Mystics #1: The Seventh Sense (9 page)

“This is our third time,” answered Simon. “I bagged three, but
Tristan’s the real champ—holds the academy’s record for
Most Bagged Fairies
ever on one assignment. Stuart wasn’t happy at
all. You should have seen how his ugly face went all twisted. I thought he was
going to cry. I bet he cries like a girl.”

“Hey!” said Zoey, with mock anger.

“Sorry,” laughed Simon. “But I bet he does. Today it’s going to be
me, you’ll see. I’ll get them all! Whoa!”

He waved his spray can like a weapon. He used awkward martial arts
moves, like someone with no real experience who’d watched too many Kung Foo
movies.

Zoey caught Tristan staring at her. She smiled at him, but he looked
away. Perhaps he was still embarrassed because she had asked if he had a
girlfriend. He didn’t look offended or put off. In fact, he had a tiny grin on
his face that hadn’t been there before, like he was
pleased
about something. And she thought she knew what that was…

 
Zoey focused on the task
before her. Tristan was obviously very good at spraying and bagging fairies—whatever
that was—and she wanted to be just as good as him. So, even though she was a
little self-conscious, she tried to stay close so she could learn from him.
She’d always been very good at standing back and observing.

They reached the base of power lines and the operatives spread out.
Blue electricity winked at Zoey from one of the power lines. She looked up. Even
in the night’s black sky she could see fairies. There were hundreds of them. At
first they looked like birds sitting on the power lines, but the closer she got
and inspected them, it was clear that these were not birds.

They were the ugliest creatures she’d ever seen. These were not the
beautiful fairies she’d imagined. They were size of house sparrows and were
covered in filthy brown fur. They had veiny, bat-like wings, pointy ears, and large,
wet, yellow eyes. They glared at her from above with hairless, gray-colored
faces that were twisted and wrinkled like dried up raisins. Some had tails,
while others did not. Some clung upside down like bats with sharp talons, while
others sat cross-legged. They were all biting and tearing apart the electric wires.
They ripped at the lines with sharp, pointy teeth, and chewed and swallowed the
electricity like it was a spaghetti feast.

Transfixed, she watched as a little fairy the size of a humming bird
ate away at a large wire. It swallowed the wire like slurping a noodle, burped
loudly, and then it grew, doubling in size. It was now as big as a crow.

“Hey, did you see that?” said Zoey as she pointed to the fat fairy.
“That one just grew! I saw it, it like got twice as big!”

Tristan stood at her side. “Quick, use the spray before they get too
big for us to manage them.”

“Huh?”

Tristan covered the fairy that had just grown with a blast of semitransparent
mist. It froze instantly, as though it had been squirted with liquid nitrogen. It
fell to the ground like a rock. Immediately, Tristan picked it up and was about
to put it in the bag when Zoey grabbed his hand.

“Is it dead? Are we killing them?”

Zoey felt sorry for the little furry creature, even if it was
unbelievably ugly. “It feels wrong to kill them. I mean—they are just eating.”

Tristan held up the frozen fairy for Zoey to see. “We’re not killing
them—just temporarily immobilizing them. They don’t feel any pain. Trust me.
It’s the only way to remove them without hurting them.”

The fairy’s horrid little face was frozen in a grimace, but its eyes
moved from Tristan to Zoey. If it
could
move, she was certain it would spit in their faces.

“Wait till they bite you—you won’t be feeling any
love
for them after that.”

Simon sprayed an unsuspecting fairy and threw it in his bag happily.
“Fairy that, you sucker.”

“They’re really stupid, too. So they’re fairly easy to catch.
Usually
. But there’s always one with a
bit more fairy brain cells than the rest of them, and those ones can be a real
pain to catch.”

The night air was filled with sounds of sprays, like a large sprinkler
system had been turned on. The operatives held their cans high above their
heads and sprayed the fairies like they were giant mosquitoes. Some were
smarter and flew off just before a shot of spray would get them. But then they
stupidly fluttered back to the same exact spot. The fairies fell off the wires in
a shower of brown clumps.

A girl screamed.

