"Do whatever you want." Fable sighed. "Just tell us what you're planning to do with this cigarette."
"I will summon the one person who can help us," Axel said, and took a drag. He coughed instantly.
"Summon?" Shew asked. "What do you mean?"
Before Axel collapsed from coughing, as he had never smoked before, the house shook again. This time, it wasn't the Whale of Sorrow. Smoke swirled all around and all of them started to cough. A few moments later, it began to clear, and something began to show in the middle of the room. Shew and Fable held to each other, as if they were staring at some ghost. It took Fable a while to realize whom she was staring at, that shape of a woman with a craned neck and a deformed body, looking like a zombie.
As Axel fled the house with Pickwick on his shoulder, Fable slid away from Shew's grip and stepped forward, staring at the summoned ghost with welcoming arms. "Babushka! You're back!"
8
The Schloss
Lucy was waiting in the Schloss.
She thought it was a perfect place to read the Queen of Sorrow's diary. She would be alone in an abandoned castle that most residents of Sorrow didn't have the heart to approach. She had made up her mind to break the Queen's rule and read the diary herself. Lucy didn't know how she dared do it, but the more her eyes itched, the more she felt confident enough to risk her life with this. What is the Queen going to do? Lucy thought with a sinister grin on her lips. If someone as powerful as Carmilla couldn't get the diary herself, Lucy had to assume the Queen had a weak spot. She didn't know what it was, but it was the kind of weakness that led her to ask someone like Lucy to go get the diary for her.
Foolishly, Lucy was going to take advantage of her.
Lucy's plan to read the diary wasn't really a plan. It was pure impulsiveness and curiosity. She'd decided she'd read the diary and learn all about the Queen's secrets, and maybe blackmail her for it later. If this was a Book of Sand you could only read once in a lifetime, what was the price you'd pay to the one girl who'd read it in this lifetime?
But Lucy wasn't doing this alone, as she hadn't been trained for such adventures. She was waiting for the one person she knew she could manipulate and use. That person was entering the castle right now.
"Axel." Lucy frowned. "What took you so long?"
Axel stepped slowly into the castle. Although he'd been here many times, the Schloss hadn't been kind to either of them. It could rumble and shake any moment if it didn't like what they were doing.
"It took me some time to put Pickwick in a cage." He walked to the middle of the castle with its high ceiling, and showed her the cage covered in a blanket.
Lucy pulled the blanket right away, happy at the sight of Pickwick, who was curled into a fetal position with closed eyes.
"I think he is scared," Axel said. "I really feel awful doing this to him."
"But why?" Lucy turned and licked her lips, looking at him. She shot him with the least of the seductive gazes she had used on her boyfriends before ensnaring them. "You did this for me, didn't you?" She wrapped her arms around his neck.
Axel shrugged so loudly it echoed in the castle. His eyes, although he wanted to look at her, darted to the left and right nervously. Lucy knew his kind of schoolboy, who had probably never even kissed a girl yet.
"I think so," he managed to say. Lucy saw he wished to wrap his arms around her waist but hesitated, so she took them and placed them there herself. "But I'm seriously breaking Charmwill and Loki's trust by doing this."
"It's worth it." Lucy neared her mouth to his. She wasn't going to kiss him, not if he owned the Treasures of Solomon. The trick was to promise him something and never give it to him, or how would she have caught Pickwick? "I'm worth it," she added with a seductive look.
"I am also breaking Fable and Shew's trust," he said, licking his lips.
"But they will all thank you when you know the Queen's secrets later," Lucy said. "Sometimes people don't know what they want. But you do."
"I do?"
"That's why I have always liked you."
"You did?"
Lucy nodded, still biting her lips. Axel's face reddened, his cheeks ballooning as he neared her, longing for a kiss. It puzzled Lucy how he just took the bait. If she had liked him then why had she treated him so badly in school? Didn't it even cross his mind? She pulled away and returned to her serious face again. "Now, we need to open the cage," she demanded. Pickwick let out a feeble sound of misery. "You will have to hold the stupid parrot still as I turn it into a Book of Sand."
Axel followed the orders immediately, trying to avoid Pickwick's blaming eyes. "We just need to do this, Picky." He faked a smile as he opened the cage. "The Queen's secrets are important to us."