Jennifer L. Armentrout - Stone Cold Touch

Not until Roth had come along.

Given that he was a demon, the pesky soul problem was a moot point. He didn’t have one. And unlike Abbot and almost all of the Warden clan, even Zayne, Roth hadn’t cared that I was a mixed breed. He had...he’d accepted me as I was.

Scrubbing my palms over my eyes, I bit the inside of my cheek. When I’d found my repaired and cleaned-up necklace—the one Petr, a Warden who turned out to be my half brother, had broken during his attack on me—at Roth’s apartment, I’d clung to the hope that Roth wasn’t in the pits after all. That he’d somehow escaped, but with each passing day, that hope flickered out like a candle in the middle of a hurricane.

I believed more than anything in this world that if Roth could’ve come back to me, he would have by now, and that meant...

When my chest squeezed painfully, I opened my eyes and slowly let out the breath I’d been holding. The room was a little blurry through the haze of unshed tears. I blinked a couple of times as I slumped back in my seat. Whatever was on the slide projector made no sense to me. Something to do with the circle of life? No, that was The Lion King . I was so going to fail this class. Figuring I should at least attempt to take notes, I picked up my pen and—

At the front of the class, the metal legs from a chair scraped across the floor, screeching loudly. A boy exploded out of his chair as if someone had lit a fire under his butt. A faint yellow glow surrounded him—his aura. I was the only one who could see it, but it sputtered erratically, blinking in and out. Seeing people’s auras—a reflection of their souls—was nothing new for me. They were all kinds of colors, sometimes a mixture of more than two, but I’d never seen one waver like that before. I glanced around the room and the mixture of auras glimmered faintly.

What the Hell?

Mrs. Cleo’s hand was frozen above the projector as she frowned. “Dean McDaniel, what in the world are you—”

Dean spun on his heel, facing the two guys sitting behind him. They were leaning back in their seats, their arms crossed and lips curved up in identical smirks. Dean’s mouth was pressed into a thin line and his face was flushed. My mouth dropped open as he planted one hand on the white tabletop and slammed his other fist into the jaw of the kid behind him. The fleshy smack echoed through the classroom, followed by several surprised gasps.

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.