Second Skin (Skinned) by Judith Graves

move.
Bile rose in my throat as the stench of a thousand rotting corpses blasted my cheek. The demon breathed hot on my cheek. A slithering sound, like death licking its lips in anticipation, and then a guttural laugh, malevolent and deadly. Followed by the pat of a cold, dead hand on my cheek before the pressure eased, and disappeared.
I bolted upright and stared across my empty bedroom. My wolven night vision kicked in, and I searched the darkness for the creature that had attacked me. Dark and sinister shapes crouching around the room turned out to be nothing more than shadows cast by dirty clothes piled on the floor. It was gone. I was alone. I sucked in gulps of air, my bruised ribcage protesting even as my lungs demanded more.
I reached under my pillow and withdrew my athame. Shoving my tangled bangs out of my eyes, I scanned my bedroom again, searching for the demon. Nada. Not a thing out of place. My door and the window remained closed, curtains unmoving. The demon had vanished.
But it had been here, demonstrating how easily it could get to me.
Daisies smiled up at me from my bedsheets, their good cheer mocking the horror slowly draining from my veins. I hated them at the best of times. My Aunt Sammi had trouble restricting her kindergarten teacher’s eye for cutesy décor to the classroom. I shoved the sheets aside.
The unfamiliar slide of thread along my wrist drew my attention. I held out my arm, examining Kate’s supposed iron- clad protection charm. A bracelet made from a cord of black embroidery floss strung with juniper beads impaled with slivers from an iron coffin nail. Although the spell may have kept the demon from my dreams, it certainly hadn’t stopped it from paying a house call.
And last night Kate had been so certain she could thwart the demon with a few witchy tourniquets.
We should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Back at Conundrum I’d been so willing to believe Kate had the answers. I’d even helped prepare for the spell. Before we’d gotten started, I’d clunked into the metal ladder Kate’s boyfriend, Whip, had set up right inside the door. When I stepped back, rubbing my throbbing knee, strong hands settled at my waist. Their heat penetrated my hoodie.
“Steady,” Alec’s voice rumbled in my ear.
Both knees weakened. I straightened and pulled away before my traitorous body could press against Alec’s broad chest.
I ducked under the ladder.
“Seven years bad luck,” he murmured from behind me. “I hope chickening out was worth it.”
I bared my teeth from the opposite side of the ladder while he lingered in the doorway studying me with those dark eyes.
Brit shifted to make room for me against the wall. She slanted a look my way and then at Alec standing stiff in the doorway. “Hey, are you guys fighting?”
“Shhh, Kate’s about to start the spell,” I said.
Kate made her way cautiously up the ladder Whip was holding.
“You sure she’s up for this?” Brit said out the side of her mouth.
“She is if she wants any of us to sleep tonight,” Kate said. She could be wolven, her hearing was so keen. I ducked my head, hiding my grin at the thought of a wolven-witch blend. Not likely. Wolven and witches shared a long history of mutual hatred that dated back centuries, when witches used wolven for all sorts of nasty deeds and bound us to them as their familiars—a pretty way of saying we were their slaves. Such servitude was now forbidden in the paranorm world. A familiar-to-witch partnership was rare and had to be consensual.
If I was an anomaly—a human-wolven hybrid—a witch- wolven would be outright blasphemy—on both sides. That Kate and I got along spoke volumes about the wackiness that was Redgrave. Enemy of my enemy and all that.
“We have to protect this place,” Kate said. “It holds the source of my power. If the night mare blasts inside, it’ll steal my power, absorb it, and I’ll be useless to you guys in your battle against it.” She placed a small