Page 1 of The Fairy Hunter
ONE
Luna
It’s raining when we all gather around the unmarked grave of Tamara. We want to tell everyone that she’s dead and that an imposter is walking around impersonating her. We want to hold a proper burial and let everyone who loved her celebrate her life… but we can’t do anything right now. Not yet. If we do, the pretend Tamara will know, and we won’t be able to catch her. We won’t be able to put that murdering animal in her own grave.
If she’s even a woman.
We don’t know who replaced our friend. We don’t know what replaced her. But as the sun rises above the horizon, its warming light falls on the six of us, highlighting our exhausted faces, our broken hearts that I’m sure are so fractured that our loss is written on every inch of us. But even though losing one of our best friends is enough to shake the foundation of everything we hold dear, this isn’t the first time we’ve experienced death.
And it’s never broken us for long.
Just pissed us off.
“May she rest in peace,” Brenda finally says into the silence. We’ve all already said everything we wanted to say, but her words seem to be the thing that finally shakes us from our stupor. Brenda pats her steel-gray hair and turns to us, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Now, we focus on catching that bastard.”
“Amen,” Hyun, Shanice, Bethany, Olivia, and I say as one.
“So what’s the plan?” Olivia asks, and my best friend doesn’t even try to conceal the fact that tears streak her entire face. They keep rolling, even while she speaks, falling off of her chin, mixing with the light rain that falls on her.
I lift my umbrella closer to her, even though she keeps refusing it, and this time she just ignores me, lets me take care of her, even if only in this small way.
All the ladies look toward me, even though technically Brenda is in charge of our coven.
I take a deep breath, trying to push aside the loss that still feels like an empty cavern inside my chest. “We have to think about the two objects the bastard stole: The Book of Death and The Crystal of Life. Why would someone take those two items out of all the dangerous things we have in the vault?” I already suspect I know the answer, but I want to hear their thoughts.
“Maybe the spirits that Charlie Shander released into our town weren’t random. Maybe whoever is pretending to be Tamara planned to release a certain spirit or spirits using the book, then use the crystal to bring the spirit back to life. Permanently.” Olivia’s voice sounds far away as more tears fill her big brown eyes.
The normally talkative Hyun speaks oddly softly. Even though she hasn’t cried through all our words, I’ve never seen her like this. It’s like the spark that always lights her soul is gone. “That’s the most logical explanation. And scary. Tamara is a senior member of our coven. Whoever is pretending to be her could be using our younger members in this plan of hers, without them even realizing it.”
“Can wenotcall the thing Tamara?” Shanice asks. She’s wearing a long black gown with a black coat over it and a big hat to protect her curly gray hair. Seeing her like this is strange. I’m used to her being in bright colors. Somehow it feels wrong to have her wearing black, although I know it’s the appropriate color for a time like this.
“Agreed,” Olivia says, still not stopping the tears from flowing down her cheeks. “That murderer doesn’t deserve to use her name.”
I have to curl my free hand into a fist to keep from wiping her tears away. To not wipe away the raindrops that are clinging to her long brown hair. Right now, she reminds me of when she was a young girl, when the elements didn’t bother her in the least bit. Except, her tear-filled eyes hold the weight of a lifetime of loss within them.
“So what do we call her?” Bethany asks. Her head is held high, as it always is. Her brown hair, streaked with blonde, is still perfectly done and curled to cling to her chin. And yet her trademark sunglasses have been placed in her hair and her mascara is streaked beneath her eyes.
“Well, we don’t know what it is,” I say.
Brenda turns to me. “Of course we know what it is. What’s the only creature capable of keeping a glamour like that, without any of us detecting it? What’s the only creature cocky enough to pull all of this off right under our noses?”
I hear Olivia inhale sharply beside me, and my gut churns. It’s so obvious. Why hadn’t I thought of it? Maybe because the jerks are rare and usually avoid witches, for good reason. Or maybe because I didn’t want to think about it. I’m not sure which.
“A damned fairy,” I finally say.
And it’s like my words break whatever spell has come over us.
Brenda stands up taller. “Hyun and Bethany, can you handle watching over the coven and protecting the younger members from the fairy?”
Bethany dries her face with a handkerchief, her lip curling with anger. “We can more than handle that.”
“Shanice, can you help me research the book and crystal more?” Brenda asks the tall woman.
Shanice nods. “I’ll clear my schedule.
Then, Brenda looks at Olivia and me. “You two ready to hunt a fairy?”
I smile through my pain, wanting to be angry instead of sad. “We were born ready.”
