Feeding Frenzy (The Summoner Sisters Book 1) (4 page)

Inside, the rooms and halls painted electric shades of the rainbow are subdued by the seething masses of college kids swarming through them.  From our first contact with the sweaty humidity that rushes to greet us, Lia seems to withdraw.  The house music is loud, the drunken laughter louder.  It all seems to be such a forceful demonstration that everyone’s having fun and living that there doesn’t feel like there is space for us to participate.  I grip her shoulder and make a face at her to set her at ease.

“Not here to meet people,” I yell in her ear.  “Don’t think about how weird it is, let’s try to find the guy.  Do you wanna check the rooms or watch the door?”

“Door.”  I give her a thumbs up and a reassuring smile.  I make a beeline to the room where the booze lives.  I survey it, checking out every guy around to see if he could be the mystery murder creature.

“Summer?”

I turn towards the voice and see Katie.  “You made it!” she says with a smile, coming in for a hug.  I shift uncomfortably to angle my right arm towards her and go in for a dainty, little “don’t touch me” hug.

“Yeah!  Thanks for the invite,” I say before she has time to determine if that was strange.  “Everything going okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.  We’re sort of on lock down, so I don’t think anyone’s planning on leaving with anyone tonight or anything, and we’ve told all our friends about the guy we think is doing it, so everyone’s sort of keeping an eye out.”  She shrugs.  “Troubled times…”

“Definitely.  It seems smart.”  I move up in the line for the keg of the worst beer ever produced for money, and wince at the prospect of consuming it.  I’m not even sure why they sell it in kegs—or more to the point, why someone would
purchase
a keg of it.  What, was Walmart out of fruit punch and rubbing alcohol?  I sigh inwardly.  I guess at least it’s a surefire way to know I won’t get drunk on the job.

“But you haven’t like...seen him tonight, have you?” I ask. 

She grimaces.  “He’d have to be pretty friggin’ thick to come to a party
here
.  I mean, even campus security is hanging around tonight.  This sort of thing looks really bad for the school, too.”

I nod sympathetically.  I’m saved from having to make further small talk as she gets pulled into the shriek-y embrace of one of her friends.  After I get the fermented seltzer they’re handing out, I circle through the adjacent room.  Finding nothing, I bring Lia her consolation prize.  She sniffs it.

“What’s it supposed to be?” she asks.

“A potion most foul that makes strong men weak, and wise women regret.”

“Bottoms up, then.”  She takes a swig and purses her lips.  “I think it’s working.  I already regret.”

“See anything?” 

“Jesus, yes.  Saw lots of things.  None of them panty-dropping monsters, though,” she replies.

“Ah, there it is.  I was wondering how long we could go before you would make me uncomfortable.”

“Tits.  Butts.  Tongues.”

“You’re so childish.  Stop naming body parts.  Eyes glued to the door.  I’m going to go finish snooping.”  I suppress a shudder as I walk away—I think younger siblings must have some sort of gene that allows them to gross out their older sibs.

The rest of the house is like the first two rooms, in that they are full of morally questionable young adults, but there are no inhuman monsters apparent.  Sadly, there aren’t even a few hot dudes to ogle while I wait.  I wonder if it’s them or if I’m just spoiled by the memory of the monster from the security feed?  Or worse, what if I’m just too old to see them as anything other than adorable little kids?  I knock back some more of the beer at that thought and go to check the situation outside.

The back patio appears to be reserved for smokers and people who are a little closer to consummating the mating dance of our species.  We are sickening when we think we’re in love.  I make a mental note never to share a chair with a guy at a table with three other couples also pretending that they’re alone.  Sadly, it seems that this is where all of the pretty boys went, and it’s already working for them.  Only one of them has the same sort of hair and facial structure as the perp I’m after.  He’s sitting, so I can’t see his build.  His long legs are hidden by a table, meaning that I also can’t see the feet he almost certainly has.  I decide to do a stake-out.  I feel my earring, and it’s just a little warmer than the air, which isn’t really a great indicator.  This charm is aces for things that mean to come kill me immediately, but it has a fairly limited field of attention, and a broad definition of the meaning of harm.  It can tell me if Jack the Ripper has it out for me a block away, loud and clear.  But if it’s just something not nice happening to someone else near me, or even if it involves daily danger, like passing someone who’s texting and driving, it gives off a little worried energy.  So it’s not worth getting upset over a lukewarm earring.

-Outside.  Got a guy who matches the profile. 
I send the text.

