Feeder

by Patrick Weekes

  “Touchdown, monster hunters! Are you okay?” Maya asked Tapper. He was still blurry, and she realized it was because he was moving fast.

  “Had to get the acid off me,” he said. “It hurts.”

  “It even hurts me,” Hawk said, wiping his hands on his pants, “and I’m kind of indestructible. Lori, you all right?”

  “Yeah.” She held up her hands, which were unmarked. “I’m mostly immune to things like that. Sorry, Tapper. I couldn’t get it without . . . The way I kill them would have hurt you, too.”

  “Yeah, well.” Tapper sniffed. “Good thing Blondie was there to save my butt with SpongeBob.”

  “Indeed,” said Iara, and Maya looked over to see that she was smiling broadly. “Now, shall we go fight Lake and banish her from our dimension as well?”

  Maya looked down at the old man on the ground. He was breathing, but he still had slime on him from the feeder. “Wait, we need to help him first.”

  “I don’t . . .” The old man was trembling. “It hurts.”

  “It’s okay.” Maya knelt down, careful not to touch him. “We’re going to take care of you.”

  “It had me, and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .” The old man began to make a little noise in his throat.

  “Um, it’s okay, I think you’re just confused,” Maya said, and looked up at Iara. “I think you maaaaaaaaybe remember getting dizzy?”

  “Aha!” Iara nodded and then did a little thing with her throat that Maya couldn’t hear, but watching the muscles in her jaw and neck work was a little cute and distracting.

  “Then you fell into the water by the docks,” Tapper added. Everyone looked at him, and he patted his acid-stained clothes and glared. “Into all that nice clean salt water, where someone will come rescue him right away and give him medical attention?”

  “Oh, dude, yeah, good.” Hawk gently picked up the old man. People in the area were still not looking at them, caught in whatever field of not-seeing the feeder or the train car put around them. “Okay, hang on, sir.” He looked over at Iara. “We chill?”

  Iara wheeled alongside him. “One moment,” she said, and then firmly said to the old man, “There was no monster. You got dizzy and fell into the water.”

  Hawk jogged over and very gently dropped the man into the water while everyone else followed.

  After a second, since nobody else was doing it, Maya yelled, “Oh gosh, I think that man got dizzy and fell into the water!”

  As if a spell had been broken, people looked down and began shouting and pointing at the man. Everyone still ignored the acid-stained ground behind them.

  “That was a small one,” Lori said quietly as they all looked down at the confused man splashing in the water. “The bigger ones don’t just eat. They do things to people, or their bodies. Using dead bodies as shells or using living people like puppets, as they . . .” She trailed off.

  “As they did to our parents,” Tapper finished.

  “I’m sorry.” Lori shook her head. “I’ve dealt with that before. If we can kill whatever is controlling the eels soon . . .”

  “The beast in the water,” Iara said. “We should have fought it. Perhaps we could have saved Shawn.”

  “Wrong, Ipanema.” Tapper shook his head. “We nearly got beat fighting SpongeBob just now.”

  “It would actually be SpongeBob’s friend Patrick,” Maya chimed in, since Tapper was the kind of person who liked specificity.

  “Or Starro,” Iara added.

  “Tapper’s point,” Lori said sharply, “is that if we’d stayed, we’d have died.” Tapper nodded. “Tia Lake is tied to the thing controlling the eels somehow—maybe a puppet, or maybe she’s . . .” Lori swallowed and lowered her voice. “Maybe she’s a fake person that the monster is creating like camouflage.” Her phone buzzed, and she ignored it. “Before we do anything, we should try to get back into the Lake Foundation headquarters and find some answers.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Iara said, looking down at her phone, “Tia Lake is doing a live radio interview about new advances with the miracoral. It is very early, around six in the morning.”

  “Good.” Lori nodded. “So Lake will be away, and the building will be mostly deserted. How about if you all meet me back at PortManta around five thirty tomorrow morning?”

  “That is superearly,” Hawk said.

  “You can catch up on beauty sleep once the bad guys aren’t trying to catch us and kill us,” Tapper said.

