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Holy granola bar!
I sat up straight as Stacey slapped her hands on our table. “Holy shit balls for Sunday dinner,” she whispered, gaping as the boy Dean had punched slumped to the left and hit the floor like a bag of potatoes.
I didn’t know Dean very well. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I’d spoken more than a handful of words to him during my four years in high school, but he was quiet and average, tall and slender, much like Sam.
Totally not the kind of kid who’d be voted most likely to knock another guy—a much bigger guy—into next week.
“Dean!” shouted Mrs. Cleo, her ample chest rising as she rushed to the wall, flipping the overhead lights on. “What are—?”
The other guy shot up like an arrow, hands clenching into meaty fists at his sides. “What the Hell is wrong with you?” He rounded the table, shrugging out of his zipped hoodie. “You want some of this?”
Stuff always got real when the clothes started to come off.
Dean snickered as he stalked to the aisle. Chairs screeched as students moved out of the way. “Oh, I’m about to get me some of that.”
“Boy fight!” Stacey exclaimed as she dug around in her bag, pulling out her cell phone. Several other students were doing the same thing. “I so have to get this on camera.”
“Boys! Stop it right now.” Mrs. Cleo smacked her hand against the wall, hitting the intercom wired directly to the front office. A beep sounded and she turned to it frantically. “I need the security guard in room two-oh-four immediately!”
Dean launched himself at his opponent, tackling him to the floor. Arms flew as they rolled into the legs of a nearby table. In the back of the classroom, we were safe, but Stacey and I stood up anyway. A shiver coursed over my skin as Bambi shifted without warning, flicking her tail across my stomach.
Stacey stretched up on the tips of her boots, apparently needing a better angle for her phone. “This is...”
“Bizarre?” I supplied, flinching as the boy got a good hit in, knocking Dean’s head back.
She arched a brow at me. “I was going to go with awesome.”
“But they’re—” I jumped as the classroom door swung open and banged into the wall.
Security officers swarmed the class, heading straight for the melee. One beefy guy wrapped his arms around Dean, dragging him off the other student as Mrs. Cleo buzzed around the room like a nervous hummingbird, clutching her tacky beaded necklace with both hands.
A middle-aged security guard knelt beside the boy Dean had punched. Only then did I realize the boy hadn’t stirred once since hitting the floor. A trickle of unease, having nothing to do with the way Bambi was moving again, formed in my belly as the guard leaned over the prone boy, placing his head near his chest.
The guard jerked back, reaching for the microphone on his shoulder. His face was white as the paper in my notebook. “I need an EMT immediately dispatched. I have a teenage male, approximately seventeen or eighteen years of age. Visible bruising along the skull. He’s not breathing.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, clutching Stacey’s arm.
A hush descended over the room, quelling the excited chatter. Mrs. Cleo stopped by her desk, her jowls jiggling silently. Stacey sucked in a breath as she lowered her phone.
The silence following the urgent call was broken when Dean threw back his head and laughed as the other security guard dragged him from the classroom.
* * *
Stacey tucked her shoulder-length black hair back behind her ears. She hadn’t touched the slice of pizza on her plate or her can of soda. Neither had I. She was probably thinking along the same lines that I was. Principal Blunt and the guidance counselor I’d never really paid attention to had given all the students in the class the option to go home.
I didn’t have a ride. Morris, the clan’s chauffeur, handyman and all-around awesome guy, was still on the no-ride list with me since, the last time we’d been in a car together, a possessed cabdriver had tried to play chicken with our vehicles. And I didn’t want to wake up Zayne or Nicolai—for the most part, full-blooded Wardens slept deeply during the day, entombed in their hard shells. And Stacey didn’t want to be home with her baby brother. So here we were, in the cafeteria.
But neither of us had an appetite.
“I’m officially traumatized,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Seriously.”
“It’s not like the guy is dead,” Sam replied around a mouthful of pizza. His wire-frame glasses slipped to the tip of his nose. Curly brown hair flopped over his forehead. His soul, a faint mixture of yellow and blue, flickered just like everyone else’s had since this morning, winking in and out as if it was playing peekaboo with me. “I heard he was revived in the ambulance.”
“That still doesn’t change the fact that we saw someone get punched in the face so hard that they died right in front of us,” she insisted, eyes wide. “Or are you missing the point?”
Sam swallowed the bite of pizza. “How do you know he really died? Just because a wannabe police officer says that someone’s not breathing doesn’t mean that’s true.” He glanced over at my plate. “You gonna eat that?”
I shook my head at him, sort of dumbfounded. “It’s all yours.” A second later, he snatched the pizza with the little pepperoni cubes off my plate. His gaze flickered up to mine. “Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded as he munched away. “Sorry. I know I don’t sound very sympathetic.”
“Ya think?” Stacey muttered drily.
A dull ache flared behind my eyes as I reached for my soda. I needed caffeine. I also needed to figure out what the Hell was up with everyone’s auras doing the wonky thing. The colorful shading around a human represented what kind of soul they were rocking: white for an utterly pure soul, pastels were the most common and usually indicated a good soul, and the darker the colors got, the more questionable the status of one’s soul became. And if a human didn’t have that telltale halo around him, that meant he was on Team No Soul.
