Page 51 of Static/Cling

“I do not get hangry.”

Leif snickered and pushed Roger towards the door. “Eat,” he called over his shoulder.

“So, he’s bossy,” Kassian said after a few bites.

Bjorn grunted.

“He seems to think he knows what everyone needs.”

“He’s usually right.”

“That his power, then?”

“What?” Bjorn stopped, fork part-way to his mouth. “What power? He doesn’t have any power.”

“He wouldn’t have answered a SPAM advert if he didn’t.”

“I answered the advert. He just came along with me. He always comes along.”

“As your keeper, yes. So you both said. But?—”

“He doesn’t have a power any more than you do.”

Kassian lifted one eyebrow.

“You do?”

A grim expression passed over Kassian’s face. He focused his attention on the condiments in the middle of the table, placed his hand on the surface, and waited. After a moment, the salt shaker jiggled. He frowned.

Without warning, a fork that had been sitting on the next table over flew through the air, straight at Bjorn’s head.

“Shit!” Only Kassian’s lightning-fast reflexes saved Bjorn being skewered as he caught it, mid-flight. He pursed his lips and sighed, setting the fork gently down beside his plate.

“You have telekinesis too?” Bjorn eyed the fork, which rattled against the tabletop. “So is that a family thing, or what?”

Kassian covered it with one hand. “Sort of.”

“Explain ‘sort of,’ please.”

“I can try and move something, but usually, something else moves and I’m never quite sure what it’s going to be. Like one time I tried to throw a book at Randolph’s head, and instead, I launched a pillow and exploded it in a shower of feathers.”

“Maybe because you didn’t really want to hurt your brother.”

Kassian grinned. “And what? I really wanted to impale you just then?”

Bjorn shrugged. “Maybe the fork was a metaphor.”

“For?”

“Impaling.” Bjorn winked at him. “Remember Leif and I are just friends. Either one of us is free to do what we want.”

“Or who. I am abundantly aware, yes.”

Bjorn grinned, though it was lost on Kassian, who still refused to look at him. “Or whom,” he agreed. “Sometimes it’s the same whom, and we do it together.”

A sigh emanated from Bjorn’s earpiece. “I’m back, guys,” Sal said. “Maybe hold off the flirting for a bit?”

“Not flirting.” But Kassian’s blush deepened as he said it.

---