Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
MAL
“There are a lot of creatures in the world who lack empathy,” Mal began, deciding to circumvent further confusion by cutting to the chase.
The kid wanted to know why they were weird, and Mal was going to fill them in.
“Some kill for pleasure. Some kill to survive. Some do both.” It was Mal.
Mal did both. “Neither tend to feel any remorse.” Also Mal.
“I don’t kill,” Holly said in a hopeful tone.
“I don’t care,” Mal said to make sure they both knew how little the kid’s life meant to him. Holly wilted, and Mal pressed on. “Some creatures only care under certain circumstances. Some due to trauma, some due to their nature. Brownies come under that last category.”
“I’m pretty sure brownies don’t care about anything. At least I hope they don’t. They’re too much fun to eat.”
Mal blinked at the kid who just claimed they didn’t kill. Maybe they were on the psychopathy scale after all. Those folks were well-known to be liars. “You eat brownies?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Holly cocked their head to the side. “When I’m on my period, I’m violent unless I have an ample brownie supply. Every girl has her period food. That one’s mine.”
“You’re a girl?”
“Duh.”
“Good for you.”
“You’re not very observant, are you?”
Mal was keenly observant, but since he didn’t care about humans in general, he didn’t think about gender much, especially if it wasn’t obvious. Holly’s shapeless clothing and don’t look at me vibe made it so Mal would have had to care in order to find out what her gender was.
He knew it would either come up or it wouldn’t. Either way, he still didn’t care because it had no relevance to how he treated someone. Mal was far more concerned with whether someone was delicious. Holly wasn’t, and that was all he needed to know.
Clayton was going to be so fucking delicious…
Ahem. Back to the moment at hand.
“I’m not observant? I’m not the one who’s…
” Mal stopped himself. He wasn’t sure what would happen to the magic Holly was unconsciously working if he startled her.
He didn’t relish getting decorporealized because reality unbent and crushed them when the concrete wall they were walking through was reunited with itself.
He might be tough, but reality made its own rules when it came to what belonged where. “How long until we’re out of here?”
“We’re there.” Holly waved a hand and showed a grass-covered grate leading out to an overgrown lot. It wasn’t there a few seconds ago. “You still have to answer my questions until I’m satisfied, though.”
Mal waited until he made it to the overgrown lot before saying, “I never agreed to that.”
Holly bristled, and it made her eyes flash.
“Don’t get your feathers ruffled. I’ll give you five more minutes, and then I’m out of here.”
Holly frowned, but she nodded.
“You’re a brownie.”
“No… I eat brownies. We just covered this.”
“Then you’re a cannibal, which probably makes you a monster. Welcome to the club.” Mal held out a hand for her to shake.
“I don’t think we’re having the same conversation right now.”
Mal knew they weren’t since the moment she’d mentioned period food.
He wasn’t an idiot. Obviously, brownies were some kind of snack he’d never heard of.
Mal didn’t eat snacks that weren’t sentient, so he was bound to have gaps in his food knowledge.
However, he was having too much fun to clear up the misunderstanding.
“I’m pretty sure you’re only part brownie, though, so that means you’re only part cannibal.
” Mal tilted his head in mock thoughtfulness.
“That means you’re only part monster, so I can only offer you part of a handshake, I’m afraid.
” He retracted all the fingers on his outstretched hand except his index finger and wiggled it at her.
Holly’s expression was so nonplussed that if Mal was able to feed off confusion, he’d be full for days.
“If you’re just going to make fun of me, I’m leaving.” Holly did a little stomp with her foot.
Mal waited to see if she was going to gift him with a few more stomps, and when nothing happened, he gave her an easy smile.
“Don’t get your shorts in a bunch. I’m telling you the truth.
You have all the classic tells of a brownie—a race of the Other.
Not the snack food.” Mal held up a hand to forestall any potential foot stomping so he could continue.
“Brownies are creatures who are deeply rooted in earth magic. They find a space they resonate with and claim it as their territory.”
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with me,” Holly grumbled. “I don’t resonate with anything.”
“From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like you’ve been given a chance to find anyone or anything worth your time to bond with.
Brownies can’t connect with people or places they don’t resonate with.
You’re a brownie without a home or a family to care for, so your magic pool is shit.
