Fairy Bad Day(30)

CHAPTER ELEVEN





By three o’clock Emma realized that the humiliating encounter with Curtis was actually the least of her problems as she discovered that turning over a new leaf was going to be tougher than she thought. She’d lost count of the number of people who asked about her invisible dragons and whether Kessler was going to make a new designation just for her. And considering that it wasn’t funny the first time someone said it, by the time the final bell rang, it was more than a little annoying. In fact, Emma almost missed being teased about the explosion in the food court.

It was actually almost a relief when she finally headed off to the detention room. At least Professor Meyers was supervising today, and she normally just let everyone do their homework.

“Emma,” Professor Meyers called her over to the front desk and held up a piece of paper. “Before you sit down, I just wanted to talk to you about the results of the simulation fight you did this morning.”

Emma groaned since she had been more than a little distracted during the whole test. “Is it bad? Because the thing is that I’ve—”

“No.” Professor Meyers shook her head, and a stray dark curl flopped onto her cheek. “It’s actually the opposite. These results are a marked improvement on the test we did last week.”

“Oh,” Emma said in surprise as she studied the piece of paper.

“Anyway, you’d better take a seat and start on your homework, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m pleased with your efforts.”

“Thanks,” Emma said as she stuffed the results into her pocket and made her way toward the back of the room. As she did so, she glanced around. There were a couple of seniors she vaguely knew, plus a bunch of freshman who had been caught last week sneaking off campus without a pass. A few of them shot her curious looks, but she ignored them as she sat down, opened her laptop, and halfheartedly started working on her assignment for Kessler.

She reluctantly flipped open the yellow folder and randomly read one of the questions on the worksheet. List ten things about your designated elemental that your training partner might not know. Well, for a start, fairies were dumb. Annoying. Sarcastic. Ate too many Skittles and most definitely had bad taste in clothing.

Then she stopped herself, since she had a feeling that this wasn’t exactly the sort of information she was supposed to use, and opened up her slaying guide. It was actually a copy of the original one that Sir Francis had written more than four hundred years ago. A Complete and Utter Reference to the Vile and Evil Creatures That Have Spewed Forth from the Gate of Linaria and How They Shall Be Slain—In Three Volumes.

Unfortunately, when she’d told Curtis yesterday that there wasn’t a big section on fairies, she hadn’t been joking, and she once again looked at the short paragraph in annoyance.

Fairies are the smallest and least dangerous of the air elementals and unlike some of the other creatures that came out of the Gate of Linaria, these beasts show a remarkable aptitude to adjust. Not only do they speak languages but they also cover their person in clothing. It is truly most remarkable. I have yet to discover an effective ward that works on them or where their kill spot is, though due to their unaggressive and somewhat docile nature, I don’t think this is of much importance . . . .

Emma shut the book and pushed it away from her. Sir Francis might be considered the greatest slayer who ever lived, but it was blindingly obvious that he didn’t know jack about fairies. What was even worse was that if she wanted to have even a chance of staying at Burtonwood and then moving on to the Department of Paranormal Containment when she graduated, she was going to have to accept that from now on she was stuck with them.

There, she had admitted it. The thing she had been skirting around all day.

She was Louisa Jones’s daughter and she was a fairy slayer. Even in her head she could hear the sound of canned laughter. She was making a mockery of her mom’s legacy. She moodily thought about the U-turn her life had made. Unfortunately, that led to her thinking about Curtis.

Despite what Loni said, Emma knew there was a reason for the way he had acted earlier that day. For a moment she wondered if it was because he was embarrassed to be seen with her. Or it could be that he was getting her back for how badly she had acted toward him when the designations had first been announced. Or . . . or nothing. She cut herself off as she realized how pointless the whole exercise was.

At the end of the day it didn’t matter how nice Curtis was (or how cute it was when his blond curls splayed out across his tanned forehead in abandoned disarray), the simple fact was that he was still the guy who had taken the one thing she had wanted more than anything in the world. Which meant that once they had finished working on this assignment together, she would have to make sure she kept her distance from him. It would be the best thing for everyone (and by “everyone,” she meant herself, since she wasn’t sure she could handle any more humiliation).

Emma sighed and looked out the window. The November light was fading, and judging by the way the scattered students were hurrying across the quad toward the cafeteria for dinner, it was obviously getting colder as well as darker. Then she caught sight of Loni and Tyler standing over by the statue of Sir Francis, where they had agreed to meet her. It looked like they were bickering.

For a moment Emma smiled at the fact that while just about everything she had ever believed in was now dead in the water, at least some things never changed. A scraping of chairs brought her out of her thoughts as she realized that everyone around her in the detention room was leaving. She started to gather her books and her laptop when a screeching static sound suddenly blasted into her ears without warning.