Burned » Kai Parker

12

"He's your neighbor?"

I grimaced at Sam's shock filtering through the phone receiver, feeling as though I were reliving the revelation from last night. It had rattled me so thoroughly that I didn't even bother with the tasks of unpacking after I left Kai's place; instead, I escaped into a hot shower for an indecipherable amount of time, changed into pajamas, and collapsed onto the bare mattress.

"Yes, he's my neighbor, and to answer your inevitable follow-up question, no, I don't know why the world hates me either," I answered with mock cheer, while stuffing a granola bar into my purse. Then, after eyeing the plate of cookies on my bare counter with longing, I grabbed a couple of those and wrapped them into a napkin to save for later. No time for breakfast before work, since I'd overslept and had to get dressed in a hurry. It wasn't an ideal way to kick off my first day, but hopefully, the rest of it would see an improvement.

"Yikes. Tell me you guys didn't nearly take down the apartment building in a magical altercation?"

Balancing the phone between my ear and shoulder, I bent down to pull on a pair of black heels. "Not exactly."

"Sooo, what happened?"

I hesitated. "Well, I messed up the spell to transfer my luggage and it ended up in his apartment, instead. So, I asked for it back."

"Right. Asked? As in, politely?"

"You make it so tempting to hang up on you."

He laughed. "Sorry. You asked for it back, and then, what? He gave it to you and that was that?" He paused. "I hope? Because now's kinda the time when we could use Kai on our side, so if you did anything else to-"

"Relax, Sam, I didn't do anything."

It was a half truth. I didn't do anything to provoke the witch's fury and stir up drama with the Geminis, but something strange had happened in his apartment. My fingers tracing the soft fabric of his shirt, Kai's stare lingering on me, my mouth brushing his ear...it didn't equate to nothing, much as I wanted to feign ignorance and pretend it had. Yet I hadn't been able to attribute a meaning to what it was all adding up to, like I was given a bunch of calculations and every time I tried to reach a solution, it came up in angry bold as error.

Kai seemed to be having a smoother time, reaching that sum. I knew that it would be him to bring it up first, the channeling of magic that left us both breathless and adrift.

He expected more from my reaction, that had been the unsettling part–like he was light years ahead of me in solving the equation and was waiting for me to catch up. I let him down on purpose, claiming it was our magic's natural behavior and had nothing to do with either of us personally. What a load of shit that was, as if channeling wasn't one of the most personal things two witches could do. But admitting more to Kai would be dangerous, so brushing it off was the right card to play. Soon enough, he'd drop it, just like I was. I just had to give him a nudge in that direction.

"Good," my brother said, relieved.

"Yeah. I got my stuff...we had coffee, then I left 'cause it was getting late," I rushed the words, while grabbing my keys on my way to the front door.

"You what?" He sounded bewildered. "Had coffee, like the way friends do?"

"He's not my friend."

"So, if I follow correctly, he's not your friend, but you two drank coffee together in his apartment at night. Am I missing anything? Feels like one of those riddles on the back of our cereal boxes that we used to spend entire mornings on."

"No riddle here, Sam. He wouldn't give me back my stuff until I had coffee with him, because he likes to annoy me as much as humanly possible. I sacrificed my enjoyment for the sake of my clothing supply."