Day of the Demon (Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom #7)

Chapter 1

Ialways knew that parenting a teenager would be like living with a demon from hell. The hormonal explosions. The friend drama. The dating drama. The high school drama. All of the little passion plays that make up the theater that is known as adolescence.

I read all the parenting books. I talked with other moms. I watched movies and television shows.

I anticipated everything … except for the one thing I couldn’t possibly have imagined—

My teenager really is a demon.

Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.

Technically, she’s only part demon, and that from her father’s side.

And I’m not even sure how much demon is in her, because we don’t really know how much was in her father in those years when he was growing up, his body and soul unknowingly entwined with a demon put there by his own parents when he was an infant in a ritual that no parenting book would ever endorse.

And, yes, the fact that our daughter is part demon did save the world just a few days ago—though that little tidbit didn’t even make the local news. Not like that’s a shock; preventing the apocalypse hardly ever makes CNN.

But none of that changes the fact that something demonic lives inside my strong, beautiful, snarky daughter. Not just lives—is. She’s not possessed. She’s not playing host. That darkness is part of her. That yearning for power and mayhem. That fundamental, hard, cold evil.

I’ve never seen it in her. It’s never come out.

But I know it’s there, and that simple reality scares me to death.

Because how do I protect her from something hidden deep inside her?

My name is Kate Connor and I’m a Level Five Demon Hunter.

And right now, my biggest fear is that someday the demon in my daughter will burst forth, and that will be the end of everything. Because even if it meant the apocalypse, how in hell could I kill my child?