Creature Discomforts (Descendants) (5 page)

“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.

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.

“It’s not a Malaysian unicorn,” Sid said. Rachel’s bed groaned as he sat next to her, and she pulled her knees together so their legs wouldn’t touch.

“I’m being thorough.” Rachel couldn’t quite keep the annoyance out of her voice. She didn’t need Sid commenting on how she researched.

“I’m telling you, it’s not an abath.”

Rachel’s lips compressed to a slit, and she stubbornly stared at each word of the description. Beside her, Sid twitched.

“Are you done yet?”

Rachel didn’t answer.

“Just turn the page.”

“I’m not turning the page,” Rachel said through clenched teeth.

“Turn the stupid page, Rachel.”

“Guys?” Kendra interjected, but they both ignored her.

Sid reached over and tried to flip to the next entry, but Rachel slapped her hand onto the page. “Get your own Corpus.”

“Guys,” Kendra tried again, and was once again ignored.

Instead of getting his own Corpus, Sid tried to take hers. He yanked at the book, but Rachel held tight, veins in her wrists cording with effort and her jaw set. Sid resorted to trying to pry her fingers away one at a time until their hands were twisted together and they were nose to nose, glaring.

And that was the moment Beth Ann burst in.

“I knew it!” The girl’s eyes bulged and she clutched at her bag until her knuckles were white knobs in her tan skin.

Rachel and Sid jumped away from each other so fast Rachel slammed into her nightstand and sent her reading lamp crashing to the ground.

Beth Ann stalked forward, the lace hem of her pale pink sundress swishing around her thighs. Rachel didn’t know why that transfixed her so. Maybe because it was easier to look at a hem than into Beth Ann’s livid face.

“Beth Ann, I …” Sid stammered.

“You stood me up,” Beth Ann said, every single syllable its own sharp knife. “You stood
me
up. I waited for an hour. And all that time you were here.” Beth Ann turned on Rachel then, jammed one acrylic-tipped finger into the air. “With
her.
”

The way she said it—the astonishment in her voice that Sid could actually pick hanging out with Rachel over her—made something deep inside Rachel flip over. Like a switch being thrown.
A match being lit. Rachel looked up into Beth Ann’s face and stood tall. Distantly, she was aware of Sid talking, trying to beg forgiveness, but it was nothing more than the buzzing of gnats in her ears.

“Yes, Beth Ann. Sid was with
me
,” Rachel hissed. She took two big steps closer and reveled to see the way the girl stumbled for just the tiniest of moments. She didn’t expect push-back. That just made Rachel thrust her chin out. “Because we’re friends. We hang out like
friends
.”

“Girls can’t just be friends with guys!” Beth Ann said, her voice growing
more shrill with every word. “It doesn’t work that way!”

“It does with us!”

“Too bad,” Beth Ann shrieked. “It can’t be that way because I won’t allow it!”

Rachel closed the distance between them and shoved the tip of her finger into Beth Ann’s sternum. “I dare you to try, you stupid, vapid—”

Beth Ann swatted away Rachel’s finger, shook her hair out behind her and laughed, a sniggering, cruel thing so unlike her usual giggle. The shrieking was gone, replaced with arched eyebrows and a cold smile. “Did you ever consider that Sid feels bad for you?” Beth Ann waved a manicured hand up and down Rachel’s form. “Seriously, look at you. A greasy pony tail? Clothes that look like you slept in them? You can throw yourself at my boyfriend all day, but it’ll never work.”

Rachel reached for the dagger hiding in her boot without even realizing it, but then Kendra was hauling her back and pinning her arms to her side and Sid was jumping between them, his face a burning red. Beth Ann looked at her in triumph, her perfectly pink lips curled up at the edges in a smirk.

Sid held both arms out like someone desperately trying to keep two cats apart. “I don’t want you hating each other,” he said, swinging his head back and forth to look at each. “You’re both my girls.”

Rachel froze just as Beth Ann did, both sets of eyes going wide.

“She’s not your girl,” Beth Ann spit at the same time Rachel said “I’m not your girl.”

Sid tried for a sheepish grin and waved his hands. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, his accent suddenly burring with French. “My English isn’t great.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. His English was perfect and he knew it. But Beth Ann’s shoulders relaxed just the slightest, and she pouted her lips. “It’s okay, Siddy,” she purred.

Rachel shook off Kendra’s hands still clamped around her forearms and crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe you should just leave, okay?”

A frown worked across Sid’s face. “You’ll be able to study without me?”

The look Rachel threw Sid was acidic. “Yes,” she said, her voice even. “Somehow we’ll manage.”

Sid held his hands up in surrender then let Beth Ann tug him from the room. Beth Ann looked over her shoulder for a moment as the door closed behind her, her blue eyes shining in victory. Then she turned her back on Rachel, stood on tiptoe, and pressed her lips to Sid’s.

“
Rach,” Kendra whispered close in her ear. “Are you okay? Do you want me to talk to him?”

“I’m fine, Kendra,” Rachel snapped. “Just leave me alone.”

The door slammed shut on Sid and Beth Ann at the same moment Rachel let her dagger fly. It hit the wood with a thud and a shower of splinters and stayed there.

Rachel was not proud of the English paper she turned in. She dropped it off at the professor’s lectern and scurried back to her seat, feeling squirmy and disjointed. That had always been a feeling reserved for things like parties, not class.

“I’m so glad that’s over,” the girl with the yellow were eyes whispered. She grinned at Rachel and let out a long sigh, but it all just made Rachel squirmier. It was like worms were tunneling under her skin and writhing in her belly.

“Yeah,” she managed. “It’s over.” Whether she meant the final paper of the semester or her chances of salvaging her GPA, she wasn’t sure.

