Fairy Bad Day(58)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO





Of course the main problem with a big, dramatic exit was that it made things awkward if you then had to sit in the same room with the person and go through a heap of books looking for ways to banish an invisible fairy. Emma reached for another one of the books that Curtis had unceremoniously dumped into the middle of the table when they’d arrived at the library half an hour ago. As she did so, she was careful to avoid his gaze since right now talking to Curtis Green wasn’t on her agenda.

The book she picked up was one that she’d collected from her own house on Wednesday night, but since then Curtis had gone through it and flagged some of its pages with miniature Post-it notes, which were now sticking out in what appeared to be some sort of color-coded order. As she flipped to the first marked page, she discovered that in his small neat handwriting, he had jotted down the pros and cons of each banishment. She turned to another page and it was the same. For some reason she found this annoying, and she reminded herself that just because someone was organized didn’t make him nice.

“So, Jones, do you have the pendant?” he suddenly asked as she realized he was looming over her. It was the first time he had spoken to her since her dramatic exit. “I want to ask Gretchen if she has any information on mysterious jewelry that could banish creatures back to the other side of the Gate of Linaria.”

“Oh, right.” Emma slid the pendant across the table, careful not to touch his hand. He picked it up and headed off, but returned ten minutes later with a frustrated expression on his face.

“She said no. Actually she said it five times. Twice in German in case I was having difficulty understanding her the other times.” He eased himself down into a chair across from where Emma was sitting and put the pendant back on the table before he picked up One Hundred Ways to Banish Elementals Beyond the Gate of Linaria and opened it to one of his Post-it notes. “We’re just going to have to figure it out on our own.”

Three hours later, Emma shut the last of the books and let out a groan. “There’s nothing in any of these,” she said before remembering that she still wasn’t speaking to him. She determinedly looked away from him.

“What about the other book?” Curtis suddenly asked.

“What other book?” Emma demanded while staring directly ahead of her.

“The one your dad gave you last night? Loni said you took it back to your room. I was just wondering if you’d found anything useful in it.”

Emma realized that she’d forgotten all about the book after she’d thrust it into her slaying kit before she headed out of her room this morning.

“Er, no, I haven’t found anything yet, but let me check again,” she mumbled as she fished it out of her kit, still berating herself for having forgotten it. Her fingers curled around the old leather cover before she carefully opened it up, the ancient pages crackling as she did so.

Now she remembered why she had fallen asleep last night while she had been trying to read it. The typeface was tiny and the words blurred together and she had to squint to read it. However, after suffering through the first chapter, in which Sir Francis described (in great, great detail) how he had first stumbled across the Gate of Linaria, Emma had started to feel like she was in a boring history class.

She was just about to flip to the next page when something caught her attention.

Today I can rejoice because the Gate of Linaria is finally shut. My heart aches to realize that any of these foul creatures have been allowed to pollute our Earth but at the same time I am filled with joyful relief that some of the most vile ones seem to have died off completely. For this I am grateful. One such dark beast that no longer walks on our soil is the darkhel.

I have fought only the one. The beast was surrounded by some of the smaller fairies, who, if I’m honest, are more of an annoyance than a danger. However, this hideous creature was different, and our battle was great and long. My bones ached with weariness and still I could not defeat it. Eventually I fended it off, but I fear that if I had not managed to close the gate and banish these abominations, everyone would have felt their wrath. For not only are they the strongest and most evil of all the elementals, but as far as I can tell, there is no way to kill them. . . .

She stared at the words as the bile churned in her stomach. Loni had said last night that the darkhel couldn’t be killed, but Emma had secretly been hoping there might be a loophole. Unfortunately, if Sir Francis, the most powerful elemental slayer who had ever lived said it couldn’t be killed, she was going to have to accept that there was no loophole.

Emma turned her attention back to the page, and her eyes widened as she realized that down at the very bottom was her mom’s writing, in ink so pale that it would soon be completely gone.

Emma squinted to read the faded words and then felt a shudder go racing through her.

Darkhel says Pure One is here. No mention of banishment. Must find; must protect Pure One.

So they had been right. The darkhel was hunting for the Pure One and it was hunting for it at Burtonwood. Just like it had been doing when her mom had fought it. And she knew her mom had succeeded since the Gate of Linaria was still shut. Now all Emma had to do was figure out how her mom had done it. The answer must be somewhere in the book.

Feverishly she flipped through the delicate pages, reading her mom’s entries, always in faded ink, dulled by the passage of time. Most of them concerned various ways of killing or banishing the darkhel, all of which her mom dismissed as useless. But at the end, when Sir Francis finished talking about his hopes for a future on Earth that was free of elementals now that the gate had been shut, her mom had written in bright red pen.