Fairy Bad Day(18)

“More. In fact, they normally never shut up,” Emma replied over her shoulder as she swatted one of the girl fairies out of her hair and turned into the art and biography aisle. “Okay, so when I say ‘now,’ I want you to throw a few Skittles on the ground—though not the red ones—you so don’t want to see fairies after they’ve eaten red ones.”

“That’s right, buddy,” Rupert called out as another fairy, dressed in tiny overalls, lunged at Curtis’s arm and used its small (but very sharp) teeth to bite into his biceps. “Listen to what the useless slayer has to say, and no one will get hurt—too badly.”

“Hey,” Curtis protested as he shook his arm to get rid of the small fairy. It didn’t work, and the thing remained clamped onto his flesh. “Emma, this is ridiculous. I need to get it off me now.” As he spoke he thrust the candy deep into his pocket and instead pulled a slim-line laser gun from his slaying kit.

“No. Put that away and give them the Skittles,” she hissed. However, Curtis—who up until this point had been showing signs of sanity—didn’t seem to hear her as he pointed the laser in the direction of the small creature on his arm.

Emma groaned as she watched the red tip pierce the flesh and the fairy finally stopped biting Curtis’s arm. It grinned in glee as its pale skin turned a glowing orange color and a bright beam raced out from along its fingers straight back toward Curtis’s hand.

“Ouch,” he yelped in pain as the laser fell away and one of his crutches toppled from under him. “What the—”

“You couldn’t just give them the Skittles so that I could show you how to kill them, could you?” Emma demanded as she quickly emptied her packet onto the ground and jumped out of the way as six sugar-starved fairies sped toward them. “You had to do it your way. Make sure you put that in your assignment.”

“Well, if you’d told me that my way would hurt so much, then maybe I would’ve thought twice,” Curtis retorted as he cradled his singed hand. “So what happens now?”

“Now we kick your pathetic body into Timbuktu,” Rupert said as he flew down and grabbed an orange Skittle straight out of Curtis’s hand. “I mean, hello, you’re even more useless than slayer-girl here, and that’s really—”

“Gotcha,” Emma yelled as she plunged her nail file deep into the fairy’s wing and watched it wriggle on the ground in annoyance. She glanced back up at Curtis. “Lasers make them go all Incredible Hulk, but nail files render them pretty much useless. It’s the steel. Apparently, they hate silver as well, but unfortunately my budget doesn’t really stretch that far.”

“Ha! That’s a good one, calling us useless,” the fairy yelled out as it continued struggling to break free of the file. “I mean, you haven’t exactly had a great scorecard since you became a designated murderer.”

“Well, I’d rather have a bad slaying record than be the one wriggling around on the floor with Skittle drool running down my chin,” Emma retorted. “Now prepare to die, because . . . hey.” Her eyes suddenly honed in on the tiny raglan T-shirt the fairy was wearing. She leaned in closer so that she could see it more clearly.

“Argh.” Rupert tried to squirm away from her. “Gilbert, Trevor. Get her off me. She’s trying to put her human cooties all over me. Please, brothers, for the love of evil, get her off. Get her off.”

Emma ignored the squealing as she used the tip of her finger to smooth the tiny T-shirt out, much to Rupert’s horror. Then she let out a gasp of surprise. “That’s the dragon I saw.”

“What?” Curtis leaned forward, his broad shoulder inadvertently grazing hers, and studied the black muscled beast that was printed on the minuscule shirt. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. That’s the same thing I saw before,” she said as she inched away from him, since there was something disturbing about him when he got too close to her.

“What did you just say, stupid girl?” Gilbert, who had been scooping up Skittles into his pocket, stopped and narrowed its eyes.

“You heard her,” Curtis growled as he glared at the fairy on the ground. “So why don’t you start to tell us what’s going on?”

“Rupert, don’t tell them anything,” the fairy commanded to his fallen comrade, all sense of humor gone.

“Please, Trevor, as if I’m going to spill my guts to a couple of pathetic kids.” The injured fairy looked slightly outraged. “Besides, it’s quite obvious that they don’t have a clue what’s happening.”

“Aha, so there is something going on.” Emma widened her eyes. “Curtis, go to my slaying kit and get the hairspray.”

“I don’t think now is really the time to worry about your hair, Jones. Besides, your hair always looks nice.”

“It’s not for me,” Emma said between gritted teeth. “It’s for Rupert here. He obviously knows something, and I need to find out what it is.” And did he just say her hair looked nice? For a moment she was completely thrown as she stared at him, but Curtis didn’t seem to notice her confusion.

“With hairspray?” he asked in a perplexed voice. “What did they put in your manual?”

Emma took a patient breath. “There is no manual for slaying fairies. Sir Francis’s book only gave about three sentences, one of which basically said, ‘Approach with caution.’ Which is one of the many, many reasons why I want to become a dragon slayer. All of this stuff is what I’ve picked up as I’ve gone along. Hairspray totally screws up the oil in their wings and means they can’t fly for at least a week. Oh, and apparently it makes them look ugly to the opposite sex as well.”