-Need back up? 
Lia replies almost instantly.

-No, not yet.  Just checking, but I do not think it is him.

-Okay.  Let me know if anything changes.

I send a thumbs up emoji and walk over to the circle of hazy cigarette smoke.

“Hey, got one I can bum?” I ask the first guy I see notice me.

“Yeah, sure.”  He flips me a red and offers a lighter.

“Thanks.”  I inhale, trying not to let it go to my lungs too much.  The last thing I need is an addiction to something as expensive as cigarettes, but
damn
are they nice.  I move slightly so that I can keep an eye on the guy.

“Nice night, huh?” cigarette-guy asks.

“Huh?”

“I’m Ben.” 

Oh, right.  Quid pro quo.  Damn you, cigarettes.

“Summer.”  I shake his hand and move again so that when he inevitably keeps talking, I can pretend to listen and still watch the guy who is getting...wow.  “Frisky”, I guess is the euphemism.

“You Chi Kappa Kappa?”

“Uh, yeah.  Me and my little are visiting from Idaho.”

“Cool, cool.”

I really dislike the beginning phases of the human mating ritual.  I try to make it clear that I don’t like his feathers or whatever it is that humans use to distinguish good mates from bad ones, but he is persistent.

I get roped into a long conversation about the differences between Idaho and Virginia, mostly because Brett...no, Bryan?  Ben!  Ben is getting suspicious at how much I’m staring past him towards the frisky couple.  More than I don’t want him to figure out what I’m doing, I don’t want him to think I want to occupy the next available chair with him.

Eventually Girl Frisker comes up for air and—whoa.  She’s actually pretty pretty.  Good for them.  I recover from seeing a Megan Fox clone and try to see his face.  I’m in luck; I’m able to get a full visual when she whispers in his ear.  He nods and stands up, his hands never leaving her.  He shivers for the millisecond it takes for his arm to gap wide enough to put around her shoulders.  Man.  I hope he can keep it loaded ‘til go time.  Standing, I can tell that he’s not our guy.  He’s taller, and while he’s hulky, he’s not all sharp lines like the guy on the security camera.  Watching him walk confirms my judgment that this was a false alarm.  Though handsome and tall, he walks with a shuffling gait that speaks to long years attempting not to seem his real height.

Well, that was a bust.  I think for a second about the Megan Fox girl.  Yep.  That was a bust.

“Well, thanks for the smoke, Brent,” I say, cutting him off.

“Oh uh...yeah.  Sure.  Do you wanna maybe meet up later or…?”

“That’s sweet, but we’re not in town that long and I gotta go meet my little so…”  I grind the rest of the cigarette under my foot and run inside before he can think of something else asinine to say.  I should feel bad for treating him like that, but I really don’t.  Unwanted, prolonged chitchat is just the pits.  Maybe I’ll take another shower when we get back to the motel to wash the awkward off.

Inside, Lia is doing her best impression of a coat stand, miserably sipping her drink and scowling at the door.  Her relief is palpable when she sees me.

“Anything?”

“Nah, the dude wasn’t our dude.  But not a bad specimen.  He left with a Megan Fox.”

“Ugh, the Megan Foxes get all the specimens.  We can go?” she asks hopefully.

“Please.”  We start moving for the door, pushing past the throngs of Chi Kappa Kappa’s dearest, most trusted hundred or so friends.

“This feels...wrong, somehow,” I say once we get back to the safety of our car.

“What does?”

“The baddie’s taken a girl a week for the past month.  What, is he full?  Mischief managed?”

“Maybe he didn’t see anyone his type tonight.  Maybe he was at another party.”  Her shoulders slump as she brakes for a stop sign.  “No, please don’t make us,” she pleads.

“You said it, not me.”  I put down my window and listen for shouting or the heavy bass drum of house music.  “Woooo!” someone yells in the distance.

“Turn left,” I direct, pointing towards the sound.

We spend the rest of the night going to consecutively sloppier parties, and making a few friends along the way to help us locate any other gatherings.

At the fourth such event, the thought I’d been playing with solidifies.

“Her boots.”

“What?” Lia asks, stifling a yawn.  It’s after two A.M. and we’ve had exactly zero luck finding lean, dark men.

“Her boots bother me.”

“Whose boots?” my sister asks, looking around.  “No one here is wearing boots.”

“Exactly.  No one is wearing high-heeled boots.”

