CHAPTER FOURTY FIVE
[45]
song: psycho killer by talking heads
"KISS ME." Daisy let out, so quiet she could barely hear herself.
Kai didn't lift his gaze off her eyes; he just breathed in and out slowly, his heart beginning to beat rapidly at her words. "Kiss me." She repeated.
Kai's eyes flicked to her lips and then back up to her eyes, and he leaned in quickly.
Before their lips could connect, Daisy quickly brought her hand up and wrapped it around his throat, pushing him away from her. His eyes burst open in surprise, as her lips twitched into a smile. "Predictable."
Kai pulled away, annoyedly freeing himself from the grip she had on his neck. His hair was disheveled and still wet with gasoline. He started to walk away but turned back around to speak. "Are you gonna keep playing this game with me or can we carry on with our lives like adults?" His tone was serious.
"Carry on with our lives?" She raised her eyebrows pushing herself up off the wall. "Not sure if you've noticed but there's no lives to carry on with here."
"You know what I mean." He says with a frustrated sigh as he rubbed his eyes.
"I don't." She retorted.
He looked at her like she was an idiot. "We're stuck here together we might as well try and fix what we had. There's no—"
"Kai! You have to be kidding me." Daisy let out a shocked laugh. "I want nothing to do with you." She narrows her eyes at him, her words cold. She starts walking past him, past all the broken glass and fresh blood that was covering the lobby of her apartment, and towards the elevators. She clicks the button and the elevator door opens.
He follows her to the elevator. "So you just want to isolate yourself then? Forever?"
"Yup." She says in a bored tone, as she steps inside. She turns to face him as the elevator door shut.
Kai quickly brought a hand up and stopped the door from closing. He swallowed and clenched his jaw, hesitating before speaking. "I can't handle being alone." He says.
Daisy examined his expression. Pleading, desperate eyes. He was different, clearly, but his words still felt so familiar. She'd gone through this with him once before and she couldn't do it again.
Neither of them moved for a few seconds before Daisy broke the eye contact and clicked the elevator door button.
Kai ran his tongue over his teeth frustratedly before stepping inside the elevator and pressing the emergency stop button. Daisy widened her eyes in frustration as she took an unnecessarily deep breath. She wanted to scream in annoyance but she knew that's just the reaction he wanted from her.
"Let's go get food." Kai suggests, like they were just two casual friends who didn't try to kill each other less than five minutes ago.
She glares at him. "Just one meal. And then I'll leave you alone."
"No you won't." She shakes her head.
He thinks for a second. "You're right I won't but—"
She scoffs and walks past him out of the elevator, heading towards the stairs. He instinctively grabs her arm and she turns around annoyedly, yanking her arm from his grip.
He eyes her for a second before speaking. "But that way we can figure things out. Rationally."
She widens her eyes again as she felt annoyance creep up inside her again. "Rationally?! You just chased me down with a knife!" She flails her arms out towards him.
"You killed me, then tried to set me on fire!" He retorts, just as blunt. She relaxes a bit, realizing that they were both as irrational as the other in this situation. Kai thinks for a second before speaking again. "You're not the only one here anymore. Things are gonna be different now. You've been here longer, you have the rules down. My family created this magic, I know the loopholes. We can try and get out of here." He says. She didn't say anything, so he spoke again. "But only if we work together." It was clearly a hard sentence to force out as Kai looked miserable saying it out loud.
Daisy processed his words. Yesterday she thought she was dead. That this was it, this was her eternity. She hadn't even thought about the possibility of finding a way out of here. Whatever here was. If this really was a world made up of Kai's coven's magic, then she would have no chance making it out of here by herself.
She hesitated before speaking. "Fine."
"Great." Kai says, letting out a sigh of relief.
"On one condition." She says.
Kai let out a groan.
"No using magic on me." She says. "No tracking spells, no mind tricks—" She wanted to go on, but she honestly didn't know what she was talking about and what Kai was even capable of. "Nothing."
"Don't give me a reason to use it and I won't." Kai holds his hand out for her to shake. "Promise."
She glanced at his hand then back up to him. It wasn't a full guarantee, but if she didn't try to harm him, she didn't know why he would try and use magic on her. It was naïve, but she also knew Kai, and this was probably the best she could get out of him.
She held her hand out and shook his hand.
—
Daisy sat at a table at the restaurant the two had wound up at. It was high up in a building, and she could see the lights from times square below her. The sky was dark, but she could tell the sun would be rising soon. She heard Kai clattering around in the kitchen as she impatiently sat and waited for the food.
Their was a candle lit in the center of the table and she blew it out, the romanticizing of the situation ticking her off.
Kai came around the corner with two plates, setting one in front of Daisy and one at his spot. A steak was sat on the plate aside an assortment of different grilled vegetables. She tried not to fawn over it too visibly.