Zoey turned to see a dozen fairies retaliating against one of the operatives.
They attacked the girl savagely, biting and tearing at her face and neck. Her
anti-fairy spray can lay uselessly at her feet. Blood spattered her face as
they scratched and pulled her hair out in tufts. She flailed her arms in a
panic, trying desperately to get them off her. But they clung to her like
Velcro, piercing their teeth and talons deeper into her skin and making her cry
out in more excruciating pain.

Without thinking, Zoey ran to the girl. She sprayed a cloud of anti-fairy
in front of her as she ran. She held her breath and circled the girl, spraying
furiously in a zigzag motion. The fairies’ faces froze in stunned expressions,
and they dropped like flies around the crying girl. Blood oozed from the many
deep cuts around the girl’s face, and her bottom lip quivered as she tried to
smile at Zoey.

“Are you okay?” Zoey coughed the spray from her lungs. She had a
horrible taste in her mouth, like she had just chewed on some soap.

“You’re bleeding. You should put something on those scratches before
they get infected.”

The horrified girl stared at Zoey, then covered her face with her
hands and ran to Agent Vargas. He attended to her wounds with a first aid kit.

The ground in front of Zoey was littered with frozen fairies.
Technically, these were hers—
she
had
sprayed them off the girl—but before she had picked any up, something hit her
in the small of her back. She went sprawling to the ground. She felt a searing
ache in her ribs. Slowly, she turned and looked up.

With a grin on his face, Stuart was happily bagging all the fairies.
He gave her a wide self-satisfied smile.

As much as she hurt, she felt a tide of anger welling up from deep
inside. She wanted to hurt him.

“Hey!” said Zoey angrily. “Those were mine! I sprayed them off the
girl! You can’t do this! That’s stealing!”

Stuart looked down at Zoey and sneered. “Really? I didn’t see your
name on them,
Drifter
. Finders
keepers, isn’t it what they say? Besides, you’re not even a
real
operative—you shouldn’t even be
here. Nothing you do makes a real difference. You’ll never be one of us.”

Blood gushed to Zoey’s face. She pushed herself up and raised her
fists at him. “You’re going to get what’s coming to you,
King
. I don’t mind hitting girls like you, either
.
”

Stuart’s face darkened. “Why you little—”

“Is there a problem? What’s going on here?” Agent Vargas stormed up
to them, looking livid.

“Stop this at once! We’re here on a very
serious
assignment. We don’t have time for your foolish, adolescent
scuffles. The fairies are getting stronger, and if they do our cans won’t be of
use anymore. We
don’t
want that to
happen! Am I understood? Do you understand?”

“But Agent Vargas, he bagged the fairies I sprayed—”

Agent Vargas raised his hand to silence her. “It doesn’t matter who
sprayed them, what matters is that we get them
all
before they feed too much. I don’t want any unfortunate
incidents.”

He lowered his eyes. “This is not a rivalry; you’re supposed to work
as a team.”

He turned to Zoey. “Remember—you’re being evaluated. This isn’t the
time to pick a fight.”

Zoey opened her mouth to protest, but she closed it when she saw the
look on the agent’s face.

“If I have to separate you again, there’s going to be trouble. Everyone,
back to work!” Agent Vargas walked away, but Zoey felt worse—now he thought that
she
had started it.

“Later,
Drifter
.” With a
smile, Stuart swung his bag of fairies over his shoulder and sauntered towards his
gang at the next power pole. Zoey stared angrily after him.

Tristan glared at Stuart as he and Simon passed him on their way towards
Zoey. With his jaw clenched tightly, Tristan looked like he was about to give
Stuart a beating. He kept walking instead, his hands curled into fists.

“Hey, King!” yelled Simon suddenly, “you dropped your
crown
.” Simon threw the spray can at the
back of Stuart’s head. It hit with a satisfying
smack
. Simon smiled at Zoey, clearly impressed by his own aim.

Stuart turned with a murderous look. Simon stared up at the sky, whistling
innocently with his hands in his pockets and looking a little too smug.

“You’re dead!” hissed Stuart as he stormed towards Simon, but one of
his minions grabbed him and pointed to Agent Vargas who was eyeing them
carefully.

Stuart glowered at Simon. “You’re dead, Brown. I’ll get you for
this. You’re dead!” He turned and walked away.