“Summer, I’m tired, overstimulated, covered in other people’s fluids and cranky about it.  What are you talking about?”

“Megan Fox wannabe was wearing heeled boots.”

“Like...stripper boots?”

“No, like late nineties, fashionably sophisticated boots.”

“And that...bothers you.”

“Well, yeah.  Listen, you and I are off the grid most days, right?  And even we can stay in this century.  Where would you even
buy
boots like that now?  Why would someone that hot not know about shoes?”

“Maybe honey badger don’t give a fuck, Summer.  Maybe she’s cool enough to start trends.  Maybe she didn’t feel like shaving.  It took you three hours of obsessing to realize she’d pulled a faux pas—maybe she didn’t think anyone would notice.  Maybe the dude she was with was less shallow than you.”

“Ouch.  Okay, grumpy.  I’m fresh out of candy bars, so I’ll try putting you down for a nap.  Let’s head back to the motel.”

“Aha, an accord,” she says tiredly, heaving herself back into our car and gratefully settling in.

I don’t mention it again, but the boot thing is still nagging at me.

“Hey, Summer?” Lia breaks the silence as I park.

“Yeah.”

“Sorry about the shallow thing.  I don’t actually think that.”

“I know.”

I get out of the car, still trying to figure out why this seems so important to me.  I stop in my tracks.  I arch my feet until I’m standing on my tippy toes, and mimic how the girl from before was walking.

“What are you doing now?”

I look at my sister, panic flooding through me.  “We missed something big.”

I run into the motel room, and grab my laptop.

“What’s going—”

“Shh!  Hang on, just a sec,” I cut my sister off.  I re-watch the tape of the alleged first abduction.

“Look at his feet again.”  My sister looks at me like I’ve well and truly lost my mind.  “You looking?”

“Yes, Summer.  As before, I see that he is walking strangely.”

“I can’t freakin’ believe it….He’s a little pigeon-footed, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I guess.  And?”

“So was the hottie with the bad shoes.”

“And this is...related you think?”

“Yes, because on top of walking with her feet pointing in, she was doing this maneuver.”  I grab a pair of Lia’s shoes.  While we can share clothing, her feet are a full size larger than mine.  I get up and try to walk, demonstrating the awkward gait that I can still picture the frisky girl from the party employing.

Lia watches my demonstration and then goes back through the footage.  “Holy shit.  And that’s what he’s doing, too.  That’s what looks so ‘off’.  He’s stuffing his shoes.”  I nod my agreement.

“But how does that make sense?  All the abductions so far have been of women by men.”

“Because, I don’t think that’s true.  And I think I just let it get another kid.  Dammit!  Let me see the laptop again a sec?”

Lia hands me my computer and I go to Katie’s Facebook page, scrolling through until I find the guy I’d initially thought might be the bad guy.  His name is Shane.  Shane Collins.  On his page, I see a few conversations with what appear to be his fraternity brothers.

“Yo, u seen Mike?” someone named “El Duche La Roche” wrote.

“Nah, think he went home again lol,” Shane replied.  I keep scrolling.

A week earlier.

“Anyone sees Cody, tell him I got his phone.  Again.”  Reads another post by “El Duche,” with several brothers tagged.

“God
dammit
!” I curse.

“What?  What is it?” Lia moves to peer over my shoulder, trying to find something obviously wrong on the page I’m reading.

“It was right there!  It was totally that girl!  I was going off incomplete information.  Lia.  It’s not just girls gone wild.  I’ll bet Cody and Mike and now Shane are also MIA.”

“How can we have missed it that badly?”

“It’s really not that bizarre, I guess,” I say after I stop bashing my forehead with my palm.  “A girl goes missing after a night with a guy, front page news.  Face plastered all over Facebook land, hoping someone’s seen her.  A boy goes missing after a night with a girl.  Sounds like these guys sort of fall off the face of the planet on the regular.  No one raises the alarm; or at least not as big an alarm.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to America.  But don’t you see?  It’s perfect for a monster on the prowl.  Strong willed guy who’s not gonna be missed?  Cody’s been gone almost three weeks—I don’t see him on the news yet.”

I punch the bed.  “Dammit!” I yell again.  “I could have had the thing.  Stupid
Ben
and his stupid
cigarettes
!  Stupid Summer!”

“Whoa, whoa, easy.  You didn’t invent sexism or missing person protocols,” my sister says soothingly.  “And you totally just Sherlocked the hell out of this case.  Now we know whatever it is, it’s not just one guy taking girls, and that the foot thing is more than a quirk.”

