Loki kicked the door of his car to close it, and followed her into Rumpelstein High.
Lucy was incredibly popular, waving to friends and high-fiving others while she strolled down the hallway. It occurred to Loki that he was the one who was saving the town from the vampire, yet Lucy got all the fame.
The school looked different from what Loki had imagined a school in Hell would be like. He’d imagined it full of wizards, witches, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and the whole nine yards. He’d imagined cobwebs on the windows; blood spattered on the walls, teachers with horns and large forks, and girls drinking their ex-boyfriend’s blood and wearing it as lipstick for fun.
Rumpelstein High was far from it. This was just the normal American high school like in Snoring, only it seemed far from boring.
“So do you always go to school dressed as if you’re going out on a date?” Loki was making conversation while they walked to her father’s office.
“Not always, but today I am going out on a date after I give you the package my father told me to.”
“You have a boyfriend?” Loki asked.
“Permanent boyfriend? Not a chance. Boyfriends are temporary, but I like this new one. He’s better than the one from last month.”
“Last month? I know people who don’t change their underwear that much.”
“And he’s not one of the football team hunks,” Lucy bragged. “I don’t date boys from school. They’re boring, predictable, and there’s too much drama when we break up. I like my boys to be outsiders in every sense of the word, and older.”
Lucy stopped at the office and opened the door. Loki stood at the threshold as she entered and picked up an envelope from the desk.
“Here,” she handed Loki the envelope. “That’s your down payment.”
“Wombles! Thank you,” Loki took the envelope without opening it. He didn’t want to look eager and broke. Still, the envelope was thick and tempting, and made him think of renting a room tonight and just so he could sleep on an actual bed. “I’m starting to like your father.”
“I doubt you would if you met him,” Lucy said. “Anyway, I have to go meet up with my boyfriend.”
“Wait,” Loki said. “Is that all? Aren’t you going to tell me more about the vampire princess, where she lives, and how I could find her?”
“There is nothing to tell, Loki,” Lucy said. “She lives in a castle in the Black Forest, the one whose turrets you see rising high wherever you go in Sorrow. You go there and kill her, that’s if you’re up to the job. Good luck, handsome. You’re going to need plenty of it.”
Lucy left Loki speechless in the middle of the hallway. He thought it was a bit weird that none of the town’s council members had come to greet him.
“Oh, one more thing,” Lucy turned around halfway down the hallway. “You have only six days to get the job done.”
“One week?” Loki said. Loki wondered if this was pure coincidence. It was impossible for Lucy to know the deadline placed on him by the Council of Heaven.
“That’s when our new principal arrives,” Lucy said. “I heard she’s a woman of discipline, and the town’s council is looking forward to working with her. She’ll grant you a free year of school at Rumpelstein High if you kill the vampire princess.”
“What does the new principal have to do with the vampire princess?” Loki tiptoed to look at Lucy behind the growing crowd in the hallway. Mentioning the vampire princess had turned a lot of faces toward him.
“She’s the one who demanded the princess be killed before she arrived and begins work,” Lucy said, and then he couldn’t hear her anymore as she disappeared behind the crowd.
Loki avoided the staring eyes, wondering why the students were so interested in him when he mentioned the vampire princess. He walked the hallway slowly, and thought he’d inspect it for a while.
There was a drawing on a bulletin board of a nasty young vampire princess with blood drooling from her lips. She had red eyes, tattooed arms, black hair, and was very pale. It looked like cleverly imagined fan art of the unseen Snow White. This wasn’t the Disney Snow White girls loved when they were kids. It was a nasty one with fangs and blood drooling from her jaw. The drawing was creative, creepily amusing, and ecstatically dreadful. It amused Loki how this version of Snow White was interesting; lips red as blood, skin pale as snow; the description made the idea of her being a vampire seem not so far-fetched.