Speed Demon (12 page)

I glanced back at Levi sitting next to Dakota, who was clutching Marshmallow Pants with a rapturous expression on her face. Levi was frowning. When he felt my stare and glanced my way, I raised my eyebrow in question.

“What?” he asked.

“Should you let her hold him?” I asked. It seemed a little dicey, you know, letting a five-year-old cling to a creature from hell. Just saying.

He grimaced at me. “You try to take him away.”

I wasn’t sure if he was saying he didn’t want new scratches now that his old ones had finally healed, or if he didn’t want Dakota going ballistic on him, so I just reached out and tried to take the cat. “Can I hold him, Dakota?”

The sweet little blonde shot me an evil “die, bitch” look and clung to Marshmallow Pants (by the way, it was getting harder and harder to think of a demon by that candy-coated name) tightly. “No!” she said. “And my name’s not Dakota!”

“Well, what is it then?”

“Georgia.”

Close enough. I had a state, just the wrong region. “Oh, I’m sorry, Georgia. But can I please have the cat? We need to take him into the house in a minute.”

“No.”

I swear the kid was actually snarling at me and I didn’t like that satanic gleam in her eye. I looked at Levi. “See? This is your fault.”

“How is this my fault?”

But of course I couldn’t talk about it, because we were surrounded by kindergartners and my mother was in earshot, so I let it ride. I also let Dakota / Georgia keep the cat. It wasn’t worth having my eyes scratched out—and that was probably just what the kid would do to me. No telling what the demon might pull.

I sat back and bided my time until we got to the zoo, figuring there would be plenty of opportunities to corner Levi in the cat house and force some answers out of him.

 

 

Zoe and her patch-earning pals were giggling and pointing at a bunch of fish up ahead in the aquatics building, so I nudged Levi and gestured for him to hang back. “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m a group leader,” he informed me, continuing to walk. “I have to stay with Group Four—Alexis, Zoe, Mandy, and Brittany. They’re my responsibility.”

Best Big Fake Brother of the year.

“Oh, give me a break! You can see all four of them from here.” It really annoyed me that my mother, who as a prosecutor put criminals in prison on a biweekly basis, and who oozed suspicion, seemed to think it made sense to trust small children to Levi. Granted, my mother didn’t know that Levi was a demon escaped from prison, but all she knew was that Levi had suddenly appeared as my new friend in need of a place to stay, and she had not only swallowed his story of divorcing parents battling it out, she had let him move in and started feeding Levi her appalling casseroles with zero questions.

Now she was entrusting her favorite child to him? It boggled the mind.

“Okay, but if they start moving, we need to follow them,” he conceded. “What’s up?”

He wasn’t even looking at me, but had his eyes fixed on Group 4. I had to begrudgingly admit that was why my CON list had existed at all. Because he always managed to show that despite his annoyingness, he was a good guy, and it was clear then that he took the girls’ safety seriously.

“What do you think is up? You just told me that little cute kitten is a demon. What does that mean, exactly? What kind of demon?”

“I never said he was a demon.”

“Hello, it was obvious. His eyes were glowing.”

“Cats eyes glow.”

And so would mine, from fury, if he didn’t stop talking in circles. “Are you trying to tell me now that the cat isn’t a demon? If you are, save your breath, because I don’t believe you.”

He sighed. “Fine. You’re right.”

“What kind of demon is it? A prisoner?”

“No, definitely not a prisoner.”

Well, that was reassuring. It still irritated me that of all the demonic portals to open, I had managed to open a prison portal. Like demons weren’t bad enough, I had to open the door to the underworld that held the dregs of demon society. Picture that mess.

“Who is it then? And why is it a cat?”

“Not sure.” Levi took a step forward like he was going to break into a run, then stopped, dropped his arms, and sighed. “Crap. Mandy almost fell off that step. Watching kids is hard work.”

So while he babysat, it was once again up to me to figure everything out when I knew nothing about anything.

Sounded about right for my life.

I stared at a shark hanging out in its tank looking bored out of its gills and thought he and I had a lot in common. He was stuck in a tank that amounted to about the size of a bathtub compared to what he was used to, and I was grounded with no friends.