“Gee, thanks.  That will make me feel so much better when I’m picturing Shane dying a slow death because I didn’t think of this four hours ago.”

“Listen, rain cloud.  If he’s gonna die slow, then we’ve got time to plan an attack.  I’m going to go sluice off so I don’t want to crawl out of my skin, and then we can strategize.  Try to relax.  We’ll find it, okay?”

I nod and rub my forehead.  So much for a day that started off so well.  I’m exhausted and sticky and the delightful smoke of cigarettes has turned into a disgusting ashtray aura.  I want to sleep but I know that I won’t be able to with at least seven people out there in the monsters’ den.

Ophelia comes back out in a few minutes.

“So, what are your thoughts, and how can I help now?” she asks from her side of the room.

“Aside from kicking myself, I’m not really sure what to do right now.  I think we should find this ‘El Duche’ guy but he probably won’t be super communicative at three o’clock.”

“Sounds reasonable.  Hey.  Summer.”  I look over at her.  “It’s not your fault.  And we’re gonna find it.  Okay?”

I nod at her, my thoughts elsewhere.

“Hey.  We’ll take care of it.  You can’t lose it on me now.”

That makes me smile briefly.  There have been a few near misses in that department.  “I haven’t yet, have I?” I reply wryly.

“Miraculously, no.  Let’s keep it that way.  So...can anything else happen right now?”

“No.  No, don’t think so.”

“Okay, then…” she turns on the television and turns out her light.  “Then I’m gonna get my strength for tomorrow.  You should do the same.”

I act like I’m going to follow her advice, changing into pajamas, brushing my teeth.  But when my sister’s eyes close and her breathing shifts into the rhythm of sleep, I continue researching.  I read through months and months of all the public profiles on Facebook for the fraternity and sorority members.  I Google more about the various monsters that I can think of which might fit the bill.  And, when I get really desperate, I try to find ways to beat insomnia that maybe I haven’t tried before.  As suspected, all that’s left now is medicine or sleep studies.  Unhelpful, internet.

“Summer.  Hey.  Summer.  It’s just a dream, wake up.”

I bolt upright and brandish the knife I keep under my pillow at the air in front of me.  My eyes focus on my sister at the edge of my bed, hand on my foot.  So.  I guess I fell asleep at some point.  I groan.

“What time is it?” I ask, leaning back against the headboard.

“About seven thirty.” 

I groan again.  I distinctly remember hearing birds chirping while I was still up, which means I got somewhere in the neighborhood of two hours of sleep.  “Then why’d you wake me up?”

“You were having another nightmare.  Looked pretty bad.  You were freakin’ me out, even.”  She looks at me as if she’s trying to diagnose me.  “Do you remember it?”

“Why, did I say something?”

“Nope.  As usual, you just sort of thrashed around and looked like you were screaming but no sound came out.”

I smile wanly.  “No, Lia.  You know I never remember.  Sorry I woke you up.”

The nightmares started shortly after I realized that Lia’s memories were being stolen by one of the fae.  She was little, maybe nine, so I was around twelve.  My current theory is that they are either a curse put on me by the fae that tormented Lia, or that they’re the manifestations of my subconscious turning to mush when it tries to process my life experiences.  Whatever they are, I try not to dwell on them.  Most of the time I honestly don’t remember them when I wake up, but the ones I do are always about Lia.  I’ve decided that she doesn’t need to know that.

“’Kay, well, I’m up now.  I’ll go get us coffee,” my sister offers, getting up and throwing on a hoodie.

I start picking up the room a little and going over what clean things I have to wear.  I don’t want to shower until I know she’s back.  I know.  I’m a total mom.  Deal with it.

We’ve got bar work tonight, and case work today.  What time to do normal people our age wake up after a party?  Ten?  Noon?  Noon sounds safe, which means we’ve got four hours until we can do much.  I check my email to see if any of our contacts have gotten back to me in the...three hours since I sent out the requests.  Unsurprisingly, my inbox is still empty.  Most of them either aren’t up yet, because their circadian rhythms work, or they are still working and haven’t gone to bed yet.

“Think I wanna go for a run,” I say to Lia when she gets back.

“After that night?  Okay...have fun.”

“You should too,” I cajole in a sing-song to her.  “You’re gonna regret it if you don’t get moving.”

“Sleep burns calories, I’ll just do that some more.”

