Fairy Bad Day(56)

“Does it matter?” Emma demanded as she recalled the humiliating experience with a shudder. “It seems pretty obvious he doesn’t like me. In fact, he more or less spelled it out, so why would I want to torture myself on the reasons why?”

“Yes, but—” Before Loni could finish, Emma shook her head.

“I’m serious. Besides, we shouldn’t even be thinking about this stuff right now. My mom wouldn’t let herself get sidetracked like this.”

“I guess you’re right,” Loni reluctantly agreed before putting her stern face on. “But this conversation is just on hold until after we’ve managed to beat the darkhel, okay? And speaking of darkhels. You’ve fought it twice in three days and there’s a good chance you might need to fight it again, which means you need your sleep. Understood?” she said in a firm voice.

“Yes.” Emma gave her a halfhearted smile as she shut the door and got ready for bed.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE





The next morning Emma scanned the crowded cafeteria until she caught sight of Loni and Tyler in one of the booths in the far corner. The chilly November weather had settled like a polar blanket over the campus, but thanks to all the visitors, the cafeteria was packed to the rafters and the long windows were steamed up with condensation.

“So how did it go last night?” Emma demanded as she slid into the orange upholstered seat and gracefully eased the lid off the coffee cup that Loni pushed into her chilled hands.

“Well,” Loni said as she stifled a yawn, “the good news is that I’m now officially a hacker.”

“Are you serious? You got into the medical records?” Emma felt a wave of relief flood through her, and she reached across the table and grasped Loni and Tyler’s hands so that she could give them a grateful squeeze. “That’s so great. In fact, I don’t know what I would’ve done if my two best friends weren’t an electronic genius and a guy who spends far too much time betting on his five-legged cockroach.”

“For a start you could stop squeezing so hard,” Tyler complained. “I’ve been up all night. You need to be gentle with me.”

“Sorry.” Emma smiled and immediately released her grip. “I’m just so relieved. So where’s the list? Is there anyone on it that we know?”

“Okay, so the thing is,” Loni said as she gave her own hand a shake, “while I managed to get into the system, I didn’t exactly figure out how to get what we wanted right away. In fact, I sort of accidently downloaded all the medical records onto Tyler’s computer.”

“And printed it out,” Tyler added. “I think Miss Zodiac’s going to have to plant about a hundred trees to fix this little carbon-footprint disaster.”

“What?” Emma felt her relief start to sink. “So we don’t have a list?”

“Not yet,” Loni admitted. “But don’t get freaked out because I’ve finally figured out a way to separate the people who have B-negative blood from the rest of the list and now we’re just waiting for it to download.”

“And let’s just say that for a state-of-the-art computer system, not only is it very hackable but it’s also very slow. It might still be a few hours before the list is ready.”

“Okay, so no list yet.” Emma paled before shooting them a hopeful look. “I don’t suppose either of you have heard if Kessler’s back yet.”

“Negative,” Tyler said. “I spoke with Barney this morning. Well, obviously she didn’t know it was me, she actually thought it was Tony Weber, a new and enthusiastic sales rep from Good Knight Swords. But I found out Kessler’s still away and probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning before Induction.”

“Okay. So I guess all we can do is hit the books and figure out a way to banish this thing, since killing doesn’t appear to be an option,” Emma said as she pulled her mom’s pendant out of her pocket and put it on the table, as if hoping it would give her some sort of clue about what to do.

“Actually”—Loni brightened—“last night I suddenly wondered if I could make a ward that would work on the darkhel? After all, we now know that it really hates steel and salt, and remember I used my subsonic blaster on it the first time you fought it. Well, that got me thinking—why not include a subsonic pulse as well, then we can hit it three ways.”

“You can do that?” Emma shot her a blank look.

“In theory.” Loni nodded, then made a face. “Of course there’s the slight problem that no one has ever added a subsonic pulse to wards before but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Besides, the ward I made for ogres had some choppedup seagull feathers, which I just slipped it into the small space below the circuit boards, and it ended up working. Now I just need to go and hunt down some steel. Preferably as high grade as possible. I’ve been doing some research and silver would be better.”

“Definitely.” Emma nodded in agreement. “Because if the little fairies are anything to go by, they hate silver even more than they hate my nail files. That bracelet you gave me for my birthday touched one of them and it dropped to the ground like a dead fly.”

“Unfortunately, time and money aren’t exactly on our side, so I guess steel will have to do,” Loni said.