Creature Discomforts (Descendants)

by Peterson, Jenny

  It was Kendra who answered, her voice croaky after not talking for so long. “Not a damned thing. These two girls didn’t even share any classes. And like I said before, the Corpus doesn’t offer much either.”

  Rachel groaned and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. A headache poked behind each eyeball, pulsing in time with the blinking cursor squatting in the middle of the blank document on her laptop.

  “Are you sure it’s something beasty?” Kendra scooted off her bed and stretched out on the floor next to Rachel.

  “No,” she admitted. She waved a hand in Sid’s general direction. “But Emperor Martin over there demands our due demon diligence.” Rachel rolled her head on the floor to look at Kendra and sighed very loudly.

  “Wait,” Sid suddenly said. “Wait. Wait. Wait.”

  Rachel pushed up on her elbows as Sid shoved himself away from Kendra’s desk and rolled across the floor in her chair. He had his own laptop rested on his knees and tried to prop his bare feet on Rachel’s stomach. She shunted his feet away. “We’re waiting.”

  “So I thought to look for anything strange before Sara and Ali vanished.” He opened his eyes wide, like this was some significant clue.

  “Okay,” Kendra said, waving her hands for him to continue. “And?”

  “And, according to some of the TA message boards where we all gossip about students, a girl disappeared a week before the other two.”

  Kendra sat up. “But why wouldn’t we have heard about it? We got a flyer about Sara, and Beth Ann was putting on a good show about Ali. Why nothing for patient zero?”

  Sid narrowed his eyes and stared at his screen for a few seconds before focusing back on the two girls on the floor. “She was a freshman like you two but apparently wasn’t adjusting well. No one’s reported her missing, and it looks like everyone assumed she’d just left college.”

  “Maybe she did just leave college. It’s not unheard of,” Kendra said, sliding back down to the floor.

  Sid snapped his laptop shut and stood up. “Won’t know for sure until we poke around. She was room 113, Baker Hall. Let’s go.”

  *

  “This is ridiculous. I’m already behind on my anthro homework,” Rachel hissed a half-hour later as she and Kendra scurried after Sid. “And this is probably highly, highly illegal.” They’d already stopped at Sid’s room to grab his lock-picking kit—which did nothing for Rachel’s worries about legality—and Sid was striding down the first floor of Baker Hall.

  The missing girl—Melanie, Sid had called her—had a single room at the end of a corridor next to an emergency exit. It was quiet and still, with only three other closed doors in this short side hall spoking off the main corridor. Rachel suppressed a shiver. No wonder Melanie had a hard time adjusting to being in college. A single room at the end of a hall that felt more like a tomb than a dorm. Rachel shivered again and hugged her arms around her stomach.

  Sid bent over the door handle, a collection of long, thin instruments bundled in one hand. Rachel and Kendra turned their backs to him and kept a look out, pretending it was totally normal to be hanging out at the end of a random hallway. It wasn’t long before Sid started muttering in French.

  “Uh, you doing okay?” Rachel whispered out the side of her mouth, her eyes still on the hall.

  “Très bien,” Sid grunted. He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses farther up his nose and concentrated on the stubborn lock.

  “Have you ever actually done this before?” Kendra hissed. “I mean, it’s a dorm room. It’s not a bank vault.”

  “Your confidence in me is wonderful,” Sid hissed back.

  “If it’s too hard, we can just—” Rachel compressed her lips together. At that moment, a door on their left swung open and a girl walked out wearing a bathrobe and carrying a little tub of toiletries. “Hello!” Rachel’s voice came out an octave too high and a decibel too loud. Beside her, Kendra groaned.

  The girl froze at the open door and narrowed her eyes in greeting.

  “Um, have you seen Melanie? We have, uh, math together.” Rachel raised both eyebrows hopefully and forced a smile.

  The girl didn’t move. Her eyes narrowed further. Rachel grimaced wider. Kendra—God help them all—waved. “Haven’t seen her,” the girl finally grunted. Then she turned down the hall and stomped off to the showers.

  Rachel let out a long breath, her spine collapsing to mush. “What is this? Grinch Hall?” She tried for a laugh but it came out more of a relieved cry.

  There was a click, a “Ha!” from Sid, and the door swung inward.