It wasn’t much of a victory, but seeing the red mark on the back of
Stuart’s neck made Zoey smile.

“You’re crazy, you know that,” said Zoey to Simon as he strode
towards her with an equally large smile.

“Crazy’s my middle name,” said Simon proudly. “And it’s
not
Esther, no matter what anyone says.”

Zoey watched as Stuart opened his bag and showed his friends his stolen
fairies. They all laughed overdramatically, and then turned and looked at Zoey
with triumphant expressions.

Her eyes stung, and she felt a pain in her chest. This wasn’t fair.

“Forget him, he’s not worth it.” Tristan took Zoey’s hand, and for a
second she forgot all about Stuart and his minions.

“Come on. I bet we can still bag more fairies than Stuart and his gang.”

Tristan’s hand was warm and comforting, and she let herself be
dragged away to a neighboring power line.

Simon followed behind them.

“Hey, look over there,” he pointed to a large gathering of fairies
munching on a low power pole a few yards away. “We can easily break the record
with these. Hurry, before his highness and his court inflict their plague of stupid
upon us!”

The three of them ran together.

Tristan held two cans in his hands like guns.

“Get ready—a group this size can do some serious damage. The trick
is, when they come at you, you want to spray in an arc like this.” He waved his
arms around in a semicircle. “Protect yourself and especially your eyes; they
always go for your eyes first. You saw what happened to Anne. If you get hit in
the eyes, panic sets in, and you forget all about your training. Then it’s all
over.”

Zoey held her
can
in front of her.

“I’m ready. Let’s do this.” She felt surprisingly strong and capable,
having forgotten her sore back in the rush of excitement.

With a grin, Tristan kicked the pole. The fairies stopped eating and
bared their pointy teeth. They were not happy about having their lunch
interrupted.

“Get ready!” Tristan jumped back.

The fairies soared in the air with a loud screeching noise like a
high pitched siren and came at them like a bomb raid. At least fifty angry fairies
shot towards them like a swarm of angry wasps. The fairies split into three
groups and launched their attack.

The closest and largest group of fairies hit Tristan first. He spun
around in a circle, spraying as he went. He spun himself into a protective
layer of mist like in a cocoon. The fairies charged the walls of mist but were
immobilized immediately and fell to the ground. Piles of immobilized fairies
lay at Tristan’s feet.

In the corner of her eye Zoey saw Simon dive under a fallen tree
trunk. He screamed like a girl, but in between screams she heard him shout,
“Take that! And that! And then some! And then some more! You nasty little
critters—ouch!”

The third swarm came at Zoey.

She planted herself firmly, with her feet apart. They came at her in
a straight line. Just as Tristan had showed her, she threw her arm out and
sprayed in an arc. The first ten fairies dropped like rocks.

But then they split apart. Before she knew what was happening, they
had attacked her back. She screamed as their sharp claws ripped into her skin. She
reached back with her left arm and tried to pull them off. But it was no use.
They were glued to her. Pain and then panic started to overwhelm her. She felt their
teeth puncture the back of her neck, and then warm liquid ran down her back. They
bit into her arms and her legs, until she was completely covered. They weighed
her down until she couldn’t move. They were going to tear her apart.

And then something clicked inside her. As the adrenaline raced through
her body, her instincts kicked in. She closed her eyes and began to spin around
and around like a top. Slowly at first, and then faster, she sprayed all around
herself. She didn’t stop spraying for at least twenty seconds. Immobilized
fairies started to fall to the ground at her feet and her pain stopped.

When she stopped spinning and opened her eyes, fairies littered the
ground at her feet like a furry carpet.

“That was awesome!” said Tristan as he came up beside her. “I
thought you were in trouble for a second, but you totally nailed them. You’re a
real natural. I knew it.”

Zoey reached to the back of her neck. Her fingers were stained with
red. “Not that much of a natural—they got me pretty good.”

“No pain, no gain,” Tristan smiled.

“That was
so
cool.” Simon
dragged his bag behind him. He looked around at Zoey’s feet. “Holy guacamole! How
many do you think you got there? Looks like twenty. Man, I only got six! I
totally suck at this, don’t I? Thank God I’m heavenly handsome.”