Illusory

"This is just insane," I muttered to myself, running my fingers through my hair in an attempt to rid it of the slippery conditioner I'd just put in, the water running down my body in a warm, soothing way that reminded me of Van. "There's no way he means any of what he says. He's just conf-" I got a mouthful of lukewarm water, then, and had to stop speaking to tilt my head forward and cough and hack and spit until I no longer felt like I was drowning. Slowly, ever so slowly, I was becoming a member of the Ember's-obviously-a-moron-who-should-be-locked-away-in-a-tiny-box camp.

I stopped talking to myself, which I hadn't thought was odd until that moment, and finished rinsing my hair out in silence. He has to be confused, I resumed the conversation in my mind, where I was allowed to talk to myself. People don't just suddenly decide that they like someone. If he was going to like me, he would have started to long before now. I felt like a silly little teenager again. I hadn't had problems like these since I'd graduated from high school. Of course, this is Van we're talking about. I turned the water off and stepped out of the shower, onto the fluffy white rug, where I grabbed a towel from the nearby rack. He's not exactly open with his feelings. But still, wouldn't he have said something by now? I began drying my hair, moving quickly as the chill of the air outside the warm shower began to sink in. Then again, what does he stand to gain by lying about it? Like he said, if all he wanted was sex, he would have gotten it right then and walked away. Instead... "What does that mean, anyway?" I blurted to the empty bathroom. "'You have very nice skin.'" I still didn't get it, and I didn't think I ever would.

It wasn't long before I was dried off, dressed in a tight-fitting, salmon-pink tank top and a pair of equally tight-fitting black shorts, and headed down the stairs. I couldn't just keep muttering to myself. I had to do something. "I don't understand you," I said to Van, glancing through the kitchen door to find him digging around in the fridge. "Is it just you who doesn't make any sense, or is it men in general?" I flopped on the couch, sprawling my body along all three cushions, and snatched my cell phone from where it lay near the edge of the table. I thought I'd set it down closer to the middle, but whatever. I forgot these things a lot, and at least it was closer now.

"What are you doing?" Van asked as he entered the room, a bottle of water in one hand and a banana in the other. I didn't look at him but for what I could see with my peripheral vision.

"Texting my friend Jenna," I answered, typing away at the keypad. "Maybe she'll know if all men are like you or if it's just you."

"Why is Rick's number in your phone?" he asked suddenly, putting his bottle of water and banana down on the table.

I looked up at him now, mouth open in indignant shock. "You went through my phone?" I knew it had been moved!

"I did," he said with a cool nod, as if he'd done nothing wrong, and I jerked into a sitting position on the couch.

"Why?" I asked, nearly shouting. "You have no right —"

"When you start hiding things from me, I have every right," he cut me off, his voice still cool as could be even as his olive-green eyes smoldered.

"We're not dating, Van!" I said as I lurched to my feet, my voice now raised in a full-on shout. "You're not my boyfriend, my brother, or my parent! We work together, for Christ's sake. You have no right, ever, to go through my stuff!"

"Why is his number in your phone?" Van asked slowly, sternly, those fiery eyes narrowing down at me.

"It's none of your damn business, Van," I growled. I wanted to shout some more, wanted to throw the fit from fucking hell right about now, but against Van, acting like a child would get me nowhere. Hell, even acting like an adult wouldn't get me very far, not with him.

"If you're living in my house, it's my business," he said in that same slow, hard manner.

"Then I'll gladly get my shit and go," I snapped, rounding the table at a brisk walk. He had no right! No right!

But he stepped into my path, staring down at me with those heated eyes. "I thought you wanted to learn magic."

"I'll find someone else to teach me," I countered, stepping to one side and then the other, though he followed me in either direction — a smooth and infuriating dance. "I'm sure there's someone out there who would be more willing than you to do the job."

"Someone who will pay you while you do it?" he asked, gliding to the right when I moved that way. "Someone who will give you a place to stay and food to eat?"

"Just let me go!" I screamed when he followed me back to the left. "I don't want to be here anymore!" But he followed me again, another step to the left, and I finally snapped. With a shriek of raw rage, I went to shove him, one hand heading for his face and the other moving toward his chest; but he caught my wrists in a painfully tight grip with a level of ease that only pissed me off more. I kicked at him, trying to do any kind of damage I could, but he pressed his legs against mine and guided me backward several steps. The backs of my knees soon collided with the cool white fabric of the nearest armchair, and I was knocked onto it, Van following me down to straddle me. His damp towel still lay over one of the arms, and it was cold against my arm as he pinned my hands down.

"We're going to need to work on your temper, aren't we?" he said with a calm smile that made me want to break his nose.

"No, we're not," I snarled, struggling beneath him, but his mass gave me little room to work with. I was trapped. "I'm leaving."

"Because I took a peek at your cell phone and demanded answers?" he asked, an eyebrow arched in cool knowing. I stopped struggling and averted my angry gaze, finding the white wall to my left to be much more bearable at the moment. "And you don't think you need to work on your temper?"

"Shut up," I grumbled, lip half out in a pout. "I had every right to get angry. I still do."

"And I have every right to know why Rick's number is in your phone."

I said nothing for a moment, then gave his abdomen a sidelong glance and mumbled, "You're not wearing a shirt."

