watch to let him know that she didn’t have time. Then she turned and hurried toward her fate.
“Emma, I’m disappointed. For most of your time at Burtonwood, your behavior has been exemplary,” Principal Kessler said fifteen minutes later as he held up a slim file. Then he picked up a second (not so slim) file and shook his head. “Until five weeks ago when you suddenly started rivaling the Lewis twins as the student most likely to give me a coronary. Disobedience. Detentions. Your mother and I go back a long way, but trust me when I tell you that she would be the first to condemn your behavior.”
Emma wished that she hadn’t been in such a hurry to get to the principal’s office as she clenched her jaw and leaned forward so that her bangs fell into her eyes. She knew this meeting was going to be bad, but it was worse than she ever could’ve imagined. She would not cry, she would not cry. Instead she concentrated on the bit of worn carpet near the corner of the desk. Anywhere was better than looking up at the wall behind Principal Kessler’s head, where her mom’s beaming face was still sitting in its frame, just like it always was.
Would she still be smiling if she knew that instead of being a dragon slayer, Emma was a fairy slayer. A disgraced fairy slayer.
“We all know how unhappy you are about your upcoming Induction,” the principal continued in a grim voice. “However, as a student of this Academy, I expect you to follow whatever orders you are given. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” she forced herself to answer.
“There is a reason that we follow rules and regulations, and believe it or not, it has nothing to do with trying to ruin your life,” he continued, as if warming to his task. “For example, yesterday we had a code-blue situation—something that I expect all the Academy students to treat seriously. Instead, what do I get? Someone who first insists that she’s seen a dragon flying over campus, which I am compelled to take seriously, only to waste valuable time doing an EMR scan and double-checking all the wards. And then, she calls me again to say that the dragon wasn’t a dragon after all but an invisible fairy called a darkhel. Can you see what I’m getting at here?”
Emma nodded as she tightened her grip on the arms of her chair, still refusing to look up in case she accidentally caught sight of just how annoyed Kessler really was. Besides, when he said it like that, it really did sound crazy. Ridiculous. Especially since, judging by his tone, he’d been doing some fruitless research on darkhels as well.
“Even worse, then I get a visit from another one of my students to confirm that what you had told me was true.”
What? Emma’s eyes widened. “Curtis came to see you?”
Kessler gave a sharp nod to let her know he hadn’t appreciated the visit, and suddenly Emma felt a stab of guilt that Curtis had put himself in the line of fire on her behalf. She really had misjudged him.
“So if you were me, what would you suggest I do with you?” Kessler finally spoke in a subarctic voice.
Realize that I wasn’t meant to be a fairy slayer and give me dragons instead? Emma longed to say in a hopeful voice, though she wisely realized that it probably wouldn’t go over that well right about now.
“Well?” he prompted, but before she was forced to answer (what was clearly the trick question to end all trick questions), Barney poked her head around the door and gave a polite cough and then pushed her bright green glasses up onto her head, in what was obviously some sort of code. Principal Kessler got to his feet and made his way over to her.
“Excuse me for a moment, Emma.”
“Of course,” she said as he and Barney had a fast and furious conversation. She leaned forward to try to listen, but unfortunately they excelled at talking at subhuman levels.
“Right,” he said as Barney left, and he walked back to his desk and picked up his phone. “Something’s come up, so we’re going to have to cut this short. But Emma, you’re on detention for the next two weeks, and the only time you will be permitted to leave the grounds is when you’re doing your assignment. And if I’m not fully satisfied with your behavior, I will have no choice but to expel