Speed Demon (13 page)

“I couldn’t.”

“I know. Demon rules. Whatever.” I had heard it all. “And who is Lilith?”

Levi’s face drained of color. “Lilith? What do you know about Lilith?”

“Nothing. Just her name, and that she probably has something to do with the fact that you were in prison.”

The color all ran back into his face and he turned red from rage. “Otis shifted into human form?”

“Just for a minute. Long enough to tell me to ask you about Lilith and that I should open all five portals at once if I want to then close them.”

“I’ll kill him. I’m really going to kill him,” Levi said. “Don’t listen to a single thing he says, do you understand? He’ll lie and try to trick you into doing what he wants.”

Like anyone else I knew?

“He wants all the portals open so he can claim credit for it. He’s the prison warden.”

Oh, so now we elevated Otis from mere guard to warden?

I couldn’t keep up.

Underworld politics was wearing me out.

“I can’t even close one portal, why would I be stupid enough to open all five at once then try to close them? I’m not a moron, Levi.” Even though everyone seemed to think I was.

He didn’t answer, which irritated me. He did think I was a moron? But I realized he probably hadn’t even heard me since he was leaving the room, eyes darting left and right.

“Otis, where are you?”

They were going to have a demon smackdown. This could get ugly.

I could hear Zoe reprimanding from the family room. “Stop calling him that, Levi! His name is
Marshmallow Pants
.”

Which I’m sure just thrilled a prison warden.

I decided maybe I needed to have a little chat with Zoe about leaving the hot pink onesies on the baby dolls and off the cat from hell. I’d seen the human side he’d chosen and he didn’t really look like he was in touch with his softer side. One more bonnet and yellow sundress just might send him over the edge.

Downstairs Levi was holding his hands out and pleading with Zoe. “Just let me see the cat, Zoe.”

“No!” Zoe had Otis in her lap and was brushing his fur, with about zero gentleness. The cat’s head was actually flinging back with each pass through of the brush, which looked suspiciously like Zoe’s own hairbrush. Where was my mother and her hyper-hygiene when you needed it?

My dad wandered into the room with a bag of potato chips. Despite my mom’s harassing, he has horrible eating habits, yet still manages to stay thin. I was fortunate enough to get that awesome little gene from him because I was all about the dairy products.

“What’s going on?” he asked, raising a chip to his lips.

“The cat needs a bath,” Levi said.

Yeah, like a dunk in the lake with rocks tied around his paws, if Levi had anything to do with it.

“He does not,” Zoe insisted.

“He stinks like garbage and he killed another mouse. I found it in my gym bag.”

And Levi didn’t look happy about it.

It occurred to me it was no coincidence Levi was on the receiving end of all of Marshmallow Pants’s little gifts of rodent carcasses and cat food vomit. It might be intimidation, but more likely it was just a demonic joke.

My dad grimaced. “I paid two hundred bucks to the exterminator and we still have mice? I’m going to call them and make them redo the spraying.”

It always came down to the wallet with dad. He glanced over at me. “When did you dye your hair red?”

“Only the tips and it was like two weeks ago. You need to keep up, Dad.” And I needed to get that cat away from Zoe. Otis was starting to hiss at her as her combing got more and more aggressive.

“Come on, Zoe. We’ll give MP a bath together. We’ll do it in the laundry room.” How hard could bathing a cat be? I reached out and picked the cat up. Otis came willingly, and actually snuggled up against my chest, his head right along my . . .

Ack. I dropped the cat back onto the couch with zero hesitation. Perv. I swear he was actually smiling up at me as he realized I realized exactly what he was doing. I also decided I didn’t want to wash his fluffy butt after all. He would probably enjoy it.

“Actually, I have homework. Levi can do it with you.”

Levi glared at me and I realized he had never intended to actually give the cat a bath. He just wanted to get him away from Zoe.