  “Are you okay to get new clothes and a hotel?” Lori asked. “I have to go pick up my brother from day care.”

  “Your brother?” Maya asked.

  “Ben.” Lori’s lips curled into a little smile. “He’s seven, and he’s normal. He doesn’t know anything about all this. I promised I’d get him today if my work finished early.”

  “I can ensure that the group is taken care of,” Iara said confidently. “Go get your brother. And Lori . . . thank you. Thanks to you, we are free, and we have a chance to save our families.”

  “And it was nice to meet you too, even, you know, without all that,” Maya added, smiling at Lori, who blushed a little and shifted her weight around.

  “See you tomorrow,” she blurted, and headed off without a backward look.

  “She’s a little odd,” Hawk said, “right?”

  “She fights monsters to protect the innocent,” Iara declared, “just as we will.”

  Tapper snorted. “She’s not like us. Not that we even know what we are yet.”

  Maya sighed. “What if the angels were also fae?”

  LORI

  From: lfisher@anglerconsulting.sea

  To: jvickers@santadee.net

  Subject: Obnoxious favor

  Hey, Jenn,

  Tried to call you but couldn’t get through. The consult job needs me superearly tomorrow, before Ben’s day care is open. I can’t find a sitter. Is there any chance you could watch him for a couple of hours before day care?

  I’d need you here at 5:15. Yeah, I know.

  If you can, let me know. Stupid job.

  -L

  Ben was delighted to have Lori come pick him up early from day care.

  She held him tight as they rode the ferry back home, half listening to what he’d built out of Legos and what his Pokémon had done to his friend Josh’s Pokémon in what was either their card game or them acting out the battle or some excited seven-year-old combination of the two.

  She got him back home and into the small kitchen with the garbage under the sink that she’d forgotten to take out because it was a monster-hunting day. She got him pretzels and cheese as a snack, took his lunch bag out of his backpack, took back the pretzels and cheese upon seeing his blueberry applesauce sitting entirely untouched in the lunch bag, had a short argument about whether Ben had or had not said that he liked blueberry applesauce at some point in the past, and eventually came to a mutually agreeable compromise of Lori swapping the terrible blueberry applesauce for normal applesauce that Ben would eat while watching streams of people playing video games, with pretzels and cheese to follow upon completion of this arduous task. She threw in some chocolate milk to seal the deal.

  Only then, only when Ben had settled in front of the computer, happily listening to a stream of a man with a loud and dubiously British voice, did Lori look at her phone. She had e-mails, including one from her personal account, and she opened that first.

  From: jvickers@santadee.net

  To: lfisher@anglerconsulting.sea

  Subject: re: Obnoxious favor

  That is way too early, and you owe me big.

  Seriously, no worries. See you there.

  -Jenn

  PS: Have coffee ready plz

  PPS: Bringing what I got you today. You’re gonna love the neckline!

  Lori breathed out a sigh of relief for friendship. Then she went over and set up the coffee machine on a timer for tomorrow morning, so she wouldn’t forget.

  Then, and only then, did she look at the tex
ts from Handler.

  Handler: It’s OK.

  Lori: Like heck it is.

  Handler: Nothing is gonna happen.

  Lori: Not until Thursday.

  Lori: Three days. We have three days to stop Tia Lake.

  Lori: Whatever she is.

  Handler: Prolly good to figure out what she is, then, huh?

  Handler: Incidentally, I think Starro McSpongeBob might’ve been a kappa.

  Handler: Google says they drown people and have water that pours out of their heads.

  Lori: I am concerned that Google is our best source of information here.

  Handler: We’ve got this, kid. I will not let anything happen to Ben.

  Handler: Unless Josh upgrades his Charmeleon to a Charizard.

  Handler: Ben’s pretty much toast in that case.

  Lori looked over at her brother as he laughed and shouted, “Oh no!” at something the possibly British game streamer was doing to an enormous pile of TNT.

  “You okay over there, little guy?” she asked.

  “Yep!” he called back without turning around.

