Wickedly Ever After_ A Baba Yag - Deborah Blake Page 0,17
right?”
“Mostly Human, yes. But what I said was that Baba Yagas try not to tell lies. We’re all too aware of the power of words, so we try to use ours carefully. Most of the time we’ll avoid giving a straight answer or say something that distracts from the actual question. Heck, I’ve been known to set things on fire just to divert someone from a question I couldn’t answer.”
She chuckled at a memory he was probably better off not knowing about and winked at Bella, who was known both for putting out fires and accidentally starting them when she got upset.
“So you haven’t told a lie!” Liam said, pointing at her triumphantly.
“Of course I have, you goose,” Barbara said. “Unfortunately, there are times in every Baba’s career when it is simply unavoidable. Besides which, I realize that it was a very long time ago and a little bit hard to imagine, but I too was once a child. I distinctly remember an incident in which I spilled the porridge on the fire and told my mentor Baba that Chudo-Yudo had done it.”
“She made me go outside and sit in the mud,” Chudo-Yudo said, his voice muffled by a large bone that was more inside his mouth than out. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about that.”
“Oh,” Liam said, his shoulders slumping. “If even Baba Yagas lie when they are children, how on earth are we going to find someone Human who has never told even one tiny little fib?” He picked up his mug again, forgetting about the odd taste, and then made a face but drank it anyway.
Barbara patted his arm. “It seems impossible, I know. All the best impossible tasks do. It’s kind of in the definition. But we’ve still got some time. We’ll just have to travel around and see if we can stumble across someone really, really honest before the two weeks are up.”
“What if we take a baby?” Chudo-Yudo asked. “If the kid can’t talk yet, he or she won’t have told a lie, right?”
“NO,” Barbara and Liam said in unison. That was how they had met in the first place, because a creature called a Rusalka had broken the rule about stealing Human children and taking them through to the Otherworld lands. In fact, that was how they’d gotten Babs, since the Rusalka had killed her parents and taken their baby to be a bribe for Liam’s grief-crazed former wife to raise as her own.
“Somehow I don’t think the Queen would consider a baby as an acceptable answer,” Bella said. “And my guess is that she doesn’t deal well with cheaters.”
Barbara shuddered. “Definitely not something we want to test.”
But then Bella got a funny look on her face. “A baby,” she said. “Huh.”
“Hey, I thought we agreed on this,” Liam’s voice was tinged with alarm. “Barbara, we are definitely not stealing anyone’s baby.”
“What?” She waved a distracted hand at him. “No, of course not. Don’t be silly. Babies are noisy and they poop a lot. The Airstream would hate it.” She narrowed her eyes as her sister Baba. “What is it? Come on, I can tell you’ve thought of something.”
Bella leaned both elbows on the counter and stared at Babs. “Hey, Babs, can you answer a question for me?”
“That depends on whether or not I know the answer to the question,” Babs said, scrunching up her button nose. “Do I know the answer to the question? If it is multiplication, I am not very good at that yet.”
Bella bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. “No worries, kid. I’m not very good at it either. The eights confuse me every time. No, this is a much simpler question.” She pointed at Liam and Barbara. “If you spilled porridge, or anything else, what would you tell your folks?”
Babs blinked. “That is a very silly question. I would tell them I spilled the porridge, of course. What else would I say?”
Chudo-Yudo spat out his bone with a thunk. “Bella is brilliant. Haven’t I always said she was brilliant, Barbara?”
“I don’t remember whether you did or not,” Barbara said, gazing at Babs with wide eyes. “But clearly you are right.” She leaned over and gave Bella a big hug. “Thanks. You’re the best. I wish we could stay longer.”
Liam raised one eyebrow in question and she grinned at him. “Still don’t get it? I’ll explain it on the way.” She raised her voice a little so that she could divert Babs’s attention from her questionable breakfast. “Time