Club Luna

"I think Brooke might have been right," I commented in the most calm and casual tone I could manage. "About the fairies wanting to separate us, I mean. And it worked, right? Nina's gone, now Brooke and Paige are gone too."

Kaylee shrugged as she continued marching along the trail, "If Brooke and Paige were affected by fae magic then it's best they're not here anyways. They'd be a liability."

I suppressed a sigh and asked, "Don't you think it's unsafe though? For just the two of us to be here alone? We already know these fairies are potentially dangerous."

"That's why it's important we finish this today," she responded. "We can't just quit, they're a threat to the public."

"I guess? Although so far it sounds to me like all they've been doing is defending themselves," I pointed out.

When she didn't reply I continued, "All we know for sure is they made a dog disappear when it was barking at them, and when some guy who was possibly drunk or high tried to mess with them they teleported him into the lake. Maybe they just wanted to dunk him in the water so he'd sober up?"

"You said that fae can be tricksters," I added. "That sounds more like a trick than anything outright malicious."

Kaylee stated, "He could have drowned. For all we know it was just a matter of luck that he was ok."

We started up the hill towards the communications tower, and I almost felt surprised that we hadn't got lost yet. It actually felt like I knew where we were going. At the top of the hill we turned south, and that little meadow where the portal used to be was just up ahead to the left of the path.

Meanwhile Kaylee commented, "I'm surprised you didn't leave with Brooke and Paige."

"I wouldn't abandon you out here all by yourself," I replied with a shrug. "I'm worried about you."

She frowned at me, "Not like you can do anything to protect me. You can't use magic or cast spells. You said so yourself, you're not even a witch anymore. You're just a spectator."

Her frown became a sort of sneer as she continued, "Actually you're worse than a spectator. You turned your back on magic, you keep saying you don't care about it. You even said you wouldn't use it if you could."

"You're a traitor," she stated as if she just had some sort of revelation. "I've been wasting my time on you from the start, haven't I? I don't know why I never saw it before, but you're not one of us. You're one of them. That's why you're so soft on Ninaya, and that's why you don't want me to get rid of those fairies. You're on their side!"

"C'mon Kaylee you know that's not true," I protested. "I'm not a witch, but I'm still part of the club. And I want everyone to be safe. That's why I'm here with you now, I want you to stay safe."

She finally stopped walking and turned towards me as she raised her voice, "Well I don't want your help!"

"Club Luna was supposed to be for witches," she added angrily. "And everything was perfect before you showed up! Brooke and Paige and Marissa and I were all doing just great! Miss Hawthorne supported us and she was teaching us more magic! Then you came along and it's been going downhill ever since! First you convinced everyone to let that werewolf join us! Then you got those angels you call parents involved! And that demon! Now Miss Hawthorne's gone, Marissa's missing, the club's in shambles, and there you are acting all innocent and pretending like this wasn't your plan all along!"

I found myself staring at her in shock, but there was also some growing anger as well. All I wanted to do was help her and keep her safe, and now instead of just dissing my sister she'd finally turned on me as well. I didn't even know for sure she was being influenced. Maybe she really was this awful, and it was only just coming out now. I was about to tell her off, and I was even thinking about turning around and leaving her alone after all, when I finally saw it.

We were under the shade of the trees, which probably helped since it was so faint. But there in her eyes, I saw the purple shimmer of magic. It was subtle and it was weak, but it was there. And as soon as I saw it I knew Brooke was right. Kaylee was under some fae spell after all.

I took a deep breath to try and calm myself down. Then in a soft voice I said, "Kaylee you've been enspelled. I can see the magic now. It's faint, that's why I didn't notice it earlier? When we were in sunlight it wasn't visible."

"Bull," she stated. "I'm done listening to your lies. Leave me alone Cassandra. You're just another supernatural creature. Demons, fae, werewolves, your kind are all the same."

She sneered as she added, "You're the one who kept telling me you weren't a witch, you kept bragging that you're not even human? Well I'm finally listening to what you've been saying for months. Go join the rest of your inhuman family, you freak! You're just a bunch of monsters who have no right to live among decent human beings!"

Her words hit me like a slap across the face, and fae influence or not I felt my anger start to rise again. It was bad enough she badmouthed my sister and me. But calling my parents inhuman monsters felt like she'd just burned a bridge between us.

