Chapter 11

When Kelly finally reached her apartment building she quickly ran upstairs to check to make sure her room was decent. She took a moment as well to tidy the front end of her apartment just in case something came up and they had to enter through that way.

She checked her watch thinking her dad must be out at an AA meeting he usually was at this hour, before she hurried back to her room to change out of her stained and ripped clothes.

She had just finished changing into a pair of yoga pants and a top when Lauren texted.

Are you ready for company? Is the coast clear? L

Yes my dad's not in, come on by. K

The port door opened on the wall next to her en-suite bathroom and Lauren stepped out holding Brenna's hand. They each had an over stuffed backpack on their backs which they flung off with relieved sighs.

And judging by the sound they made when they hit the floor both of the teen girls were packing some serious magic and they weren't afraid to use it. They got straight to work and nary a word was spoken.

Kelly took a seat cross legged on her bed to give them the space they obviously needed and watched as her room suddenly went from orderly to trashed in 5.5 seconds flat.

She knew her need for order and cleanliness was a holdover from her childhood, but heck she preferred her surrounding made sense. Having a place for everything and everything in its place gave her peace. It was a complete opposite of her disastrous childhood.

She couldn't control what happened outside her locked bedroom door: how much her father would destroy, turn upside down, or just plan demolish. She could however keep her inner sanctum from resembling the outer world of chaos and pain.

Someday she might get a therapist to work through those issues but it wasn't today. So as they unloaded the tools of their magical trade and left them strewn around her safe place she tried desperately not to fall back into an old habit of hers of chewing on her nails.

But when she unwittingly spit out a chunk of nail polish she began to see it for what it was: a losing battle. And in a minute she was going to have a boy in her room for the first time. Xan had never been invited to her home he hadn't even met her father, never wanted to, and yet she was going to be spending every waking hour with a person whom she knew, but who was at the same time, essentially a perfect stranger.

Kelly began to practice her deep breathing methods taught to her by their control and development teacher Helsing. She rested her relaxed hands on her upturned thighs and closed her eyes in a bid to center herself. And it worked for a time until Lauren interrupted her to say.

"I'm going back to fetch Donnie, the slip is ready, the circle is done, and I'll teach you both how to activate it when I return."

Lauren took Brenna's hand and they both waved a cheery goodbye before they left through the port door to head back to the school.

When next she saw her again she was holding Donnie's hand and he looked nervous to be coming through to her room. Or maybe he hated to travel like she did. Who could tell?

By this time the summer sun was setting in the sky and cast a reddish warm glow across her carpeted floor, and as her eyes panned the room, she thought now that the job was done, she could live with the results. It wasn't too disorganized nothing that a go around with the sweeper wouldn't fix. And having the circle of what she guessed was salt and the ring of various plants and leaves around it and the four lit candles, which she assumed represented the elements and the four directions at once, wasn't so bad. It even smelled quite nice.

When Donnie came through he took one look at her and nodded his head like her eyes had spoken volumes to him that she wasn't at all comfortable with this situation and he promptly transformed in to his gorgeous Russian Blue self, and in one leap, he leapt from the port in a high arc right into the centre of the protection circle.

And if he was a blip on some tracking map, he would have only shown up for a fraction of a second. Kelly had to marvel at the thoroughness of the plan. The Cait Sith would never find them this way. Lauren would come to pick him up every morning and drop him off every night, until such time as they could figure out what the heck was going on and put a stop to it.

"Now this port slip is fairly simple,' Lauren broke the weighted silence, "when you need to travel one or the other of you need only slam your palm in the centre of the glyph I've drawn her, and no worries it's not a portal of my own making. She giggled nervously at her own words."

She drew out her spell card and said, "This will be affixed to the other side. I've spelled it to remain open even while I sleep. So it will provide you access to my room as long as it is open.

"No need to knock," Lauren joked in a bid to lighten the mood.

Donnie just meowed unhappily while Kelly chuckled nervously.

Lauren however took a moment to say, "Thanks Kelly for doing this I know you're uncomfortable with the situation, and I promise we'll try to find a resolution as soon as possible."

"You'd best be. This is not the damn Hilton." She barked but the wind had gone out of Kelly's bad ass rep and she knew it.

Lauren just smiled at her and gave her shoulder a squeeze before she disappeared through the port slip.

After the bright light disappeared all that remained was the circular glyph left behind. It looked like a tribal drawing or ancient runes shaped into a human size circle on her bedroom wall. It was pretty but it most certainly did not suit the décor.

Looking around the room made Kelly itch to put it right and she was fixin to do just that when Donnie cat started prowling around inside the circle unhappily. He started meowing loudly until she dove down on the floor at the outer edge of the ring.

"SHHHHH," she whispered when she heard her father walking around in the apartment outside her door. And even though she reached out to pet him he wouldn't be calmed.

Which made her wonder how much of his human self remained in his cat form? Was he truly unhappy with his small space behind the lit candles all around him, or was it something deeper, was it the situation he found himself in – either way he'd need to keep it down, she didn't want her father hearing him and coming to her door? She lived her life happily by having as little interaction with her father as necessary.

Besides how would she explain her room and the circle?

