I tear the drip out of my arm. "Where's my clothes?" I demand. "I want my clothes!"
"Look at me," Kai says. "Calm down."
"Shut. Up."
I rummage around the shelves stationed around the room. I grunt. "Fuck. Just give me your clothes."
"No!" he protests. "Calm down."
I feel tears threatening to spill over. "Give me your shirt, you fuckwit."
He holds out a palm to silence me. "Arden, listen," he says softly. "Don't take it out on me. I'll figure this out."
"Nobody will!" I yell. "Nobody can fix this!"
"Yes, they can," he murmurs. "Calm down."
"Give me your shirt. You have a jacket. Do you want me to walk down these halls in just my underwear?"
He laughs a little. "I'm sure all the patients will love it. Just take my jacket."
"I will," I confirm. "I need to get out of here."
I all but rip his jacket off of him and he yelps a little bit. "Calm down," he repeats. "Jesus, woman, I'm getting it off."
I wrap it around myself. It only goes up to my mid thighs, but I decide that I don't really care at this point. I zip it up and pull my hair out of the scruff. I slip on the slides positioned next to the hospital bed and make a beeline towards the door. I fling it open and start down the hall, dodging the elderly shuffling with their walking frames and the doctors storming down the corridors. I click the elevator button perhaps a few too many times until Kai tells me to stop. "It'll come when it does," he says.
I just shake my head and keep punching it with my index finger. The elevator comes eventually, just when I feel like crumpling in on myself for no good reason other than everything, fucking everything, going wrong. Without looking, I try to charge into the elevator, but Kai puts a hand on my shoulder and keeps me there. A hospital stretcher is wheeled out of the lift, manned by a doctor and a nurse.
"Sorry," I mumble. Once we're left to our own devices in the lift, I turn to Kai. "You've certainly had a change of heart."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Oh, come on. Drop the altruistic act, Kai. Stop being so polite."
He grins a little bit. "Polite? Really?" he snickers. "No. I'm just trying to keep your goddamn tantrum under control."
"I don't even know why you stay around here," I accuse. "Why don't you go back to your witchy problems and leave me the hell alone!"
He sighs, smiling. He's obviously getting a kick out of this. "Because this is too entertaining," he chuckles. "I mean, I haven't seen drama like this for a long, long time."
I shake my head, chuckling sourly. "Easy for you to say."
He rolls his eyes. "Okay, princess, I'm going to teach you something. If all goes to hell, all you do is laugh. Trust me, it makes me feel tons better when I do it."
I fold my arms over my chest as the doors of the elevator open. "Was that a pun, you dumbass?"
"I guess so," he says. I stomp through the ground floor and fling the door open to the outside. I suck in a big breath.
"Where's your car?" I demand.
"Didn't bring it," he says. He pouts. "Aw, no. I forgot Princess doesn't do exercise."
"Fuck. You." I cut through the carpark, not looking for cars, not looking for anything except my house, where I can finally crumple into a heap and cry.
The slides make it slippery and awkward to walk so I flounder through the streets, my jaw set and my arms crossed painfully tight.
"You know you can talk about it, if you want."
I stop and turn around to look at him. He's balancing on the edge of the cement on the edge of the grass. "And say what?" I yell. "I can't bring my boyfriend back, my brother's trying to kill me, and now I'm a siren with no fucking powers!"
And then Theo's voice is replaying in my head and I'm taken back to that first day of school when we didn't even know what I was. You'd be a pretty lame supernatural creature with no powers.
I find my self guffawing and sobbing all at once. My mouth is stretched taut into a half smile, half scowl and there's tears running down my face like a waterfall.
"I hate this so much," I cough out between wails. It sounds illegible.
Kai frowns. "Oh, no," he says. "You have feelings now." He pats my back awkwardly. He mumbles something under his breath and then the air is no longer whipping through my hair and the sun is no longer above us.
I open my eyes. I'm in my living room. Goddamn witches.
I collapse onto my couch in a hysterical fit of sobs and shrieks. Kai puts a throw over my curled up figure and sighs. "Let's watch TV and I'll go get you ice cream and vodka. Okay?"
Kai turns on the TV and goes into the hall. I hear him shuffle a bit before I hear him talking. "Sienna?" he murmurs. He's on the phone. "Hey." He's silent for a moment. "I'm alright. You?" A pause. "I don't know what to do. It didn't work. Arden's lost her powers. She's crying like a little bitch." Rude. "Yeah, she's absolutely insane about him. What do I do?"