"And you might as well not be wearing one," he responded, cocking an eyebrow down at me in something like victory.

I looked down to find that he was right. During the struggle, my tank top had sneaked up to reveal all of my stomach and a good half of my red bra. My eyes drifted back to his face, and with a defeated sigh, I said, "I wondered why I felt a draft."

"And now, you know," he said, a crooked grin in place as he pushed himself off of the chair and off of me. He then picked up the bottle of water, cracked it open, and offered it to me. "Would you like a sip? I'm sure your throat is dry from all that screaming."

"I wish I'd been screaming for other reasons," I muttered, my mind on things that involved a few less pieces of clothing and a lot more "struggling."

"What?" he asked, and I shook my head, taking the bottle from his outstretched hand.

"Nothing, nothing," I said, then chugged a good half of the ice-cold beverage in just under a minute, watching him coolly all the while as he waited patiently at my side. I handed it back, and he didn't comment, just cocking an eyebrow at me before downing the rest of it.

I sat up in the chair, tugging my shirt back down to where it was supposed to be. "You're not going to go through my stuff anymore, are you?" I asked dryly, eyeing him as he screwed the little white cap back on to the empty bottle.

"If you don't give me a reason to, I won't," he said with a shrug, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

I sighed. "Fine." Arguing with him wouldn't do any good; he was too stubborn. But I wouldn't be forgetting this any time soon, and I certainly wouldn't be letting him act like he owned me again. We were business partners, no matter what he said and what I wanted. We were just business partners.

"Now, are you going to tell me why you have his number?" he asked, dropping the bottle onto the table and picking up his banana.

"Why do you need to know so badly?" I asked, watching him make his way around the table and to the couch. He flopped onto the puffy cushions with a sigh, peeling the banana slowly, casually, before he would speak.

"I just do," he said, his eyes on his fruit. He turned it one way, then the other, studying it as if it were the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen.

"Because you're jealous?" I offered, a teasing smirk dancing across my lips.

"Jealous?" he asked, his eyes drifting to my face, icy with cool disdain. "Why would I be jealous?"

"Well, if you really do like me," I started, leaning back in the chair with my arms folded behind my head, "then that whole rant earlier about how much you didn't like him was probably because you were jealous. You didn't like that he might have been flirting with me a little — which he really wasn't doing, by the way — and you decided to pretend he was a bad guy to try to get me to stop talking to him."

He gave a harsh, mirthless laugh. "Right," he drawled, and took a massive chunk out of his banana. "I was jealous of that roughneck. I, a refined magician, a gentleman, was jealous." He snorted in forced laughter. "How do you come up with these things?"

I smiled a smug smile, arching my back in a little stretch that lifted my shirt well above my belly button. "Argue with me all you want, but we both know it's true. A refined man wouldn't have acted in such a way for any other reason."

He took another bite of the banana, then stuffed the rest of it into his mouth angrily. "Right," he muttered as he chewed, displaying his more gentlemanly qualities. "I was jealous. Pah!" He got to his feet and left the room to throw his banana peel away in the kitchen, mumbling and grumbling the whole time. "Jealous," I heard him say again from the kitchen. "Ha!"

"Shouldn't we be getting to bed?" I asked after taking a moment to chuckle under my breath. I sat up in the chair now, pulling my legs onto the cushion and crossing one over the other. "We haven't slept much since before we left for Washington, and I imagine you're still tired from your fight."

He reentered the room, a shrug shifting his bare shoulders. They were lightly freckled, I noticed, and I couldn't help smiling at the cute little dusting of orange. "I guess so, if that's what you want to do," he answered, his tone still bitter in spite of the subject change. So jealous! I didn't even know if I could be mad at him anymore.

"Whatever you want to do," I said with a small shrug of my own, staring sadly at one freckle-less shoulder. "As long as it doesn't involve talking about Rick anymore."

"Why is his number in your phone, anyway?" he asked instantly, and I sighed. I should've known this would happen. Why had I even said anything? Of course I could still be mad at him.

"Because he wanted me to have it," I answered, lips tightening in annoyance as I raised my eyes to his. "Is that good enough for you?"

"But why did he want you to have it?" Van asked, stopping before my chair with his arms crossed over his lightly muscled chest, his lips pursed and his body ramrod straight.

"I don't know," I said flatly. "You'd have to ask him."

"All right." He stooped beside the table and reached under it, grabbing my phone from where it had fallen during our little altercation. I hadn't even realized I'd dropped it. He began scrolling through numbers, and I jumped to my feet, snatching it from his hands.

"Hey!" I cried, flipping the phone shut and holding it protectively against my chest. "I told you not to go through my stuff anymore!"

"I wasn't going through your stuff," he said with a taunting smile. "I was just going to call Rick."

What a dick! "Yeah, um, no," I said quickly, keeping a tight hold of my phone when his eyes dropped to it. "I'm going to bed. You do whatever you want as long as it doesn't involve calling Rick or talking to me about Rick or touching anything that is rightfully mine." I walked past him and made my way up the stairs, and I heard him laughing after me.

"Sleep well," he called. "We'll talk about this more in the morning."

"Whatever, jerk!" I slammed the door.

We most certainly would not be talking more about this in the morning!