“You don’t know the owner of the school you go to?” Loki asked with amazement.
“Oh, that one,” Fable said. “You know I hate school. Don’t go much unless I feel like I want to have a bad day, which is a good thing for witches. The bad energy is sometimes needed for certain spells.”
Loki and Axel exchanged looks, trying not to remember the Fable who had trapped them in the house.
“Don’t let her go to school again,” Loki mouthed to Axel.
“So why do you care so much about Lucy, Axel?” Fable furrowed a suspicious single eyebrow.
“Me? I don’t,” Axel said defensively, averting his eyes from meeting Fable’s. Loki shot him a you-are-such-a-dork glance. “I don’t even like her. She is weird,” Axel said, leaning back in his seat and putting the hood back on to cover his lying facial features. “Does it really show that I like her?”
“Not with the hood on,” Fable said. “I can still see you, by the way. You’re not wearing the cloak of invisibility, you know.”
“I know. This is my miserable cloak of nerdidity,” Axel mumbled.
“Nerdi—what? That’s not even a word,” Fable said. “Anyway, so this Lucy—whom I have a feeling I will not like— knows how to find a Boogeyman?”
Lucy finally picked up.
“Hey,” Loki tried to sound cheerful.
Lucy didn’t reply right away. Loki heard strange crunching sounds on the phone and the last breaths of a long moan, and Lucy laughing in the background.
“What do you want, buster?” a voice growled.
“Moonclaw,” Loki acted happy to hear his voice, something that he hadn’t done since he’d arrived in Sorrow. “Wussup, man?”
Axel grinned.
“Don’t wussup me, buster,” Ulfric Moonclaw said, spitting into the phone. “You made my boys look like fools, and you’re gonna pay for it when I see you.”
“Pay? How much?” Loki mocked him.
“Are you trying to be funny?” Ulfric lowered his voice, maybe so that Lucy couldn’t hear. “My friend, Big Bad, saw you in the castle, you and the two lousy witch’s kids,” he grunted, and Loki could already picture Ulfric turning into a werewolf like Big Bad. “It was foolish of Big Bad to expose himself, but now that you know our secret, you’ll have to die.”
“Is that it?” Loki said. His heart was beating faster already. They had escaped Big Bad once and he knew that facing him again wasn’t going to be easy.
“What do you mean?” Ulfric said angrily.
“Where’s the ‘Muahaha’ part?” Loki said. “I mean you talk like an evil goblin. There’s always a ‘Muahaha’ in the end.”
“Who’s on the phone, Ulfy?” Loki heard Lucy ask as she seemed to grab it from her boyfriend. Loki wondered if she knew that he and his gang were werewolves.
Lucy was in a good mood. Loki wondered if they had been making out.
Some people are just ordinarily happy. They get to do what everyone else loves to do, like making out once they reach a certain age. I wonder when I will get to make out freely with someone I like without the girl turning out to be a demon.
But then Loki remembered Lucy was practically making out with a monster, too. Ulfric was a werewolf, so it seemed that he really needed to stop whining.
“Lemme toke to ya gal,” Loki said with sleazy smile on his face. The one syllable words felt like music to him. He ended the sentence with a high note, more of a cliffhanger. “Mooonclawww,” Loki said.
He heard Ulfric tell Lucy that he was going to make Loki pay for making fun of him.
“Hey,” Lucy said. “What’s up, Loki? Are you still a lousy vampire hunter?”
“You won’t believe it,” Loki rubbed his hair in the mirror. “It gets lousier. I think I’m changing into a chicken hunter for a while.”
“Sorry, buddy. The job is already taken. Foxes are on it,” Lucy said. Loki could hear Ulfric tickling her or something. “So what kind of help do you need this time?”
“How did you know I need help?”
“You always do, Loki,” she said, shushing Ulfric behind her. “I take it you haven’t killed the vampire princess yet. Two girls were missing from school today. So what do you want?”
“Do you happen to know a good and reliable, not too scary, not too expensive—did I mention not too scary—Boogeyman?” Loki said. He glanced around as if not wanting anyone to hear him. He still couldn’t believe he just asked.
“What?”
“Like I said,” Loki shrugged. “I need a Boogeyman, tonight. And again, one who isn’t that boogey.”
“Wow,” she said. “Sorrow has gotten to you, too.”
“We need the Boogeyman to—”
“We?”
“Yeah,” Loki said. “I’m working with a team now,” he explained, looking at Fable biting her nails in excitement in the rear view mirror.