  The room was dark, just the weak light from a lamppost outside filtering in through drawn shades. Rachel felt along the wall for the switch, and butter yellow lights blinked to life. The dorm was set up almost exactly like Rachel’s, except it was half the size. Where she and Kendra had two desks, two closets, two tall windows opening to the green-edged walkways, Melanie had one.

  It was tidy and clean inside the room, with neat stacks of textbooks on the desk surrounding an obvious space where a laptop had rested. There were no toiletries on the vanity next to the small sink and empty hangers among the clothes in the closet. Perhaps Kendra had been right and this wasn’t another missing girl but simply a lonely freshman who hadn’t been able to cut it. With Miss Congeniality next door, Rachel couldn’t say she was all that surprised.

  But then she spared a glance for the whiteboard calendar hanging in every dorm room and frowned. The calendar was filled with neat handwriting denoting tests and assignment due dates in black marker, but a date two Fridays ago stuck out. In red marker, Melanie had written “Clock tower! 9 pm!” in big, bold letters and circled the date.

  Maybe Melanie hadn’t run away. Maybe she’d been lured.

  *

  Rachel cased the clock tower all night.

  She dressed head to toe in black and had as many weapons strapped under her clothes as she could: the silver dagger, her short knives, a wooden stake, packets of herbs to repel different demons. The sun had long ago dipped behind the trees before she took up the watch, yet the tower’s gray stones were still warm to the touch.

  Night fell fast in the mountains, and it seemed to fall even faster in this empty corner of campus. The clock tower stood like a lonely sentinel at Saint Etienne’s northern edge, where the narrow valley came together and the dale was blotted out by mountains. There was a small clearing surrounding the tower, but the trees around the edge grew close, and the trails between them leading back to the main part of campus were thin and secluded in the dark.

  The day’s birds gave way to the sounds of night: cicadas chirped a chorus, frogs croaked from the river winnowing through the gap in the mountains, even an owl hooted from somewhere nearby. Rachel sat with her back to the tower and waited. And waited.

  Yet nothing appeared. Neither did anything strange happen around the library where Ali had disappeared and where Kendra was stationed or Sara’s residence hall where Sid was keeping watch. Kendra’s and Sid’s check-in texts became fewer and fewer, and it wasn’t long before the night’s orchestra had lulled Rachel to sleep. She awoke at dawn, her neck stiff and her butt numb. The sky above was a wash of pinks as Rachel stretched with a loud groan and stumbled back to her dorm.

  She was picturing her bed when voices stopped her dead. She’d just slipped through the doors of Caster Hall, and she peeked around a column to see two girls huddled together on a couch in the common room.

  “I’m telling you,” one girl said, her voice wet as her face. “I heard Tay scream.”

  Rachel held her breath so she wouldn’t miss a word. Mascara traced down the wet-faced girl’s cheeks, and her short skirt and sequined tank both looked worse for wear.

  The girl next to her swayed and blinked clumsily. “You’ve had a lot to drink. So did Taylor. You know how loud she can get.”

  “Then where is she, Lacey? I didn’t see her the rest of the night after she started talking to that weirdo and neither did anyone else.”
>
  Lacey dropped her hands onto the crying girl’s shoulders and leaned in. “We both need to get some sleep and then we’ll go talk to Taylor, okay?”

  The first girl sniffed and nodded then stumbled to her feet and leaned on Lacey as they slowly disappeared down a hall. Rachel groaned and scrubbed her hands over her face. She’d wasted a whole night sitting like a fool in the wrong place, and now she’d definitely not be getting any sleep.

  *

  By the next afternoon, it was official: A fourth girl had gone missing. Yet there were no bodies, no clues of where they’d gone. Nothing except for a hungover girl mentioning a weirdo, which was about the opposite of helpful. Rachel had thought for a couple hours it was maybe an incubus, but those definitely left bodies. Really messy bodies.

  Rachel’s stomach twisted and cramped, and jittery energy pooled in her limbs and ached to be used, making her clench her hands and feet. She felt heavy and weak all at the same time. There had to be something she could do, but what? Rachel dragged herself to the caf with all the liveliness of a zombie. She heard herself grunt in hello to the guy swiping cards, but didn’t even care when he recoiled from her.