I.e., he was a demon.
I wasn’t doing much tagging anymore—another nifty ability I had thanks to my mixed heritage. If I touched a demon, it was equivalent to sticking a neon sign on their body, which made it easier for Wardens to search them out.
Well, it didn’t work on Upper Level demons. Not much did.
I didn’t stop because of what had happened with Paimon and then being forbidden to tag. Abbot had ungrounded me for life after the night in the gymnasium, but it felt wrong to randomly tag demons, especially now that I knew many of them might be harmless. When I did tag, I went for the Posers, since they were dangerous and had a habit of biting people, and left the Fiends alone.
And truthfully, the change in my tagging routine was all thanks to Roth.
“It’s just that those two idiots were probably messing with Dean,” Sam continued as he finished off the pizza in a nanosecond. “People snap.”
“People usually don’t have fists that could be considered lethal weapons,” Stacey retorted.
My phone chirped, drawing my attention. Bending, I pulled it out of my bag. The corners of my lips tipped up when I saw it was from Zayne even though the pain behind my eyes steadily increased.
Nic is picking u up. Meet me in the training room when u get home.
Ah, training. My stomach did a funny little twist, a familiar reaction when it came to training with Zayne. Because at some point during the grappling and evasive techniques, he’d get sweaty, and inevitably his shirt would come off. And, well, even though I was hurting something fierce over the loss of Roth, seeing Zayne shirtless was something to look forward to.
And Zayne...he’d always meant the world and then some to me. That hadn’t changed. It never would. When I’d first been brought into the clan, I had been terrified and had promptly hidden in a closet. It had been Zayne who’d coaxed me out, holding in his hands a no-longer-pristine teddy bear that I had dubbed Mr. Snotty. I’d been attached to his hip since then. Well, until Roth had come along. Zayne had been my only ally—the only person who knew what I was, and...God, he’d been there for me, my rock these past couple of weeks.
“So...” Sam drew the word out as I sent Zayne a quick okay and dropped the phone back in my bag. “Did you know that when snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food?”
“What?” Stacey asked, brows furrowing together like two angry little lines.
He nodded, grinning a little. “Yep. Kind of like a death match...with yourself.”
For some reason, a bit of stiffness went out of my posture when Stacey choked out a laugh and said, “Your capacity for useless knowledge never ceases to amaze me.”
“It’s why you love me.”
Stacey blinked and heat infused her cheeks. She glanced over at me, as if I was somehow supposed to help her with her recently discovered crush on Sam. I was the last person on the face of the Earth to help when it came to the opposite sex.
I’d only kissed one boy in my entire life.
And he’d been a demon.
So...
She laughed loudly and brightly as she picked up her soda. “Whatever. I’m too cool for love.”
“Actually...” Sam looked as though he was about to explain some kind of random fact about love and temperatures when the pain in my head flared.
Sucking in a short breath, I pressed my palm above my eyes and squeezed them shut against the red-hot stabbing sensation. It was fierce and quick, over as soon as it started.
“Layla? Are you okay?” Sam asked.
I nodded slowly as I lowered my hand and opened my eyes. Sam stared back at me, but...
He cocked his head to the side. “You’re looking a little pale.”
Dizziness rose over me as I continued to stare at him. “You...”
“Me? Huh?” Frowning, he glanced at Stacey quickly. “I what?”
There was nothing surrounding Sam—not a single trace of robin’s-egg blue or the soft buttery yellow. My heart tripped as I twisted toward Stacey. The faint green of her aura was also gone. That meant that neither Sam nor Stacey had—no, they had souls. I knew they did.
“Layla?” Stacey said softly, touching my arm.
I twisted around, scanning the packed cafeteria. Everyone looked normal except there was no halo around any of them. No soft shade of color. My pulse picked up and I felt sweat dotting my brow. What was going on?
Searching out Eva Hasher, whose aura I was all too familiar with, I found her sitting a few tables back from ours, surrounded by what Stacey lovingly referred to as the bitch pack. Beside her was Gareth, her on-and-off-again boyfriend. He was leaning forward, arms folded on the table. Staring off at nothing, his eyes were red and glazed over. He liked to party, but I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen him high at school. There was nothing around him.
I shifted my gaze back to Eva. Normally there was a halo of purple surrounding the überhot brunette, meaning she’d been slipping into questionable soul status for quite some time. The need to taste her soul was always great.
But the space around her was also empty.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
Stacey’s hand tightened on my arm. “What’s going on?”
My gaze flitted back to her. Still no aura. And then to Sam. Nothing. I couldn’t see a single soul.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_7222ace3-49a8-5346-8834-e1a3f9239b37)
The rest of the afternoon went by in a daze. I hated to think that Stacey and Sam were used to my random mood shifts and disappearing acts, but they were. Neither of them pushed me about my odd behavior.
