It wasn't the sort of thing that you wanted to hear after falling out of contact with someone for an extended period of time. Two weeks normally wouldn't have been bad at all, but circumstances were a bit different. This wasn't Athan, who he'd only hear from when things were turning bad, to tip him in, or more often when he made the effort to reach the man regarding that, or business opportunity- so to speak. It certainly wasn't the same as when he and Celeste had had their fling, and a sort of mutual agreement that they'd just run into each other again and have fun when things turned out that way. He'd had serious reason to be concerned about her wellbeing when she vanished, though he'd gotten the message since that it wasn't that kind of vanishment. More purposeful. Which mostly had the effect of getting him agitated as well. Of course, she was agitated about who knew what. Yes, he'd hit frenchie. He was pretty sure they'd both seen that coming a long way off.<br/><br/>But then after he'd really started to worry about her, started to intentionally let someone get close to him. And he hurt her right off the bat. While she was vulnerable. And then she vanished and wouldn't even give him a chance to show whether he'd done whatever it was she'd wanted him to do or not?<br/><br/>Kael could be patient. He'd been a very patient man at times. But this just cooked his goose.<br/><br/>Not that it was entirely logical, but he was too busy being irritated to worry about that.<br/><br/>He might have gone and tried to track her down by now and talk to her, but with her dodging his calls but showing every sign of not having gotten herself killed or in a world of hurt, eventually a guy had to just accept it. Very sourly. The main upside was that bitter frustration was absolutely perfect for kicking his work out regiment up to the next level; his muscles had been in a constant ache since day 4 of the silent treatment, and he'd been handling the business well, repairing his gear, and generally being successful as long as possible to distract himself from his frustration and the nightmares slowly but steadily getting worse.<br/><br/>Attempts to hunt down frenchie's whoreson "gods" and "godesses" had been less successful, and the chances of getting one where he could browbeat them into doing something useful for once seemed pretty long.<br/><br/>Of course, it was likely fortunate he hadn't been in the process of channeling his frustration into exertion when the phone rang, or Mei Lee might have faced a particularly snappy response. The first rings interrupted an attempt at something like meditation, which he'd never been very good at, with hot water pouring down over him. He had no intention of running out to the phone, but subconsciously he upped the pace a little, and walked to the phone, trying to steel himself to be ready to be civil to what was probably another business request on the other end, towling off his head and making sure the rest of him was at least not dripping before he collapsed into his chair- the only one in the place, a simple wooden thing he was lucky to have stand up to the weight- and played back the message he'd missed.<br/><br/>The tension wasted no time in coming back to his shoulders.<br/><br/>So when the phone started ringing again, right beside him, the man snatched up the receiver, sound of Mei Lee's voice intermittently interrupted by the machine switching over to the next message of the same in the background.<br/><br/>"Talk."