Stone Cold Touch

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  pretty quickly.” I looked over at her, wishing it could be different for the whole lot of us. “I think, in a way, you guys have it worse than I do.”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s not like I don’t ever want to mate and have babies. It’s just that I...”

  “Want to do something else, too?” When she nodded, I bit my lip. “Then why don’t you? You’re trained. You can fight. Do you really need their permission? I mean, really? Who’s here to stop you if you go out and hunt?”

  Danika didn’t respond for a long moment and then her eyes lit up. “You know, you’re right. I could do it and once I got up there, what could they do to stop me? Send me home?” She laughed. “I’d like to see them try.”

  “Try what?”

  We turned at the sound of Zayne’s voice. Goodness gracious, dressed as he was in dark cargo pants and a tight Under Armour shirt, he was hot in a completely dangerous way.

  “Nothing,” chirped Danika. She leaned over, surprising me with a quick hug. Then she popped up and left the room, waving at Zayne as she squeezed by.

  He frowned. “What’s going on?”

  I shook my head and repeated what she said. “Nothing. You ready?”

  “Yeah.” He eyed me as I made my way over to him. “Nice outfit.”

  “Danika said I looked like an after-school-special ninja.”

  Zayne laughed. “Nice.”

  I started past him, but his arm formed a wall as he placed his hand on the other side of the doorjamb. My eyes lifted to his and he lowered his head, almost as if he was about to kiss me, but that couldn’t be it. He wouldn’t dare do something so insane again. Zayne didn’t have a death wish. But as his mouth drew closer, the flutter in my stomach grew. His fresh, winter-mint scent surrounded me, and then his lips brushed the curved of my cheek.

  I tensed in the sweetest kind of way. My eyes closed as my hands itched to touch him. Things...things were so odd between us. Both of us had admitted that there was something between us, that we wanted more, but there was also a line between us, one that consisted of labels and promises and danger.

  I thought of the promise I made to myself last night, the promise that changed what we both wanted. Disappointment swelled and crashed through me like tumultuous waves as I abruptly dipped under his arm.

  Ignoring the look of confusion, I smoothed my hands over my pants. “Is there anything we need to get before we go?”

  A moment passed before he answered. “I have everything we need packed away in the Impala.”

  Everything we needed for a possible exorcism consisted of holy water, something I was so not getting near, purified salt and stinky, blessed incense. We had everything needed to do one in the house, and I briefly considered doing an exorcism here, but that would kind of be hard to explain to the Wardens. I’d have to bring up Petr, and with the way Abbot was acting toward me, that wouldn’t be smart. I had no idea what to do about Petr, and there was a tiny part of me that really wondered if he was here in wraith form. Either way, excitement hummed through me as we headed out to the garage. I’d never seen an exorcism before. This should prove interesting.

  “Can I yell ‘By the power of Christ, I compel you’ whenever we get to that point?” I asked.

  “What?” Zayne laughed as he opened my passenger door. “Hate to break it to you, but we don’t have to say a word and no one will be yelling anything like that.”

  I pouted. Dammit, I’d always wanted to say that. “Well, that’s not nearly as entertaining as the exorcisms I’ve seen on TV.”

  He gave me a look as he stepped aside to let me climb in. Just as he went to close the door, Dez came out the compound door, heading for one of the SUVs.

  His gaze moved from Zayne to me. “She’s going with you to the house?”

  “Yeah.” He leaned against the open door, eyeballing the older Warden. “You got a problem with that?”

  Dez held up his hands. “Didn’t say I did. Just be careful.” He glanced at me and the look said he wanted to pull me out of the car and toss me over his shoulder. “She’s a...”

  A scowl pulled at my lips. “A demon?”

  “No.” Dez’s brows rose. “I was going to go with ‘a girl,’ one who is young and doesn’t need to get hurt.”

  “Oh.” I felt like a bitch. “Thanks for pointing that out.”

  Zayne closed my door before I could say anything else. As he crossed paths with Dez, he said, “You know I won’t let anything happen to her.”

  He nodded. “Still. Just be careful.”

  As Dez disappeared into the further recesses of the garage, I looked over at Zayne as he got behind the wheel. “Guess what?”

  “What?” The engine purred to life.

  “I’m a girl.”

  His lips curled up. “Shut up.”

  I giggled.

  Zayne backed out of the garage as he asked if I’d heard from Stacey or Sam yet. Stacey had called me earlier and the conversation had been a little bit awkward, but all in all, it had been normal. Except that I’d told her what I was really doing tonight for the first time ever. There was something freeing in not lying about my extracurricular activates.

