Creature Discomforts (Descendants) (3 page)

“I told you, Grey! She scares so easily in the water!”

Beside Kendra, a merman bobbed above the water. His skin shone pale silver, and even in the twilight his eyes seemed to glow green. Grey lifted a long, sinuous arm above the surface and ran fingers through hair that was as silvery as his skin.

“Sorry for that,” Grey said with a tilt of his head toward Rachel in greeting.

Rachel slid a glare from Kendra to the infamous Grey, dreamboat extraordinaire. Rachel had to admit, he really was quite cute. And the way he was grinning at Kendra, Rachel felt like she should look away. Instead, she smiled sweetly at the merman. “I finally get to meet you,” she said. “Kendra has basically told me everything about you.”

Under the water, Rachel got another sharp jab to the side. “God,
Rach. Don’t make it sound like that. I don’t give you a hard time about your cru—friends, I mean friends.”

Kendra’s cheeks flared crimson, and Rachel left her with Grey. She kicked away across the water toward Kai and her mom, but the few yards between them seemed to grow until Rachel suddenly felt very alone among the waves. Her body went stiff with coiled tension, and she was acutely aware of the billions of gallons of water pressing in on her from every side, stealing her breath, pulling at her limbs. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was being watched—either from below, or above or from within. Rachel’s lungs compressed and her chest was held tight in a vise of fear until the ground was firm and solid under her feet.

Rachel awoke the next morning and repeated to herself that the grip of fear had been normal. She loved the sea, but she also respected it. That meant a healthy wariness, and bobbing in dark water with a whole civilization of
merpeople somewhere underneath her exposed body could make anyone a touch jumpy. Rachel rubbed at her sleep-groggy eyes and tossed in bed, but she couldn’t find that comfortable spot again.

Kendra showed up at ten in the morning with a coffee for Rachel, a tea for Daphne and enough energy to power the town. Rachel hunched in her chair at the breakfast table, slurping the coffee and waiting for it to kick in while Kendra bounced on the balls of her feet and only stopped talking to shove bits of croissant into her mouth.

“…And then, Grey took me through the kelp forest just outside the city walls. I mean, like a real forest. So anyway, we talked for what felt like hours, and did you know when they reach adulthood merpeople can walk on land during the night of the new moon? That’s so cool, right? I had no idea, and—”

“Wait,” Rachel interrupted, pulling her chin from her hands. “Didn’t you wonder how your mom and dad”—Rachel shifted her eyes to her mom, who was leaning against the kitchen counter listening—“uh, you know,” she finished in a whisper. She stopped short of miming the “you know” part.

Kendra stuck her tongue out. “Ugh. No thank you.
Anyway
.”

“No, really. Grey seems great and all,
but, I mean, where does he even have his …” Rachel clamped her mouth shut.

The caffeine really needed to kick in any minute now. Then she’d have enough sense to skip this totally awkward conversation with her own mother standing not five feet away. Unfortunately, said mother chose that moment to impart a little sex-ed.

“Actually,” Daphne said, “mermen are fully equipped, but their anatomy doesn’t work with the anatomy of a human; the merman penis is more trident-shaped than anything. That’s partly why any mer older than twenty can walk among humans during the right conditions: to mate. They shed the tail, gain legs, and the mighty mer trident becomes the more familiar human spear.”

Rachel choked on her coffee, Kendra fell back into a seat like it was all too much to digest, and Daphne took a dainty sip of tea. She apparently didn’t notice the look of horror on
Rachel’s and Kendra’s faces and continued. “It’s all fascinating, actually,” Daphne said, though Rachel thought “mortifying” was a better term.

“The guppy mortality rate for
merpeople is high, so this provides an opportunity to pass on their genes. In fact, did you know the mer mating song is supposed to be close to that of whale song, though I’ve heard it’s strangely arou—”

“
Ohmygod
!” Kendra shrieked, jamming two fingers into her ears. “Daphne, you’re the best, but please,
please
stop.”

