by Amanda Ashby
“Do you want some help?” Emma asked. “Not that I’m an expert thief or anything but I have been taking extra napkins from this place for years to help clean my sword and I’ve never been caught once.”
“Well, that certainly is a stellar track record,” Loni agreed in a diplomatic voice. “But it’s probably better to try to figure out the best way to banish the darkhel. We managed to get a whole bunch of books together. In addition to your mom’s books, Tyler hit up everyone on his dorm floor. We now have the definitive elemental banishing collection.”
“Thank you,” Emma said before glancing around. “So where are they?”
“Curtis has them. He was going to look at them last night after he left us.” At the mention of his name Emma felt her stomach drop. However, Tyler seemed oblivious as he glanced around the crowded cafeteria. “Actually, he should be here by now. Do you know where he is?”
“Of course not. I mean, it’s not like we’re joined at the hip or anything,” Emma said a bit too quickly as last night’s humiliating experience came flooding back to her. Unfortunately, the memory was accompanied by a vision of the kiss that had happened right before the humiliating experience, and as she felt her cheeks start to burn, she scolded her mutinous mind for even thinking about it.
“Interesting.” Tyler shot her a grin. Emma sighed and Tyler turned to Loni. “You know, me thinketh the lady doth protest too much. Especially since I’ve seen the way her eyes seem to widen when he does that lopsided grin thing. I wonder if he’ll teach me that trick.”
“Hello, sitting right here,” Emma reminded them while resisting the urge to touch her lips and re-create the feel of Curtis’s mouth on hers. “And I do not widen my eyes when he does the lopsided grin thing.” Then she caught sight of Curtis swinging his way toward them on his crutches and lowered her voice. “Okay, you guys can’t leave me alone with him. I mean it. Oh, and Tyler, if you say one thing in front of him, I swear on all that is holy that I will kill you. And not in a nice way either.”
“What’s not in a nice way?” Curtis asked with interest as Emma shot Tyler a telling glare, in response to which he pretended to zip his lips, even going as far as to throw away an invisible key. Great, now Curtis would think they’d been talking about him.
“Nothing,” Emma quickly assured him. “So I heard you’ve got the books on banishment spells for me to look at.”
“Yes,” Curtis agreed as he patted the backpack that was slung over his shoulder with casual ease. “So should I get them out here or are we all going over to the library to look at them?”
“Actually”—Loni slid out of the booth and grabbed Tyler before he could protest—“I’m going to try and make some wards that might work against the darkhel and Tyler’s going to check to see if that program’s finished running yet. So it’s just going to be you and Emma on study duty.”
Then without another word Loni and Tyler disappeared toward the exit. Emma glared at their retreating backs before turning to Curtis and studiously ignoring his face, since she definitely didn’t want to have an encore performance of last night.
“It’s okay. You don’t need to help. I’ve got it covered,” Emma quickly assured him. Curtis tightened his jaw for a moment and looked frustrated.
“Of course I want to help.”
“I said it’s fine,” she repeated in a tight voice.
“Look,” he finally said. “I know you’re probably pissed at me for last night, and I’m sorry. I should never have let things get that far. I screwed up.”
However, Emma, through lack of sleep and stress, suddenly felt something inside her snap as the events of the last week started to catch up with her.
“Oh, right. The big secret thing that you can’t tell me about.” She sniffed as she grabbed her slaying kit and slid out of the booth, careful not to touch him as he moved out of her way.
“Jones—” he started to say, but Emma cut him off.
“No, you know what, Curtis? I’m sick of everyone having secrets. My mom, the darkhel, and now you? It’s too much. So whatever your stupid secret is, I don’t care. Keep it to yourself because I’ve got bigger things to worry about.” Then without another word she hurried toward the exit before he could see that her cheeks were burning like they were on fire.
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. T
he 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.
Finally have way. Darkhel won’t win.
I know how to banish it.
Emma turned the page to find the rest of the entry—especially the part where her mom explained in full detail (with perhaps some diagrams thrown in for good measure) exactly what she had discovered. But there was nothing except three words scrawled at the bottom of the back cover: It is done.
How was that possible? Emma rubbed her sore eye before carefully rereading Sir Francis’s text in case she had missed something that her mom had discovered, but she came up blank. For a moment she just stared at her mom’s writing. I know how to banish it.
“This is useless.” She snapped the book shut as frustration gnawed at her. “We might as well go and help Loni make wards. At least they might have a chance of working.”
Curtis looked up. “Jones, it’s okay, we’ll find something. I’ve still got a whole pile here that we haven’t considered yet,” he said in a level voice that just made Emma more annoyed. After all, it was okay for him to blow hot and cold and look all gorgeous and make her wish that he liked her, but he wasn’t the one who had just discovered that his mom was keeping secrets from them. Lifesaving, elemental-banishing secrets.
“No, Curtis, it’s not okay. There’s nothing in any of these books.”
“Well, what about a Reversal Banishment?” He studied the heavy book in front of him before looking up at her, a hopeful expression plastered on his face.
“Sure, I’ll just go and get my crushed diamonds and pint of darkhel blood and we’ll get started,” she snapped, her annoyance at him getting the better of her.
“Okay.” The skin tightened slightly around Curtis’s jawline as he turned a page. “Well, there’s always the Lindal Banishment. Professor Vanderbilt swears by that one. In fact, I don’t know why we didn’t think of it first.”
