Fairy Bad Day by Amanda Ashby
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Jenny Bent, my fabulous Skittleloving agent. This book wouldn’t have existed without you. To Christina Phillips, Sara Hantz, and Pat Posner, only you guys know what this one was like to write—and I will buy you pretty shiny things if you promise not to tell! I would also like to thank my amazing editor, Karen Chaplin, who works so hard to find the story within—thank you, thank you, thank you! And to everyone else at Puffin, you have no idea how much I appreciate all that you do to make my dreams come true.
To Marie Zitney, Delia Lynch, and Vanessa Charters, I met you guys well before the Internet ever existed, yet somehow you’ve turned into my Facebook cheer squad—thank you! To my mum and my entire family, thank you for your excellent bookstore-stalking abilities! I’d also like to give a special thanks to Mandy, Claudia, Ruby, Niko, and Willie for being such amazing friends when we needed it most! An extra big shout-out to all the amazing YA bloggers out there who do so much to support writers. You guys are the best! And as always, nothing would exist without Barry, Molly, and Arthur. Thank you for ignoring the dust, the burnt meals, and the occasional vagueness.
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.