CHAPTER FOURTY SIX
[46]

song: so beautiful by dpr ian

THE TWO EXIT THE BUILDING TOGETHER. Daisy walked a few feet behind Kai as he happily admired around the streets of New York like a tourist.

She examined him and his stature. He felt so different than when she last saw him. Of course, it'd been five years, but he felt like a completely different person. He looked the same, it was the way he acted that was odd. He used to be so stern and articulate, now he felt much more confident and sarcastic. She'd be lying to herself if she said she didn't prefer this new side of him, but both were equally as unbearable.

"Let's go to The Empire State Building." Kai says, glancing behind him once again to make sure she was still there.

"No." Daisy says immediately after, somehow becoming more annoyed than she already was.

"You're no fun." He says, looking up with a squint at the tall buildings that towered over them. "We could go to Central Park."

Daisy rolls her eyes as she kept following him down the sidewalk.
He continued blabbering on about New York but she tuned him out. They walked for about another ten minutes before they entered Manhattan, the skyscrapers slowly turning into trees and street houses. The sun had almost fully risen by the time they got there.

Kai came to a stop and turned towards the white street house with the black door and black shutters. "Let's crash here." He suggests.

"You can." Daisy corrects. "I'll be next door." She began to walk towards the brick street house that sat beside the white one. She walked up the steps to the front door, but stopped when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned around, to see Kai following her into the house she had just claimed. "What are you doing?" She shook her head.

"Let's be roomies." He shrugs with a proud smile.

"Is this a game to you?" She harshly narrowed her eyes at him. "I agreed to talk and see if we can figure out a way out. That's it. I have no interest in being your 'roomie'."

He looked as if everything she just said went in one ear and out the other. She widened her eyes in frustration before turning back to the front door and twisting the handle, which was obviously locked. She heard a scoff from behind her and all she wanted to do was turn around and kick him down the stairs. She took a quick breath, trying to regain a bit of patience before bending down and grabbing a rock from the planter on the porch.

She adjusted her grip on it, before slamming it down on the doorknob. Repeatedly.

"Do you need help?" Kai asked from behind her.

"No." Daisy retorts, grunting as she continued to slam the rock onto the doorknob to break it off. She'd used a few different tactics to break into houses over the years, but this one seemed to work the best.

Kai watched the painstaking process for a few seconds before finally pushing her out of the way and flicking his hand in front of the door, unlocking it with a satisfying click. He glanced at her with a smug expression before swinging the door open.

Daisy lingered on the front steps for a few seconds, dumbfounded and annoyed, before dropping the rock and stepping inside behind him.

He flicked on the light of the front entry way. Street houses in New York were narrow and small, but they were pretty. Wood floors and white walls, with antique finishings and white stain glass windows.

They looked around for a minute, examine the living room to the right, and what looked like a dining room to the left. In front of them was another hallway to the kitchen, and a stair way to the upstairs.

Daisy shook herself out of her daze of admiring the pretty home, and regained a bit of realization. "Right." She muttered. "I'll be next door." She said again, spinning around towards the door, only for it to shut in her face— likely because of magic.

She shut her eyes frustratedly before turning back around. "Do you want me to be miserable?" She asks, shaking her head.

"No." He responded, the rhetorical question clearly not resonating with him.

Daisy took a deep breath, which then turned into a yawn and she remembered why they were even here in the first place. "I'm gonna go upstairs and get some sleep. Then we can talk." She says. She wanted to get this conversation over with as soon as she could so he'd leave her alone, but she couldn't until she got some sleep.

"Oh, right." Kai says, he also must've forgotten the reason they were there too. "I'll go shower."

She gave him a quick nod before the two headed up the stairs, which creaked under each step. The second floor was just as beautiful, with reading nooks and even bigger windows. She opened the first door she saw, expecting to see a bedroom, but it was only an office.

Another door sat at the end of the hall, and Kai had already made his way inside. Daisy followed, and quickly realized that it was the only bedroom in the house. It didn't really seem to be a problem for Kai, as he had already turned the shower on.

Daisy stood in the doorway, looking around at the single bed and back to Kai. "No way." She says, almost chuckling.

