Speed Demon (3 page)

At the moment, I really did not want to like him. He had kissed me, and when I should have ducked or leaped back or shoved him, I had rolled with it and now I was a big fat cheat who didn’t deserve the cute smiley faces Adam texted me. I was feeling serious worry and self-disgust. I mean, did the rules of dating mean I had to come clean to Adam about it? And exactly just how would I feel if he had kissed another girl?

Pretty mean and ugly and hurt and sick to my gut, that’s how I’d feel.

There had to be a way to blame this on Levi.

And I needed music.

Turning the van on, I adjusted the radio to a station that wasn’t playing Disney music and gave myself a mental morals quiz.

1. Who would I be hurting by keeping the kiss a secret? No one.
   
2. Who would I be hurting if I told Adam? Both Adam and myself, which would be zero fun. We would break up, he would hate me, Levi would still be dating Amber Jansen, and I would be stuck sitting at home on Friday nights sticking pins in a voodoo doll of Levi, tortured, miserable, and wan. (Okay, slight exaggeration—I probably wouldn’t go the voodoo doll route—but I’m just saying it wouldn’t be good times.)
   
3. Omitting portions of the truth was still technically lying, which was wrong, but then again, wearing high-waisted jeans was wrong too, and people did that.
   
4. If someone dropped a twenty-dollar bill in front of me, I most definitely would give it back to them, which meant I was still a good person at my core.
   

 

Therefore, the logical conclusion was that the kiss had to be kept a secret. I was pretty sure. I really wished I could discuss the incident with my best friend Isabella, except she had an unexplainable crush on Levi, and she would not be objective or sympathetic to my problem. It would probably even further the space between us that had been growing huge lately because of Iz’s resentment over my relationship with Adam. She was totally feeling left out, and I didn’t want to make that worse, because I really missed her.

I pulled the soft drink can out of the pocket of my hoodie one-handed, juggling my cereal bowl with the other. My current kind of stress called for some serious carbonation. I leaned forward to hit the radio station again—not in the mood for Shakira, people—and popped the drink open.

And sprayed Diet Coke all over my legs, my hands, the dashboard, and on my corn flakes.

Whoops. Guess my internal anxiety actually shook up the can in my hoodie pocket. Or climbing in the van did it. One or the other. Licking my wrist to clean it off, I put the can down in the cup holder, rested the bowl on the floor between the seats, and glanced around for something absorbent. The radio was doing some weird in-and-out thing and I was starting to wonder if bubbly liquid pouring into its inner workings was enough to kill it. That would really thrill my father since he had spent time and money installing one of those satellite radio things.

Not to mention my mother’s words about making a mess were rolling around in my head. I found old fast-food napkins in the glove compartment and was mopping at the dashboard with about zero success when I felt someone watching me. Looking up, I saw it was the dude in my kitchen, Brawny Boy. Just standing in the gaping hole of our kitchen wall and staring at me. Leering, actually. He met my eye, smiled, and waved.

I debated the best strategy. Blow him off, and it could either result in his leaving me alone or killing me while I slept. Wave back, and it could serve as unintentional encouragement or prevent me from a torturous death. I opted out of potential torture and gave him a lukewarm wave. I wasn’t very brave in the face of deviance.

Slipping lower in the seat, I glared at the hole in the wall. I was not a demon slayer, no matter what Levi had said. I had closed the portal, but look what it had gotten me. I was condemned to eat soggy cereal in the van.

The door from the kitchen opened and I saw my mother. Zoe darted between her legs and ran into the garage. Realizing that the van smelled like milk, corn flakes, and Diet Coke, I hit the button to pop open the side door to air it out. My mom stepped out of the house and waved to someone other than me. I glanced back and saw some of the Girl Scouts plowing up the driveway and heading straight for the garage. I sighed. Privacy over. Time to play assistant to the stars. Zoe definitely was the Sutcliffe household star, which most of the time didn’t really bother me. She was cute, smart, reasonably sweet, and stayed out of my bathroom.

