Devil in Disguise (Kai Parker)

Chapter Thirty-Two: Ransom Note

Meg looked up as Tyler barged into the room, holding a phone in his hands and a look of determined calm on his face. Her eyebrows rose as she saw the object, and realisation coursed through her. He had been on the phone when he was yelling the other day. He hadn’t been shouting at himself at all (though Meg wouldn’t put it past him). Now the question was – who was on the phone?

Almost as if Tyler heard her, he scowled and handed the device over. “Someone wants so talk to you.”

“To me?” she asked, a little surprised.

“That’s what I said.” he settled in a cushy little chair right by the still tantalisingly open door, watching her with the eyes of a hawk. She fought the childish urge to stick her tongue out at him.

“Hello…?” she said uncertainly. This phone felt weird in her hand; it was so different from the models of the 90s.

“Hi Meggie.” Damon’s arrogant drawl came through the line, amazingly intelligible compared to everything she’d used.

“Damon!” she sat up sharply, pressing it to her ear. Memories of their last encounter ran through her head, and she started to ramble, “Look, Damon, I wasn’t myself the last time we met, you can’t trust a word I said. That wasn’t me, I swear –”

“OK, OK, Meg!” he interrupted her, clearly not in the mood to hear it, “Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee already filled me in on your whole magic thing, blaa blaa blaa. I’m calling to talk about something else.”

“If it’s about killing Kai, I can’t help you.” she said, bristling when she heard Tyler snort disdainfully.

“Don’t worry, it’s not.” But he had that tone in his voice, the one that told you he was crossing his fingers behind his back. “But since Alaric’s kinda stopped talking to me, Liv’s in Mystic Falls, and Jo’s unavailable at the moment, we need you to be our occult guidebook about the Gemini Coven.”

“You’d trust me to tell the truth?” she asked doubtfully, suspicions rising.

“Like I said, we’ve heard about your magic thing. You’ve got none right now, so you’re good, right? Jo told us it was true before going AWOL. Apparently you appeared on her doorstep a few decades ago?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it true you once set her hair on fire?”

She laughed as outraged voices sounded from Damon’s line. She distinctly heard Caroline chastise, “Get back to the point, Damon!” and Elena’s titters.

“Anyway, anyway,” he backtracked as a sound like him being smacked over the head came through the phone, “We need to know – how long does Kai’s stolen magic last before he loses it?”

“That sounds like you’re going to attack him.” she tutted, rolling over in the bed so she couldn’t see Tyler anymore. The look on his face was making her want to kick him.

“It’s just a precaution. C’mon, Meg – if you don’t tell us, we’re screwed.” he goaded. “And I thought you didn’t want any of us to die?”

“True.” she sniffed, before giving in. “It depends on how much he absorbs. I was never much good at math, but if he absorbed, say, a kilogram of magic, it would take him about three, four hours to lose. The more he has, the longer it lasts.”

“Right, we’ll make a note of that… Second question: can you fix an Ascendant after it’s been burned? Is there any magical mechanics you can perform on it to make it work again?”