Even so, I couldn't just abandon her to the fae. I still needed to dispell whatever magic they'd used on her. And since I was a walking anti-magic zone I did the first thing that crossed my mind, that I knew would cancel the spell on her immediately. I stepped towards her and pulled her into a hug, then as she started to struggle and swear at me I planted a kiss on her lips.

The chill of magic ran down my spine and the little hairs on my arms stood up as the magic drained out of her. There was a slight twinge of pain in my chest, but it faded immediately. And I was still alive, still me.

Kaylee finally pulled herself free and stumbled backwards a few paces, then dropped to her knees. Her expression shifted from disgust to shock as she stared up at me.

"Oh my Goddess," she half-whispered. "Cass I..."

Then her eyes widened and she gasped, "You drained the magic into yourself, didn't you? What were you thinking!? You could have killed yourself! Are you ok?!"

"I'm fine," I replied in a calm clipped tone. "How are you feeling?"

She slowly shook her head as she stayed on her knees in the middle of the path. She looked like she didn't know whether to cry or be angry, as various emotions played out over her expression. Finally she sighed, "I don't know. I can't believe I said all those things. And I can't believe you stayed with me even though I was acting like such a bitch."

Rather than respond right away I moved to the side of the trail then sat down facing her, with my back against a tree. I finally shrugged, "I wasn't going to leave you alone in the woods, especially not while you were being influenced by the fairies. I might not be human, but I'm not inhumane. I couldn't let you get hurt."

Kaylee frowned and shifted from her knees to sit crosslegged on the ground in front of me. She opened her mouth to respond but was distracted when a piece of popcorn appeared in mid-air and hit her in the nose, then fell to her lap.

"What -" I started to comment when the same thing happened to me. A single piece of popcorn appeared in mid-flight, bounced off my nose then dropped in my lap.

Me and Kaylee gave each other bemused looks, then we both heard a small voice shout "Boooo!"

Kaylee's eyes widened and her face went pale, but I just sighed and asked "How about you show yourself? Or selves? I'm assuming there's three of you?"

Sure enough three fairies appeared in a little swirl of magic, mid-way between me and Kaylee. They were hovering about thirty centimetres off the ground, above an open bag of that popcorn with the white cheddar flavouring.

Like the descriptions we'd heard, they looked like tiny naked human girls with butterfly wings. They were each about as tall as my hand was wide, and they looked roughly the same age as me and Kaylee, about seventeen or eighteen.

I also noticed they looked a lot like each other, and I'd guess they were sisters if not triplets. On the other hand I wouldn't ask about that, incase it came across as speciesist. Like implying all fairies looked the same or something. Another thing that was hard not to notice was all three looked really pretty too. The fact that none of them had any clothes on was actually a little distracting.

Finally, their wings had the same black patterns as a monarch butterfly, but only one of them had the same orange tones as a monarch. The other two were coloured yellow and green, and all three had short colourful hair that matched their wings.

The one with the green wings and hair was holding a piece of popcorn in her hand, and she wound up then let it fly like she was some kind of major-league pitcher sending a fastball my way. The popcorn bounced harmlessly off my nose again and fell to my lap next to the other one.

"Good throw," I commented as I brushed the fake white-cheddar dust off my nose.

All three of them exchanged a glance, then the one who threw the popcorn put her hands on her hips and asked, "That's it? That's all you have to say? Good throw?"

"You know we enspelled your girlfriend right?" the one with yellow wings added. "I was positive we'd get you two to break up."

Orange wings added with a pout, "Honestly I was sure you'd let her storm off into the woods alone. I lost a bet when you decided to stick with her."

"Sorry," I apologized. "So um, you probably already know this but I'm called Cass. What are your names?"

The three fairies exchanged another look, then the one with yellow wings rolled her eyes and asked "Are you serious? What's next, you're going to try and make friends with us?"

I shrugged, "Sure, if you want to be friends? If not that's fine too. I was just hoping we could talk things over, figure out a friendly way to solve the problem here."

"Oh? And what problem's that?" Orange demanded.

Ignoring the fairies, Kaylee hissed at me, "Cass! We're supposed to be banishing them, not making friends with them!"

Green rolled her eyes and mimicked something I said earlier, "Shut up Kaylee."

Before I could respond there was a flash of magic from the three fairies, and Kaylee vanished. Her clothes were still there where she'd been sitting, in a messy pile with her glasses on top.

"That's the problem I was talking about," I sighed. "Green, please bring her back."

The fairy in question stuck her tongue out at me and folded her arms under her chest, "My name's not Green, and I can't 'bring her back' since I never sent her away."