Me: Hey Dad just practicing my satanic rituals.

Father: Your what now?

Me: Sorry no time to explain. I'm just fixin to sacrifice this cat.

Father: *speechless*

Me: Oh yeah almost forgot you're next. MUAAAHHH!

Father: *Slowly closes door and builds barricade on the other side*

Laughter peeled from Kelly's lips at her wild imagination. Now that would be something to see. Maybe she should let Donnie cat keep fussin, but in the end she couldn't stand to see him unhappy so she grabbed a blanket and a pillow from her bed and made a little spot for herself on the inside of the circle.

As soon as she curled up on her side in the tight space Donnie came right to her and began to run his furry face all over hers, purring like an outboard motor, until she giggled. This carried on for minutes until he finally laid down around her neck panting heavy like he'd been through a marathon.

Kelly felt like she needed to say something to reassure the cat but what could she say? Knock it off; you're essentially a prisoner for the foreseeable future, get used to it.

But instead she said, "Bless your heart sugah, don't you worry none. I won't let anything happen to you." And she tucked him into the crook of her arm so he could lay against her beating heart.

If it was strange for her to be talking to a teen boy like that she didn't feel it, and Donnie didn't seem to mind none because he just calmed right down and went to sleep in her arms, and soon after she fell asleep too.

The next day Lauren went to see Delphi the school's no-nonsense Oracle to ask her opinion about the Donnie situation and she was able to shed some light on the situation, but frankly hardly enough.

When Lauren reported back to them at lunch that afternoon , she informed them that Liam had somehow convinced the King of Caits that Donnie would usurp him someday and take the thrown. She then went on to explain that there was so much strife in the Cait kingdom and at the court that the King had become unbalanced and now any perceived threat is taken with the utmost seriousness and with deadly force. So now they knew why the Cait Sith wanted to annihilate Donnie, but what was Liam's game?

Why Donnie? Did he just pick Donnie to keep them out of his hair?

Possibly.

If they were too busy trying to keep him alive they couldn't get in the way of his current plans. And if he could win the trust of the Cait Sith, then he would gain a very powerful ally that could travel anywhere in the blink of an eye. No one would be safe. They might even be able to get to the council members when they were at their most vulnerable.

That theory was as good as any so they went with that as a plausible explanation, but it didn't explain how they would stop the manhunt. It was not like they could reason with a mad man. They just had to hope that like cats are prone to do, eventually the Cait Sith would give up the hunt and move on to another ball of yarn.

But there hopes were dashed when as the weeks went by the Cait Sith got more and more desperate. They began to hang around the school grounds and other teenage haunts looking for signs of Donnie. They were trying to be stealthy, but they couldn't have been more obvious. Think about it: grown men prowling around teenage establishments looking like Euro trash. They frankly stuck out like soar thumbs and the students started talking. Actually the rumor mill went nuts at the school. Xander came to them on a daily basis with a new and even more crazy theory than the last.

They were now considered the magical men in black and the school -- at least the magical side -- was abuzz with what it could mean. Delphi was true to her word though and hadn't spilled the beans. Kelly had to guess you don't get the reputation of being the school oracle if you blabbed every time someone came to see you.

Over the weeks that followed Kelly and Donnie stayed late at school doing some extra training and studying in the library, but they had to be gone by ten for the night students. They would port back to her place then and have a late supper. One she usually prepared. She didn't really mind she liked to cook. He'd leap over the threshold of the port to the circle as a cat but he would turn back to a boy and they would talk for hours. He made her laugh more than a few times and she had to admit she admired his ability to find humor in his situation. Being a prisoner couldn't be fun for him, but he took his circumstanced well. And she had to admit, that was downright endearing.

Donnie was able to adapt much better though when his cousin brought some clothes to the school for him in a duffel bag, and she didn't even mind when he had to put them in the corner of her closet. He was a neat boy and she appreciated that he honored her space by not cluttering it up with his personal items.

The more she got to know him the more she liked him and an awkward friendship bloomed. And it was a friendship but nothing else. It could never be anything else: the boy was just not dating material.

Even though his handsome face grew on her and his quite thoughtful and humorous demeanor suited her to a tee he was so not the right guy for her. A poor boy with no prospects would never be dating material. There she'd said it. It wasn't even about the money she could make her own. It was about the aimlessness.

She had big plans and she wasn't going to let a boy with no future derail them. No way, no how!

Never mind that sometimes he'd talk himself to sleep and ended up snoring softly on her bedroom floor in his human form, with his dark thick lashes casting a shadow across his chiseled cheek and his handsome jaw, and never mind that she would watch him for a while before she fell asleep herself and find herself sighing in contented bliss, and never mind as well that she wished sometimes that things could be different, they weren't.

Kelly Marie Armstrong was a pragmatist, and a realist; she wasn't a dreamer with her head in the clouds. If she wanted something she didn't wish for it; she made it happen.

Besides,  she sighed, no amount of wishing was going to make Donovan Alfero the right boy for her.

Whelp you heard her folks Kelly is certain that her and Donnie have no future.

What do you think?

Do you think Donnie will be able to win her cold, cold  heart.

Tune in tomorrow to find out.

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