“That cat still has all four claws,” Dad said. “There is no way any of us can give him a bath without losing an eye. If he really smells that bad we’ll have to take him to the groomer’s and they can sedate him and do it.” He winced. “Yet another expense.”

Leaving Levi to deal with it, I opened the kitchen drawer and pulled out the dictionary.

Conduit. 1: a channel for conveying fluid.

 

Eew. How disgusting sounding was that? Please tell me I would not be conveying any fluids any time soon. Ever.

 

2: a tube or trough for protecting electric wires or cables.

 

Next. I was no tube or trough either.

 

3: a means of transmitting or distributing.

 

Okay, that was probably what Otis had meant. I made the transmission of demons from the prison to my house possible.

Now I just needed to figure out how to stop doing that. Immediately if not sooner.

Chapter Eleven

Logic didn’t have a chance in my life.

It was time to just accept that little fact and move on.

Anyone else could have done what I did (I had the urge to scream in the halls at school,
It was just a kiss, it was only a kiss!
) and it would be no biggie. Everyone would forget in like a minute and life would go on.

Not me.

Isabella still wasn’t talking to me, Adam still wasn’t talking to me, the entire school still wasn’t talking to me, and I was getting used to eating lunch while listening to my iPod and planning my escape from public school and entrance into performing arts school. I would have to drug my parents to get them to sign the application, but I figured that was a small price to pay to reclaim some small piece of happiness in my life.

Levi sometimes tried to sit with me at lunch, but I had the feeling that would be a bad idea and only make me look guilty, so I usually blew him off.

But Monday he actually sat down at my empty table with Amber Jansen. I wondered what he had promised her (engagement ring, anyone?) to get her to agree to sit with me, but she did it. With a fake smile on her face even. Impressive.

“This is a fun twist,” I said.

“Well, the way everyone is treating you just totally sucks,” Levi said. “So I figured if Amber sat with you, and everyone saw that she, of all people, is cool with you, and cool with you and I being friends, that everyone else would get a grip and let it go.”

I wasn’t sure that the plan would work at all, but I appreciated the effort. “Thanks, Amber,” I said, and I didn’t even choke on the words. I actually meant it. “I appreciate it.”

“Sure,” she said, her smile almost snapping in half.

“Look, just so you know, Levi and I . . . we aren’t . . . we didn’t . . . we don’t want to be together.” Yeah, I was so making things better. Not. “I mean, what I’m trying to say is you can trust us. Levi wants to be with you and I think that’s awesome. It’s the way it should be. You’re a great couple.”

Who was speaking? I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth even as I said them, but then again, spending day after day in total silence was enough to make anyone go completely insane. I was willing to say whatever I had to to get at least one friend back. One friend that wasn’t Levi, that is. And there was truth to what I was saying. Levi and I had never discussed our second little kiss (well, okay, not so little), and it was pretty clear we were going to ignore it forever and he was going to be with Amber.

“Okay, Kenzie,” she said, shoving her fork around her bare salad. Who ate a salad with no dressing? Yuck.

“Just quit while you’re ahead,” she added.

It probably wouldn’t help my cause if I stuck my tongue out at her, so I managed to restrain myself.

 

 

At least when I got home every day I could count on the attention and devotion of Mike, the nineteen-year-old construction worker who had an amazing collection of holey T-shirts. I had never seen him wear the same one twice.

Mike was good after-school company, despite the fact that we had trouble understanding each other. He tended to talk football and electric saws, and I tended to speak in theater analogies. So we did a lot of “What does that mean?” with each other. But I would have listened to a piece of moldy cheese if it had been willing to talk to me, I was so bored with my own company.

The only upside of my social situation was there was no way my dad would give his usual threats and lectures when my cell phone bill arrived. I was going to be under my minutes. By about all of them.

Anyway, Mike kept me company, and I was sure he wasn’t a demon, because why would he put up with his dad and uncle if he was? He would just vanquish them or something and live life off the demon bank the way Levi did. Or he could demon mojo his way into a cool job, like movie critic or something.

