Humanity 6 "The Change"

Chapter 12

ASHLEY'S POV

I hurry around Alaric's apartment, packing my bag to take to the hospital. I'm way behind schedule.

"Calculator, calculator. Where is my calculator?" I mumble to myself as I look over at Kai's body. He's still knocked out and restrained to Ric's kitchen table, and my calculator is wedged underneath him. "Of course...it's underneath the catatonic serial killer."

"Hey." I hear Damon say as I grab my calculator.

"Hey." I turn towards him with a smile, shoving my things into my bag.

"Sandwich?" He asks, holding up the food that he's eating.

"I can't. I'm late for my volunteer shift at the hospital." I say before hurrying over to him and taking a bite out of the sandwich in his hand.

"Okay." He nods before his eyes catch my hand. "That's new." He says, referring to the ring on my finger.

"Oh, yeah. Jo made me a new daylight ring. You like it?" I ask.

"Depends. Does it work?" He asks me as I pull my sweater over my shoulders.

"Well, I'm here, aren't I?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Yeah...inside...in the shade." He says skeptically.

I know that everyone's worried about Jo's inability to do magic, but I trust her. I believe that she was able to do the spell for my ring.

"Everyone's doubting Jo's magic skills, but she has a whole month to get stronger and win the merge with Kai. So a little bit of support wouldn't kill anybody." I scold lightly.

"Speaking of killing people..." Damon trails off as he looks over at Kai's body.

"Look, Ric's gone out of town to get some mystical thing to give Jo an edge, and your job is to babysit Kai...not smother him with a pillow." I warn as Damon flashes me a smile.

"Fine." He sighs.

"And if he starts twitching or something, just give him 50 milligrams of pentobarbital." I say, pointing to the syringe lying next to Kai.

"You're so cute when you're all doctorly." Damon smirks at me. "You're not free tonight by any chance, are you? Because I know this little Italian joint that has eggplant so good, you actually think you're eating people."

"And I happen to have a weird eggplant obsession." I say with a laugh.

"Perfect."

"Great." I smile back at him.

"And I'm thinking maybe after that, we could go to that Arthouse Theater. They're playing some pretentious French flick." He suggests, and I frown.

"I don't speak French, Damon."

"Well, not to see the movie, silly. To hide in the back and thrown popcorn at the hipsters."

I start laughing, but my face falls. Damon seems to have this whole date planned a little too well. Something's up.

"Wait...we've gone on this date already, haven't we?" I ask, and he doesn't say anything. "Damon, that's cheating."

"Cheating?" He scoffs. "Cheating is erasing all of our memories so you didn't have to mourn my death. That's cheating." He snaps.

I take a deep breath and look down at the floor. Those words hurt me, but I'm not mad at him for saying them. He's right, and I deserve it.

"Look, I've said I'm sorry." I say softly, still looking at the ground.