Of course, I should have stayed worried. Really, I should have learned by now to be permanently worried.

Sure, there almost certainly were plenty of supernaturals who didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother them. It just seemed that the second I identified one, we bothered each other.

It didn’t happen straight away. It was about a week later – with still nothing on Mike and Thruor’s plans – when everything headed in the vague direction of Tyz’vel’s home. It started with a scream in the dining hall. And a couple of girls jumping onto a table.

Mice in the dining hall? That was my first thought, which was probably crazy. Or stereotyped. Wasn’t people jumping on tables to avoid mice a trope. Then everyone around them was jumping on tables or chairs. I hopped onto ours to see if I could see what was going on.

A black, oil-like substance was flowing across the floor. Maybe it was oil…but if so, how did it get there? And one of the first girls to jump had it on her hand and was desperately trying to shake it off.

Kanesha, next to me, grumbled, “Is it magic?”

I nodded. “I think so, but I have no idea what it is. Just don’t touch it.”

“It’s climbing the table legs.”

It was. “Okay…” I closed my eyes for a moment, opened them. Tried to reach for some clarity on the matter. It couldn’t climb fast against gravity, but somebody would be got before I could work this out if I wasn’t very careful indeed.

Fire. “We need fire.”

“Not your thing.”

I thought it might be, but there was something about it being my thing that my mind violently shied away from. Very violently. As if embracing it was the same as embracing Surtur. “No, but I’m betting somebody here has a lighter.”

I raised my voice on the last. Trying to keep discretion wasn’t going to work in this situation. Either they’d deal with it or they’d willfully forget.

And somebody, I didn’t quite see who, tossed me one. “This had better not set fire to the lunch room,” I murmured, as I tossed it into a space between tables.
The oil stuff caught like touch paper, but it burned with a soft flame, like alcohol, and was quickly gone to ash. “Phewf.”

“Hopefully…”

I shook my head. “Most of them won’t remember. But I need to find out what did that. I think it was toxic.”
The girl who had been touched was cradling her hand against her chest and being helped by her friend towards the nurse. Hopefully it hadn’t done too much damage.

If she died, I knew I was going to be severely pissed off. And I knew in my heart, somehow, that she might.

Magic poison, and aimed at all of the children. Fairies wouldn’t hurt children.

Something that hated fairies, on the other hand, just might.