Magic wasn't worked out of thin air; Kendra had to get the body somewhere.

Now that Kyle was done with it, Kendra should have been as well.

She stood in the doorway of ICU with the DNR form in one hand and a pen in the other, a looming blank line waiting for her signature.

She'd claimed to be his only relative, a distant cousin. No one questioned her. They seemed more relieved than anything to have someone responsible for the tattooed wayfarer that had ended up in their ER after a motorcycle accident and critical head trauma. They said the coma was irreversible, there was no hope. All Kendra had to do was sign and they would turn off the machines and he wouldn't be anyone's problem anymore.

But she had seen that body animated, had seen that face hold a dozen emotions. With what she knew of the "dark arts", how could she consign a soul that had contributed to saving another to its final rest when there was so much untapped potential there? You couldn't give one man the body of another and not expect something of the original owner's spirit to shine through. Using the "real" Hunter to make Kyle change his ways had been a complete gamble.

Kendra almost wished she hadn't won the game.

The scratch of the pen seemed loud and harsh in the quiet where only the soft sounds of monitors and the sigh of bottled air intruded. As soon as the doctor had seen the movement of her signed confirmation, he moved about shutting down life-support and the room seemed to fall into a literal deathly silence.

The last thing the doctor did was have a nurse help him remove the tube running down Hunter's throat. They lifted him gently and tilted his head back, extracting the length of medical plastic that had primarily kept him alive thus far. The nurse cleaned blood flecked saliva from his face as they lay him back against the pillows, then turned with pen poised as they all three began to watch a monitor, waiting for a green flat line.

But "Time of death" would have to remain blank today.

The sharp little peaks on the heart monitor continued their steady progress across the screen. The doctor placed his stethoscope on Hunter's chest amidst the tangled vines of his strange tattoos.

"Son-of-a-bitch is breathing on his own," the young doctor said incredulously.

Kendra let escape a tiny smile.

She didn't plan on staying that long; wanted to leave and let fate have its way. But she thought she'd just sit by for a while, read a bit...aloud it turned out. Before long, she'd been there twelve hours and finished reading him a volume of John Keats poetry.

Nothing had changed.

The nurses had come and gone as had the doctor. He'd finally introduced himself to her as Dr. Miles Crest and had taken it upon himself to warn her that death by deprivation was an extremely slow process. Kendra had a feeling he wanted to "poke and prod" Hunter a bit and didn't want her in the room. With a dance of her fingers, Kendra mischievously spelled out "kick me" on the back of his lab coat as he went out.

Resting her forehead on her arm where it lay on the chair, she asked(for no other reason than to hear herself): "Hunter, do you want to go home with me?"

"...yeah."

Kendra sat up completely straight. It had just been a whisper of sound, more of a raspy breath than any real word.

A week later, Miles Crest was waiting when Kendra exited the hospital offices, an overload of paperwork on Hunter in her hands.

"You know, I can get your address, unethical as that would be," he said offhandedly while lighting a cigarette.

"You should know better," Kendra said, pointing emphatically. The cigarette burned rapidly down to the butt. Miles yelped as it scorched his fingers, not sure even at that moment if she was talking about smoking or snooping.

"You could help people, you know," he mumbled, swiping at the ashes on his leather coat. "You woke him up and he wasn't supposed to wake up."

"First of all," Kendra said, cocking her head to one side in a characteristic gesture, her dark mascara emphasizing the defiance in her eyes. "First of all, I didn't wake him up. Maybe it was that I was there, you know, someone to care. I don't know. Second of all, are you going to make me quote The Genie?"

It was Miles' turn to make a confused gesture. "What?"

Kendra sighed. "The Genie, from Aladdin? 'Rule #1. I can't kill anybody,' and I wouldn't anyway. 'Rule #2. I can't make anybody fall in love with anybody else,'"

except by body switching, outside influence, teaching them the error of their ways Kendra thought to herself.

"'Rule #3. I can't bring people back from the dead' and if you consider that Hunter was basically dead… not my doing that he woke up."

"Ok, ok," Miles interrupted, seemingly disbelieving he was even having this conversation. "So how is he? What's he do?"

Kendra shrugged. "He's like a sweet old cat. Sits in the sun a lot and watches the birds."

"Can I talk to him?" Miles asked, almost comically pleading.

Kendra smiled sweetly. "No."

She clipped smartly past him in her too high heals, then suddenly stopped and turned.

"Take care of these for me, will you?" She said shoving all the papers into his hands.

Miles looked down and blinked hard. He was sure when she had been holding them, they were mostly blank spaces. Now they were completely filled out.