Speed Demon (18 page)

“Right,” Levi said.

“Did you get the cat back?” Dad asked.

“Nope. I think he’s gone for good. You know how cats are. They just move on and never show up again.”

We could only hope.

“That’s too bad,” Dad said, clearly trying to contain his glee and not really succeeding.

“Yeah, it’s awful,” I said. “Good night.”

I wanted my dad to go back to bed. For some reason, I wasn’t feeling triumphant about closing the portal. It felt like there was a loose end. Even when Levi walked me upstairs and said, “You did awesome,” I still didn’t feel like I was ready to accept that it was over and just go to bed.

After Levi retreated into Brandon’s room, and I had brushed my teeth, I realized what it was. My original plan had called for me to yank the radio out of the car and dispose of it.

Clearly that wasn’t necessary, but it had seemed like a good idea. It still did. Totally get rid of all evidence of portal openage.

So with minty-fresh breath, I went back downstairs and crept into the garage. Since I had already cut all the wires, it was just a matter of lifting it out and off its stand. My father was going to require an explanation, which I didn’t have, but I would deal with that later. Going out the side door of the garage with the radio in my good hand, I dropped it in the trash can nestled between my mother’s dead tomato plants and the walkway to the front of the house.

Then in a moment of inspiration, I ran back in, got matches, tossed some leaves off the ground into the garbage can, and dropped the match in. It went up with a nice satisfying poof, and I watched the crackle and burn of the leaves and smelled the rubbery stench of the radio smoldering.

Now
that
was a moment of triumph. I felt the closure I hadn’t in the van and stood there in the dark, cold night feeling a little gleeful. Yeah, I was a demon slayer. So take that, Otis / Botis / Marshmallow Pants, evil cat from hell.

Levi’s head came out of the garage. “What are you doing now? I swear, I need to put a bell on you like a dog.”

“Very funny. Who is Lilith, by the way?” He had never answered that little question.

“I have no idea,” he said, bouncing a soccer ball on his knee. “And what are you doing?”

Right. He didn’t know who Lilith was. Please. But I let it go, feeling too satisfied with myself and my night’s work. “I’m burning the radio. It feels really good.” I bent my head back and sucked in some cold November air. “Ahh. It’s a good night for a fire.”

Levi dropped the soccer ball he’d been holding. “
What
? You’re
burning
the radio?”

Something about his tone made me lose some of my enthusiasm for the project. “Yes. Why?”

He didn’t answer, just went back into the garage. A minute later, he reappeared with the fire extinguisher. “Put it out.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” He looked at my gimp hand. “Here, just press the nozzle with your good hand.”

I tried, but my fingers slipped and I sprayed foam all over the front of Levi. “Sorry.” I wanted to laugh but bit my lip instead.

“This isn’t funny.”

“Yes, it is. How stupid do we look out here?”

“About as stupid as two people who just opened a new portal.” He looked pointedly at me. “Which you just did.”

“What?” Was he saying . . .

I glanced down at the radio. Burning. On the point right outside the family room that I had mapped on my pentagram diagram as one of the five points. “Fire . . . um, Levi, did I just do what I think I did, that I don’t want to say out loud?”

“It’s highly likely,” he said.

Huh. Maybe I wasn’t going to be gifted with new jeans after all.

“Oops.”

“You know this is going to keep happening, don’t you?”

“What?” I knew what he meant, but with a little luck—haha, when did I ever have that?—maybe he just meant my clumsiness was going to continue, not that portals were going to keep opening.

“Portals are going to keep opening.”

Blech. “So, basically you’re saying I have to keep doing this like over and over again?”

He nodded prosaically. “Yep. Till we figure out how to close all five simultaneously.”

I gave the garbage can one more shot with the fire extinguisher. “Wow, what a fun high school career for me. Can I put demon slayer on my application for drama school? I think this applies under the extracurricular activities as a charitable endeavor.”

“Not if you want them to think you’re sane, but you can probably write an original monologue for auditions. They’ll think you’re mega-creative.”

“Good call.” We stared at the fizzled fire and burnt-out radio, both thoughtful. I should have been more worried than I was, but at some point resignation had set in. Call me K-Slay.

“Lilith was my fiancée,” Levi said suddenly.

I whipped my head around to stare at him. “Are you serious? You were
engaged
? At sixteen?” Yikes.

“Yep. It was arranged by higher-ups, you know. I wasn’t given a choice.”

He frowned, and I wasn’t feeling a huge sense of loss on his part for whatserface. “Not that choice matters,” I said. “Who is capable of picking a spouse that you’re stuck with for eternity at sixteen?”

Or any age. Look at divorce rates.

“If I’d have been given a choice, I wouldn’t have picked her. You know I actually voluntarily put myself in prison to avoid tying the knot with that clinging nag?”

I stared at him. “You took incarceration over marriage?” Now
that
was funny. I burst out laughing.

He grinned back at me, clearly not offended. “I had to do what I had to do. Trust me, you’d have done the same thing. But now I’m here, and I have a choice to be with whoever I want.”

My laughter died out. There seemed to be an implied insult there. “So you’re choosing to date Amber.”

It wasn’t a question. He was dating Amber.

But he leaned closer to me, with those smoldering green eyes, and my heart started to race again, in a good way.

“Not Amber. That’s over. I want to choose
you
, but I’m not sure how you feel about that.”

How did I feel about that? Sort of like helium had inflated my lungs and I might lift off the ground at any given moment. Not logical, but there it was, and I was going to roll with it.

“I guess since I kept you here, I might as well make use of you.”

Levi laughed, and then he kissed me, the kind where you forget your name, your phone number, and even the English language. He pressed me against the house, which was good, since my legs no longer seemed capable of supporting my weight.

“Can this really work between a demon and a demon slayer?” I asked, proud of myself for admitting my slayer status.

“It just might be a beautiful disaster,” he said, his lips near my ear.

Creating disasters was something I was fabulous at, so why not, right?