Snow White Sorrow (The Grimm Diaries) Read online

  There was a slight touch of golden-green mascara over her eyelashes, reminding Loki of ancient Egyptian goddesses.

  She was a goddess.

  Not in the wow super-duper way, but in the regular, kind-hearted girl next door kinda way. Loki imagined her like a child; so innocent that when they cussed, you couldn’t get mad because you were defenseless against their charms.

  Slowly she let him down, loosening her grip. She did it with grace and care. It made him feel like the woman in King Kong’s huge palm, awkward.

  Standing on the same ground now, she was an inch shorter than him—not that it gave him any credibility.

  She looked up into his eyes as hers turned slowly from black into ocean blue with a hue of gold.

  “What the h—” Axel said, still holding his flashlight with both hands as if it were his magic wand.

  Loki let out a sigh. Snow White’s blue eyes had that fabulous shine he didn’t see in most Minikins’ eyes. It was the type of shining there was no name for, but implied that the person was full of life—and that they had a great story to tell.

  She is fooling you again!

  But why would she do that? Why didn’t she just kill him?

  With the blood dripping from her lips, and with her pale skin, she was just an excruciatingly attractive sixteen-year-old girl living in a castle of her own hell. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? Loki thought. He’d been living in this hell called Earth for a year now.

  In her new state, she looked so lovely she could sneak up and kill you without you even noticing it, a girl who knew when to kiss and when to kill.

  Loki understood why no vampire hunter could ever kill her. It wasn’t her strength or superpowers. It was her hypnotic and charming magnetism.

  Loki wanted to shake the trance of her presence off, but he couldn’t.

  Big Bad moaned behind him on the floor.

  “You’re still alive, monster!” Big Bad roared at her. “Monster!” his voice seemed different as if he were a monster himself. Loki couldn’t see Big Bad in the dark, although he thought he’d heard his bones breaking or something without anyone touching him.

  The vampire princess twitched at his words as if she was about to turn into something more sinister than what she was minutes ago. Instantly, her eyes turned black again.

  Loki sensed her anger. It was as if she was humiliated by Big Bad calling her a monster.

  Axel followed her with his flashlight, acting as if he were the lighting supervisor on the Broadway play: Wicked. Snow White was certainly turning nastier than the Wicked Witch of the West, and it was all because of Big Bad’s foolishness.

  Her head twisted around on her shoulders as the chandeliers above her flickered and swung violently over their heads. Loki didn’t bother looking back at Axel, the light supervisor. He heard the sound of his knees clanking together like the chains around the neck of the ghost of Christmas past.

  A swirling wind of chilling snowflakes filled the room. Loki didn’t think she needed to kill them. She could just leave them to freeze in here. She stretched her arms sideways like a witch casting a spell, her arms showing purplish veins curling like tiny snakes all over her body, all the way down to her bare feet. Her head rotated back into normal position, and she looked down at them with her mouth wide open, snarling with her white fangs.

  Loki couldn’t explain how he felt exactly. This roller coaster of emotions in one single night was too much confusion for him. Her angry eyes were fixated on him. He continued to feel guilty in a silly way. Whenever she looked pleadingly at him like that, he thought she wanted to tell him something, which made him question why she never talked.

  She shifted her eyes to Big Bad who was still invisible in the dark, and Loki could still hear him growling and his bones breaking.

  What was going on with Big Bad?

  There was no time to figure it out now. The vampire princess rushed down, as if upon an invisible transveyor belt, faster than the speed of light toward him, and finished Big Bad in the dark.

  Axel was too scared to follow her with the flashlight, keeping it on Loki as if he were the star of the show.

  “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the scariest of them all?” Loki mumbled again.

  Axel and Loki exchanged reluctant gazes. Loki wondered how fast, and far, they could run. He thought he’d save himself tonight, so he could think of an effective way to come back and kill her later.

