Page 125 of Stone Cold Touch

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 youhere.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 inWilly 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.”

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