Kai glanced down the table where my friends were in various uncomfortable stages of eavesdropping. “Good idea.” He grabbed both our trays and stood.
I was too stunned to move. Sophie laughed. “I think you should follow him.”
“What the hell is happening here?” I wailed.
“I believe he’s marking his territory,” Trey said. “It’s about bloody time. I’m surprised you managed to keep him away for so long.”
I couldn’t even process what he was saying. “Blue!”
You could have fried an egg on my face. I got up because if I didn’t, I suspected he would keep making a scene. “What are you doing here?” I hissed. “Aren’t you supposed to be on guard in Rivia at the moment?”
“Sit down.”
He’d left me the seat beside the monstera. As I sat, I funnelled a little hedge magic into the plant’s big Swiss-cheese-style leaves until it rearranged itself to hide part of my body.
“Put it back or I’ll cut it off,” he said.
“Will you stop ordering me around? And if you dare touch the plant, I will castrate you.”
“Haven’t you done that already?” He was grinning again. There was a maniacal edge to it. He picked up my fork and handed it to me.
I snatched it from him. “We’ve talked about this,” I said. Reaching out, he covered my hand in his, fork and all.
“First of all, we didn’t talk about anything. You just have an aneurysm every time I come near you in public. I allowed it because it seemed like things were settling here for you. But I’m not going to stand by while you get terrorised.”
“I am not being –”
“What did you have in your backpack the other day? I heard it beating.”
Damned supernaturals and their hearing. “I can handle it.”
“So can I.”
I blew out a frustrated breath. “You can’t just swoop in and fix everything for me. That’s not how life works.”
He gave me a menacing grin. “Maybe not in the human world.”
If I thought it was just lunch that would be a problem, I was dead wrong. He showed up out of nowhere to my next Exorcism class. Instead of coming inside, he perched on the outstretched branch of a eucalyptus opposite the waist-high windows. He had a paperback with him, but nobody was buying it.
Andrei grimaced at me. “My, my,” he said. “Somebody is overreacting.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “Why no present today?”
“Do you miss them, squirt?”
“Sure do. I need all that Popescu DNA to enhance my summoning spell.”
At this point, I was only half-kidding. I could tell he was starting to half-believe me too because his demeanour changed completely. He lost interest in me for the rest of the lesson. I thought that was probably the worst of it until I turned up at Magic Resistance the week after. I was standing there in front of the portal biting my bottom lip. All of a sudden, Kai scooped me up and stepped through with me.
I almost jumped out of my skin, but we were through so quickly I didn’t have time to be afraid. Of all the classes, I thought for sure he would avoid this one.
Chanelle looked like she wanted to peel the skin from my face. Kai turned to me, effectively blocking her from view. “I have to take care of something with the Dominion,” he said, his green eyes dancing. “I’ll be back to pick you up at the end of class.”
“This is not funn –”
He kissed me. It was a quick peck, but it had the intended effect. Professor Montgomery could not have been more useless. If it were in Weaponry and Combat, Professor Eldridge would have cuffed him across the head. All the professor did was clear his throat and start explaining to us the many ways in which portals could be opened and closed. Unfortunately, for me, you needed high magic for that to happen.
I spent the whole lesson eyeing the others and feeling irritated that I couldn’t perform this very essential feat of magic.
“Can you please make your face less scary?” Evan asked. “Kai’s coming back soon, and I don’t want him to think I’ve done something to upset you.”
“If I go and stand in the corner, which is about as useful as I can be this lesson, he’ll think someone did something to me anyway.”
Evan laughed. I liked hanging out with him. He had a nice accent that I could listen to all day. “It’s nice to see him lively again. For a while there, I thought he was going to get stuck that way.”
“If only someone would just get stuck in another dimension,” Chanelle sniped from too close by for comfort. She’d been teleporting all over the place all lesson.
“Nelle,” Evan said. “Can you please keep your distance? I don’t want to accidentally send you somewhere.”
He said it with such mundane politeness. She reacted like he’d spat in her face. “I haven’t forgotten, Evan.”
When she was out of earshot, I whistled. “She hates you almost as much as she hates me!”
If I didn’t see the hesitant click of his fingers as he opened and closed the portals, I would think it didn’t affect him at all. “She doesn’t hate me,” he said. “She’s just confused about what it is she wants.”
I didn’t know if he really believed that or if he was just telling himself so because he was too nice to accept that Chanelle was a bitch.
The lesson was almost over when Kai returned. I made it a point not to engage him. This time he seemed content to just stand by the sidelines and watch while we finished up the lesson. There was something reserved about the way he stood there with his back against the wall like he was searching for something.
“What’s wrong?” I asked after we went back through the portal to Dominion Academy.
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just always disturbing to meet with the Dominion guards.”
I didn’t have much time to ponder on it
