. Do you know who the Pure One is? Does the darkhel know? It’s just that if the creature’s going to be superstrong for the next twenty-four hours, knowing who the Pure One was would make our job so much easier.”

“Sorry.” Gilbert shook his head. “Pure Ones don’t tend to come well labeled. Our dark brother has spent most of his time on the other side of the gate researching who it is and now I guess he’s just working through a list. Anyway, can we go now? We’re missing our movie.”

“Fine, go. But seriously, once this is over, if I catch you guys trying to help any more evil elementals sneak into this world through the Gate of Linaria, then so help me, I really will slay you.”

The fairies laughed. “I love how you can keep a sense of humor even when you’re in the middle of a crisis,” Trevor observed as he abandoned his imaginary air skateboard in favor of doing a somersault and flipping Emma the bird. Then, without another word, the three fairies disappeared back in the direction of the movie theater.

“Okay, so it’s not just me, but they’re weird, right?” Curtis double-checked, and Emma nodded.

“Oh yeah. They’re weird. But at least they helped us find the soul box. So let’s go and do this thing. The sooner we find it, the sooner it will all be over.”

“You know I still can’t believe the Gate of Linaria is behind a place called Hong Kong Wong,” Curtis admitted. “I thought it would be somewhere more . . . upscale.”

“And not smell of stale cooking oil,” Emma added as Curtis pulled back a heavy sheet of builders’ plastic that concealed the burned-out kitchen. Then she noticed he was still wearing his glasses. “By the way, I don’t think you’ll be needing those in here. It’s a glamour-powder-free kitchen.”

“Oh, um, right,” he said uncomfortably. He flushed, hesitated for a moment, then with obvious reluctance took off the glasses and put them in his pocket. “I guess I won’t.”

For a moment Emma stared at him, not quite sure what his problem was, but then she remembered they had a job to do. She stepped over a huge pile of chopsticks scattered on the floor. She’d secretly worried that the place might be full of repairmen, but fortunately the damaged kitchen was empty of anything other than the charcoaled remains.

“Wow, that must’ve been some explosion.” Curtis whistled as he leaned forward on his crutches and surveyed the damage.

“Yeah,” Emma agreed as she walked over to one of the stainless-steel benches and put down her kit. “Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Or the right place at the right time. I wonder if the reason you can see the darkhel is because you were here when it came through the gate,” Curtis wondered aloud. He almost sounded wistful as Emma pulled the pendant out of her pocket.

“I have no idea.” She headed to the far end of the kitchen and systematically started to wave it in the air. “But right now, I guess that’s the least of our problems. Just yell out if you can see anything.”

Curtis paused before finally nodding. “Of course.” He started to glance around. “So what happened here last Saturday?”

Emma, who was just in the process of waving the pendant in the burned-out microwave, pointed over to the far wall. “Well, there were about ten fairies all hovering over there, and as I reached into my kit to get my weapon there was an explosion from over by the freezer,” she said as she continued to wave the pendant in the air, desperately searching for anything that might be a soul box.

Curtis headed over to the burned-out freezer and studied it. “Ah, yes. You can see that the door has been blown out, so it must be in here.” He pointed.

“Very CSI,” Emma said, smiling slightly as she stepped past him into the freezer. Despite its being out of order, it was still chillier inside the giant appliance, and she hugged herself as she stepped over a large bag of soggy bean sprouts and went in.

She held the pendant above her head and immediately sucked in a breath.

There, where the back of the freezer wall should’ve been, was now a great black swirling vortex of nothingness. For a moment Emma just stood transfixed, unable to look away from the hideous whirlpool of pulsing black space that silently flashed and flickered.

Her mouth felt dry and her eye throbbed as she forced herself to look away.

So it was true.

This was the Gate of Linaria.

“Are you okay?” Curtis was suddenly at her side with the stealthlike ability that she had come to associate with him, despite the crutches he was still using.

“I’m fine. Just a little freaked out. I mean, we’re sophomores at Burtonwood, and you don’t exactly expect to come face-to-face with the Gate of Linaria.”

“I know,” he agreed in a solemn voice. “Though I’ve started to discover that the more time I spend with you, the more I expect weird things to happen.”

“Thanks . . . I think,” Emma said as she reluctantly stepped away from him and held the pendant up again, still looking for the soul box. It didn’t seem to be there and she was just about to head back out to the kitchen again when she realized that Curtis was heading in the other direction, straight toward the far wall, as if the whole swirling black void of nothingness wasn’t even there.

“Curtis, what are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” He took another step forward and Emma screamed as the void suddenly burst open and hundreds of tendrils of smoke began to slowly reach out and snake and coil their way around his plaster cast like ivy up a wall. Emma rushed toward him and grabbed his arm.

Whatever the smoky vines were, they were strong, and as she tried to pull him away, they continued to writhe and wind their way up his leg. Emma felt herself straining with the effort of fighting the void. But finally, the resistance disappeared and they went tumbling back onto the freezer’s floor. Emma groaned on impact and rolled to the side to see if Curtis was okay. His face was leached of color, his brown eyes filled with confusion.

“Jeez, are you okay? What just happened?” she demanded.

“I’m not sure.” He rubbed his eyes and pulled himself into a sitting position. “One minute I was just walking, and the next minute, I felt... I felt like I had just stepped into hell.”

“That’s because you did step into hell.” Emma stared at him, still not quite sure what was going on. “You didn’t see it?”

“See what?” His gorgeous face was etched with alarm. “Jones, what are you talking about?”

“The Gate of Linaria. The evil fingers of death that were trying to grab you and pull you in. How could you not see it?” For a moment Emma just stared at him before she felt a stab of panic go racing through her.

Curtis didn’t answer. Instead he pulled the ugly white sunglasses back onto the bridge of his nose and peered over to the far wall. Then, as if he were seeing the gate for the very first time, his face paled and his jaw clenched.

“Seriously, you’re acting very weird.” Emma tried to study his face. “Why did you put your glasses back on? I don’t understand.”

For a moment Curtis was silent; then he pushed the glasses back onto his head and let out a sigh. “You’re so smart. I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out already,” he said, his voice dull and laced with bitterness.

“Figure what out?” she asked, confused.

“That I’m sight-blind.”