  Lori: I will kill anything that threatens him.

  Lori: I need you to be okay with that.

  Handler: Do I seem NOT okay with that?

  Handler always seemed reasonable. It was so easy to forget that it also used her as a lure to catch and eat things. She wondered why it bothered.

  Lori: How am I going to work with the others without showing them what you do?

  Handler: Don’t know if you can.

  Lori: I need them to take down Lake.

  Handler: Yep.

  Lori glared at the incredibly helpful message on her phone screen. She thought about pretty blond Maya seeing the giant teeth come out of nowhere, of realizing what Lori really was.

  Lori: Are they like me?

  Handler: Definitely not.

  Handler: Iara said she only goes for guys.

  Lori: Like US. You and me.

  Handler: Nope.

  Handler: Dunno what they are. Exactly.

  Lori: Would you like me to Google it for you?

  Handler: Not feeders.

  Handler: So take the help.

  Handler: Plus I think Maya’s maybe got a thing for you?

  Lori blushed and coughed and put her phone facedown on the table.

  So what was she supposed to do? If Handler ate another feeder while the others were watching, they would see. Maya would see.

  No, that was dumb. Forget Maya. Maya deserved to be with a real person.

  What really mattered was that if she refused, they wouldn’t be able to stop Lake.

  And they only had until Thursday.

  Could she even refuse to do what it wanted? She’d never tried to stop Handler from eating a feeder before. It would be like Lori’s hand telling her not to eat a sandwich. Could she, when it actually mattered and wasn’t just banter over text messages, actually do anything, even have an opinion, that Handler didn’t agree with?

  Lori hadn’t asked permission to open the container that the kids had been in, though. The phone had buzzed, but she hadn’t looked. The message, whatever Handler had said as Lori had walked toward that container, would still be there if she scrolled up high enough. She could read it and know for certain whether she was actually allowed to do things that Handler didn’t like.

  She’d know for certain whether she was a real person.

  She pushed the phone aside. Right now it didn’t matter. She and Handler both needed to stop the Lake Foundation, her because of Ben and Handler because Lake was a threat to it. That was enough for now.

  “Hey, little guy,” she called, “when you’re done with that video, I have a question about Pokémon.”

  That covered the hour until dinner nicely.

  MAYA

  “What do you think, Iara?” Maya held up the lime-green T-shirt with the smiley face on it, squinting and trying to imagine what it would look like in normal light and not the glare of department-store fluorescents. She wasn’t good at trying on clothes. There was too much people-looking-at-Maya for it to be fun. “Also, am I getting your name right?” The others seemed to have gotten it okay, but Maya wasn’t good with other languages.

  “You are fine, alemã,” Iara said, smiling. “You say it very well, and with more care than most.”

  “I just want to make sure I’m not calling you the donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh.” Maya held up a dark red blouse with a little sweetheart neckline. “It matters what people call themselves.” She sighed. “And I don’t know which to get.”

  Iara had a blue sundress with pretty purple flowers sitting in her lap, and she grabbed both shirts from Maya and added them to her pile. “You will get both,” she said firmly. “The green is fun and very pretty with your hair, and the red blouse will break the hearts of the ladies.”

  “Oh? Oh!” Maya went hot and guessed she was probably the same color as the blouse now. “I, um, I was thinking more for breaking into the building and looking harmless, right? Something that fitted in so that nobody would get suspicious of us.”

  She didn’t think Iara was entirely listening, because she had wheeled over to a rack with jeans. She held up a baggy pair, held them out in front of Maya, squinted, and then tossed them aside with a sniff. “You have very pretty legs. You deserve pants that do them justice. Maya?” Iara’s voice took on a concerned tone. “Maya, what are you doing?”

  Maya looked down and realized she had inadvertently blended into a clothing rack of tan slacks, camouflaging perfectly. “Um, nothing, sorry.” She slipped back to normal colors before anyone in the store noticed, although since most people were trying hard to look anywhere but at Iara, she was probably safe.

