Jennifer L. Armentrout - Stone Cold Touch

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

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.