Shift

FOUR.2

Kayden felt awkward as she stood over the boy. She still held his spell book, cradled to her chest like a security blanket. "Will that scuff up the floor?" she finally asked.

The boy paused from drawing a complicated chalk design on her hardwood and glanced up towards her. "No. And the rune will disappear after the spell is completed."

"Ah."

The teen returned to his drawing, a hula-hoop-sized circle filled with intricate swirls and symbols. "Couldn't you have chosen some simpler form of compromise?" he complained. "This rune diagram is a pain."

"It's not my fault that you broke into my room last night. If you hadn't come after me, we wouldn't be doing this right now."

The wizard made a face. "You weren't supposed to wake up. And if your girlfriend hadn't been there, then I—"

"Wait—what?" Kayden burst out, staring at him. "My girlfriend?"

"The blonde who was sleeping next to you."

"You mean Lexi? She's my cousin, not my girlfriend!"

"Well excuse me!" the boy said sarcastically. "What else was I supposed to think? When guys have sleepovers, we all don't sleep in the same bed!"

"She's my cousin!" Kayden stressed again, but when he didn't respond, she just shook her head.

The boy flipped the page in his own spell book. "So," he asked, "where's your cousin now?"

"The mall. My mom took her shopping, a bit of aunt-and-niece bonding time. Lexi's the one who found your book this morning and passed it off to me. I stayed home, figuring you'd come back eventually."

"She saw it too?" He closed his eyes and little wrinkles formed at the edges. "At this rate, your entire neighborhood is going to need their minds wiped."

"Calm down. Lexi's the only one who saw it and she thought it was my Latin textbook. No harm done." She looked down at him. "Speaking of done, are you finished yet?"

"Does it look like I'm done?" he retorted, carefully printing a string of symbols along the circumference.

"Sorry."

Kayden stared at him in silence, watching his arm pendulate back and forth as he wrote. When almost the entire edge of the circle was covered in symbols, he paused and looked up at her expectantly. "I need your name."

"My name?"

"Yes." He sounded impatient and more than a little tired. "You know, the thing everyone calls you. It's on your birth certificate."

"Stop it," Kayden snapped. She looked down at the runes, suddenly nervous. "How do I know you're not going to... control me or something once I give you my name?"

The boy grinned. "Read a lot of fantasy, I take it?" When Kayden just glared at him, he waggled his piece of chalk. "If I wanted to control you, I could just sketch a mark on your skin. I don't need your name."

"So what stops everyone from writing control runes on people?"

This time, he laughed. "One: common courtesy. Two: it's harder to do than you think. You have to be pretty powerful, and most people are not. You're lucky I'm just seventeen."

Kayden rolled her eyes.

"Now," he said, "will you give me your name?"

Kayden sighed. Might as well. "Kayden Lee."

"Isn't that a guy's name?"

"It's unisex," she answered wearily.

"All right." He started writing again, glancing back towards the book as he translated her name into some symbolic design. Finally, after a thorough glance over to make sure he hadn't left anything out, he said, "Done."