Mystics 3-Book Collection by Kim Richardson Page B

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