  Her tray clattered to the empty table in a corner of the caf, and Rachel clattered to a seat too. She picked at the food she’d grabbed: a greasy burger with a sodden bun, salad she’d forgotten to dress, egg rolls, and chocolate frozen yogurt. The lunch of frustrated, failing champions.

  Even worse, Beth Ann and her two friends slipped into seats at the next table. Rachel ducked her head so her hair hung over her face and shoved an egg roll in her mouth.

  “Rachel?” Rachel swiveled toward the sound, half an egg roll still sticking past her lips like a deep-fried cigar. Beth Ann’s lips curled and she froze over her dainty salad. “Gawd, Rachel. I know finals are coming up, but this”—she waved a fork in Rachel’s general direction—“this is kind of beyond.”

  Rachel swallowed a lump of egg roll. “I’ve been busy,” she grumbled.

  Beth Ann’s laugh was tinkling and light yet absolutely full of razor sharp needles. “Too busy to shower? Aw, honey, that’s so sad.” She pulled puppy dog eyes and a frown then turned back to her friends with another laugh.

  Rachel tried to concentrate on her food, but every swallow dropped into her stomach like a brick and made her feel worse. It was bricks in her stomach and knives in her ears. Beth Ann’s loud, pointed chatter to her two sycophants scraped across Rachel’s sleep-deprived skin and stabbed at her mind.

  “I just can’t believe how some girls let themselves go. A real woman looks and acts her best when she’s under the most pressure. That’s what my mother always said, anyway.”

  Rachel bent over her tray and berated herself for the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She could track and bag a wendigo, she could throw a knife with accuracy, yet she couldn’t think of a single thing to say to Beth Ann in her own defense. Rachel’s mood was black when someone dropped a tray of food across from her. She jerked upright and peered into Sid’s face. He gave her a small smile that hitched up one side of his mouth, though his eyes looked nearly as tired as Rachel felt.

  “Sid, sweetie, there’s room next to me,” Beth Ann cooed, her voice suddenly all sugar and honey.

  “I’m fine here,” Sid said lightly.

  Rachel peeked through her hair toward Beth Ann. She didn’t miss the girl’s mouth twist with disgust for a second before flashing another dazzling smile. “Come on, Siddy. Let’s go outside. Rachel’s being such a grump. Let’s leave her alone with her, ah, lunch,” Beth Ann said, the last word dripping with derision.

  “Maybe later,” Sid said, his voice still carefully even.

  Beth Ann huffed and folded her arms over her chest to pout. “I don’t understand why you want to eat lunch with her over me. What’s so special about Rachel?”

  Rachel ducked lower over her food, wishing she could just curl up into a ball and disappear. Her face flared red with embarrassment. But then it flared even hotter.

  “Beth, don’t be shitty. You don’t know a thing about Rachel.”

  Beth Ann’s table went silent, her two friends frozen so they wouldn’t miss a thing. Then with small, precise movements, Beth Ann stood, gathered her half-eaten salad, and walked away without a word. Her two friends trailed behind, leaving Sid and Rachel alone.

  “Sorry about that,” Sid said quietly. “She doesn’t like that we’re friends.”

  Rachel pressed her lips together and frowned at her food. “What do you see in her?” She flicked a glance at Sid and saw him shrug.

  “She’s simple,” he finally said after a long pause. “I don’t have to think around her, if that makes sense.” He grinned then and reached across the table for the forgotten half of Rachel’s greasy burger. “Besides,” he said past a big bite. “I’m in America. I should date the perfect American girl, right?”

  Sid’s words punched Rachel in the gut. Her shoulders hunched inward, like that could protect from the truth of Sid’s revelation. If Beth Ann was the perfect American girl, what was she? In that moment, Rachel felt very, very small and plain.

  “I, uh, I’ve got to…” Rachel jumped to her feet and rushed away.

  CHAPTER 7

  The sky bruised with twilight. At least it matched Rachel’s temper. It’d been one of those days where the clouds were dollops of whipped cream and the breezes sweet. It was perfect and lovely and completely missed as Rachel was stuck in her room with a snappy Kendra and an exhausted Sid. She tried to coerce her brain into something approximating sense. Her brain was not a willing participant.