Feeling a whine coming on, I turned and went to my mother.

“What’s wrong, baby?” she asked me, linking her arm through mine. “You look upset.”

Sometimes it was nice to have a mother to lean on, even if she was shorter than me.

“I hate Levi,” I told her.

She laughed. “Maybe you two should just accept that you want to be a couple.”

Gak. So much for Mom Comfort. She was rooting for the wrong team and it felt like a betrayal.

“And where has Isabella been lately?” she asked.

Just turn the knife a little more, Mom.

Chapter Ten

When I got home I Googled the demon Otis. Turned out Otis was a nickname for Botis—you couldn’t fault the guy there for trying to make the most out of a crap name like that. Yikes. I sometimes complained that my parents should have just named me Mackenzie since that’s what everyone seemed to think my name must be for Kenzie to be my nickname. But it wasn’t my nickname, it was my full complete name, and as a result it can’t have a nickname generated from it as it sounds like a nickname in and of itself, which made me happy. I didn’t want a nickname.

But I would totally go for Otis if I were Botis.

The description of him wasn’t even remotely encouraging. “A ruler of hell, he appears on Earth with sharp teeth and a sword.” Or as a fluffy white cat. Huh. But when I thought about it, the cat had sharp teeth and the sword could be translated as his claws. He was constantly doing a number on Levi.

Which made more sense now that I understood they knew each other.

Levi said Otis wasn’t a prisoner. The portal he had exited from was a prison portal. Ruler of hell . . . Who else was in a prison? Prison guards. Otis was most likely a prison guard, which explained the animosity between him and Levi. And seemed as further evidence why I should stop being a wimp and just send Levi back right along with Otis aka Marshmallow Pants.

Had I ever really gotten any sort of reasonable explanation as to why Levi had been in demon prison in the first place? No. Nope. Levi avoided that question like every other one I asked him.

Feeling eyes on me, I quickly turned. There was no one in the open doorway of my room. Unnerved, I checked out my whole room. I let out a yelp when I realized Otis was lying on the foot of my bed, watching me steadily while he licked his foot.

How long had he been there? I minimized my screen but realized he probably knew exactly what and who I was researching. I had actually read the description of Otis out loud. Heart thumping faster than normal, I gripped the edge of my desk and eyeballed him. “Can I help you?”

He let out a meow, then leaped off my bed. He paused halfway across the carpet and looked at me, like he was waiting for me to follow him. I was so going to regret doing it, but I got up and followed him, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans. “Where are we going?”

Otis strolled into my bathroom, with its black and aqua blue color scheme and its crisp white towels, and jumped onto the rim of the bathtub. He did a graceful walk back and forth on the shiny, slippery surface, pausing to rub his shoulder on the shower curtain.

“What?” I said. “I don’t get it.”

He jumped to my counter and knocked over my acne meds—yeah, guess I should have put those away after using—with his nose. Then he jumped back over to the tub edge and stood there meowing, looking down at the drain.

“You want me to open this portal back up?” I asked in shock, when I finally realized what he was trying to tell me without benefit of English skills. “No way! How stupid do I look?”

If a cat could raise an eyebrow, this one did. He just blinked at me, arrogance and disdain dripping from his Marshmallow Pants pores.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not doing it.” I probably shouldn’t even be in the bathroom alone with him now that I thought about it.

Otis meowed.

“No.”

He jumped behind the shower curtain with a meow that I was pretty sure was a curse.

Great. “What are you doing?” I waited. Nothing happened. I couldn’t even hear him moving around.

“Otis. That is your name, right? Come on, I can’t understand Cat. I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“How about now?” The shower curtain pulled back and I was staring at a dude sitting in my bathtub, knees up to his chin. He was older than Levi, in his twenties, and he had a goatee, side-burns, black eyes, and yellowed fingernails.

You know what I did. Hello. I screamed.

His hand shot up, the bathroom door slammed shut behind me, and he gave me a lecturing, “Shh!”

The door closing scared me into instant silence. I stared at him, breathing heavily, arms across my chest, like that would somehow protect me.