No one in the Other is going to see you for what you are because of that, so life is going to suck for you until you find your home. ”
That should be enough information, right? In Mal’s opinion, it was more than enough repayment for Holly helping him get out of a situation that wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t hosed him down with a fire extinguisher.
“I…” Holly was frozen in place. It didn’t seem to be from fear, though. Mal would have been able to taste it if it had been. It seemed more like she’d been poleaxed by the information Mal had just dropped on her.
People were such drama queens. If Mal froze up every time he was presented with information that rocked the foundations of his reality, he’d never get anything done.
“Well, have fun with that, Holly.” Mal gave the girl a salute and walked away.
When he heard her call out a frantic, “Wait!” He waved a hand and stepped into the treeline edging the parking lot. The shadows welcomed him happily and obscured him from view. To Holly’s eyes, Mal should have appeared to vanish into thin air.
He pulled out his phone and typed in Clayton Wood.
With the shitty, bargain-basement phone he’d managed to cobble together, it wouldn’t be able to find the man directly, but it should get Mal close.
He dialed the number his phone presented to him, and a hurried male voice answered, “I’m not interested in extending my car’s warranty, so fuck off! ” The line went dead.
Mal ignored the interaction and smiled when his phone pinpointed the location where the call had picked up.
Clayton should be within a hundred meters of that phone, and it was nowhere near the man’s stupid chapter house.
Now that Mal knew roughly where Clayton was, all he had to do was go there and hope it wouldn’t be in such a densely populated area that he’d be difficult to find.
It only took a 20-minute cab ride, but the howling pit in his soul made it feel like six hours.
He didn’t have a sassy teen to distract him from his hunger anymore.
Just an old, exhausted-looking cab driver who wouldn’t survive a good scare if Mal’s control broke and he decided to eat him.
There was no point in trying to eat someone if they died before he managed to get a single bite out of the deal.
When Mal arrived, he braced himself for the ordeal he was about to go through. He somehow had to sift through the neighborhood without eating anyone but his intended target. It was going to be close, but he could do it. Mal was a pro.
The cab deposited him directly in front of the dock.
Considering Clayton’s challenges, Mal would have ignored the dock entirely.
He would have assumed Clayton wouldn’t want to tempt fate by being so close to death by drowning, but the memory of him telling Tommy he lived on a boat had Mal stopping to examine it.
The first boat on the dock was a two-tier luxury yacht well past its prime.
Rust covered every last inch of exposed metal, and the railing around each level appeared to have had a recent, hasty welding job applied to it.
Mal wondered if Clayton had done it and how many fingers he’d lost in the process.
He knew it was Clayton’s boat without being told. It couldn’t belong to anyone else. It wasn’t the hodgepodge repair work or the dozens of elemental sprites milling around the place. It wasn’t even the eye-assaulting clash of colors splashed on the hull, seemingly at random.
No. It was the massive hole in the side of the boat going well below the water line that let Mal know to his core that this boat could only belong to the fussy chaos mage he was about to eat.
As he walked up to the boat, several water sprites waved at him as they swam lazily around the outside of the hole.
There was no water in the hole. From where Mal stood, he was able to see a perfectly dry and intact bathroom sink on the other side of the hull with nothing between it and the water but air.
Clayton was just full of surprises, wasn’t he?
Mal would try to squeeze a few of them out of him before he drained him dry.
Not trusting the ancient plank connecting the dock to the boat, Mal jumped over it with ease. The moment his feet hit the deck surrounding the first level, a door opened and out popped Eira, looking stressed and frantic.
When she spotted him, she snapped, “Finally!” and shoved a sticky, softly sobbing Tommy into his arms. Tommy stopped crying the moment Mal automatically accepted him and buried his tiny face into Mal’s neck. Sticky hands twined into Mal’s hair, and the boy gave an exhausted hiccup.
What?
“I don’t know what took you so long,” Eira continued.
“I’ve been up to my elbows in chaos for hours now.
You feed Tommy and put him to bed while I sort everything else out.
” Eira turned and vanished inside, shouting behind her, “If you’re waiting for an engraved invitation, it’s not happening. Get your butt in here and get to work.”
Mal stood frozen in place as his world flipped upside down.
Apparently, being a drama queen wasn’t exclusive to humans.