He shrugs. "I'll sleep on the couch." He spoke like it was obvious.

Daisy looked at him hesitantly as he carried on, going through dresser drawers and shuffling through the clothes of the previous owners. If he wasn't going to act like it was weird, neither would she. She walked inside the bedroom, uncomfortably sitting on the side of the white bed and taking off her shoes.

She took off her jacket before she laid down, fluffing the soft pillows to meet her ideal comfort. She yawned again, but almost choked as she caught glance of Kai, shirtless in the bathroom doorway about to completely undress.

"Jesus Christ." She mumbled before raising her voice. "Shut the door!" She yelled, turning her face away and unpleasantly plopping it on the pillow.

Kai scoffed, shutting the door with his foot before undressing and getting in the shower.

The door shut and the sound of the shower running muffled. She was exhausted, but she didn't know how she could sleep knowing he was only a few feet away. She wondered if she would ever sleep again.

It was the weirdest change she'd ever felt. Going from complete isolation for multiple years, to then being in the presence of another person so closely. She was surprised she still had some social skills, and she cut herself some slack over the outburst she had last night.

Last night. It hasn't even been twenty four hours since he was here— but it felt like weeks. She had no idea what to expect from here on out, so much so she couldn't even think of what she was going to do after she woke up from this nap.

So they have a conversation about the possibility of finding a way out of here? Then what? They leave, and she goes back to the real world? The real world where her friends family has gone five years thinking she was dead? Where she was a murderer and accomplice? Absolutely not. She couldn't.

It wasn't even worth thinking about, if his coven created this world as a prison, they wouldn't have added a way out. They were stuck here, and if he won't accept that, that's not her problem.

The hot water burned against Kai's skin as he let it hit his face, his eyes closed, breathing heavily. It awoke him in all the right ways as the stench of gasoline drained from his hair. He rubbed his eyes, feeling a chuckle creep up from his stomach.

The look on Daisy's face as she dumped gasoline on him was terrifying, but alluring. He'd seen the damage Daisy had done to almost every city she had left, so he didn't know what else he had expected when he found her.

Buildings burnt to the core of their structure— the worst being Wayward. He had looked for her there first, no tracking spell needed. But it was just a charred over ghost town. Both of their houses were completely gone, just ash. And if buildings weren't burnt down, they were destroyed in other ways. Windows shattered, axes taken to front doors and fences. She had keyed cars that were parked along the roads, carving her name on the metal with the key. A signature to finish off the mess she had created.

He would be lying if he said she didn't scare him, but it also just made him more intrigued. A similar feeling to the one he had when he first met her.

He was in the shower for about an hour. It probably wasn't necessary, but he was too comfortable to get out. Finally, after washing his hair and body, he stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around him. He wiped the steam off the mirror and examined himself as he dried his body and got dressed in fresh clothes.

Kai swung the door open to the bedroom, and saw Daisy curled up on the bed, asleep. He had forgotten she was there or else he would've been a bit quieter.

He tossed the towel down on the small bench in front of the bed, sitting down before he had even realized he had.

Kai took the chance to really admire her for the first time since he found her. Although she hadn't technically aged, she looked different. She had a sense of maturity about her now that he hadn't seen before. While she was definitely a bit off the rails, her stature was intelligent and cunning— something they had both developed more of over the years.

He watched as her lips parted slightly every time breathed out, and he remembered the feeling of them on his. He felt his breath hitch at the thought. Kissing her again was something he hadn't even thought possible, and he still didn't, but that didn't mean it wasn't something he desired.

He missed her touch. He missed everything about her and what they had. He missed the way he made her laugh. He missed the way her nose crinkled when she was embarrassed. He missed the way she looked when she talked about things she was passionate about. He missed the way things were before things got bad. He missed the way she loved him.

Daisy shifted in her sleep and he sat up a bit. Her movements turned to stretching and a yawn, before her eyes slowly flickered open. "You're a snorer." Kai says, and her eyes quickly dart over to him, as he sat on the bench at the end of the bed.

"Were you watching me sleep the whole time?" She says, giving him a disgusted face. Her voice was scratchy. She didn't even realize she had fallen asleep.

