Page 108 of Stone Cold Touch

I sent Nicolai a grateful look.

“I know,” Abbot murmured, rubbing his brow. “The fact that the wraith went straight to the school is concerning.”

Crossing his arms, Zayne pressed his shoulders against the wall he was leaning into. He’d been quiet again when he’d picked me up and hadn’t said much while we spoke to his father. His gaze met mine briefly before looking away.

I sank a little in the chair. As Abbot talked about plans for scoping out the school tonight, I replayed what happened in class. Keith could’ve been seriously hurt and unless we got the wraith out of there, everyone was in danger. The chill that settled over my skin caused me to hunker down in my sweater—the chill.

The cold air I’d felt before the wraith attacked had felt familiar. How could I have forgotten that? I leaned forward in the chair. “Wait a second. Before the wraith attacked in the classroom, I felt a burst of cold air. The same thing I felt before the windows exploded and Maddox fell down the steps.”

Abbot’s fingers stopped along his brow as he looked at me. “Are you telling me that there’s a wraith in our home?”

It sounded crazy, but it wasn’t impossible. Protective wards against demonic activityinsidethe house was pretty much nil due to me being in here. And wraiths weren’t technically demons anyway.

“Why would there be a wraith here?” Abbot answered, lowering his hand to the top of his desk as he studied me. “Typically they are drawn to locations familiar to them when they were alive.”

Dez shifted from where he sat in one of the oversize leather chairs. A contemplative look crossed his face. He didn’t speak and I didn’t know what he was thinking, or if it was along the same lines of where my mind went.

A wraith was created when a soul was stripped from a human. Only certain demons could do that—Lilith, a Lilin, and...and me. Wardens also had souls, pure souls. And I’d taken Petr’s soul the night he’d attacked me. It had been self-defense, because he would’ve surely killed me if I hadn’t, but the act of taking a soul, no matter the cause, was strictly forbidden.

And something horrific had happened to him. He hadn’t died like a human would when the last wisp of soul was stolen away. He had morphed into something diabolical, more frightening then an Upper Level demon. But then Roth had killed whatever he had become.

Could Petr still be here, but as a wraith?

My stomach twisted into knots as I lowered my gaze. “You’re right.” The words were like acid on my tongue. “There’s no reason for there to be a wraith here.”

When I looked up, I realized Zayne was standing straight and he knew what had really gone down that night. I hadn’t admitted it to him, but he always saw through my lies.

“How will you get rid of the wraith that hurt Keith?” I asked, hoping to bring his attention back to the problem at the school.

Abbot held my gaze, his expression closed off. “A good old-fashioned exorcism.”

26

Time dragged by uneventfully. Probably since I hadn’t left the house. Abbot hadn’t grounded me, which had surprised me. Even though it was obvious that I hadn’t caused the mess that had landed me in out-of-school suspension, I really had thought he’d find some way to lay that blame down on me.

I’d learned from my one brief conversation with Nicolai that an exorcism had been performed at the school Friday, after school let out, and that the wraith formerly known as Dean was no longer an issue. I was relieved to hear that the malicious spirit had been removed and there was no need to call in the Ghostbusters, but it didn’t change the fact that Dean had died without a soul and was therefore in Hell.

Dean hadn’t deserved that and it wasn’t fair. Worse yet, there’d be wraiths. Or there could already be more and we just hadn’t discovered them. The Wardens were investigating suspicious deaths, but it was impossible for them to catch everyone. We were operating in the dark, waiting for a disaster to come ashore.

At least when I had been able to go to school, I’d felt as if I could do something if anything happened, but being stuck here made me feel about ten kinds of useless.

That was it. I wasstuck.

The only bright spot in the downtime was the phone calls and messages with Stacey and Sam. They were still under the impression that I’d be joining them for movies with Zayne, but that wasn’t happening. I hadn’t really seen Zayne. Not that I blamed him for avoiding me. Whenever I thought about him, a throbbing ache would light up my chest. I didn’t regret telling him the truth, but it didn’t make dealing with the consequences any easier.

Dinner had already been served and most of the Wardens would be getting ready to head out for the night. Before I headed down to the kitchen to see what food I could hoard, I walked over to where my cell rested on the foot of the bed.

On some kind of weird, annoying subconscious level, I reached for the phone. Stopping halfway, I drew my arm back. “Crap.”

There was a time bomb waiting on my phone.

A text message from Roth that was two days old. A text message I would not, could not respond to.

The message had been innocent enough. A simpleare you bored yet?But it had been the first time he’d texted me since he returned from his little trip to Hell and for some screwed-up reason, the text made my stomach decide it wanted to be a gymnast every time I thought about it. In my head, the text symbolized a clearly drawn line and responding would be like cartwheeling across it.

Roth had been right the last time I saw him.

I didn’t understand jack when it came to him. I didn’t know what he was about or what he was trying to accomplish with the things he’d said to me. All I did know was that his outright dismissal of what we’d shared still festered like an infection in the chambers of my heart. That was a fact—a reality. I wasn’t going to allow it to happen again.

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