Page 12

12

PENN

Once the post-feeding high wore off, I was even more confused. My feelings for Cam hadn’t changed. Feeding hadn’t made them stronger, but I couldn’t shake the my suite mates’ questions. I couldn’t wave away the doubts that something supernatural was influencing me.

I paced my dorm room for about twenty minutes, weighing the questions in my mind. Pacing didn’t give me any clarity though, and I knew the obvious solution was to ask Cam. I just couldn’t ignore the bias from any answers he would give me. I needed something unbiased: something factual or even just a more human perspective.

Then the obvious solution hit me.

I needed to address this like a journalist. I had the skills to figure it out. I knew how to ask the right questions, how to research, how to find the answers that I needed. Journalism had been a lifelong dream of mine, and it had taken me this long to realize the obvious solution. Maybe I had some residual post- feeding high. That made me feel better than the thought that I might just be a bit of an idiot.

I sat down at my computer desk and opened a new document on my computer.

I needed to approach this like I would any article. Maybe I’d even make this my next story: Business and Pleasure: The Feelings Factor When Feeding Your concubus Friend. I rolled my eyes at myself. That title was terrible for a newspaper, but it might make a good document title for when I was looking for the research later. I typed it into the header and began drafting out the list of questions I needed answered.

It took an hour before I had the full list of questions in front of me. I read through them and began organizing them into subsections. Some of them were so closely related to questions I’d thought of at the beginning of the exercise that they became sub-questions. By the time I was finished, my brain was quieter than it had been since Ethan put this idea in my head in the first place. I felt like I had control over the questions that had been ricocheting around my head. They were wrangled. They were in front of me.

They were manageable.

I turned on some music and opened up a search window.

There wasn’t a lot of reliable information online. There were think pieces that offered opinions on some of my questions, and I put summaries and links underneath the questions. They weren’t scientific, but most of them were written by humans who had been feeders. They were good resources, but if I were examining them as verifiable sources? I would question the validity.

I marked each of those sections orange, a visual caution sign in my research document. I turned the information from reliable sources, as scarce as it was, green. There was one link I’d found that looked trustworthy, and then I found at least four other articles that contradicted everything it said. I turned it red and moved on.

I worked diligently for several hours, until my stomach was growling and my eyes were heavy. I looked at the clock and saw the time. Nearly two in the morning. I’d only researched about half of my questions. It wasn’t enough to form an actual opinion, to decide that I could concretely say that my feelings for him weren’t muddled by some supernatural force and pheromones.

I hit save on the document, found a snack, and went to sleep.

My dreams were full of stories from my research and Cam, always lingering on the edges.

I was exhausted when I woke up a few hours later. My computer was still open, and the unanswered questions beckoned me. I considered skipping class and researching all day, until I felt like I was satisfied with the answers. Until I had enough information to safely say if my feelings for Cam were real.

I chose to be responsible. I went to my first class and tried to pay attention. I kept my research document closed, even though it practically begged me to be opened. I hated unanswered questions. It was a good thing I was human, not some kind of cat shifter. I’d have been killed before I even hit puberty. Needless to say, going to class wasn’t useful. I couldn’t tell you one single thing we’d gone over in my first class, and that motivated me to skip the next one.

I’d get notes from one of my classmates.

I went to the library and tried to find books to go along with the articles.

After a lot of looking and asking a few staff members, I found something useful. It was a first hand account from a feeder, a small section of a much larger book that had been published a few years after the Halloween Wave. He’d been a feeder for a succubus and had begun developing a deep emotional connection to the succubus he fed from. They’d not been friends or anything before they started feeding, so it wasn’t exactly like me and Cam, but it was close enough.

I read through the three pages several times, taking detailed notes on his account.

He’d met her at a bar a year before the interview, and they’d hit it off. He didn’t know what she was when they first kissed, but he’d felt the shift in the energy between them. His descriptions reminded me of what it felt like when I kissed Cam during our feeding sessions. It was like the world tilted slightly. I felt light headed, and my heart fluttered. Was it just his magic? This man’s account made it seem like it might have been.