So he obviously wasn’t a demon and had no idea that the busted-up kitchen wall he was helping to repair contained an open air portal. I wished I didn’t know anything about it either. Wait. I didn’t.

I did wonder if when they fixed the wall, the portal would just automatically close by itself, but that seemed way optimistic. When did anything in my life ever just go away? Exactly. Never.

Which lead me to think that when they sealed that sucker up, they would actually be leaving an open air portal in the wall, with no way for me to access it to close it. It also seemed to me that the only way to get rid of air (aside from vacuuming it, which so hadn’t worked) was to displace it. Move it out of the way with an object. Plug it. Fill the space. Give the air nowhere to go.

It all made sense to me with my limited science knowledge. Note that I should have been in chemistry by junior year but wasn’t because I was on a slow track (aka don’t give the scientifically and mathematically challenged students chemicals to play with). So really, it’s not like I knew what I was doing and I had no reason to trust myself on this one, but I had to do
something
. I wanted life to go back to normal.

So I asked Mike, “How long until you’re done here? It doesn’t look any different to me than when you started.” It was still a hole.

“We’ll be done by the end of the week,” he said. “We’re done with framing, electrical, and plumbing. Just need insulation, then drywall.”

Did he look sad to be leaving me? Or was that just the wishful thinking of a desperate teen without friends or a driver’s license?

My dad had decided to upgrade the wiring since the wall was blown open, so the cool thing to come out of my little accident that wasn’t an accident was that we would now have better wireless access, an intercom system, and an iPod docking station in the kitchen cabinet. Everyone had me to thank for that.

“Oh. So then you move on to the next project?”

“Yep.” He was cleaning up for the day, sweeping up the sawdust and shifting the industrial fan they used out of the way. His father and uncle had left for the day already and he was stuck finishing up. “You sure you can’t go out with me?” he asked, looking hopeful.

I pictured floating that one past my father. “I can ask, but I’m pretty sure my parents will laugh hysterically in my face before they say no.”

“Just ask. You never know.”

“Okay.” What did I have to lose, really? And while it wasn’t like I had any sort of burning desire to date Mike (that had been reserved for Adam) I did like him now that I knew he wasn’t a serial killer, and what else did I have going on?

“Cool. I have to unload the insulation out of my truck into the garage. Stick around, okay?”

I pushed myself off the island where I had been leaning. “I can help you.”

Mike looked dubious. “You don’t have to do that. It’s heavy.”

Heavy? Yeah, I was out. “Well, I can try. And if I can’t lift it, which is highly probable, I can talk to you while you do it.”

I tripped over the fan cord on my way around the island. Have I mentioned how graceful I am?

“Whoa, careful.” Mike reached out and steadied me.

Tripping was a daily adventure for me, so I just laughed. “I didn’t fall. That’s a good sign.” I plugged the fan back in, and because I’m random I turned it on just to see how industrial it really was. The turbo fan was so strong my eyeballs instantly dried out and my hair shot straight backward.

“Whoa.”

“What are you doing?” Mike watched me with a small smile.

“Look. I’m a model.” I did mock poses, simpering and pouting as the fan blew my hair. Spinning a few times, I wound up doing the Charleston. Signs of a truly bored individual.

But Mike laughed and reached out and grabbed my hand. It was the first time he’d really ever touched me and I was shocked at how big his hand was. Mine looked like a toddler’s swimming in his. He pulled me to the garage and I suddenly had the feeling that retrieving insulation was going to result in a kiss in the garage. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I liked Mike, but I didn’t
like
him, and I didn’t really want to lead him on. Plus a little harmless kiss was responsible for my current situation. Another one with another guy seemed like it might complicate things even more and result in both parental and Levi anger.

On the other hand, why should I care if Levi was mad at me? We couldn’t get along for three minutes anyway. And maybe my going out with Mike would make him jealous.

Not that I cared.

It didn’t matter to me what Levi thought.

And it so wasn’t true that I was jealous of him being with Amber.