Chapter 4
Four
A good brownie always helps another.
Even if that means killing babies in the name of science. - Arienna
Worried Fabia will come find me if I take too long, I leave Hyatt to his tantrum, then peel out of the house.
I hurry down the street to her home. Despite us being best friends, I don’t want her next door in case she hears my monsters, and she doesn’t want me close enough to stop her from doing her “writing research”.
It’s kind of a toss up about which one of us gets covered in blood more.
“Fabia! I’m here!” I say as I crash through her front door without knocking.
The bright colours found all throughout Brownston are nowhere to be seen in here.
She claims there is dark teal, dark purple, and dark grey, but really, the only splash of colour in her living room is me.
Her home’s like a dark, stormy cloud, and I’m her visiting rainbow.
Unlike in my house, where I have lots of rooms to divide my pets into if they’re feeling overly loving, Fabia likes the wide open space.
Her sitting room makes up the entire floor, with one bathroom at the back.
Her voice drifts down from the spiral staircase in the middle of the room. “I’m up here.”
I climb up the stairs, passing through the kitchen and dining room on the second floor. There are more colours here – purple alongside the black.
I find her at the top. The bathroom door is open, and she’s sitting on the tiled floor, beside the bathtub.
Her head down, she’s chewing on the end of a pencil.
Another one graces her left hand, and she scribbles away at the notebook in her lap.
Every so often, she huffs hard, trying to blow a stubborn curl of lilac hair out of her silver eyes.
“How many babies do you need to fill a bathtub with blood?” she asks without lifting her head, and the pencil in her mouth falls to the floor.
“Um, how old are they?” I ask, my face scrunching up in thought.
“Newborns.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think that’ll ever work. They can’t even crawl, Fabia. How are they going to carry the blood? Let alone stand up to pour it over the edge?”
Her pencil stills. “What?”
I stroke my chin as I peer up at the black ceiling.
“Maybe if you stacked them up one on top of the other, then put a slide on them, leading into the tub, and then poured blood down it, you could technically claim they were filling it…” I shake my head.
“But, Fabia, they’d wriggle so much. I think you’d be better off with toddlers.
At least they can carry buckets – You will give them buckets, right?
” Lowering my eyes, I look at my best friend, who is now looking at me as if she is trying to figure out what the heck I am talking about.
So I cup both my hands together, my pinkies touching so she can see.
“It would take them forever, carrying blood like this in their little hands. Think of all the spillage.” I glance at the blood-red tiles on the floor.
“And they wouldn’t even see any puddles, so then they’d slip and fall.
” I throw my hands into the air, miming the liquid going everywhere.
“I don’t know how much would actually reach the tub. ”
“Arienna…” she says slowly. “I am not asking you how many babies can carry blood to a bathtub in a bucket or in their little hands. I’m asking how many babies would you have to drain of their blood to fill a tub.”
“Oh.” I glance at the tub. My eyes widen as a baby’s head pokes over the edge. “Whose baby is that?” I ask.
She waves a hand dismissively. “Not relevant.”
“But –”
“Don’t get attached to her, Arienna. I’m not keeping her.”
“Um…”
“Come on. Help me with this,” she says in exasperation.
I open my mouth, then close it again. A good brownie is always helpful. “Well,” I start as the baby sits back down in the tub. I can still see her, and I don’t know how I missed her before. Granted, I’m not the most observant, but now she’s really hard to miss.
“Well,” I try again. Looking at Fabia, I remind myself that I cannot go to jail today. “How much blood is in a baby?”
“Well, there’s blood in every part of them.” She looks down at her notebook full of scrawls. “If you subtract the estimate of their bones and organs – I reckon about a tenth? But the only way to really be sure is to drain a baby and then weigh the volume.”
I sneak a look at the baby in the tub again. She giggles happily as she stares at me.
Glancing back up at the ceiling, I picture my wasps.
My babies would not do well if I was in jail.
They need to be fed multiple times a day, or they get grumpy.
Besides, a good brownie always follows the rules, and there isn’t a single one that says we can’t drain a baby of all their blood.
But there is one that says we must always help those in need.
And Fabia is in need.
Isn’t the baby?
Well, she isn’t crying right now, so… no?
Unable to refute that logic, I sigh in relief. I am doing the right thing.
“Right,” I say. “Well, how many babies do you think can fit in a tub?”
“Thirty-four if you stack them two on top of each other, with the top one’s head between the bottom one’s legs.
