Erin Lynn

“He had kissed me. Put his demon tongue in my mouth. I had kissed him back. Yet I had a boyfriend. Adam. Who I believe I’ve mentioned. More than once.Boyfriend named Adam, demon named Levi kissing me—that pretty much meant I had cheated on my boyfriend, didn’t it?Didn’t mean to do that. Yikes.I bit my fingernails and knocked on Brandon’s door and tried to rationalize my way around it. It hadn’t been a premeditated kiss. It hadn’t been initiated by me. Did that really make it cheating? Or just a sort of accidental meeting of the mouths?Shouldn’t there be like a five-second rule, anyway? Like dropping food on the floor.If you retrieve it immediately, you can still eat it. If the kiss lasted less than say, a minute, it didn’t count. Right?”

“Morning, K,” Levi said, looking wide-awake and cheerful.Demons shouldn’t be chipper. It should be a rule. Or maybe just my rule. Rule Number 1: Levi must never be perky in my presence. I needed to work on enforcing that.”

“Try to keep up with me,” he said very slowly, like I was a candidate for the short bus. “De-mon. Demon. Me demon, you teenage girl.”

“Have you ever had such a horrible day that you wondered why your mother didn’t just eat you at birth like a gerbil does and spare you the hassle?We’ve all had days like that. I’ve had a lot of them—way more than my fair share if I want to be whiny about it (which I don’t because I try really hard not to be a whiner), but none can compare to the day I accidentally opened a demon portal with my zit cream.”

“You’d think I was the first sixteen-year-old ever to drive a minivan through the kitchen the way my parents were acting. Seriously. It’s had to have happened before. Somewhere. Maybe. For reasons clearly not as good as mine.”

“Shaking my head, I watched the cat run under the van and stare at us with blackeyes. I wasn’t a cat person. They always seemed like they were secretly plottingthe destruction of the human race. And despite the cutesy name Zoe had given it,this one struck me as slightly evil.”

“What does that mean, really? Be good? How does a person know she’s fallingwithin her mother’s interpretation of Be Good? “Always!” I called back. What else was I going to say? Though I was tempted to just once say, “I will never be good—I am Satan, I want to drink your blood, have orgies, and hurt bunnies.” It would totally amuse me, but somehow I don’t think my mother would see the humor in it.”

“This sucks. You didn’t have to take chemistry or government or anything. And that is so unfair that she’s letting you take art.”“It’s because I’m cute.”“It’s because you brainwashed her.”“Jealous?” he asked, waving his schedule back and forth in front of my face.Like I was going to fall for that. “No.”“Liar.”Totally. But I’d never admit it.”

“Well.” Giving a sniff, I tossed my hair back and walked through the door. “That’s the last time I ever offer you a shoulder to cry on.”“Hallelujah,” he muttered.Ingrate.But he nudged my shoulder, leaned down, mouth right by my ear, T-shirt brushing against my sleeve, and whispered, “Thanks, K. You’re sweet, you know that?”It was so unexpected that I felt my cheeks burn.”

“Number four—world domination. Number five—always be myself. Number six—get a haircut. Number seven— convince Kenzie to fall in love with me, get married, and buy a minivan.” He rolled his eyes so far back it’s a wonder he didn’t lose them in his skull.“Now who is being sarcastic?”

“My mother didn’t raise no fool.She raised a chicken.”