  Snow White turned back to Loki. She wiped her lips with the tip of her white dress then grunted at him. She took a step closer, smelled his neck, and inhaled the odor of his body. She breathed over his neck slowly like cold wind upon the water and then she brushed her tongue softly above his earlobe. The chilling touch caused the veins on his neck to show like a singer singing his highest note. Her edgy teeth touched his veins slightly. It felt like the tip of a needle flirting with his skin.

  She stood like that for a while, not biting him. Then she finally talked, and it wasn’t like anything Loki had expected to hear.

  Whatever she whispered in his ear, he thought he was imagining it.

  It couldn’t be. She didn’t say that. Did she?

  Her voice was musical and deliciously feminine. She rested her cold hand on Loki’s chest, detecting the pulse of his racing heartbeat.

  “Save me,” she whispered one more time.

  When she said the words, her voice was low, even fainter than a whisper, as if she was scared someone would hear her. But who would that be? The castle was empty. Why would she worry that someone would hear her?

  “What did she say?” Axel whimpered from his hiding spot.

  Loki said nothing. The surprise was overwhelming. Somehow, he knew that this moment was going to change his whole life.

  Snow White disappeared back into the dark, leaving him undone, just like that. The scent of apples lingered in the air, and Loki inhaled it as flashes of blurred memories passed before his eyes again.

  What’s happening to me?

  He inhaled her appleicious scent unconsciously as if wanting to take something of her back with him, as if wanting to let some of her naturally deadly perfume run through his veins.

  But he had to leave. She had spared his life, and he didn’t know why. He was beyond confused.

  He turned around, grabbed his Alicorn, then Axel’s hand and sprinted out of the castle. As they hurried back through the Black Forest, red snow began to fall from above.

  11

  Bedtime Stoories

  All the way back to town, Axel sat with his knees on the passenger seat, looking back at the empty road, and making sure the vampire princess wasn’t after them.

  When Loki stopped the Cadillac in front of Candy House, Axel didn’t bother to invite him in. He slithered out of the car, almost hypnotized, forgetting about his backpack of crosses and food, and entered his house with a slouched posture. He snorted with anger when he found Bitsy had sewn his web on the key lock again. It presented a good opportunity to release himself from the chains of fear by kicking the door open with his boot.

  Loki drove away, back to the parking lot, which would be his sleeping place until his sixteenth birthday. He wasn’t angry at Axel for not inviting him in. He understood. Axel had seen more than enough, and Loki felt slightly guilty for dragging him into this. Vampires were Loki’s everyday business. None of them had been a beautiful girl, though. Certainly none had asked him to save them before.

  The parking lot was empty, and Loki needed the sleep. He locked his car, and tried to see if the Pumpkin Warriors were playing music, but they were snoring in their sleep. Scared and lonely, Loki decided he’d keep the radio channel open and let their snoring keep him company.

  “Turn off the car’s light!” a band member whimpered.

  Loki turned off the dashboards light, slipped under his blanket, and hugged his Alicorn. One of the things he wanted to go back home for was the possibility he’d end up hugging a girl he loved at night instead of an Alicorn.
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  He started counting sheep again. After sinking into sleep, he saw two black sheep. All the other sheep were baa baaaing at the two outcasts. He knew he was one of the two black sheep, and wondered who the other one was. Was it his dark shadow from the past, the one Charmwill had told him about, or maybe Snow White, the vampire princess herself?

  Loki stopped dreaming and slept soundly to the melody.

  Zzzz. Zaa. Zoomm.

  It was hard to tell what time it was when Loki woke up again later in the night. Tucked under his blanket, eyes heavy, he noticed the Pumpkin Warriors had stopped snoring. The night was silent as the dead.

  Loki wasn’t ready to wake up, so he decided to roll over on his other side and continue sleeping.

  Then he heard something.

  “Row, row, row your boat,” a girl with a sweet voice was singing outside his car.

  Loki’s eyes sprang open. These weren’t the little girls singing this time. He knew the girl’s voice. It was the same sweet voice he’d heard tonight, and he doubted he’d ever forget it the rest of his life. It was Snow White’s voice.

