“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.”

“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.”

“I know, I'm sorry, "Bailey says. "What does exsanguinated mean?" The girl smiles. "It means draining all your blood," she says. "But they don't actually do that, I don't think.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“How do you always know just what to say?" I ask. His laugh rumbles through me. "Practice, I guess."I pull back and give him a quizzical look."I spent three years imagining what I would say to you if you were mine," he says, tugging me close. "I should hope I know what to say now that I've got you.”