At the moment, I could have done without the rabid curiosity she displayed on a regular basis. I could practically hear the heels of her black boots squealing as she hit the brakes on her way back to the kitchen. She had spotted me, and she leaned into the van, face filled with interest. “What are you doing in here?”

“Eating.”

I was relieved to hear the radio had fixed itself. Not that I could actually tell what song was playing, because with no warning, Zoe, who had climbed into the van, let out a shriek, and her little friends immediately piled into the van behind her. They were a cluster of synthetic squealing five-year-olds, and they were going to step on my cereal bowl. “What the . . .” I had no idea what they were freaking out about and I couldn’t see anything except for the seat and a mass of bodies crammed in a space too small for all of us.

“What on earth?” my mom said, stepping down into the garage.

Levi appeared in the doorway behind her. “What’s up?”

“I have no idea,” I said, about ready to open the driver side door and abandon them all. But if I left that bowl my mother would tack on an extra weekend to my punishment and that might send me over the edge.

“What do you have?” Mom asked them, leaning over the girls to investigate. “Good grief, there’s a cat in the van! How the he—How in the world did that thing get in here?”

I loved it when my mother caught herself about to swear out loud, which was fairly often. I figured she had to keep the lid on so tightly with us kids, in particular Zoe, that when she was alone with my dad she probably dropped the “f” word like a rock star.

“The garage door was open,” I said, finally catching a glimpse of a squirming cat through hot pink winter coats, bouncy pony-tails, and sparkly jeans. The cat was drinking the leftover milk in my bowl. Nice. “He must have wandered in. Don’t pick him up, you guys, he might bite you or scratch you.”

Too late. The petite blonde whose name I thought was Dakota already had the cat up in her arms, snuggled to her fake leopard fur coat. “It’s just a kitten,” she said.

Levi had leaned in, and he pulled Dakota—that was the name I was just going with because it seemed like it fit her—out into the garage, cat in tow. “It really is just a kitten, Mrs. S,” he said. “Maybe six months old. And it doesn’t have any tags.”

The white ball of fluff was climbing up the fur of Dakota’s coat and batting at her zipper pull.

“He’s so cute!” Zoe said. “Can we keep him?”

“Well, we certainly can’t throw him back out into the driveway,” my mom said, with a heavy, heartfelt sigh like she really did just want to pitch the thing back out and pretend it had never appeared. Apparently her conscience wouldn’t let her though, which was reassuring. “It’s too cold. Bring him into the house, but after the meeting, we’re going to try to find out if he has an owner.”

Yeah, like that ever panned out. I decided we had just acquired a household pet, which actually might be cool, if I was ever allowed to get my hands on the cat. Chances were, Zoe would monopolize the poor thing, and I saw bonnets and baby carriage rides in the cat’s future.

I reached for my cereal bowl as the girls all clamored out and into the kitchen. Levi opened the driver’s door and waited for me.

He had a frown on his face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, glancing sadly at my soggy, warm, cat-licked cereal. I was still hungry.

“Kenzie.”

Something about his tone made me forget about my complaining stomach. “What?” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to want to hear whatever was about to come out of his mouth.

“Another demon portal just opened.”

Yeah. Didn’t want to hear that.

Chapter Three

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, even when I was pretty sure I knew exactly what it meant, and that the meaning sucked. Maybe if I played dumb or ignored it, the portal would just close all by itself and I could go back to simply stressing about losing Adam. Normal stuff. No more of this Kenzie vs. Creatures From Hell.

Levi leaned on the frame of the open door and eyeballed me like he was losing patience. “You know what it means. You closed the water portal. But now an air portal has opened. So you have to close it.”

I glared at him. “Levi. It’s the crack of freaking dawn on Saturday. I’m too tired to do anything more than brush my hair.
You
close the portal. Where is the portal, by the way?” I glanced around suspiciously, suddenly remembering that an open portal meant demon prisoners or prison guards could pop out at me unannounced at any given minute.

“I can’t tell you.”

