Read Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb for Free Online Page B

she blinked up at the starry sky. She must have walked into a hidden power line. It was a miracle she hadn’t been killed. Righteous indignation surged through her. Those poor little animals hadn’t been so lucky. They’d wandered into the same trap and been electrocuted. She’d report this to Alabama Power. It was her civic duty.
    High up in the tree, a Chinese lantern swayed in the breeze, glowing with a soft, misty light. The lantern flared pink and faded again.
    Sassy sat up, her shocked gaze on the flickering lamp. Not a lantern; a metal cage. Beneath the hutch, a length of coiled copper pipe emptied into a curved glass container. Inside the pen, a dozen shining moths fluttered in alarm.
    Sassy’s brain processed what it was seeing, and rebelled. Moths didn’t glow and sparkle like they’d been dipped in diamond dust and moonlight. Why, from a distance, they almost looked like . . .
    Her heart thudded unevenly. No.
    No. Way.
    Inside the cage, a tiny winged creature wilted with a sharp trill and dropped to the floor. With a metallic grinding of gears, the metal container sprang to life. The copper piping shook, and a blob of colored liquid dropped from the tip of the tubing into the waiting receptacle with a musical ching .
    The glass jar beneath the cage blazed blue and went dark. It was a trap, like the invisible fence. Someone, someone sick and twisted, was distilling—
    The mechanism jerked to life again, and the prisoners wailed in despair. Exhaustion forgotten, Sassy jumped to her feet and pounded up the narrow, winding staircase that circled the tree. At the top of the steps was a small wooden platform.
    The birdcage hanging from the tree limb was wrought iron, the kind available from any home or craft store. A hole had been cut in the top of the cage and covered with delicate wire mesh that had been sliced down the middle. Directly above the opening was a saucer that contained some kind of a syrupy liquid. Something tempting to fairies, Sassy suspected in growing outrage and horror. Bluebell nectar, honey cakes, or wine; the perfect offering to attract the tiny creatures. Lured by the promise of the sugary treat, they’d flutter up to the device to take a sip, like hummingbirds at a feeder, never suspecting the fluid was laced with something wicked. Drugged and lethargic, the fairies would tumble through the wire slit into the cage below.
    If Sassy remembered her fairy lore correctly, iron was poisonous to the fae. Once inside the coop there would be no escape.
    Hurrying across the little deck, Sassy knocked the saucer off the stand and jerked open the door of the hutch. The fairies swarmed out, shedding thick puffs of fairy dust into the air. The glittering particles blew into Sassy’s eyes, climbed up her nose, and coated her throat.
    She sneezed. “Oh, my goodness, you’re welcome. Now, go away. Shoo. I think I’m allergic.”
    The fairies ignored her and twittered around her head like a flock of excited sparrows. Sassy coughed and stepped back. Her right foot slipped off the boards, and she teetered on the edge of the tree stand, arms windmilling. She made a wild grab to keep from falling, her hand closing around the pipe and the mason jar dangling from the bottom of the fairy trap.
    â€œMother-of-pearl, that was close,” she said, pulling herself back onto the platform.
    The glass jar came off in her hand. Sassy stared at the container with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Fairy goo, she was holding a pot of concentrated fairy goo. She looked inside the container. It was gross and macabre, but she couldn’t help it. Like when she was eight years old and she stuck a straight pin in the vinyl pool toy Daddy Joel had bought her.
    Curiosity killed more than the cat. Curiosity had killed her inflatable killer whale.
    The stuff swirling against the glass was shimmering and viscous, like jellied starlight. Sassy tilted the jar to take a better