  The drive into Alexandria, to the town house of the recently departed, didn’t take long. Traffic was minimal and we were relieved to find inconspicuous parking in the back.

  Zayne picking a lock was surprisingly hot.

  I wasn’t sure what it said about me that I got turned on by his confidence as he worked the pick until we heard the click of a lock being thrown.

  “That’s a handy skill.”

  He grinned as he straightened. “It’s either that or break it. Figured a gentler touch worked best.”

  Roth would’ve broken it and been gleeful doing so. There were no two guys more different than them.

  Quietly easing the door open, we waited to make sure an alarm wasn’t triggered. When silence met us, we stepped into the darkened foyer. The house was full of shadows. Only a small end-table lamp was lit in the front room. Floorboards creaked as we moved farther in.

  Zayne hefted the canvas bag over his shoulder, eyeing the paintings adorning the green walls. As we walked into the dining room, a small shadow zoomed out from underneath the table.

  It was a gray cat.

  Instead of pulling a stranger-danger dash and run, it curled around Zayne’s legs and then mine. Bambi stirred in interest as I leaned down and scratched the cat’s ears. Silently, I issued the snake a stern warning not to even think about eating it.

  I wondered if the kitty belonged to the woman or the fiancé. Or was it both of theirs? The thought of that made me sad.

  The house was tomb quiet as we entered the kitchen. A bowl of kitty chow was near the stove, along with a full dish of water.

  “Everything seems normal,” he said, turning to me. “You feel anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “We need to check upstairs.”

  Kitty followed us back through the house and up the stairs. There wasn’t enough light to make out the framed photos hanging on the wall, but they seemed like the family sort that might’ve been taken over the holidays.

  There were only two bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom shared by both. One bedroom was a makeshift office and in the other, another small lamp had been left on.

  The kitty dashed across the room and pounced onto the bed as soon as the door opened. There, she rolled onto her back, showing off a well-fed belly.

  I petted the cat while Zayne checked out the bathroom. Unlike Roth’s kittens, this one didn’t try to kill me as I idly rubbed its belly.

  It felt wrong being in here, all up in someone’s privacy. The bed wasn’t made. Pillows were haphazardly strewn across the head of the bed. Dresser drawers were left half open and there was a glass of water on the nightstand, next to a framed photo of a couple. Drawn to the picture, I left the kitty on the bed and picked up the photo, holding it under the light.

  A tremor ran through my arm. I almost dropped the
frame. “Oh my God.”

  “What?” Zayne called.

  I couldn’t speak as I stared at the photo. A man smiled at me. He was probably in his late twenties. He had his arm draped over the shoulders of a shorter woman.

  A woman I’d seen before, although briefly.

  Zayne came to my side, lowering the bag. “What is it?”

  I was shaking as I handed the photo to him. “This is their house, right?”

  He frowned as he took it. “I guess so. It would be weird for the owners to have another couple’s photo by the bed.”

  Panic knifed through my chest. “I know her.”

  “How?”

  My knees felt weak. “It’s her—the cupcake.”

  Confusion poured over his face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  There was a good chance my heart was going to beat itself out of my chest. “She’s the woman I fed off of Thursday night.”

  Zayne dropped the bag, startling the cat. His throat worked. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” I started to sit, but then I couldn’t bear to be still.

  “How can you be sure? You saw her—”

  “It’s her!” I shouted, pressing my hands against my lower stomach. Nausea rose. “Oh my God.”

  “Wait.” He reached for me, but I edged away. “Just hold up a second. You fed off her and she walked away. Did she seem fine?”

  “Yes, but you saw what happened to the lady at the foster home—to Vanessa.”

  “We don’t know if that’s true and even if it was, you didn’t kill Vanessa.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “And you didn’t kill this one.”

  “She’s dead. That’s a huge coincidence, right?” Sweat dotted my brow. That horrific thought from the night before came back. “What if...?”

  Then I felt it.

  Tiny hairs on my arms rose. The stench of something unnatural crept into the room like insidious smoke. The cat’s back arched like one of those Halloween cats’. Hissing, it darted off the bed and under it.

  “Shit.” Zayne knelt, opening the bag. “We’ve got a wraith.”

  “Of course we do,” I mumbled, numb to the core.

  I’d killed this woman. Somehow I’d done this and taken her soul, damning her to an eternity in Hell. How else would she have become a wraith? The likelihood that the Lilin had stumbled across her was astronomically small.

  And that was if a Lilin even existed....

  The temp in the room dropped severely. Puffs of misty clouds formed in front of my mouth.

  “Layla.”

