Page 29 of Stone Cold Touch

If I get my cell taken from me, it’s ur fault.

Holy shit, Layla, where r u?!?

Air punched out of my lungs as I read the next text and the several following them.

U have no idea who just walked into bio!!!

Roth is here!

Holy canola oil, why aren’t u here to witness this?

Ok. He says he had mono. Srlsy? Do people still get mono? And who in the duck was he kissing?

A second later:Duck? I didn’t mean duck. That’s SO not what I meant, autocorrect.

Another text had come in about fifteen minutes after the last one.

He asked where u were. I told him u joined a cult. I laughed. He didn’t.

Finally, the last text was to call her if I wasn’t dead.

“What in the Hell?” I tossed my cell onto the bed, mouth hanging open.

Anger blasted through me like a door being kicked open and I welcomed it because it was so much better than the damn hurt and the confusion and that...thatlostfeeling.

Roth was back in school? That...that was unacceptable. He had no reason to be there. None whatsoever even though he easily passed for an eighteen-year-old. It wasn’t as if school seriously interested him or like he’d get a lot of Lilin hunting done there.

What if he wasn’t there for the Lilin? Hadn’t he asked about Eva?

The moment that question entered my thoughts, a curse burst out of me and I spun, leaving my bedroom. I had no idea where I was going, but I had to go somewhere. Maybe hit something.

Hitting something sounded good.

Because him being there was justunkind.

I reached the lower level, stalking past the library and I would’ve kept on going to God knows where in my polka-dot pajamas when I heardhisname.

My little feet stopped on a dime and I turned, inclining my head toward the cracked-open door.

“What about Roth?” That was Dez.

“Needless to say, we cannot fully trust him,” Abbot responded, and I could practically see him in my head, sitting behind the desk, rolling a cigar between his fingers. “We need to keep an eye on him.”

“Done,” replied Nicolai.

There was a pause and then Abbot said, “We also need to keep an eye on Layla.”

I snapped my mouth shut as my hands curled in. Keep an eye on me?

His voice had dropped low and then picked back up. “You know what we could be dealing with. All of you. We have to be careful because if it’s what I suspect, we have to de—”

A rush of icy wind blew down the hall, stirring my damp hair and sending it flying around my face. Sucking in a startled breath, I spun as a loud crack reverberated through the compound. The boom echoed like thunder, rattling the pictures of angels.

Directly across from me, the large picture-frame windows in the atrium cracked right down the middle. I took a step back as the glass splintered and then exploded.

9

Shrieking, I whipped around and covered my head before I was pelted with glass. Tiny shards bounced off me harmlessly, clanging off the floor like wind chimes.

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