"We need to figure out how to save her."
“Yes, we do.”
14
Isabella
“What all do we know about Nina?” Strol asks.
“Just what we heard on the radio.”
“Hmm. Do we have a way to find out where she lives?” he asks.
“I’m sure I can hunt down her address. You think we should talk to her family?”
“Yes.”
“Might be easier just to call them,” I point out. “Quicker. We have no idea where she lives.”
“Yes, but I think they might be more willing to talk to us if we talk to them in person.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why?”
He holds up his arm.
His skin.
He’s a Kurian.
“You think they’ll talk to you?” I ask dubiously.
“I don’t particularly want to talk to the authorities,” he says.
“Why is that?”
“Because of why I’m on Earth.”
My breathing hitches. “Why are you on Earth?” I ask as evenly as I can.
“Because I… I was too much of a daredevil.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why does that mean you need to be on Earth? Are you banished from Kuria?”
“For the time being at least.”
“Why?” I blurt out. Has he done something so wild and outrageous that someone died? Is this punishment of some kind? Just who is Strol?
“My father can’t handle me,” he says calmly. “You might have heard about him. Nestrol.”
“The overlord,” I blurt out. “Of course you’re his son. Nestrol. Strol. How did I not realize that before?”
“He couldn’t handle me. I was too wild. My actions… I did a stupid dare—”
“As in truth or dare?” I interrupt.
“Yes.” He laughs. “An Earthling thing, I know, but it’s fun. Have you ever played?”
“Yes, but it might as well just be called Dare because who ever picks truth?”
“Well, my sister dared me to kill an animal. I caused a stampede that caused a flood.”
“Wow. When you screw things up, you do it with style. I’ll tell you that much.”
Strol grimaces.
“And so you’ve been here, and you can’t see your mom or your sister. Have you talked to them any?”
“No.”
“Why not? Or has your father forbidden it?”
He exhales. “I don’t know, but I have to say that I just want to focus on saving Nina right now.”
“O-Of course.”
“And as much as I would like to think the authorities would be willing to work with us, I doubt that will be the case.”
“Between the flying and your father.”
“Yes. I was supposed to submit myself to them as soon as I arrived.”
“But you didn’t, did you?”
“No. On the spaceship that brought me here, I saw a woman climbing the mountain. I thought it looked like fun, so I opted to climb the mountain and thought I might find her.”
“Was the woman anything like you expected?” I ask.
“So much more than I expected.”
“Hmm. In a good way or not so good way?”
“In all the best kinds of ways,” he assures me, “but we need to try to find Nina.”
"Of course." I grimace and shake my head. He really does make me forget and lost sight of everything else aside from him.
I drive us into town and seek out the library. From there, I locate Nina's address. There are several articles written about the case already, and I make a note of her friends' names and their addresses too, just in case.
It’s a five-hour drive over to Nina’s house, but we opt to take a flight over, which is only one hour. We’re not hailed this time, which surprises me given what’s going on with Nina, but maybe they’re too focused on finding her to care.
As I suspected, there are all kinds of people outside of Nina's house. She's eighteen years old, so she still lives with her parents, and Strol and I walk a few streets over in the neighborhood to one of her friend's houses. It's empty. No answer. Maybe the friend's at Nina's house.
The neighbor opens her door and peeks out at us.
I cross over to her. “Hi, we were hoping to talk to Georgia Bush. She’s not here, though.”
"No, she went to stay with her parents. They live upstate. Terrible times, I tell you. A real shame about Nina." She hangs her head, her curly white hair not moving an inch. It has so much hairspray, to the point of being likely to catch on fire if someone sneezes.
“I don’t suppose you know much about what happened to Nina, do you?” Strol asks.
“She wanted to go to your planet,” the old woman says, eyeing him. I can’t help noticing that her gaze lingers on his package a bit, which strikes me as hilarious.
“We heard about that on the radio,” I say.
“Yes, well, I know a lot of things,” she says, “and I listen. I watch, and I learn. I don’t drink much, but I go to the bar a lot, and I’ve heard things.”
“What kind of things?” Strol asks.
“Things I don’t want to tell the police.”
“Why?” I ask.
“I’m afraid Nina’s already dead,” the woman says sadly. “Those men… they must have small peckers, the lot of them. They act like there’s a shortage of women, that the women only want alien cocks, that they don’t see how humans can survive if all the women just want blue cocks.” She shrugs. “Pardon my frankness, but that’s what they say. There’s a ringleader of the group. His name is Frankie Hamilton. He lives over on Fifth Avenue, but I’m telling you right now, Nina’s not there. Frankie has a boat. I bet you anything, Frankie, his goon friends, and Nina are on that boat right now.”
“Boat,” I murmur.
The old woman nods. “They’re going to drown her or shoot her and drop her overboard or tie rocks around her ankles and drop her into the water. They’re going to kill her to send a message to all of the women who thought about going to Kuria.”
“We can’t have that,” Strol says firmly. “There are female Kurians, of course—”
“But not enough for all the blue cocks you have.” The old woman purses her lips and pins her gaze on me. “Is all