  “You do not like shopping for clothes?” Iara asked. “Or did I give offense? When I shop with my girlfriends, we try to tell the truth about what will look good on each of us.”

  “I, um . . .” Maya ran her fingers back and forth across a soft blouse. “I didn’t have girlfriends to go shopping with back home.”

  “Hmph.” Iara grabbed a pair of very tight jeans, held them up in front of Maya, and added them to the pile. “You do now, alemã.”

  “Well, um, thanks. That sundress is good, then. It’s, uh . . . it’s a full-blitz sundress.”

  Iara looked at her blankly. “I do not understand.”

  “It means seeing it is going to knock some boy senseless,” Maya said, grinning at Iara.

  Iara smiled back and rolled out her shoulders, pleased with herself. “Good. It is good to hear that.”

  Maya looked at a little kiosk near the clothes and saw a pretty jeweled keychain that also had a USB drive and a flashlight all built into it. She’d had a keychain with Sailor Neptune on it once. A bunch of guys had taken it away from her, and she’d never gotten it back. This one was at least sparkly. “Um, if it’s not too much trouble, we might want this to like copy data from the Lake Foundation tomorrow . . . ?”

  “Of course!” Iara grabbed one. “Now come, we will pay before the boys arrive.” She smiled. “I think I would like to surprise Hawk with what I wear tomorrow.”

  “Awww . . .” Maya followed Iara as she wheeled to the register, then hung back a bit of a distance to watch. Iara talked to the cashier, and then, after a minute, the cashier took the tags off everything, bagged everything, and passed Iara a receipt.

  “Still messed up,” Tapper muttered, and Maya squeaked and jumped a little and then tried to pretend she had realized he had come up beside her.

  “Yes! Right. It is.” Maya looked over at Tapper and saw that Hawk was there as well. “Wait. What is?”

  “Her messing with people’s minds.” Tapper grimaced, his eyes glittering as he watched Iara wheel toward them. “Not much different from what the feeders do.” He was tapping his fingers against the plastic of a clothing rack, fast little clicks.

  “Can I help you find anything?” asked a smiling sales guy, a slender white man with short brown hair that flopped
over half his face. Maya started to respond, and then realized that the sales guy was talking to Tapper.

  “No,” Tapper said, and then, “Thanks, though.” His fingers went still.

  “Just let me know if you change your mind,” the sales guy said, still smiling, and wandered off.

  “It’s totally different,” Maya said when he was out of earshot. “Deception is when the other team fakes a handoff. Strategy is when we fake a handoff.”

  “Maya’s right,” Hawk said, and then added, “and also more into football than I expected. Anyway, feeders do it to eat people. Iara’s just getting us clothes.”

  “This time.” Tapper shook his head, and the clicking noise became kind of a crackle as his fingers moved fast enough to blur. “What if she decides to do a bank next? What if she decides to make you remember kissing her?”

  “Totally okay with that,” Maya said.

  “I would not do that,” Iara said as she came over, and Tapper started, clearly having thought she was out of earshot, “because it would be wrong. With great power comes great responsibility.”

  “But you could do a bank if you wanted to, Uncle Ben,” Tapper insisted.

  Iara sighed. “I could,” she said slowly, enunciating her words carefully like Tapper was being dumb, “but at the end of the day, when the bank did not have the right amount of money, the security cameras would show a green-haired girl in a wheelchair taking the missing amount, and I would be very easy to track, no? So I use it only for little things, when needed, and not when it will hurt people. You, though? You move very fast. You could run into the store, grab the clothes, and run out without the cameras seeing you.”

  “It makes a shock wave if I do it for too long,” Tapper said irritably. “I’d probably break the windows.”

  “But you could,” Iara said, looking up at him with a hard smile, “just like me. So we are not so different, you and I.”

  Tapper just glared, but Hawk was thinking. “What about plane tickets?” he asked. “Could you get us flights? I mean, we could all just fly home again and get away from the Lake people, right?”

  “I could.” Iara nodded. “But do you not wish to know what has happened to us? Do you not wish to save our parents?”