After that night, the man began feeding his succubus friend once a week. She had other feeders, and he found himself getting jealous. At least I didn’t have to worry about that. Within a month, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. That sounded familiar. How many times had Cam haunted my dreams since this whole thing started? Of course, that wasn’t a perfect comparison. He’d starred in a few of my dreams before I started feeding him.

I sighed and kept reading.

It wasn’t the most detailed account, but their feeding arrangement only lasted a few months before he told her that he had feelings for her. She told him that it wasn’t real, that nothing between them had been real. For her, it had just been food. He compared his own experience to an addiction. He talked about the withdrawal he felt when they stopped feeding, the emotional roller coaster that came from losing her. My heart raced as I read his account.

Was that my future? Was I going to go through withdrawal and find my heart shattered?

I closed the book and reminded myself that it was one person’s account. There weren’t inconsistencies in his story, and a lot of it sounded familiar enough to think that there was validity to his views, but it was only one person. I didn’t want to fall prey to confirmation bias.

I closed my eyes and tried to think of my next steps. I didn’t get far before my phone buzzed.

Cam: missed you at lunch

I looked down at my computer. I’d not only skipped the class I’d planned, but another one as well. I’d also apparently skipped lunch. I sighed and shook my head.

Penn: still trying to figure that thing out Cam: anything i can do to help? Penn: not yet Cam: still can’t tell me what it is? Penn: once i have more info. can i come by your dorm tomorrow? should have enough by then.

Cam sent back a thumbs up emoji, and I put my phone face down on the table. Today was a waste, academically. I might as well accept the fact now and focus on finding my answers.

Because all that account did was give me one more question. In the end, the the most important question of them all stayed unanswered: if my feelings were being influenced by feeding Cam, could I keep feeding him?

My stomach was growling by the time I left the library several hours later. I’d missed newspaper, and I knew that I’d get an earful from Ever about it. I’d just tell him I was researching for my next article and hope for the best. I could use this information for my next article, make it where it wasn’t a lie. I walked to the dining hall with my stomach growling angrily.

I chose my dinner quickly and looked around the mostly empty dining area, eyes landing on a shock of vibrant red hair. It would probably be better to be around someone, to force myself not to think about all of the information I’d learned that day. And this time, Mallory wasn’t surrounded by textbooks, so we might be able to actually chat.

“You look like hell,” she chirped as I sat down. “Is something wrong with you and Cam? He didn’t eat with us the other day, and now you’re skipping lunch and you look like hell. He looked perfect, but he always looks perfect. Not really a good barometer for his mood. He was asking if I’d talked to you today though—”

“I’ve been…” I trailed off, running my fingers through my hair. How did I describe what I’d been to someone who didn’t know how obsessive I could get when faced with unanswered questions? I mean I could just say I’d been obsessed, but that had such a negative connotation. “I’ve been waist deep in research.”

“Class stuff?”

“Not really,” I answered, shaking my head. I shoved a few french fries in my mouth while she stared at me expectantly. Apparently, not really wasn’t enough of an answer or an explanation. I swallowed the food in my mouth. “My roommates said something about me feeding Cam, and it got me caught up in my head.”

“What did they say?”

“They suggested that maybe my feelings for him might not be completely genuine.” That was an understatement, but it was a good summary. It left out a lot of the nuance. It assumed that she figured things out that she hadn’t been told, and by the way her eyes widened, it was obvious she had. “Did you know that some humans think that when a concubus feeds on you, it can affect your emotions?”

“No,” Mallory answered, leaning forward. Her plastic spoon dropped onto her tray as she regarded me with interest. “Like they can manipulate your emotions? Kind of the way they can make themselves look perfect all the damn time.”

I thought for a moment, mentally flipping through my research from that day. “Not intentionally. At least, I don’t think it’s intentionally.” I couldn’t imagine Cam willingly manipulating the way I felt about him. He’d been so nervous when he admitted he liked me in my dorm. If he could manipulate the way I felt, then he wouldn’t have been worried that his feelings would be unrequited. “More like a chemical reaction or something.”