Daphne shrugged at Kendra’s outburst and popped more bits of croissant into her mouth. The silence in the kitchen was thick as demon blood. Kendra had dropped her forehead to the table like that’d make it all go away, but Rachel frowned.

“Mom, that is definitely not in the Corpus. How do you know so much about merpeople mating?”

“Oh, supplemental reading. I studied up on
merpeople when I knew I’d have a chance to finally meet one.”

Rachel slouched farther in her seat. “
Mer-porn,” she muttered to herself. “My mother is into mer-porn.”

An hour later, Rachel still couldn’t quite look her mom in the eyes when she and Kendra finished packing up the truck to head back to Saint Etienne. Kendra turned the key over in the ignition, but Daphne pulled Rachel aside before she could scurry into the cab and try to forget she lived in a world where she’d heard her mom say “merman penis.”

“What?” Rachel grumbled, her mouth turned down at the corners. “Want to tell me about the centaur erotica you’re reading?”

Daphne pulled a face. “Rachel, don’t be so melodramatic. You should learn about all of this, you know. That’s your role as a Descendant, just as it’s mine. To protect civilian demons and half-demons you need to know every aspect of their lives and culture.”

Rachel held her hands up in surrender. “Fine, fine,” she mumbled. But her mom had a point. An ignorant Descendant could easily become a murderous Descendant, killing those who had every right to live as long as they didn’t harm others.

“Look,” Daphne said, “Kai was right. It could be nothing, but keep watchful for anything strange. Two
wendigos, and then Kendra’s mom told me about the missing girl. There’s a lot going on at Saint Etienne that makes me uneasy.”

“Do you think they could be connected?” It wasn’t the first time Rachel had wondered that in the few days since she returned from the hunt.

“I’m not sure, but I’ve got a contact in your area who knows a lot more than others think. I may have to give him a call.” Daphne rubbed her hands up and down her arms and stared past Rachel to the cypress and oaks lining the back of their property. Beyond that the trees gave way to dunes and finally the open ocean. When Daphne spoke, her voice was as far away as her eyes. “I felt something when we were speaking with Kai. Like something was watching us. It was … unnerving.”

Rachel blinked, her eyes going wide. The coffee sloshing in her stomach churned into sour acid and
goosebumps rippled down her back. Rachel nodded at her mother in goodbye, but her mind was a million miles away. She strained and grasped for some sort of conclusion, some way it could all be connected—the second wendigo, the warning of Kai and her mom, that unmistakable feeling of being watched—but the bits and pieces of the puzzle darted away and refused to play nice. If it
was
all connected, Rachel was at a complete loss as to how. But she knew one thing: She’d figure it out.

*

Professor Rathbone’s classes weren’t the most popular on campus, but those who made it through his intro ancient history seminar became loyal. One of those loyalists was Rachel. She always left his classes feeling like she’d learned something, like her brain had gained a muscle or two.

It was also nice to slip into her regular seat in Rathbone’s history building lecture hall and be able to stop thinking about the Confluence of Weird that had been swirling around her corner of Georgia. But the weirdness was right in class too. There was an empty seat a few rows up, and the students sitting nearby kept shooting furtive looks at it: Sara’s seat. Was it coincidence there was a missing girl at Saint Etienne, or something more? Rachel shook her head to push away the thoughts. She needed class to be just that. Not class with an extra credit project in Possible Demon Activity.

Professor Rathbone saved Rachel from her thoughts when he strode in from a door at the front and took up his spot at the podium. He smoothed an out-of-place strand from his short, silver hair, nodded at his students in hello, and jumped into the lecture.

Ninety minutes later, Rachel and Kendra blinked against the sun heating up the red bricks and slate pavers of the courtyard outside the history building. The trees had burst into full bloom in what seemed like days, and the heady scent of honeysuckle wafted around her nose. Rachel shucked off her cardigan and stowed it in her canvas backpack atop the texts, notebooks, dagger and satchel of protective herbs her mom had made for her before leaving for college.

