“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.”
Curtis handed her the can.
“It doesn’t matter what you do to me.” Rupert folded his tiny arms in a stubborn gesture. “I’m not going to tell you anything about the darkhel. Not a single—”
“Rupert. Zip it.” Gilbert lifted his hand and made a slashing action across his throat, and the injured fairy let out an annoyed groan.
“What’s a darkhel?” Curtis demanded.
“Darkhel?” Rupert fluttered his little fairy eyes in a blank expression. “I didn’t say ‘darkhel.’ What I said was ‘dark hell.’ Dark. Dark. Dark hell. Which is exactly where you’ll both be heading very soon. You know, you should really get your ears checked out.”
“You said ‘darkhel,’” Emma corrected him.
“No, I didn’t.” Rupert shook his head.
“Yes, you did.”
“No, no, no. I most definitely did not.”
Emma, who found it hard enough to put up with Loni and Tyler’s constant bickering, certainly wasn’t going to bother with this for too long, and she finally arched an eyebrow and pointed to the tiny creature’s shirt. “So the fact your T-shirt says ‘Darkhels Rule the World’ is a complete coincidence?”
“Man, Rupert, you had to wear that shirt?” Gilbert growled.
“Darkhel?” Curtis frowned as he turned to Emma. “I’ve never heard of it. I wonder if it’s a new breed of dragon? Or maybe European?”
“Dragons?” Gilbert spat a crushed Skittle out of his mouth in disgust. “You insult us. The darkhels aren’t dragons, they’re fairies.”
“That thing was a fairy?” Emma dropped the hairspray in shock. “But that’s impossible. I mean, it was so big. And evillooking. And the size of its talons was like nothing