She wasn’t looking for something to watch. Just killing time. Each click on the button, a new channel appeared on TV that meant nothing to her. Like most people who watched TV in an attempt to escape reality, Shew was trying unsuccessfully to forget about Cerené.
It amazed her how she realized that remembering Loki wasn’t heart wrenching like remembering the ashen girl. Maybe because Loki’s darker side was too evil to neglect, or because he’d pushed Shew so hard she had to kill him. But that wasn’t it. Shew knew the real reason. She couldn’t forgive him for killing Cerené, cutting her hands so cruelly, even if it had been predicted in one of the Brothers Grimm fairytales. The look of betrayal in her eyes still haunted Shew. That look, when Cerené was wondering how she could die before knowing who she really was, and before she could create fire by will.
What did Cerené do to deserve this?
Shew couldn’t even forgive herself. They were supposed to take care of each other, and she hated that Bianca was right. You’re not going to able to take of me the way I take of you. And after all, Cerené died because of Shew’s reluctance to kill Loki in the beginning.
Click. Another channel.
Click. All TV channels sucked she wished she’d never been introduced to that hollow box. She had lived a hundred years without it in the Schloss, and it didn’t feel like she’d missed much.
Shew was lost. Quenching her Dhampir thirst didn’t trouble her much, although she was paling out since she got back from the Dreamworld.
The door banged open upstairs, and Fable came down, walking to the refrigerator. Since she’d been into Loki’s body, she wasn’t feeling good, let alone entering the Dream Temple and crossing the purple light. She was greatly shocked by her experience with Loki trying to kill her in Furry Tell.
Loki tried to kill Shew as well, so she thought the two girls could talk about it, but Fable didn’t want to. Since they came back from the Schloss Fable yesterday, Fable had occupied herself with the silly task of teaching the alphabet to her favorite tarantula—he had only been capable of writing the word ‘dork’ in the past, only because he wanted to madden Axel.
“Concentrate, Bitsy,” she told him as she rearranged the colored alphabet magnet sticking on the refrigerator.
Bitsy didn’t speak, but he was able to crawl on the refrigerator’s surface and arrange the letters. Fable would tell him to write ‘I love flies’ or ‘Axel is a dork’ and he’d crawl vertically on the refrigerator’s surface and arrange those magnetic letters.
“Smart, Bitsy,” Fable cuddled Bitsy in her arms.
Shew let out a feeble smile, listening to Fable.
Then the door to Candy House sprang open and Axel entered with a couple of his nerdy friends. They were holding Shew’s glass coffin and pulling it inside.
One of his friends, wearing over-sized glasses seemed iffed by the weight of whatever was inside the coffin.
“Hang tight, nerdfighter.” Axel encouraged him as they parked the coffin on the wooden floor of the living room. “Hye. Hey. Hellelujah,” Axel hailed, high fiving each of his friends. “No one can know about this,” Axel warned his friends with a serious forefinger. “We don’t capture an extraterrestrial everyday.”
“Sure, Axel,” one of his friends says. “Or the government will haunt us down. I’ve seen it on History channel.”
Shew, sitting on the couch, exchanged glances with Fable standing by the refrigerator. They didn’t quite understand what was in the coffin.
“Sure, boys,” Axel smiled back at them and showed them out. “Just keep your mouth shut and don’t tell anyone I caught an alien,” he closed the door and turned back to Shew and Fable and opened the coffin.
“You told him there is an alien in the coffin?” Fable said, pointing at Loki’s corpse inside it. He was suffering from his coma-like Sleeping Death after Shew had killed him in the Dreamworld. Axel had painted him green, and even had two antennas sticking out of his head.
Shew snapped and came closer, “What did you do to Loki?”
“You convinced your friends Loki is an alien?” Fable said, her mouth wide open.
“It’s not really easy smuggling a corpse around town,” Axel puffed. “Carmen didn’t work, and the two of you are acting like girls out of some sad soap opera. You’re welcome by the way.”
“I need to clean Loki and take care of his corpse right now,” Shew was about to kneel down.
“Wait,” Axel said. “Loki can wait. I have something important to tell you.”
“Not more important that Loki,” Shew said.
“How about I tell you something important about Cerené,” Axel said, knowing Shew would change her mind. “I thought so,” Axel cocked his head. “Now you girls sit on the couch while uncle Axelus the Great solves all puzzles for you. Most of them, actually.”