“Maybe because it’s another three weeks until it’s a crescent moon,” Emma pointed out. “So what next, Curtis, the Death Curse?”
“Hey, I’m trying to help here, remember?” Curtis flinched as if she had just hit him. Not that she could really blame him since the Death Curse wasn’t normally something that was even mentioned. It had been discovered by one of Sir Francis’s students, way back when, as a way to banish creatures back beyond the Gate of Linaria. Unfortunately, it had a nasty side effect. The person who did the curse would die, which was why it wasn’t exactly popular.
In fact, a few years ago there was some talk that all the Academies would remove the Death Curse from the main curriculum, but they had worried that by outlawing it, they might somehow glamorize it. Because really, killing yourself to get rid of an elemental was so glamorous. For whatever reason, it was still listed as a legitimate way to banish elementals, just not a frequently used one.
Emma let out a groan. “Curtis, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Just ignore me. I’m tired and stressed.”
“Tired?” He suddenly looked concerned as he studied her face. “Actually, now that you mention it, you don’t look like you’ve slept in days. Please tell me that you didn’t go back out last night looking for that thing last night. Alone.”
“Of course I didn’t,” she said, mainly because if she had found it, she doubted she would’ve been able to do much against it.
“So why are you so tired, then?”
“It’s nothing,” she started to say, but somehow, under Curtis’s unrelenting gaze, she found the words tumbling out. “Okay, so I haven’t been sleeping that well... I’ve been having dreams. About my mom. I keep asking her for help to fight the darkhel, and she keeps ignoring me.” Emma paused and studied the table before she finally looked back up at him. “Curtis, they felt so real.”
“Yeah, but the thing with dreams is they’re not always literal. Sometimes they mean the exact opposite of what you think they do. Maybe your mom is trying to tell you something and you’re just getting the message muddled. And the reason it seems like a nightmare is because your subconscious is trying to tell you it’s important.”
“You think so?” Emma chewed her lip as she considered it. Then, almost despite herself, she looked at him. “Do you ever dream of your mom?”
For a moment he was silent, then he nodded. “I used to dream she would come back and my dad would be so happy that he’d get a brain transplant. She never did, though, which just proves my theory about opposites happening. Maybe if I dreamed that she would stay away or had turned into a twenty-foot monster with razor blades for teeth, things might’ve worked out better.”
Emma ignored his weak smile. “Was it horrible that she never came back?”
“I guess. I mean it’s hard to say since I don’t have anything to compare it to.” Curtis started to draw invisible shapes on the tabletop with his finger. “To be honest, I’m not sure it would’ve really changed anything.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You deserve better,” Emma said in a soft voice before the situation overcame her again. “But what if this isn’t okay? What if we can’t stop it?”
“We will,” he said in a firm voice.
“But how do you know?” she persisted.
“I know because you deserve better as well,” he said, his gaze unflinching. “You’re doing a good job, you know.”
She gave him a faint smile. “Really . . . because I sort of thought that doing a good job might feel a little better.” As she spoke she lowered her chin onto the table. The wood veneer felt cool against her skin as despair washed over her like an old friend. “All I feel is sore and confused and completely unable to figure out what to do next. And I really am sorry about throwing the Death Curse in your face. You didn’t deserve that.”
“You’re frustrated. And trust me, that’s something I get all too well. So anyway, you never told me what you found in your mom’s book.” Curtis leaned his own head down on the table so their noses were only inches away from each other. Somewhere under the table she felt his outstretched broken leg touch hers. For a moment, Emma just stared at him, then realized he was waiting for an answer.
“Nothing of use.�
� She sighed as she told him what her mom had written. “I mean, we know she managed to banish it, so why didn’t she tell us how?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head while his chin was still perched on the table, his dark eyes drilling into hers. “But we’ll figure it out. Think of how much more we found out yesterday compared to the day before.”
“Yes, and think of how much more we had our butts kicked yesterday than we did the day before,” Emma countered, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead he reached out and lifted her hand off the table, entwining his fingers in hers, his gaze never leaving her face. A flutter of emotions went racing through her as the two of them sat there, chin to chin, eye to eye, hand to hand. For a second she longed to bottle the moment as she took in every inch of his face. His dark eyes, his strong jaw and jutting cheekbones, but then a guilty expression once again morphed across his face, which Emma felt like a slap on the cheek.
“Curtis,” she forced herself to say. “What’s going on?”
“Well, there’s this giant fairy that only you can see,” he said as he tightened his grip on her hand. “And right now we’re trying to—”
“No.” Emma gave a faint shake of her head, never taking her eyes off him. “I mean about this. About us? You can’t be like this and then act like . . . well . . . like you did last night.”
For a moment Curtis shut his eyes but his fingers tightened possessively around hers. Finally, he opened his eyes, which were now full of sincerity. “I’m sorry. I was a jerk last night. I shouldn’t have kissed you, but trust me, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to.” His beautiful mouth twitched before he leaned farther across the table so that his nose was almost touching hers. He was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. “It’s just there’s something I really need to tell you. And the thing is that you’re probably not going to—”
“There you guys are.” Brenda Vance suddenly appeared at the door of the study room, and Emma felt Curtis’s hand quickly untangle from hers as he lifted his head from the table and the moment dissolved around them.
