Fairy Bad Day(50)
For a moment Curtis tightened his jaw and Emma widened her eyes. There was that weird look again, but before she could nudge Loni, the look had gone and Curtis was handing the glasses over.
“Incredible. I still have no idea how he did it.” Loni reverently examined the glasses, making a low whistling noise every now and then before she finally handed them back. “But the main thing is that they worked and that you could help Emma. It’s amazing.”
“It’s not amazing,” Curtis corrected in a tight voice. “It was just a fluke.”
“An amazing fluke,” Loni added as she looked at Curtis with interest, but instead of answering, he just shrugged and slipped the glasses back into his pocket before turning to Emma.
“So how did you manage to fight that thing? It’s so freaking strong. I feel like my arm is about to fall off.”
“Probably the adrenaline rush from discovering that it wanted to kill me,” Emma retorted in a dry voice. “Or the fact that I’m still not any closer to knowing how to kill it. I tried the pendant and for a moment it looked scared, but then it just laughed. In fact, the only thing that worked was the nail file that I use for the regular fairies.”
“Okay, are you telling me that you made it go away with a nail file?” Tyler choked in surprise. “Because even though I couldn’t see the fight, it didn’t seem like the type of thing that would be stopped by a wooden nail file.”
“Not wood, steel,” Emma corrected. “But Tyler’s right. I mean, the second I stabbed it with the nail file, the darkhel disappeared faster than Garry Lewis after he blew up the science lab last year. Yet my sword’s steel as well, which means they are essentially the same thing. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Except for the salt,” Loni added, and Curtis looked confused.
“What.”
“Salt,” Loni repeated. “Emma read on some Web site that fairies really hate salt as well as steel.”
“Loni’s right,” Emma said. “I rub each nail file with salt. To be honest I’ve never really been able to figure out if it makes a difference or not, but guessing by the fact that my nail file did what my sword couldn’t, it must be true.”
“Okay.” Tyler composed himself. “So we don’t know how to kill this creature, but a combination of salt and steel will slow it down. I guess it’s a start, but we still need to figure out what it’s doing here.”
“Well, maybe this can help.” Loni held up the leather-bound book that she was still clutching. “This is the book that Emma gave me before she fought the darkhel. It’s actually written by Sir Francis and there’s a whole section on our invisible friend. Which means we might be able to finally find out something about the darkhel.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
So, what’s the verdict? How are they?” Loni asked Tyler twenty minutes later as they all sat in Emma’s room. She knew she should be grateful that Loni had finally agreed not to drag both her and Curtis to the infirmary, but right now all she really wanted to do was look at the book her dad had brought her. Unfortunately, Loni refused to even open it until she was sure there were no serious injuries. Tyler, who had been in charge of bandaging, looked up and nodded.
“Curtis has some bruising,” he observed, “and Emma’s leg will live to see another long, hot summer wearing those cutoff jeans of hers.”
“In other words we’re fine,” Emma translated as she flexed her leg and sore wrist. “So now can you please tell us what you found out?”
“Besides the fact that for a fairy slayer you’re very stubborn?” Loni arched an eyebrow before relenting and flipping open the book. Then she pointed to an ancient wood-block sketch at the bottom of the page. “So is this your guy?”
Emma and Curtis both leaned over and studied it before they nodded simultaneously.
“That’s him.” Emma shuddered at the blurred image, which still managed to perfectly capture the appearance of the vile creature, from the strong hooked talons to the shimmering narrow eyes. “I can’t believe we’ve finally found a book that even mentions darkhels.”
“Well, you’d better believe it,” Loni assured her as she started to read the text. “‘Darkhels are related to the common fairy but are taller, stronger, and filled with raging evil. Their preferred method of killing is to slash at their victims with their lethal talons, injecting them with a deadly poison.’”
Loni wrinkled her nose as she continued to scan the page. “Okay, so that doesn’t make sense. It says here that when Sir Francis finally shut the Gate of Linaria, the darkhels on our side of the gate died off. Apparently the air on Earth was too wholesome for their corrupted lungs and they could only survive while the gate was open and letting through all their bad, evil air.”
“Well, obviously our guy never got that memo,” Emma said. “Because it was definitely alive and getting bad, evil air from somewhere.” Then she froze and stared at them all. “You don’t think this means that the Gate of Linaria has been opened?”
“No way.” Loni instantly shook her head. “Even though the gate moves around a lot, some science guy from one of the Academies in Europe put a sensor on it so we would instantly know if the gate had been permanently opened. I read an article on how he built the sensor and it was truly remarkable the way he linked up the—”