  “Gently down the stream,” she sang.

  Loki was afraid to look through his window and find her waiting for him outside. Had she followed him?

  He held his Alicorn ready, wondering how close she was.

  “Horribly, horribly, horribly,” she hummed happily. “Now it’s time to scream.”

  Loki straightened up slowly, wiping the sticking fog from his window. As he moved, he noticed Carmen was loose and shaky as if not standing on stable ground. He looked outside the window, and the situation became all too clear. The parking lot had turned into the Swamp of Sorrow, and his Cadillac was floating in the middle like a lily pad.

  A shriek argued its way out of him. The swamp stretched as far he could see. There were no street lamps, no school, and no parking lot.

  “Don’t forget to scream,” Snow White repeated the last part again, but she still sounded angelic, not scary.

  Loki saw her rowing in another canoe, which was actually a white swan. She was in her normal, beautiful girl form, dressed in white with that red ribbon in her hair. There was no blood spattered on her face, and she wasn’t flashing her fangs. She was just a pretty girl, rowing away in a dirty swamp.

  Turning her head toward Loki, she looked surprised he was there with her.

  “Loki?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”

  Loki shrugged.

  What is going on?

  “How did the parking lot turn into a swamp?” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” she wondered. “Did you come here to help me? To save me?”

  Her voice was ripping Loki’s heart out. It was smooth, vulnerable, pleading for help. She reminded him of the squirrel he’d saved; a small helpless being, waking up every day, looking for a nut, but forced to live among Minikins, monsters, and vampires. Every moment of every day, it had to escape the danger of the monsters that overshadowed it so it could live in peace.

  “What a ridiculous metaphor,” Loki knocked on his head as if it were a nut he wanted to break open and fix.

  “Did you say something?” Snow White blinked, her cheeks blushing red. She had eager doe eyes that made one want to sacrifice themselves just to protect her to protect her—but only when she was normal like now.

  “No,” Loki shook his head. “I’m in the mumbling business. I mumble to myself all the time.”

  “I noticed,” she laughed.

  Her laugh made Loki want to throw away his Alicorn and dance on the water of the swamp while rain poured on him.

  “I mumble to myself a lot, too,” she said. “I am lonely you know—“

  This isn’t right, Loki. This just isn’t right. Think of a way to cross over and kill her now. She’s sparing your life so she can make fun of you. She’s a bratty princess who wants to have some fun with her next victim. She knows your weakness.

  “But I prefer to sing instead of talking to myself,” she continued. “I know a lot of songs.”

  “Enough,” Loki shouted, waving his hands nervously in the air. He was kind of silencing her, and silencing the annoying voice in his head that compelled him to disbelieve his eyes and kill her. “Back in the castle, you said you want me to save you.”

  Snow White’s face changed. She looked worried, but nodded her head reluctantly.

  “From who?” Loki asked.

  Snow White didn’t reply. She looked appalled as if something was going to jump out of the water and pull her down. She only shook her head ‘no.’

  Loki understood that she wasn’t going to answer him. “If I come closer, will you be able to whisper it to me?” Loki said as he lowered his voice, too.

  No, don’t come closer. It’s a trap!

  Loki squeezed his eyes shut momentarily, until the annoying inner voice passed.

  Snow White nodded, lacing her hands together.

  “I will swim over,” he said.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “You can walk on water.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If you take a deep breath and don’t think about the water underneath you, you can walk on its surface as if it’s land,” she said. “I do it all the time.”

  “If you say so,” Loki decided to try, and didn’t mind if it didn’t work since he was going to swim over anyways.

  He opened the Cadillac’s door, and stretched out one foot. He let it touch the surface of the water, closed his eyes and pretended it was land. Surprisingly, it worked. Loki found himself stepping on something, a little bit soft and spongy, but rigid enough he could walk on it.

