Leslie Sweetspell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Leslie Sweetspell used to be a girl. Now she was a witch made of candy, and she wanted her body back. She stood on the frost-crusted path outside a cottage built from chocolate walls and sugar-pane windows. Pink smoke curled up from its chimney. She knew this house. The fairy who had turned her lived inside. Leslie adjusted the lollipop patch over her missing eye and pressed her sticky palm to the cookie door. The door swung open on its own. Inside, the air smelled like burnt sugar. A cluster of small star-shaped shapes drifted near the ceiling, pink and purple, blinking like nervous fireflies. A pink waterfall poured from a crack in the back wall and pooled on the floor without wetting it. In the center of the room stood a tall crystal, blue and violet, humming low. The fairy was pinned to the crystal. Her wings were stuck flat against the stone. Her mouth had been sealed with a strip of black wax. A man stepped out from behind the crystal. Pale skin. Red eyes. Long black hair. He held a short knife against the fairy's throat. "Move slowly," Elijah said. Leslie stopped in the doorway. Her cake-gown rustled. "That's mine." "She turned you." "I know. I need her." "She's fed on three children this month." Elijah did not look at Leslie. His eyes stayed on the fairy. "I've been tracking her." Leslie's stomach twisted. She fed on sweet souls too. She knew what that hunger felt like. She also knew she would never sleep again if she did not fix what the fairy had done. "I need her alive," Leslie said. "She's the only one who can undo the spell." "Then ask fast." Leslie stepped forward and peeled the wax off the fairy's mouth. The fairy gasped. "Undo it," Leslie said. "Turn me back." The fairy laughed, thin and dry. "I can't. The spell isn't a spell. It's a trade. Something took your body. You got mine." "Then who has it?" The fairy's eyes flicked to the star flock overhead. "Ask them. They witnessed it. They keep every trade." Elijah's knife pressed in. "Name it." "A vampire," the fairy whispered. "Wears your face now, girl. Walks in the sun because of what you are." Leslie's one eye burned. She reached up. A small six-pointed star drifted down and settled in her palm. It showed her a picture: a girl with toasted cream hair, laughing, drinking from a cup. Fangs behind the smile. Elijah's grip changed. He looked at Leslie for the first time. "That's the one I've been hunting," he said. Leslie closed her fingers around the star. The fairy could not help her. The thief was wearing her face. And the vampire beside her wanted that thief dead. "Then we go together," Leslie said. Elijah cut the fairy loose and let her drop.