In the end, we find something on YouTube after our coffee and do a halfhearted workout for about thirty minutes.  Still better than nothing, I try to tell myself as I head to the shower.

We kill time for a couple hours—going to the laundromat, restocking on protein bars.  It’s big news when we learn that our favorite brand has a new flavor.

It’s ten o’clock and we’re back in our room, flipping channels.

“Think I’m just going to take a small nap,” Lia says, eyes already closed.

“Yeah, getting up this early was dumb.  And stupid,” I mutter, laying down myself.

“Yeah.  This world is poo, with the waking up on weekends and the monsters.”

I sink into blissful oblivion, only to wake up precisely twenty minutes later.  Fuck my life.  I can’t help but agree with Ophelia this time.  This world
is
poo.

I spend the next hour quietly resting, hoping at least to recuperate enough energy to get me through a shift at Finnegan’s.  I let my mind wander but it obsessively keeps circling back to feet.

Pigeon-footed.  High boots.  Seductive.  A race of monster that has both males and females and preys on both males and females.  I can feel it staring me in the face and I still can’t see it.

I let Lia sleep as long as possible.  At noon, we drive over to Alpha Psi Mu’s house on Greek Row, the fraternity that “El Duche” belongs to.

Lia rings the doorbell, and a bleary eyed guy answers the door.

“Yeah?” he says by way of greeting.  Ugh.  The girls at Chi Kappa Kappa have way better manners.

“Umm, we’re looking for a Mr. La Roche?” I query.  The guy looks over his shoulder.

“Dan!” he yells violently.  We both jump a little at the sudden onslaught of noise.

“What?” an equally loud bellow comes from inside the dingy house.

“Two chicks here to see you!”  Nice.  Real nice.  About a minute later, thuds on the stairs indicate the arrival of Dan “El Duche” La Roche.  I try to hide a smile upon seeing that he’s stopped to do his hair and throw on what was probably yesterday’s outfit, judging by the smell of fabric freshener that wafts after him.

“Sorry about that,” he apologizes, smiling at us.  “Jordan can be an ass, and he’s hungover as hell.”  This is obviously the moment we’re supposed to laugh, so I do.  Cooperative witnesses are much less work.  Lia’s laugh sounds more like she just got punched in the stomach.  Laughing at things that aren’t funny is one of the niceties that I haven’t been able to re-teach her since she lost her memories.

“No problem.  We actually had a few questions for you?  See, Shane is my cousin...I’m Summer Collins,” I say, extending my hand.  “We were at a party with him last night, he hooked up with some girl and we haven’t been able to get a hold of him since.”

Dan listens to me closely, his eyes going dark at mention of the girl.

“Sorry, ladies,” he eventually says.  “Shane’s sort of a...free spirit.  Kinda shitty of him to ditch his cousin like that but…”

“Well, do you know where he might be?”

He runs his hands uncomfortably through his hair.  “I...don’t know where any of them go.  Never been invited myself,” he says with another attempt at a reckless grin.

“Any of who?” Lia pipes up.

“Well...we’ve had a couple guys go missing.  It’s pretty normal for them...Cody will sometimes disappear without his phone, and we’ll get a collect call from him a week later asking for a ride from the airport.  And Mike throws like...tantrums and goes home for a while, then comes skulking back like nothing happened.”

“But...you don’t seem to think that’s the case this time?”  I ask, kicking myself again for not having the sense to stick to High Boots McFrenchalot.

He shrugs and tries to look like he’s not worried.  “I dunno.  It’s just stretching on a little long.  Even Cody’s parents have called, asking if we’ve seen him, and they’re like...real hippies.  No cell phones.  No cable.  Spend more time in a tent than their house.”

“That’s really unsettling,” I tell him.  “You can understand why I’m concerned for my cousin, then.  Is there...is there some place local that he and that girl might go, if they didn’t want anyone to know?”

He snorts.  “You kidding?  We’ve got abandoned buildings out the ass.  Hell, half the mall is empty.  There are hotels and motels and trailer parks, and it’s not like it’s that hard to get from here to somewhere else….”  He shrugs again.  “Sorry.  I wish I could help, honestly.  But I don’t know where they might be,
if
something is even up.”

Bummer.  I was hoping for more.  “Well, can I give you my number, in case you hear from him or think of anything?”

“Yeah, sure.”

We exchange numbers and I thank him for his time.

In the car, I can feel Lia glancing at me nervously.

“What is it?” I lead in.

“You’re just taking this really hard, and I’m worried about you.”