I didn’t want to just wander around in public with the item I was borrowing from Pauline, so I had it stashed in my bag. I’d practiced pulling it out. I didn’t plan on using it.

I planned on convincing the fairy to go bother somebody else with it. Honestly, I wasn’t about to hurt it for pranking me.

But scare it? That was definitely on the list. It was Saturday, and I hoped to snag it over the weekend. I couldn’t take this to school. I’d get suspended, for sure. Zero tolerance and all that.

It was a gorgeous fall day, unless you happened to be allergic to ragweed. Fortunately, I wasn’t. I wandered the streets setting myself up as bait for prankster fairies. Which might also cause me to attract something else, but nobody had tried to kill me in almost a month. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t try to kill me again – in fact, that was almost a guarantee. But it was a good slice of time without attempts to kill me, and I’d take it.

Then I became aware of footsteps behind me.

“The muzzle’s showing,” came the voice of Mr. Otter, rich and smarmy.

“What?”

“The water pistol. You do realize holy water…”

I laughed slightly, shoving it further into the bag. “It’s not holy water. It’s a fairy deterrent.”

“Ooh. Having fairy problems?” He actually turned around to face me, walking backwards.

“Just a prankster. I’m going to discourage it from bothering me again.”

“What, not going to retaliate?”

The idea was tempting. “Not sure how I’d prank a fairy back, or I would.”

“Psst. They don’t like spicy food.”

I contemplated. “You mean, let it steal my lunch and get some kind of nasty surprise? That would probably escalate things, though.”

“Oh, for sure, but it’s more fun than threatening to shoot the poor guy full of iron filings.” He winked at me.

“You’re in a good mood.” He seemed more lighthearted than he had before. Which probably meant something good had happened in whatever life he had when he wasn’t harassing me.

Or playing pranks on people, I now rather suspected. Still, hiding cayenne in food was fairly harmless…well, maybe I’d check on that.

“Of course I am. For starters, it’s a beautiful day.”

I had to agree on that. “You’re less smarmy when in a good mood.”

“Smarmy? Me?”

“Oh, come on. You can’t pretend you don’t know how you come over sometimes.” Or that he did it on purpose, of which I was honestly quite sure. Intentional smarminess. But maybe it was a kind of wall around the real him, which was poking out right now.

He considered that, then, much more quietly, “But not to you.”

“I’m not your type?”

His lips twitched. “You’re off limits. Even for me.”

Which pointed at my first theory. I was related to this guy. Right now, though, that didn’t seem as bad a fate as it did when he was being an ass.