A long pause.
"Well, I'm not a girl, for one. I don't know how how you guys think," he says to Sienna. He sighs. "Alright. Got it."
I hear him stepping away and a few minutes later he comes back with a big tub of ice cream and bottles of vodka and wine. "Well," he says. "At least now you can get drunk."
***
I wake up in the same clothes as I was wearing yesterday. So, not much at all. I'm flung over the couch haphazardly. Kai is sleeping in a corner, out cold. The room smells boozy and sickly sweet.
There are a few bottles strewn across the table, most empty, some halfway full. A sticky tub of ice cream is left on the table along with an empty, greasy pizza box.
I sigh. I don't even remember ordering pizza last night. I scoop up the remaining litter and throw it out. My legs feel like they haven't walked in forever and the sunlight proves too bright for me to withstand. I hold a rigid hand in front of my face as the sun shines down like a beacon.
I come back inside and make a start towards the bathroom. I peel off the t-shirt I'm wearing. It always astounded me how cologne seemed to linger around much longer than women's perfume. And so my bathroom now reeks of Kai.
I jump in the shower and turn the hot water up until my skin is tingling and raw.
I let the hot water run over me, cleansing away most of the grief and purging any momentary weakness I had.
I will not cry, I tell myself. And even though I feel the hopeless sadness searing through me, I do not dare spill a tear.
Afterwards, I make breakfast while Kai is still fast asleep in what looks to be an awfully uncomfortable position. Amongst all of the sounds coming from the pan, I hear a load groan and then a distinct, "Shit!"
There's a small amount of movement before I hear a shrill, "Oh! Good morning my little non-siren siren!"
"Morning," I reply.
"You feeling better?" he asks, swaggering into the kitchen.
I nod absentmindedly, focused on flipping a pancake. Kai sits down at the dining table. "Pancakes, huh? Delish."
"You're welcome."
"Theo, you son of a bitch," he says. "Should've wifed you up before he decided to take the highway to hell. These pancakes. Devilishly good."
"Okay."
"Jesus, what's with the one-word answers?" he asks. He places a hand beneath his chin and strokes the short beard spanning along his jawline. "Oh, yeah. That's right. I'm not your tragically devious, sexy beau. Speaking of, what a man crush."
I smile. "Tell me about it."
"So what're you going to do when Theo gets back?" he asks. "Give him the night of his life, I hope."
I cock an eyebrow before closing the stove and making my way to the dining table. "Why are you so chatty today?" I ask suspiciously, before reaching for the whipped cream.
"Woah, that's a lotta whipped cream," he says. "What did you ask? Oh, yeah. Why am I so chatty? Well, I'm excited. It can only go up from here, can't it?"
"I suppose." My lips curl upwards into a small grin. "Everything has to have a solution, right?"
"Hey, at least you have a supernatural Frankenstein as a boyfriend. Maybe he can cook up something new. Maybe make you a witch like me. That'd be awesome. Witchy-woo buddies, am I right?"
"Hm," I say. "Doesn't appeal."
"Why?"
I raise my eyebrows. "I wouldn't want to turn out like you, of course."
"Really?" he gasps. "Who wouldn't want to turn out like me? Hot, powerful, sexy."
I laugh. "You're none of those things."
"Come on," he says. "I know you're still attached to Theo, but you're not blind."
I tilt my head to the side. "Theo is still superior."
He bites his lip, grinning. "Fair enough. I'm not offended. We both know the truth, though."
I smile. "Getting a bit cocky there, are we?"
He opens his mouth to speak, but closes it once the abrupt knocking on the door sounds. I stand up, drawing my eyebrows together. "Did you invite someone?" I asked Kai. He shakes his head no. If it was any of Scott's pack, they would've just walked in, I'm sure.
This knocking was that of someone desperate and eager. I take wary steps towards the door, combing through all the possible scenarios. With a rigid hand, I twist open the doorknob.
I look at the woman on my doorstep, tracing all of her features with my eyes. The sweet smile, the kind hazel eyes, the long black hair, the slight lines around her eyes from all that smiling and laughing throughout the years.
It can only go up from here.
It was my mom.