"Well I'm calling you all by your colours since you won't tell me your names," I replied. "You're Green, she's Orange, and she's Yellow. And if you didn't send her away then what did you do with her?"

All three fairies suddenly giggled. Yellow stated, "If you can guess what we did then we'll undo it!"

"And we'll promise to leave people alone from now on," Orange added.

Green continued, "But if you guess wrong, we get to keep her!"

Yellow added, "Although I can't imagine why you'd want her back, now that you know what she really thinks about you and your family."

"I'm not going to play your games," I stated as I shook my head. "And I know she didn't mean all that stuff she said. That was your influence."

Orange smirked, "Not true! I just dialled up her aggression so she'd be quicker to anger and more inclined to be nasty."

"I made her more bull-headed, so she'd argue more and question less," Green added with a grin.

Yellow boasted, "And I made her more impulsive, so she'd blurt out the stuff she normally kept to herself."

Orange concluded, "The bigotry was all her own, all we did was encourage her to share her true thoughts with the world."

"Just undo whatever the three of you have done to her," I stated. "I'm not going to argue with you, and I'm not going to ask you again."

Green flew up to hover right in front of my nose and taunted me, "Why aren't you scared of us, little girl? We already know you're helpless. We heard what your girlfriend said, we know you can't use magic."

I had to suppress a smile as I realized she'd given me a perfect set-up to misquote something I'd read in a Terry Pratchett book.

I kept up my cool calm act as I asked, "You know why you fairies don't frighten me? It's because I already know what the scariest thing in this forest is. And it's not you."

"Oh yeah?!" Orange demanded as she flew to Green's side, followed quickly by Yellow. With all three of them hovering right in front of me Orange demanded, "So what is there around here that's even more scary than us?"

My lips curled into a little smile. In a cold calm voice I stated, "Me."

Yellow opened her mouth to respond, but I didn't give her the chance. For the first time I could remember, I used demonic magic in anger. The trio of fairies dropped out of the air and collapsed on my lap, and a moment later there were some tiny snoring sounds from Green. All three were in a deep sleep, and they'd stay that way for the next hour or two.

One by one I carefully picked each fairy up and gently set her down on the ground next to me, then focused on the clothing where Kaylee had been sitting a few minutes ago. Since the fairies claimed they didn't send her away I had a feeling she was still there. In fact I might have won their game if I'd played it, I guessed they used a shrink spell on her and she was buried in her outfit.

If I was right, all I needed to do was dispell the fae magic. The only thing I wasn't sure about was whether or not a demonic dispell would work on fairy spells. I didn't think it could hurt though, so I gave it a try.

Sure enough Kaylee reappeared, sending her clothes flying in every direction as she suddenly returned to normal. She let out a startled yelp and her face went bright red as she quickly scrambled to gather up her things, pulling them on one at a time as she grabbed them.

Once she was properly presentable and had her glasses back on she turned to me and demanded, "Cass what did you do? How did you do this, you can't use magic!"

"I can't use human, fae, or holy magic," I replied with a shrug. "I've been telling you all along Kaylee, it's safe for me to use demonic magic. And I've been learning how."

"And no, I haven't learned from Nina," I added before she could drag my sister into it. "She doesn't even know I can do this sort of thing."

She gave me a worried look, but didn't argue yet. Instead she turned her attention towards the three tiny bodies laying on the ground next to me and asked, "What did you do to them? Are they dead?"

"Don't be creepy," I stated. "They're just asleep. If you think you can do the banishing ritual by yourself we can do that now. Just draw the pentacle around them here maybe? Or, I was thinking we could get a little cage and enchant it with anti-magic? Then we could put them in it, so we could talk to them without worrying about them using magic or escaping."

She made a face, "Now you're the one who's being creepy. You can't keep them as pets Cass!"

"That's not what I meant," I replied as I rolled my eyes. "I thought we could question them, find out what other pranks they've played and if anyone else needs our help. I know Nina would be really happy if we could find that missing dog and reunite him with his humans."

Kaylee sighed, then shook her head. "I don't think it's worth the risk, not for a dog. Let's just do the banishing ritual and send them home while we've got the chance."

As she picked up the box of salt she added, "We're going to talk about the demonic magic later Cass. You shouldn't be messing with that stuff."

"Whatever," I shrugged as I moved out of the way so she could start marking the salt pentacle around the sleeping fairies.