Rachel tapped her pen against the top of her notebook. What was the date again? And why the hell was she forgetting things like that: dates and assignments and all the little things that knit together to form her Capital F Future. She stifled a harsh laugh. Her future. Right. That had been thrown out the window the moment she turned eighteen and could suddenly see a slug-like demon on the ceiling of a motel room.

“Sorry,” she leaned over and whispered to were-girl. “What’s the date?”

The girl chuckled. “Finals getting to you? It’s Monday, May sixth.”

“Thanks,” Rachel muttered. She wrote the date at the top of the fresh sheet of paper and told herself she could do this: still be the Rachel she had always been—the girl who set the curve, the girl who got everything right—and the Descendant she had no choice but to be.

Except she never even got a chance to try and pull it together for the semester’s last week of regular classes. Professor Michaels had just handed out the study guide when a knock at the classroom door stopped her. Rachel slunk down low in her seat and groaned as the door opened: It was Sid.

He had a leather bag crossed over his chest and a sheaf of papers tight under his arm. He leaned close to Professor Michaels to speak then scanned the classroom. Rachel sank even farther in her chair and tucked her chin.

“Ah, there she is,” Professor Michaels called. “Rachel? Mr. Martin needs to speak to you.”

Rachel pasted on a thin smile as she trudged up the aisle toward Sid and her English professor. She hadn’t made it two steps before Sid stopped her. “Don’t leave your things, Miss Chase,” he said, his voice distant and light.

Rachel clenched her jaw so tight she was certain her molars would turn to dust. “I don’t want to miss this class,” she got out past her teeth. “It’s the finals review.”

Professor Michaels waved a hand. “Oh, it’s fine. You’ve got your study guide.” She smiled encouragingly. Rachel wanted to slap her.

“Fine,” she said, defeated. Rachel grabbed her notebook, shoved it into her bag, and followed Sid out the door.

“What the hell are you doing,” she hissed the second the door closed.

“Another missing girl,” he said, all lightness gone. “But there was an obvious struggle this time. Kendra’s waiting for us.”

Rachel’s stomach jolted at Kendra’s name. The two girls hadn’t spoken since Rachel snapped at her the other night. It felt weird not speaking to Kendra, especially when the two shared a dorm room. She shook off the anxiety and checked her watch. “This couldn’t have waited another forty-five minutes?”

“I saw the opportunity. I took it.”

Without another word, Sid led the way. Rachel followed, her eyes on his back. His shoulders were bunched high and his strides jerky. He was tense and nervous, Rachel realized, though if it was the missing girl or that fact that he and Rachel had stayed far, far away from each other since her blow-up with Beth Ann, she didn’t know. Rachel grumbled to herself and stumped after Sid. She’d pushed her two closest friends away in a matter of days. That had to be some sort of surly record.

Once she saw Kendra and the police tape over the dorm room door, Rachel didn’t care where Sid’s tension came from. She flicked her eyes up to her best friend then back down. Kendra’s face was stony.

“When did this happen?” Rachel asked.

Kendra shrugged, but Sid answered. “Last night, maybe? It was only discovered about an hour ago. Campus police have already been through, but the town police could be here any minute, so we don’t have long.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Rachel said. “So we could be caught tampering with a crime scene.”

In answer, Sid dug into his bag and held up a fake press badge then handed out three sets of gloves. Without looking at Rachel even once, Kendra snapped on the gloves and followed Sid under the yellow police tape and into the destroyed dorm room.

The place was a mess. One of the windows was shattered, jagged bits of glass edging a giant hole where something had crashed out of—not into—the room. A deep purple, satin duvet cover was flung across the room from the bed, a giant rip in the fabric spilling tufts of feathery innards. Over the sink, the mirror was broken as well, and there was a smear of dried blood across a long sliver still clinging to the frame.

Across the room, Sid lifted an upturned chair before moving on to poke at the scattered papers and broken pencils littering the floor. Rachel glanced at Kendra and scurried closer, her feet crunching over more broken glass.

“I’m sorry I snapped,” Rachel whispered in a rush of breath and words, her eyes on the makeup strewn over the vanity.

Kendra paused her search through the toiletries. “You can’t take your frustration out on me,” she finally whispered back. “I’m not the one you’re mad at.”

Rachel sucked her lips in. Kendra meant Sid, Rachel knew that. Kendra—like her mom had earlier—thought Rachel liked Sid. But if she did … and if she admitted that she did. No. Sid was with Beth Ann. Rachel wouldn’t be made a fool.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kendra peered at Rachel from the corner of her eye, head still bent over the vanity.

“I …” Rachel started. “I just …” She scrunched her face up and shook her head. Kendra reached across and squeezed her hand, and for the first time in days the tightness in her chest released. She squeezed Kendra back then moved on with the investigation.

Rachel stepped over more broken pencils and a torn paperback to get a closer look at the whiteboard calendar next to the desk. There was a star outlined in purple and black over the square for May fifth with the word “date” written in a blood red marker.

“Uh, guys?” Kendra’s voice was strangled and weird, and Rachel whirled to face her so quickly she knocked another stack of papers to the floor.

Kendra had opened the closet door and was staring at a full-size poster of an actor from a popular series with expertly tousled hair, piercing dark eyes, and a strong jaw. And bared fangs. Next to Mr. Tall, Dark, and Bloodthirsty was a shelf stacked high with paperbacks titled things like “Once Bitten, Twice to Die” and “Immortal Love.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped open, and she wrenched her eyes from the shelf of books to another broken wooden pencil at her feet. Now that she looked closely, she saw that the wood had been eaten away, yet there was still a trace of tar-thick ichor dried at the end.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”