"Just for a few minutes." He shrugs, like it was nothing, he stands up and glances at the watch on his wrist. "Feel better?"

Her body ached for more sleep, but her brain knew that a deep sleep was inevitable with him around. "I need a drink." She says with a yawn, rubbing her eyes.

"O-kay." Kai responds watching as she slowly drug herself out of the bed, taking no time to stretch or acknowledge him any further before she was out the door and headed down the stairs. As he follows her down the steps, he continues talking. "I don't know a lot about prison worlds." He begins. "My Coven kept a lot of details from me. Probably for good reason. And I'd love to be able to read about them in my family's grimoire— but you set that on fire in a fit of rage—" He spoke quickly, and Daisy had zero interest in paying him any attention.

She searches through the cabinets of the kitchen, moving around the currently useless kitchenware and boxes of food, searching for any type of alcohol. "Jesus were they mormon?" She mutters to herself as there was no sign of even wine glasses in the kitchen.

"Hello?" Kai says from behind her, leaned against the kitchen table with his arm crossed as he watched her. She didn't say anything, so he spoke again. "Hello?" He repeated, annoyed.

She turned around and gave him a look. "What?" She responded, like it was an inconvenience.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "I was saying that my coven has other grimoires."

"What's an old book gonna do?" She says, turning back around to search through the cabinets.

Kai took a frustrated deep breath. "The 'old book' is full of spells. And information. Magic information. Because we're in a magic prison world."

"Yes!" Daisy shouted excitedly, as she found a half empty wine bottle in the back of a cabinet. She latched onto it and pulled it out, popping the cork off and turning back around, to meet Kai's annoyed expression. "I'm listening." She shrugs, as she hops up on the counter and sits there, taking a drink from the bottle. "So where are these other grimoires then?"

"Scattered across the country. My coven lived everywhere." He says. "Closest possible one is in Maine, and if it's not there, then North Carolina."

Daisy takes another drink. "Alright, you go check, I'll be here." She gives him a lame thumbs up.

"Oh no, you're going with me." He gives an assuring nod.

She shakes her head with a laugh, hopping off the counter and heading towards the fridge. "Going on a ten hour road trip with you is the last thing I want to do right now." She says, opening the fridge and scanning it for something good.

"Well if you didn't set the one I had on fire then we wouldn't have to." Kai responds.

Daisy turns around with a bored expression. "Let it go."

"It'll be fun." Kai says, with a smile that he knew would just piss her off more.

Daisy frustratedly runs her tongue over her teeth before shutting the fridge, not interested in anything in there. She turns back around to face Kai. "This wasn't part of the deal." She says.

"Deal's over." He responds.

She narrows her eyebrows at him. "That's not how deals work?"

"Not up to you." He says with a shrug.

"It is. Up to me, actually." She retorts. "You can't make me do anything anymore. Not here."

"I'm not making you murder a kid I'm just asking you to get in a car with me so I don't get bored." He says, looking at her like she was being dramatic.

Daisy takes another drink from the bottle that was still in her hand as she stepped towards him. "I don't care what you're asking me to do. I'm not doing it." She says, leaning towards him and emphasizing the last bit.

Kai stares at her for a few seconds before speaking again. "Okay." He says, beginning to walk out towards the front entry. "So when I find a grimoire, and ultimately the way out of here, I guess I'll just leave you here cause you were no help."

Daisy lingers in the kitchen alone for a few seconds before stepping out to the entry way. "You don't need my help you just want me there because you'll be bored. Said it yourself." She says.

He ignores her. "It's up to you." He shrugs cheekily.

She clenched her jaw. He then started to open the front door. "What, right now?" She says, stepping towards him as he started to leave.

"You coming or not?" He asks in the doorway, impatiently.

She stared at him, grinding her teeth as she weighed her options. Either stay here and risk being abandoned for eternity, or stick out a car ride with him in the very slim chance that he might be able to figure a way out.

She wanted to smack herself for even letting him be within a three feet distance with her, let alone about to go on a road trip with him. But if there was literally any chance of her going back to the real world, she'd do it. She took one last swig from the wine. "Fine."