She nodded, a pensive expression on her face. “Isn’t all love and attraction a chemical reaction? Human or monster?”

That was a valid point that I hadn’t considered in all of my research. There had been studies about human attraction. Monsters were mostly human, even if they had some different traits and a touch of magic, right? Physically, I knew that Cam’s anatomy was the same as any human’s. Why wouldn’t he be just as human physiologically?

“And I mean, did you like him before you started feeding him?”

Mallory was asking better questions than I had. Maybe she had some killer journalistic instincts that no one knew about. Or maybe she was just far enough removed from the issue that she could be objective.

“I didn’t really know him before I started feeding him,” I told her with a shrug. “I knew he was hot, so I had a crush on the outside of him. But the more I’ve gotten to know him and the more time I spend with him, the more I like the inside, too. I think about him. A lot. I dream about him. He looks at me, and I feel my stomach swoop. When he kisses me…” I trailed off, a soft smile on my lips.

I felt Mallory’s small hand rest on mine. “That sounds really familiar.” My eyes met hers. “I felt the same way when I had a major crush on this guy in high school. When we finally kissed, forget butterflies. I had a whole swarm of hummingbirds fluttering around my body. It was electrifying.” Electrifying was a good word for it. “And then, as I got to know him more, the feeling intensified. Eventually, it died out, because I got to know him too well and discovered that some of his opinions were kind of gross and that he chewed with his mouth open and he never wore matching socks and… Actually, none of that’s important.” I laughed as Mallory attempted to guide herself back on track. “What matters is that it sounds very human.”

Very human.

Those words assured me more than anything I’d read all day had.

“Do you think I’m reading too much into this?”

“I think that you’re asking questions that are important for you,” she answered diplomatically. “I also think you’re asking them to the wrong people.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, have you talked to Cam about any of this? He’s an incubus, right? Wouldn’t he know if feeding changes the way a feeder feels?” I shook my head. I hadn’t talked to him, and he’d only had one feeder before me. I didn’t know if Cam had confided that to Mallory, and it didn’t feel like my place to tell her. I’d let her read whatever she wanted into that shake of my head. “And what about Professor Fan? Or any of the other teachers for that matter.” I shook my head again. Professor Fan, my Intro to Monsterkind teacher, would have been too obvious an answer. Of course, I didn’t come up with it.

“Well, why not?” Mallory practically exclaimed. “We are at a school full of monsters. You have questions about a monster thing. You’d think, being a journalist, you’d talk to them, right?” She had a very solid point. “Where have you been looking? If you haven’t talked to Cam and you haven’t talked to any of the monsters in charge around here?”

I looked down at my fries and popped a few in my mouth to avoid answering her. It didn’t buy me a lot of time. When I finally swallowed, she was still looking at me with an exasperated expression I’d never seen on her face before. I smiled sheepishly. “The internet.”

“Because the internet always has an excellent variety of peer reviewed articles that are always 100% right, right?” Mallory teased.

I felt my face burn with embarrassment. “I mean, I also looked in the library, but there wasn’t a lot of information. So mostly the internet.”

“Okay, I think you need to talk to actual people about this. Talk to Professor Fan after class tomorrow, and then for the love of God, talk to Cam. I cannot stand the hangdog look in those beautiful eyes of his. He kept looking at the door every time someone came in. It was heartbreaking.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll talk to Professor Fan,” I conceded with a laugh.

“And Cam.”

“And Cam. Now tell me what we went over in class. Since I didn’t make it.”

Mallory nodded and started going over what we’d learned in Professor Fan’s class that day. I ate, and when I left, I felt a lot better than I had all day.

Maybe I didn’t have the answers I wanted or needed yet, but I had a better plan of attack. Mallory’s suggestions had given me a new path to take.

Even if I did feel kind of like an idiot for not thinking of the most obvious sources on my own. Some journalist, huh?