Devil in Disguise (Kai Parker)

Chapter Six: 555-Hiya-Kai

Meg barged unceremoniously into a random house, tearing the living room apart in her search. She didn’t have long before Damon and Bonnie found her, and demanded to know why she ran off. For now, she wanted her knowledge to remain a secret.

Her eyes flashed to the phone, and she wondered if calling him would work. She could remember his old phone number perfectly. And how much he had always hated it. "Phones are boring," he’d used to say, waving his pager in her face, "At least, they are compared to my amazing digits."

He had loved his pager. She was almost certain she had kept it with him. No way was he giving up those digits. Besides, he could be anywhere in the world right now. His new number would be impossible to guess. No, she’d stick to paging him. Picking up the phone, she dialled his pager number, ‘555-Hiya-Kai’, and left him the phone number of the house. If he still had it, his pager should be beeping right now, and he should be exceptionally surprised. It had been twenty years since it had last sounded.

Meg waited by the phone, nerves at breaking point. Her eyes alternated between staring avidly at the phone, and glancing nervously at her watch. It was 8.09 AM, if her watch still worked. Going twenty years into the past couldn’t be good for it.

Suddenly, the phone started to ring. Meg picked it up breathlessly, saying, "Hello?"

"Meg?" came a voice, muffled with static but immediately recognisable. "Meg? What’s going on?"

"Oh my god, Kai!" she laughed, sliding down the sofa and landing limply on the floor. "Oh, my god."

Kai Parker. The one she died for.

"What’s going on? Are you real?" he demanded, and she could imagine him pressing a phone further into his ear as he waited for her response. "What are you doing here?"

"I don’t know!" she giggled. "I can’t believe I’m actually hearing your voice! I thought I’d never see you again!"

"Did the Gemini Coven take you down? Go back for you or something?"

"They took me down five seconds after they trapped you here, Kai. They killed me." she said, without thinking.

"They… killed you?" he said jerkily, after a tense pause. Then he laughed that merciless laugh, sending shivers down her spine. "Oh, someone ordered an excruciating death." he said in a sing-song voice.

"Kai, don’t." Meg said tensely.

"Oh, is your magic gone again? Ugh, you’re so boring without your magic." he groaned.

"I don’t think anyone has magic here, actually, and if you hated me without my magic so much why did you keep taking it?" she asked indignantly, glad to get him off the subject of murder.

"Desperate times called for desperate measures. I had no magic, you just wanted to get rid of it – it was the perfect deal!" he reasoned.

Kai’s magic wasn’t much better than Meg’s. He was born with none whatsoever, and instead had the power to steal it from other witches and warlocks. It was a painful process – rather like having scorching needles embedded into your skin – but Meg had done it routinely, just to get a few moments of clarity.

"How are you here, Meg?" he asked, mood changing abruptly.

"I don’t know! The Other Side has been going down for months, I was prepared to die – again – and then, suddenly, we all got transported here!"

"What do you mean ‘we’? Are there other people in here with us?" Kai asked sharply.

"Yeah, I came through with these two ghosts – long story. Damon Salvatore and Bonnie Bennett."