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“I made you a cake,” April said.
Valerie knew that if she didn’t get up to go look at it, April would stand there forever. The half-smile on her glossy lips would never turn into a frown. She had a dozy amount of patience, like she could—eyes wide open—sleep away the minutes and hours anyone else would find boring; she wouldn’t even notice if Valerie ignored her.
At first, Valerie had appreciated that. She was busy enough as it was—was there anything more Sisyphean these days than trying to land listeners for yet another true crime podcast? She hadn’t wanted a roommate who would chip away at her time, friend-hunting her with endless perky enthusiasm: let’s watch this, let’s try this recipe, let’s go out tonight.
April didn’t pester. She just … waited.
It had gone from nice to fucking weird.
To be fair, though, Valerie had spent the last few weeks on edge. It was—not that she could admit this to anyone—a happy kind of edge, but still, her nerves were fried from it. They were overreacting to the tiniest bit of stimuli now, even when it was just her roommate standing still in the kitchen doorway.
Anyone else would say following up on all these graphic murder cases had them tense, Valerie thought, reluctantly getting up to investigate the cake and get rid of the itch of April’s blank gaze on her neck. But I know better. That don’t bother me at all. It's just content.
And lately, it was great content. It was everything she could have hoped for. Instead of scrounging through news articles—more and more of them AI slop that stuck out like a sore third thumb—and wondering how much she could rephrase Wikipedia and get away with it, Valerie had something hot and local. Other podcasts were talking about the blood-drained bodies—all with puncture wounds in their thighs—but only Valerie was on the ground, there to get live interviews from the victims’ friends and do close profiles of their hangout spots. She had a focus. She had a brand. She was in.
Her Patreon had limped along for a year with only a handful of people. It hadn’t even given her beer money.
Now she’d gotten 400 new patrons over the last month. She didn’t have time for April’s cake: she needed to be working on new rewards for higher tiers.
But cake did sound good.
“Oh!” she said, the sound startled out of her when she actually saw the cake on the kitchen table.
“Do you like it?” April said.
It was chocolate frosted, with zigzags and blood drops done in red gel. 400 was written on the top in the same sticky, gooey gel, surrounded by sugar tombstones that were probably left over from Halloween cupcakes.
“I thought it was going to be for my birthday,” Valerie said, but that was a clumsy cover-up for the fact that she hadn’t thought about April’s exact words—I made you a cake, not just I made a cake—at all. April was always baking, after all, and she was always on some diet that never let her eat any of it.
“Your birthday isn’t for three more weeks. This is for all your new subscribers.”
“I didn’t even realize you’d heard my podcast.”
April didn’t look like she would—which, then again, maybe made her look like exactly the kind of person who would. Pastel cardigans and pearls.
“I have to keep up with it, don’t I?” April said. She cut a thick slice of cake and passed it over to Valerie. “I need to know what you’re saying. And it’s important to you.”
Valerie took a bite. It was delicious, of course: April’s baking always was. “You don’t have to get into it just because we live together, though.”
“You’re not listening,” April said. Her half-smile was still where it had always been, and it stayed there as she knelt down in front of Valerie’s chair and pressed her hand to the inside of Valerie’s thigh, pushing her pajama shorts up an inch or two. Her fingers were as cool as snakeskin. “This is where you’ve been saying all the bite-marks are, but—and you can’t put this in the show—they’re actually a little higher. Closer to here.”
She tapped Valerie’s thigh twice. If she moved her hand even a little, she would be touching Valerie's underwear.
“How ….” The chocolate was heavy on Valerie’s tongue.
I’ve never seen her eat. She bakes, but I’ve never seen her eat.
“How do you know that?”
April’s smile finally changed, widening enough for her lips to part, and Valerie saw the answer to her question.
She made herself put the fork down. If she tried anything, tried to stab April to get her away, she didn’t think she’d be fast enough. Not with April poised above her bare leg.
“Are you going to kill me?” she said. Her voice only cracked a little. All those hours talking about murder—April’s murders—had been good vocal training.
April actually looked hurt. “No. You’re the first thing in a long time that’s been interesting, so I’ve tried to make it interesting for you too.”
That was one of the stranger details of the case—there had been sporadic exsanguinations in the area over the last few decades, but never this many this close together, and never so clearly linked by a single method.
Content. Lots and lots of content.
She looked at her cake. 400 new subscribers this month. She could break 500 total next week, with the right material. Easily. By the time her real birthday rolled around ….
April had still been working on her own sleepy timeline. It had taken her six months of apartment-sharing to drop five bodies. What if she sped up? Worked on Valerie’s release schedule?
Valerie opened her legs even wider, letting April’s hand climb and her fingers curl. She could feel her heartbeat down there, in her femoral artery. In her cunt.
“I need some rewards for higher-tier patrons,” Valerie said. “Like special updates. Early access.”
“Not too early,” April said.
“No,” Valerie said quickly. “But … something special. And some more content for good, hooky episodes, the kind that land new listeners.”
April followed her fingers with her lips. No breath stirred against Valerie’s skin.
“I’m sure we can think of something,” she said.