"You can cook now." Daisy commented, picking up her fork as Kai sat down.
"I could always cook." Kai says, feeling offended. "Remember that tomato basil pasta I made for you after we saw Ghostbusters?"
She honestly didn't remember until just now. She tried not to look too discomforted by the mention of her past life. Everything they'd done had been blocked from her head until the moment she saw him again. It was a horrible feeling, being reminded of what they used to have. It was something she didn't want to think about for very long.
He poured them both glasses of champagne, and held his glass up for a cheers. She just stared at him with a glare that burned into his skin. She started digging into the steak and Kai put the glass down with a smirk as he watched her.
"So how old are you now?" Daisy asks, surprising Kai as that was the first question she asked. "I haven't aged here. I don't think."
He watched her for a second before starting to eat his food. "Twenty two."
Twenty two. Even thought she knew life had carried on after she ended up here— hearing him say how much he had grown out loud freaked her out.
She scoffed, taking a bite of steak. "Did you go to college?"
"I was in the medical program at University of Washington for two years but my parents pulled me out." He says.
"Damn." She shook her head, a smile forming on her lips. Not one from happiness, just pure disbelief. "You murdered multiple people and still got to go to fucking med school." Her words were cold.
Kai didn't look embarrassed or regretful, like he should, he looked proud. He happily bit a piece of steak off his fork. "That's what happens when your dad would rather let a murderer run free than face the consequences that came with what he created."
"That's why I'm here, isn't it?" Daisy wasn't really asking, she already knew. She just wanted to hear him say it. "Your dad knew I'd tell the police so instead he just made me disappear." She says.
Kai didn't respond, just stared at her, which was tell enough. She let out a scoff as she nodded.
She waited a few long seconds before speaking again, debating whether or not she wanted to really hear the answers to her questions. "What'd you tell my family?" She stared at him. "What do they think happened to me?"
When she first got here, even the thought of her family made her break down into tears. But she'd become so numb to that pain that it barely even phased her anymore.
"You went missing." He says. "After a few months the case was closed and you were presumed dead. Just another one of those freak murders like Jenna and Tommy."
She felt her grip tighten around her fork as he spoke. So badly she wanted to plunge it into his chest, but she forced herself to relax. It was exhausting how anger was one of the few emotions she had yet to suppress herself from since she got here.
Daisy looked at Kai, who was more focused on trying to read her expressions and responses than actually hold a conversation. She opened her mouth to speak again, but he spoke instead.
"I've been following you for a few months, now." He says, forking another piece of steak.
She clenched her jaw as she looked down at her food. She was so numb to this feeling that it didn't even bring her discomfort anymore, all it did was piss her off.
"Well, not— very successfully. You can't really seem to stay in one place for longer than a couple days. I've been doing countless locator spells and every time I get to where it took me, you've already left."
She looks at him with a forced content stature. "I got bored." She says.
"Did you get bored, or did you just set everything on fire?" He asks, egging her on. He gestures towards his still damp with gasoline clothes. "That seems to be your new thing." He says sarcastically. She just looks at him, expressionless, wishing she didn't blow out that candle a second ago. "It got to a point to where I didn't even need a locator spell." He laughs. "Just followed the trail of burnt to the ground cities." She still didn't speak. "You haven't gotten to Chicago yet, have you? I was hoping we could take a trip to see The Bean."
He spoke theatrically, and the more he spoke the more her blood boiled. It was the way he spoke with no genuine emotion lingering on his tongue. Everything he said sounded pre-planned, or like he was reading it off a script. A script perfectly written to drive her to madness.
He opened his mouth to speak again, but she stopped him for her own sanity. "Why are you here?" She asks. "You said your coven put you here. Why?"
He eyed her, his previous sarcastic smirk turning into a more devious one. "Does it matter?" He asks.
"Does any of this?" She asks, matching his tone.
He shrugs a bit, readjusting in his seat. He leaned his elbows on the table, putting his chin in his hands before he spoke. "So you know that my coven?" He says.
She obviously knew his coven. He knew that she knew that. "Yes. I know your coven." She says after a deep breath, hoping that it'd gain her another ounce of patience to get her out of this conversation without trying to kill him again.
"So like, if you're a twin, when you turn twenty two you have to do this little 'merge-thing'. There's like this big ceremony and stuff and it's— a big deal. It determines the next leader of the coven. Buuut you can only 'win' the merge if you beat your twin by absorbing all of their magic, and killing them." He tries to read her expression before continuing. "I'm already a certified magic-absorber and I hate my twin. Sounds like a pretty good deal, right?"
"Can you get to the point?" She asks, growing bored.