See, this is where we had problems. Levi knew everything about demons and portals and prison but swore all the time that he couldn’t tell me anything. That I had to figure it out myself. It’s like when you’re seven and you ask your mom what a stripper is and she tells you you’ll understand when you’re older. I was older. I still didn’t get why women dance naked, and I still didn’t know how I was supposed to close a new demon portal. And why did Levi and I have to play this game of paranormal charades all the time? What exactly was going to happen to him if he just straight out told me?

Maybe horrible demonic punishment for Levi would be forthcoming, but I was thinking we should just go for it and see what happened. I was tired of guessing and how bad could it really be, especially since it wouldn’t be happening to me?

“Okay, so let’s do a quick recap before I go into the house and get assaulted by craft materials,” I said. “My house sits on a demon prison. My bathroom was one point in the pentagram that the prison forms, so when the portal opened up in my shower, you were able to escape. The other four points of the prison pentagram clearly are somewhere in the house as well, then, and if all five portals open, every prisoner in the demonic hellhole can escape. Is that right?”

“Yeah. That’s the general idea.”

“And according to you, only I can close the portals.”

“You’re also the only one who can open them.”

Wait a minute. “You never told me that before.”

“No?” He tried to look innocent and failed miserably.

“No.” I narrowed my eyes. “What exactly am I doing to open them? I’ll make sure I don’t do it anymore.”

He just shrugged. “You’ll figure it out. Well, now that we’re all caught up to speed, I’ll head into the house.”

The coward turned and went into the kitchen, leaving me once again alone in the minivan with my soggy cereal, my flat can of Diet Coke, and a view of the gaping hole in my kitchen wall.

Hello.
Gaping hole
. Created by me with the minivan. I was staring at the opened air portal, wasn’t I?

And there was Brawny Boy again, standing there with his hammer in hand, just looking at me like he had nothing better in the whole wide world to do than just unnerve me. I debated going around and ringing the front doorbell rather than having to stroll past that freaky dude on my way into the kitchen.

Have I mentioned that I didn’t want to be a demon slayer? That I just wanted to be an actress with a cute boyfriend? I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t aggressive. I was clumsy and a worrier and maybe just a little overdramatic. Sometimes. The thought of taking on demonic entities made me long for a milkshake and a fleece blanket for comfort.

Zoe’s little face popped up in the hole. “Kenzie! Mom says you have to come in.”

I went for it. Let the five-year-old protect me from the creepy construction worker.

Wait a minute. What if that guy was a demon? When I opened the first portal in the shower, Levi popped out. If I had opened another portal in the kitchen wall, who was to say that another demon hadn’t escaped? And was swinging a hammer. Nice.

Note to self: Ask Levi how to spot a demon at ten feet.

I grabbed the bowl and walked through the kitchen door. Zoe was far too close to that guy—potential demon—for my personal comfort. I set the bowl on the island, reached out, and picked her up, straining my arm muscles and just about ruining my back. Not exactly a heavyweight champ here, you know. I could barely open a soft drink can, and Zoe had grown when I wasn’t looking.

But the gesture seemed to make her happy and she wrapped her legs around me and flung her arms around my neck.

“You have to see Marshmallow Pants,” she said.

O-kay. “What is Marshmallow Pants?”

“Who,” she corrected. “It’s the kitten. I named him.”

“Oh. Cool.” I was sure that poor cat was just totally pumped to have a name that sounded like an emo band. “How did you come up with that name?”

“Because he’s white and fluffy like a marshmallow and his butt looks like he’s wearing pants.”

Duh, me. It was all so very obvious. “Right.”

I was carrying her out of the kitchen when she tapped the construction dude on the arm. “Hi,” she said, when he turned.

“Hi,” he answered, smiling first at Zoe, then at me.

Eye contact, bad. Didn’t want to do that, and I couldn’t believe that no one had taught the kid about stranger danger. Why was she chatting this guy up? Though it’s probably dangerous to try to figure out where a five-year-old’s actions are coming from, I figured that knowing Zoe, she was just showing off, trying to make sure she was the center of attention. Always. But I did not want her getting friendly with a potential demon. Okay, I realized she was pals with Levi, and that he lived in our house and everything, but he was
Levi
. He was annoying, but not evil. I didn’t know anything about this guy and I wasn’t taking any chances with my baby sister.