” She waves a hand. “But that only helps me with knowing how many dead babies can fit in a tub. Not how much blood I’d need to fill it, and I did the maths about how many could fit if you blended them first, but then you’ll be bathing in their bones and brains and” –she wrinkles her nose– “that does not sound very appealing.”
I don’t think any part of this sounds appealing, but a good brownie never says mean things.
“Hmm,” I say as I scratch my chin. “Well, considering I’m the only one who reads your books, I think you should just times your number by ten.
Three hundred and forty sounds like a good number to me. Very believable.”
She frowns and looks at the baby, her eyes calculating.
I slide in between her and the bathtub with a carefree whistle.
Her eyes narrow. Then she rolls them in exasperation. “I’m not going to kill the baby, Arienna.”
“Then why do you have her?” I ask. “And why’s she in the bathtub? All the better to clean up the mess, hmmm?”
“Because it turns out babies are suicidal. I take my eye off her for one second, and she’s crawling for the stairs. Another moment and she’s teething on one of my knives.”
“Why’d you tell me not to get attached to her then?”
“Because you get attached to everything,” Fabia says in exasperation. “You watch a play or read a book, and you cry about it ending.”
“That’s very normal.”
“No, crying about the ending, is normal. Not it ending. But second point – whenever it rains, you go out searching for monsters.”
“But, Fabia, they’re miserable in the rain! It’s only right to bring them inside.”
“They aren’t miserable,” she says. “That’s where they live. They get more stressed when you kidnap them.”
“I don’t kidnap them. I lure them in with my love and cuddles.”
She looks at me dryly. “They try to bite and scratch you when you pick them up to haul them away.”
“No. Those are kisses and hugs. They just don’t realise they have teeth and claws.”
She rolls her eyes. “And anytime you kiss anyone, you think they’re your lifemate.”
I sigh dreamily. At the dawn of time, the gods split everyone’s souls in two and then tossed each half out across the Seven Planes for them to find. One of these days, I’m going to find mine. I just know it.
“And there you go being soppy again.”
The baby makes a cooing noise, and I break out into a smile. Turning around, I pull a face at her, and she laughs. “Are you sure we can’t keep her? I think she’s cute.”
“You think centipedes and spiders are cute,” Fabia says as she scribbles on her notepad, her pencil scratching away at a page. “Your meter is broken.”
“But they are cute! Remember Jojica?”
She snorts. “You mean the massive hairy spider that attacked birds? The one who cocooned your dad in its web and nearly ate him?”
“Yeah! She had the cutest little face. All those eyes!”
“Eyes she used to hunt down your dad.”
I wave my hand as I turn back to face her. “Death is a part of life.” I pause. “And besides, that would have been a nicer way for him to go.”
She cocks her head to the side, giving me that point. Dad might have died while having sex, but the verdict was still out on whether he’d been suffocated, drowned, or crushed when he got shoved up that troll’s vagina. My money was on all three.
“Yet, you still made me get rid of Jojica,” I say sadly.
I can’t see Fabia’s eyes as she ducks her head back down, but I can tell she’s rolling them like a cup of dice. “She was a monster, Arienna. Maybe try having a normal pet. Like a rock or something.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Rocks are boring.”
“Rocks are amazing. Just touching, breathing, or licking some of them can lead to death.” She snort-chuckles. “You could say they’re stone cold killers.”
I laugh because she’s made a joke, and a good brownie always laughs at one’s jokes.
Even if they’re terrible.
“See? Rocks are cool.” She gives a firm nod.
I make a non-committal noise.
Tossing her notebook away from her, she stands, then picks up the baby. Holding her out at arm’s length, she mutters, “You were not helpful in the slightest.” The child reaches for her as she giggles. Fabia wrinkles her nose as she marches towards the open bathroom window.
“Um, Fabia?”
“Babies don’t take fall damage. They’re too small.”
“That’s true, but –”
Out she goes. She didn’t even hesitate to drop her.
“Fabia!” I run towards the window and peer out, pushing half of my body through the hole so I can see if she’s safe. Fabia yanks me back in before I can.
“You take fall damage,” she says sternly.
“But the baby –”
“Is fine. Someone’s bound to find it before dark, and they will make sure she gets back to her parents.” That’s true. The whole town raises all the kids, and Fabia knows that better than anyone considering she’s an orphan herself.
“Now come on. I’ve got a bottle of ambrosia with your name on it.” She ushers me out of the bathroom and down the stairs. “We’re going to get pissed, then talk about all the ways we can kill Karl in my book.”
That shouldn’t have swayed me (a good brownie never entertains a murder), but it did.