When I saw Nicolai waiting for me in front of the high school, I knew my superspecial-demon-sniffing abilities had gone to Hell. The Wardens all had pure souls—a beautiful white glow that I knew tasted like heaven. Even Petr had a pure soul in spite of the fact he was the worst sort of male and had tried to kill me.
But Nicolai, a Warden I knew was as good as Zayne, didn’t have his usual white glow today. I climbed into the black Escalade, eyes wide as I pulled the door shut behind me.
He passed me a quick look. Nicolai rarely smiled since he’d lost his wife and his only child during childbirth. I used to get more smiles than most, but not since the night the clan had caught me with Roth.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his blue eyes identical to Zayne’s. All Wardens had the most brilliant blue eyes that looked like the summer sky before a storm. Mine were the palest gray, as if they’d been leached of all color, a product of the demonic blood in me.
When I did nothing but stare at him like a goober, his handsome face slipped into a slight frown. “Layla?”
I blinked as if coming out of a trance and fixed my gaze on the people crowding the sidewalk. The sky was overcast from the recent cold rain and the clouds looked fat with more, but there were no traces of a soul to be found. I shook my head. “I’m okay.”
We didn’t speak again during the unnecessarily long drive to the compound just over the bridge. Traffic was always a pain. When Morris drove me, he didn’t talk—he never talked—but I’d pretend to have a conversation with him. With Nicolai, it was just about seven kinds of awkward. I wondered if he still thought I’d betrayed the clan by assisting Roth in finding the Lesser Key of Solomon, if he’d ever smile at me again.
It seemed as if it took thirty minutes and ten years before the Escalade rolled to a smooth stop in front of the compound. As usual, I grabbed my bag and threw open the door. I’d done it so many times I didn’t look where I put my foot. I knew the curb of the sidewalk leading to the porch steps would be there.
Except as I hopped down, my booted foot met nothing but air. Caught off balance, I threw my hands out as I toppled forward. My backpack was flung to the side as I went down palms first. Bambi shifted without warning, curling along my waist as if she sought to somehow not end up squished if I went down.
Real helpful there.
I caught myself before I kissed the pavement, sliding on the slippery, broken stone. Skin tore across my hands, sparking little bites of pain.
Nicolai was out of the Escalade and by my side in record time, swearing loudly. “Are you all right, little one?”
“Ouch,” I moaned, rocking back on my knees as I lifted my battered hands. Other than feeling like a three-legged gazelle, I was okay. Cheeks red, I bit my lip to stop a flood of curse words from coming out. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” He curled his hand around my upper arm, helping me stand. Bambi shifted positions the moment he came in contact with me, and I felt her crawl up the side of my neck, reaching my jaw. Nicolai saw it, too, jerking his hand back. He cleared his throat as he fixed his stare on my eyes. “Your palms are scratched.”
“They’ll heal.” And they’d heal within hours. Hopefully Bambi would slither back to somewhere less visible in that time. None of the Wardens liked to see her for a crap ton of reasons. “What happened to the curb?”
“No idea.” Nicolai frowned as he stared at the crumbled gray stone. “Must’ve been all the rain.”
“Odd,” I muttered, spying my bag in a puddle. I sighed as I stomped over to it and wrenched it out of the muckiness.
Nicolai followed me up the steps. “Are you sure you’re not hurt? I can get Jasmine to take a look at your hands.”
I had no idea why Jasmine, a member of the New York clan of Wardens, was still here. Not that I had any problems with her. Her younger sister Danika, the beautiful, full-blooded gargoyle who wanted to make babies with Zayne, was another story. Then again, considering all that Roth and I had shared, I really had no room to be jealous.
But the bitter burn was there every time I saw the dark-haired beauty. Double standards sucked, but oh wellsies.
“Really. I’m good,” I said as we waited for Geoff, hidden somewhere in the belly of the compound, to unlock the doors. “I’m just obviously not very graceful.”
Nicolai didn’t respond and—thank baby Jesus and cuddly angels—the front door opened. Careful not to step through an unexpected hole in the floor, I set my bag down just inside the door and hurried upstairs to my bedroom.
Good news. I didn’t fall down the stairs and Bambi had decided to get off my face and was now back to curling around my body.
Traffic and my impromptu face-plant outside had made me late to meet Zayne, but as I toed off my boots, I wasn’t sure how focused on training I’d be considering there seemed to be a wire suddenly missing in my brain.
Why couldn’t I see souls? And what did that mean?
I needed to tell someone—I would tell Zayne, but not his father. I didn’t trust Abbot so much anymore. Not since discovering that he’d known all along who my mother and father were. And I was pretty sure he didn’t 100 percent trust my rosy-red behind either.
I dragged a pair of sweats and a T-shirt out from my dresser and tossed them on the bed. Padding around my room in my socks, I unbuttoned my jeans and pulled my sweater off over my head. Static crackled in my loose hair, causing thin wisps to stand up around my head. Zayne would know what to do. Since Roth—
My bedroom door flew open and Zayne burst in. “Nicolai told me—holy Christ.”