"Wrong!" He says, like he didn't even hear her. She lets out a groan, slumping back into her seat as he continued. "Found out papa Joshua wasn't ever planning on letting me merge with Josette because I'd win. You know after the whole you situation he didn't think I was 'mentally stable enough to lead an entire coven'." He mimicked air quotes.
Josette. After hearing her name Daisy kind of tuned him out. She hadn't thought about her in months. While her name brought a bit of comfort, it also brought a tinge of pain— as if Daisy just listened to her, listened to her friend, she wouldn't be here right now.
"Soooo," Kai continued. "Obviously I'm a little pissed, right? Cause like— I want that power? I don't want to be the defunct witch anymore?" He spoke like it was overtly obvious. "Since my dad wasn't gonna let Josette and I merge, he was gonna make Olivia and Lucas do it when they got older."
It took Daisy a second to remember who Olivia and Lucas were, but she realized that they were the other set of twins in his family. They were much younger than Kai, maybe around three or four.
After processing, she waited for him to continue, but he was just looking at her. "Is that it?" She says.
"Are you not gonna guess what happens next?" Kai suggests.
She looks at him with a clearly impatient expression, but she quickly realize he really wasn't gonna continue if she didn't guess. She thinks for a second, trying to register his story which had all these unfamiliar words that were not apart of her normal vocabulary.
Daisy slowly started to piece the puzzle together, and it was clearly visible on her face as Kai began to perk up. She looked at him with narrowed eyebrows, as she didn't even want to think about it.
"Go on, guess." He nodded, knowing he was disgusting her.
"You killed them..." The words did not roll off her tongue easily, she didn't want to believe it but she also knew it was not impossible for him.
He squints an eye and tilts his head to the side, "Ehh, close enough." She watched him with disgust as he continued. "See, I tried to. I actually would've gotten pretty close if Josette didn't show up and say she'd merge with me."
"So you didn't kill your siblings?" Daisy asks, trying to follow along.
"Oh, no. I did." He nods. "Just didn't get around to getting Olivia and Luke."
There was visible disgust on Daisy's face, while she didn't feel as much remorse she would've five years ago, it was still hard to hear. His words were too casual, and it was a side to Kai she hadn't seen a lot of before. Even a few minutes ago, he was serious and intimating, but this felt performative. It was like he was so excited to finally have a conversation with someone after months of being alone, he switched into some other persona.
"Blah blah blah, Josette didn't actually merge with me, just tricked me into falling into my coven's trap and getting me sent to this prison world." He says. He lets out a breath, like telling that unnecessarily long story cost him energy. He forks his last bite of steak and plucks it off the fork with his teeth happily.
She didn't have a lot to say, he seemed to have covered most of the bases, and there were definitely a few details she didn't need. She clenched her jaw before speaking. "Did they just have to send you to my 'prison world'?"
Kai shrugs. "It was a last minute excursion." He says sarcastically.
"And besides, this prison world was originally created to hold me, not you. My dad could only send one person over by himself the night you were sent here. And when you ended up being alive, he chose to send you so he didn't have to deal with you running around telling the town that his son's a psycho killer." He makes an awkward face. "But I bet he's kinda regretting not getting rid of me sooner right now."
She takes a deep breath, and glances around, readjusting to the environment she was in after she found herself too distracted by their conversation to realize she was still sitting in a restaurant with him. "Can we be done here?" She says, feeling flustered in the worst way. Being reminded of all these happenings made her feel sick.
He shakes his head. "We haven't even talked about what we're here to talk about." He says, but Daisy had already stood from her seat.
"I don't care. We ate together, now leave me alone." She says firmly before turning and beginning to leave. Suddenly, her feet felt like they were glued to the floor, and she felt a quick tightening sensation around her muscles as she realized she was frozen in place. "You promised no more magic!" She frustratedly yells.
"I promised no more magic if you promised to have dinner with me, and try to figure a way out of here." He says, standing up and walking to where he came into her view, since she couldn't turn her head towards him. "Unfortunately you've only completed one of those two tasks." He says, and she felt her muscles relax, as she unfroze in place. She stumbled a bit as she regained her footing. "So until then," he waves a finger lazily and a soft breeze flew past her, moving her hair up and off her shoulders, then elegantly back down. "I still get to use magic on you."
Daisy clenched her jaw, a knot growing in her throat from the overwhelming amounts of annoyance and frustration she's felt in the past hours. She glances out at the big glass windows to her side that overlooked the city, the sun was rising with an orange tint to follow. She turns back to him. "Fine. Let me get some sleep, maybe you could take a shower because—"
"Oh, is it the gasoline you dumped on me in your fit of rage?" He interrupts sarcastically.
She groaned internally as she could barely get a sentence out without him finding a way to tick her off. "—because you reek." She finishes. "Then we can talk about finding a way out of here."