  The wraith was close—the wraith I’d created.

  “Layla,” Zayne snapped, at my side in an instant. “I need you here with me. Do you understand? This isn’t going to be easy. I need you here. Are you?”

  Air rushed out of me. Pull it together. Moving panic and horror to the back burner, I forced a nod. I needed to be in the present. “I’m here.”

  “Good.” Zayne zeroed in on the open bedroom door. “Because so is the wraith.”

  A dark mass filled the doorway, roughly the same size as Dean’s wraith. A shadow person. It didn’t move. Appeared to just stand there and check us out.

  Zayne shoved the bundle of dry incense into my hands. He lit it and the pungent odor of frankincense pillowed out in puffs of smoke. “Whatever you do, don’t drop this. If you do, the whole exorcism will stop.”

  Seemed easy enough. “Okay.”

  The wraith drifted closer and the room turned into an icebox. Wind picked up, whipping around the room. Clothing blew out of the dresser. The lamp fell over. A pillow smacked my arm.

  Zayne moved forward, a bottle of holy water and a small jar of salt in his hands. “Stay back. I don’t want to get any of this on you.”

  The smoke was choking as I moved out of the way. A high-pitched wail came from the wraith, a sound that was a cross between a hyena and a screaming baby. It charged Zayne. One second, he was in front of me, and the next he was slamming into the opposite wall. He held on to the water, but the jar of salt rolled across the floor, to the other side of the wraith.

  Crap.

  It hissed at me, the sound feline and yet distorted, stretched out into a howl. Zayne was back on his feet, hair windblown but still in his human form. He tossed the water onto the wraith and it didn’t go through the shadow. It seemed to soak the holy water up, causing it to bloat like that annoying kid in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

  As the wraith spun on him, I took off, heading for the jar of salt. My feet went right out from under me. I landed on my back with a grunt and somehow, by the grace of God, I held on to the incense. I turned my head, spying the jar resting a foot from me.

  The wraith laughed evilly as I rolled onto my side. I snatched up the jar and unscrewed the top with one hand just as icy fingers trailed down the back of my neck. The heebie-jeebies I experienced at that moment almost made me scream as though a spider had landed in my lap.

  “Toss the salt at the wraith,” Zayne shouted over the pounding wind.

  Twisting against the force of airstream, I knew that if I took Zayne’s advice, the purified salt would just blast me in the face. The wind was terribly powerful, robbing my lungs of the ability to draw in a breath.

  I pushed to my feet, holding on to the incense tightly as I forced a step forward and then another toward the wraith. Instead of throwing the salt, I shoved it, jar and all, into what might’ve been the creature’s midsection.

  The reaction was immediate.

  Like a rubber band snapping, I was propelled backward as the wraith let out a scream nightmares were made of. I hit the middle of the bed. The incense slipped, and I dug my fingers in, keeping the cloying crap from hitting the bed, stopping the exorcism and most likely burning down the townhome.

  The wraith exploded into wisps of smoke that quickly evaporated as if a vacuum had been placed in the room, sucking out the evil. Everything settled and the heavy presence of the abnormality eased off. The air became lighter.

  My eyes met Zayne’s.

  He looked as though he’d gone through a wind tunnel. “You okay?”

  “Yep,” I squeaked, sitting up. The incense had burned out on its own. How convenient. “Wow.”

  “Was it everything you were expecting?”

  I considered that as I saw the cat peek its head out from under the bed. “Still wish someone yelled ‘power of Christ,’ but it was okay.”

  Zayne shook his head as he hauled me to my feet. Taking the incense from me, he dropped it into the bag and then tied it up. “We need to get out of here stat before someone checks out the commotion.”

  Agreed.

  I petted the cat one last time and then we hurried through the house. Once we were back inside the Impala, I was relieved to find that the sickly scent hadn’t lingered on our clothing. Glancing at Zayne as he threw the car into Drive and peeled out of the narrow backstreet, I let everything I’d held off seep back in.

  With the adrenaline still kicking around in my veins, my thoughts held a razor edge to them. As each one fell into place, it sliced and diced.

  We’d reached the rural road that Zayne had taken as a shortcut to get to Alexandria by the time I found it in myself to speak. “We can’t ignore what we found.”

  He cast me a quick, sharp look. “What do you mean?”

  “Who that woman was. We can’t ignore it, Zayne. I did that to her.” The words cut through me. “I must’ve fed off her more than I thought I did.”

  Zayne’s knuckles blanched from how tightly he was grasping the steering wheel. “You would’ve known if that was the case. There has to be another explanation for this.”