Devil in Disguise (Kai Parker)

Chapter Twenty-Four: Let's go

All was silent, aside from that persistent buzzing. Meg had stopped breathing from shock, and Kai seemed to have lost his tongue for once as he listened to that noise. Then, with a crash, he dumped Bonnie’s body on the floor and unzipped his backpack, pulling from it another pager. He hadn’t thrown it away after all.

‘Nut-Meg.’ he said with a tinge of laughter in his voice. He picked up a phone, a great big clunky thing, and dialled the number she had paged him. Kai had never been close to his siblings; Meg was relying on that. If he recognised the number and realised she was just upstairs, then there was no escape.

The phone started to ring, conspicuously loudly, and Meg picked it up as quickly as she could so Kai wouldn’t hear. But this house had been built to hide the noises of magic – it could deal with a pesky phone. ‘Hello, Kai.’ she greeted, not entirely sure what to say. Her throat was dry and she was sweating, pulse hammering in her neck.

‘Oh, hiya Meg.’ he chirped, and there was the sound of him flopping onto the sofa. ‘Nice to know you still want to keep in touch.’

‘Don’t lock Bonnie in the cellar.’ she said forcefully, though choking the words out went against every instinct of self-preservation in her body.

There was a surprised silence, but then Kai said amusedly, ‘So, you’ve been watching? Interesting. Then you must be nearby.’

‘Not necessarily.’ she fidgeted. ‘Your father taught me a few things about tapping into the house’s security. A key, of sorts. It doesn’t even require magic.’ she lied; she, of course, had no such thing.

‘That’s an unusual thing for him to do.’ he said suspiciously. 'What if Mad Meg came back?' the capitalisation of those two words were clear. ‘You know better than I that I didn’t always drain you completely. She’d have the run of the house, and anything could have happened.’

'Yes, but when those times came he would lock me in the cellar.' she tried to sound convincing. Honestly, this lie was pretty good for her. Kai’s influence.

'Which brings us quite nicely back to the topic of the witch.' there was a smirk in his words.

‘Mhm.’

‘You don’t want me to lock her up?’

‘Exactly.’ she nodded, though he couldn’t see her.

‘And there, little Nut-Meg, is where we hit the problem. If I leave her lying about, then there’s a chance she may wake up early and mess everything up again. That Bonnie is one light sleeper.’ he chuckled humourlessly.

‘Please, don’t Kai. If you leave her there, she’ll never get out. You, at least, had the whole world to explore in your twenty years alone. She’ll spend eternity staring at the same four walls.’ Meg pleaded. ‘It’d be enough to drive anyone mad.’

‘See? Another pro for locking her in the cellar. It’d be nice to think of her rotting away in a little jail cell, after all she’s done to stop me from getting back.’

‘Kai, listen to me. Bonnie doesn’t deserve this. I owe her this, at least.’

There was a ringing silence. Kai seemed to be considering something. He sighed, muttering, ‘Damn her.’, before speaking loudly into the phone again, ‘Tell you what, Meg. I’ll make you a deal: I leave the little witch here, unharmed – well, not harmed further – if you do something for me.’

‘What would I have to do?’ she asked warily.

‘Think about it. What would you do,’ he said delicately, ‘to save Bonnie from a slow descent into madness? I’ll judge whether or not it’s acceptable.’

Silence reigned once more. Meg was starting to hyperventilate, eyes continuously flicking to her watch. It was 5.34 PM. It was 5.35 PM. 5.36. And still, she couldn’t bring herself to say the most obvious answer to his request.

‘You still there, Meg?’ he asked mockingly.

‘Yeah.’ she replied thinly.

‘Come to a conclusion yet?’

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and made the words come out. ‘If you… let Bonnie be free, and promise not to hurt her… anymore… then I will… I will…’ swallowed. ‘I will stop playing hide-and-seek and tell you where I am.’

‘You know, I could just do that with a spell.’ he replied, making her heart race. She hadn’t thought of that.

‘You don’t want to waste magic on me.’ she laughed weakly. ‘And besides, this way, I do it out of my own free will. I know you like it when you manipulate people into doing it instead of straight-out forcing them to.’

Another pause, and Meg knew she’d scored a point there. ‘I still dunno…’ he said tantalisingly. ‘I suppose…’

Inspiration struck her like lightening, and she said quickly, ‘And I’ll give you some of my magic after we leave. It’ll come back the moment we get back into the real world.’

‘…Deal.’ he said with a smirk and an air of finality. ‘Come on, then, Meg. Where are you?’

Trying desperately not to think, not to panic, not to feel anything at all, she walked to the door, deliberately stepping on the creaky floorboards, and pushed it open. Her dirty shoes left marks on the expensive floor as she slowly walked down the stairs, coming to a stop right at the bottom. Kai was standing in the sitting room doorway, hair mussed up from lying haphazardly on the sofa, Bonnie lying crumpled a few feet away. Meg gulped as she looked him in the eye, and then swiftly looked away. That kiss had taken any strength she had when it came to Kai. ‘So, you were nearby.’ he noted.

‘Yes.’

‘You were in that locked bathroom on the plane, weren’t you?’ It wasn’t a hard leap to make.

‘Yes.’ she repeated, voice hushed. She really had to pull herself together. Acting dejected around Kai would only make him stronger.

‘Are you capable of saying anything else?’ he scorned in typical Kai-manner.

She steeled herself and looked him full in the eye. ‘Of course.’

‘Great! It’d be boring to have someone that agrees with me all the time.’ he grinned, stepping over Bonnie’s abandoned form. ‘Come on, girl. Let’s go.’