ERIN LYNN BERKLEY JAM, NEW YORK demon envy ERIN LYNN BERKLEY JAM, NEW YORK THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. Copyright © 2007 by Erin McCarthy. Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. BERKLEY® JAM and the JAM design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lynn, Erin. Demon envy / Erin Lynn. — Berkley JAM trade paperback ed. p. cm. Summary: Levi, a water demon who seems very much like a teenage boy, emerges from a portal in sixteen-year-old Kenzie’s bathroom one morning, and while his presence in her life is exasperating at times, he seems to help her fit in with her high-school peers. ISBN: 1-4362-4701-2 [1. Demonology—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3. School—Fiction. 4. Family life— Ohio—Fiction. 5. Ohio—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.L993De 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2007021055 Chapter One Have you ever had such a horrible day that you won- dered 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. Oh, yeah. I did. Would this happen to anyone else? Probably not. But for me, Kenzie Sutcliffe, it is totally typical. If there is mud to step in, ketchup to squirt on my shirt, or a volleyball to be hit on the head with, I will manage it. What can I say? It’s a gift. October twentieth started out normal enough: The annoying 1 ERIN LYNN alarm went off way too early; mother made squawking sounds like a cracked-out parrot—It’s late, really late, you’ll miss the bus!; and brother turned my bedroom light on for spite, searing my sleep-deprived eyeballs with fluorescent lighting at six A.M. Major wardrobe disaster occurred when I discovered I hadn’t turned on the dryer the night before and all my jeans were still cold and wet. Given that no one had done laundry in two weeks because Mom was working on a huge court case, I had finally taken matters into my own hands and stuffed eighty-seven pairs of jeans in the washer—literally every piece of denim I owned. Then somehow had forgotten to turn on the dryer after the trans- fer of pants from the washer. I remembered to empty the lint trap and add the Snuggle dryer sheet, but forgot to push the pesky lit- tle ON button. Picture me in the kitchen, in frog pajama pants, staring into the dryer as if my retinas could evaporate all dampness: “Bran- don! You were supposed to put the clothes in the dryer and turn it on!” It made me feel better to blame someone else even though it was a total out and out lie. Fourteen-year-old brother, milk dribbling out of his mouth: “Bite me.” Okay, that was fair. Not bothering to pursue a good-natured round of verbal sparring with my brother, which wouldn’t dry the jeans anyway, I ran back upstairs, mentally racing through my closet. Brown cords? Too earthy. Skirt? Too bohemian. Black pants? Too school band concert. 2 DEMON ENVY The thing is, I like jeans, and only jeans. Wearing anything else makes me feel like a photo layout in a teen magazine. Toss me a football, give me some shiny gloss and a fan blowing my hair here and there, and I could be the Fall Collection. The only reason I had the brown cords and the boho skirt and the band- concert pants was because my mother thought black hoodies were a crime against fashion humanity, and she held out a futile hope that by gifting me with cute coordinates, I would morph into Homecoming Queen destined for an Ivy League pre-law program. Much like herself. It wasn’t going to happen. She would have to pass the tiara torch to my little sister, be- cause I was purely Fringe. Not those dangly weird strips on the country-western shirts you see in seventies bar movies, but fringe, as in clinging to the edges of junior-class social acceptance. That was me. Never totally out but never totally in either. Just as likely to be included with an enthusiastic invite as totally forgotten when it comes time to pass the word on about a major party. I never knew which one I was getting, and it was frustrating. But with so many of those offered friendships as fake as the glossy teen catazines, I was constantly waging a war with my- self. Who wanted to hang with a bunch of hollaback girls? Or worse—be one. On the other hand, it sucked to spend Friday night at home watching Rent for the nineteenth time with my best friend Isabella. Principles vs. Popularity, the age-old ques- tion. 3 ERIN LYNN With this to debate while I showered, I went into my bath- room and discovered that a giant crater had surfaced on my chin overnight, a red-rimmed, oozing volcanic zit, ready to blow at any minute. “Aah!” I shuddered involuntarily and reached for my morn- ing acne lotion, the stuff that’s slimy and bleaches the color out of my aqua blue hand towels. Occasionally I wonder if it’s good to put something on my face that can strip color out of cotton—hello, Michael Jackson—but I need all the ammo I can get in the war on bad skin. Here’s where it got weird. I cranked up my CD player so I’d be able to hear it in the shower. Then, open bottle of lotion in my hand, I leaned over to turn on the water, wanting the temp to warm up while I was busy taking on pimple from hell in round one of Kenzie vs. Body Bacteria. I never even got as far as the faucet. In a move that is classic Kenzie—questioning the usefulness of all the hours and thousands of dollars spent on dance lessons if I couldn’t even manage to walk without incident—I tripped on the bottom of my huge pajama pants and slammed into the wall, dropping the lotion into the tub. It bounced, I winced in pain, and fifty bucks’ worth of prescrip- tion acne meds poured out of the bottle and down the drain. I grabbed at it, but two-thirds was already gone. If the pipes were having problems with pimples, they’d be in luck; otherwise, it was a total waste. “Shoot!” Saving what was left by tipping the bottle right side up, I 4