All around, Saint Etienne opened its face to the spring sun. Her mom had said Saint Etienne was making her uneasy, but under the clear sky and greening trees, Rachel felt nothing but love for her little university. The fountains gurgled in the string of courtyards linking the campus buildings, and students lounged on the grassy open areas at the edge of the surrounding forests. The forests had been one of the things that had drawn Rachel to Saint Etienne. The private university was small but beautiful, tucked into a hollow at the edge of a tiny mountain town with seemingly more coffee shops and art galleries than permanent residents. After a lifetime on the water, there was something strange and wonderful about living in the tree-covered mountains. Wonderful, yes, but getting hot. A stifling breeze tugged a lock of hair from her pony and stuck it to the side of her face. Rachel swiped the back of her hand across her forehead where sweat beaded her hairline and pulled Kendra under the cool, covered walkways lining each building along the courtyard.

Up ahead, a familiar blonde leaned against a stone column.
Beth Ann was surrounded by equally beautiful friends, their heads bent together and hands clasped like in prayer. Rachel groaned and nearly darted back into the sun to escape Beth Ann, but then she heard the unmistakable gulping sniffle of a girl trying not to cry too loud. Curiosity got the better of her—maybe Sid finally broke things off?—and Rachel called out.

“Beth Ann?” Rachel tiptoed closer like she was approaching a sleeping siren. The two other girls looked up at the intruder and left Beth Ann after long hugs and more than one back rub. “Beth Ann, are you okay?”

Beth Ann turned with another sniffle and shook her head. God, how annoying; she was one of those pretty criers. Her eyes were dewy and hauntingly sad, and just the tip of her nose was red. Beth Ann gave a wet laugh. “I’m being silly, but I just can’t help it.”

“What’s wrong?” Kendra asked.

“One of the girls from my human behaviors study group is missing!”

Rachel cocked her head. “Sara Hernandez? You know her?”

A single tear slipped down her cheek and left a track through her foundation. “What? No. Ali Freemont. Who’s Sara?”

Rachel waved away her question.
A second missing girl. That definitely qualified as peculiar. “When did you see her last?”

“Yesterday, but she missed our lunch date and won’t return any of my texts.”

Or maybe not that peculiar.
Rachel bristled, and beside her Kendra huffed very loudly.

“Or, you know, maybe she just ditched you and doesn’t
want
to text you back,” Kendra offered.

For all her misery, Beth Ann cut Kendra a look that could scorch fire. “I’m not stupid, you know.” She gave a world-weary sigh and dabbed gently under her eyes. Then, without missing a beat, she retrieved a compact from her tiny LV bag and got to work touching up her face with blotting papers and a compulsory swipe of strawberry
lip gloss. She had started in on another layer of mascara when Rachel finally snapped.

“Beth Ann!”

The girl sighed again and clicked her compact shut. “Ali is such a good, sweet girl,” she said. “I knew she wouldn’t just
skip out
on lunch plans. That’d be so obnoxious!” She eyed Rachel then, as if to illustrate what obnoxious behavior looked like. Rachel ignored the subtle barb and waited for Beth Ann to go on. “I called her roommate, and Ali didn’t come home after study group at the library last night.”

“Maybe she stayed over with a guy,” Rachel said.

She earned another of Beth Ann’s scorchers for that remark. “I said she was a
good
girl, Rachel. That means she has this little thing called standards.”

Rachel drew in a big breath through her nose to stop herself from saying something nasty, something that rhymed with witchy
wasshole. See, she had standards too. “Just tell me if you hear from her, okay?”

Beth Ann patted the corners of her mouth for any errant
lip gloss and flipped a curtain of hair over her shoulder. “Why?” she asked, all sadness from her voice dried up. Apparently the mourning period for dear Ali was over. “What could you possibly do?”

Rachel balled her hand up into a fist. She imagined how soft Beth Ann’s cheek would be under a blow from her knuckles. “Just let me know. Promise?”

“Whatever.” And with another flick of hair, Beth Ann flounced off.