  Rachel grunted a goodbye to her mom and shoved her phone back into her pocket. Outside her window, a group of guys threw a plastic disc and loped around after it like eager puppies. They laughed and shouted and generally were having a much better time than she, which only made Rachel huffier. She turned away from the window and crossed her arms over her chest with a little “harrumph.” The tittering sound of laughing girls wove through the deeper baritone of men’s voices. Rachel’s scowl deepened. Wonderful. More college girls she had to worry about disappearing into the night to who knew where.

  Rachel slumped away from the window and collapsed onto her bed.

  “What’d Daphne have to say?” Sid asked. His voice was deflated and thin, and he took off his glasses to pinch at the bridge of his nose like that would help revive him.

  Sid flicked a look Rachel’s way, but she tucked her chin and picked at a string unraveling on her comforter. She hadn’t quite been able to meet Sid’s eyes since last week, since he admitted Beth Ann was “the perfect girl.” She tried her damnedest not to care, to concentrate on other things. It wasn’t like she didn’t already have a lot to occupy her mind. But it was there when she least expected it: when she brushed her teeth before bed, when she first woke up in the morning. It was a twist in her gut and a press against her chest. She hated the feeling.

  “Rach?” Kendra prodded.

  Right. The phone call with her mom. She had to stop thinking about it. Sid was her colleague. Nothing more. “She’s got nothing. She hasn’t been able to get in touch with her contact in the area yet. If it was grabbing guys as well as girls, but …” Rachel threw up her hands and fell back onto her bed, her arms flopping overhead and smacking the headboard. Above, the blades of the ceiling fan cut through the air, but it did little to clear the stale, defeated atmosphere hanging like a too-thick blanket over them all. “She thought maybe it could be another wendigo since remote forests are its natural hunting grounds, but there’s no way. Wendigos don’t take their food to go.”

  Kendra made a gagging noise. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Yeah,” Sid agreed. “It really is. They’re not the cleanest eaters, though I have read of wendigos that like to take bits and pieces for a snack.”

  “But there’d be something,” Rachel said, still staring at the ceiling fan. The blades blurred until they looked like they were reversing their spin for just a second.
“A sign of a struggle, blood. The best lead we’ve got is a girl who met someone at the tower and a girl last seen with a ‘weirdo.’”

  Kendra’s bed creaked, and Rachel rolled her head to watch Kendra fold up her legs to rest her chin on them. She pursed her lips up, thinking.

  Sid paced back and forth in the space between Rachel’s and Kendra’s beds, one hand at his chin. “The tower meeting means something. Melanie would have had to have some contact with the kidnapper before agreeing to meet there. Which means it’s maybe a half-demon or something that can blend in without being too obvious to those of us with the sight.”

  “Or it’s just a crazy guy,” Kendra said. “Seriously, Sid. The girls Rachel overheard said Taylor was last seen with a weirdo. Like, a human weirdo. I’ve pored over the Corpus and every text I can get my hands on. There’s nothing.”

  Sid didn’t stop his pacing. “No. It’s a demon. Or tied to a demon somehow.”

  Rachel pushed herself to her elbows and watched Sid’s boots track back and forth across her vision. “Why do you think that?”

  The boots stopped and turned so two scuffed toes faced Rachel. “I’ve grown up in this world. I’ve seen predators and threats and what they do to their victims. There’s just … just a feeling that it’s a demon.”

  “But we don’t even know if there have been any victims,” Rachel pressed. “We can’t keep chasing after something based on a feeling you get. I’ve got class, Sid. And a GPA that’s looking pretty pathetic.”

  The boots stepped closer, and Rachel looked up from them to the dark pants to the shirt with the sleeves pushed up and finally into Sid’s face. He met her eyes and didn’t waver. “I just know.”

  Rachel didn’t have the energy to fight. She hauled the Corpus into her lap and opened the first page. Maybe she’d missed something the first time. Rachel rolled her shoulders, tried to forget the English paper she still had to complete, and stared at the entry for “abath.”

  The illustration showed a stout, pony-sized beast with a short tail and a single horn known for its healing powers. The heading underneath the creature’s name declared it a pest for its modern-day love of rooting through garbage.