  Opening his eyes, he let out a laugh. This was amazing. He was standing on water, and then walking toward Snow’s swan canoe.

  “This is magic,” he said.

  Snow White nodded, and spread her welcoming arms.

  Suddenly, a frog croaked nearby.

  Loki stopped in his tracks.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “No frogs, please,” he mumbled. “I hate frogs.”

  “You mean you’re afraid of frogs,” she squinted, almost laughing at him.

  Another frog croaked, and another. Tons of them came nearby, jumping happily on the surface of the water.

  Loki lost his concentration, and the spongy earth underneath him turned back into liquid and he sank.

  As he was drowning, he saw Snow White laughing at him from beyond the surface of the rippling water, pointing a finger, fangs drawn, thousands of frogs surrounded her. “Loki. Loki. Loki,” she said. Strangely enough he could hear her plainly under the water. “How many times can a person be fooled? No wonder they banned you.”

  Snaky plants, like octopus arms, crawled around his legs and arms, pulling him deeper. He couldn’t swim up to the surface. He was drowning, and a sudden rescue didn’t look promising.

  Loki jolted awake from under his blanket in the Cadillac, sweating and panting, while waving his Alicorn in the air. The Pumpkin Warriors were still snoring in the radio. Outside his window, he saw the parking lot. There was no swamp.

  “Bad dreams?” one of the Pumpkin Warriors moaned. “Happens to me all the time when I sleep on my stomach.”

  It was a dream, a horrible dream.

  Loki yanked the door open and walked outside. The yellow street light was slightly glowing. He was glad it was a dream, and he pinched his face to make sure he was awake. What if all of his life was just a bad dream?

  “Hey, Loco,” a voice called him.

  It was a tiny voice, and he wasn’t scared of it. Besides, he knew who called him ‘Loco’ in this world. It was either his mom or the animals. Loki looked down at a black cat with green eyes rubbing itself against his jeans.

  “What do you want?” Loki grunted. “Leave me alone.”

  “You know what I want,” it said. “It’s cold out here, Loco. I need a place to sleep.”

  “Shouldn’t you be in the pet cemetery?”


  “I followed you here so I can sleep in your car,” the cat said, wiggling its tale. “I hear you have an amazing backseat,” It spat on its paw and rubbed it with the other. “I promise I won’t tell any of the other animals that you let me in.”

  “O.K. O.K.,” Loki said, “but no meowing early in the morning, deal?”

  “But of course,” the cat nodded.

  “And no snoring.”

  “Cats don’t snore, dogs do,” the cat said proudly.

  When I wake up, you wake up, and don’t you dare ask me to feed you, deal?”

  “Deal,” the cat said, looking up at him. “Want to shake paws on it?”

  “No thanks. You just spat on yours,” Loki said going back to the Cadillac.

  “My name is Nine by the way,” the cat followed him.

  “So why do you only talk to me when I’m alone, Nine?” Loki rolled his eyes.

  “It’s a gift only you have,” Nine said, padding next to him. “We pets love to talk to you, but we really hate Axel. He treats Bitsy so bad. We won’t worry bother wasting our time talking to someone who treats other animals and insects so poorly. “Stop babbling and hop in,” Loki said, and closed the door.

  Since Nine was going to sleep in the backseat, Loki wasn’t going to need the radio’s company, so he turned it off.

  “You need a blanket or something?” Loki asked Nine.

  “I’m fine,” Nine said. “I tucked myself in your warm backpack, if you don’t mind.”

  “Good for you,” Loki said. “Aren’t you going to tell me why you’re really talking to me?”

  “Like I said it’s a gift,” the cat yawned. “One day, when you remember your past, you’ll know why.”

  “If I ever do remember,” Loki mumbled.

  Loki was close to asking Nine about his past, but he was too proud—and maybe too sane—to do so.

  The earth rumbled suddenly, conjuring that soft earthquake he’d experienced before in the same parking lot. It was much shorter this time. The car shook a couple of times and then it stopped.