“Open this portal,” he demanded. “It’s the easiest way for me to go back and take Leviathan with me.”

“How did you get here? Can’t you go back that way?”

“You know how I got here.”

Actually, no I didn’t. That’s why I was
asking
. “Why are you a cat?”

“Try and explain this,” he said, gesturing to himself in human form.

Good point. Not only was he a good five years older than me, he had tattoos from wrist to elbow on both arms, an eyebrow piercing, and a T-shirt with a bleeding skull on it. Probably my mom would not be so happy if I was hanging around with this guy.

“Cat is easier.” He smiled, but it wasn’t really a happy kind of expression. He sort of looked like he had a fever, his eyes glassy, skin pale. “Most of the time.”

“How do I close the air portal?” I asked. Not that he would give me an answer, but hey, it was worth a shot.

“You don’t want to close it,” he said, shaking his head vehemently. “The only way you’re going to be able to fix this breach in underworld security is to open all the portals at once. When you do that, you take their collective energy and shut them down all together. You’re the conduit.”

I was a conduit. I so didn’t want to hear that. I wasn’t even sure what it meant frankly, but it sounded like this whole mess revolved around me somehow. Note to self: Look up conduit later when I didn’t have a cat demon turned dirty rocker human in my bathtub.

“I don’t want to be the conduit.”

He actually rolled his eyes. “Who asked you?”

Yet another good point. “And Levi told me I can’t have all the portals open at once or the whole thing will open.” Leaving West Shore, and in particular my house, open to an infestation of demonic prisoners and their whip-cracking prison guards.

“And did you ever wonder what Levi’s motive might be? Or why he’s in prison?”

Yes. Frequently. “Why is he in prison?” I asked cautiously.

“Just ask him about Lilith.” Otis actually grinned. “See what he tells you.”

Lilith? Somehow that sounded like a story I didn’t want to hear. Involving star-crossed lovers and the demon he killed for her.

“Why are you in prison?”

“I’m not. I’m a guard. I’m here to take Levi back and to get you to open these portals so you can close them once and for all. We don’t like prisoners slipping out.”

I wasn’t so fond of it either.

“Just think what you might get next time. Levi is harmless, but that’s not what might pop out if you leave these portals open.”

Like him, maybe? I didn’t feel threatened exactly, but Otis was no boy next door. It wasn’t hard to picture his eyes glowing and a couple of thick, yellowed horns popping out of that shaggy hair. “So I take it Levi doesn’t want to go back and that’s why the two of you don’t get along?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you just go into human form and drag him back the way you came?” If he was a prison guard, you’d think he’d have strength, training, weaponry. Not that he looked like he was packing heat in his fur when he was in cat form.

The whole thing was insane.

“Aren’t you listening to me?” He leaned back, his hands behind his head, and lounged in my tub. “I can’t do it without you, little girl.”

I blinked. Did he just call me little girl? How creepy was that?

There was a knock on my door. “Kenzie?” It was Levi. “Who are you talking to?”

Otis met my questioning look with a steady stare, shaking his head no. I turned to the door. “The cat,” I said. When I looked back, Otis was back to being Marshmallow Pants, licking the drain.

I opened the door and met Levi’s worried look with a fake smile. “What do you need?”

He pushed past me. “Why are you in here with the cat?”

“Because I had to go to the bathroom and he followed me in here. I guess he wanted a drink from the drain.”

Levi pulled Otis out of the bathtub, holding him out to avoid the claws that were trying to swipe him, and said, “Don’t ever do that, Kenzie.”

“Do what?” I watched him dump Otis into the hallway.

“Go to the bathroom, change your clothes, take a shower in front of this cat.”

“Because he’s a demon.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I didn’t, because now I know he’s a demon, but I didn’t know that yesterday. Thanks for looking out for me then.” I racked my brain to remember if I might have ever changed clothes in front of Otis, but I couldn’t remember any particular instances. The thought of Otis walking around—down low, by the way—watching me gave me the heebies. And I seriously didn’t like the fact that he was hanging with my baby sister, even if it was in cat form.