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White’s grandmother,” Cole called. “And you smell like a Kardashian.”
    “I can do this all day,” Quinn added, twisting the knife in his grasp.
    Cole’s ability to irritate even the undead was going to his head. “I mean, really? You know this guy’s a virgin, right?” Quinn’s mouth tightened. “And he’s kicking your ass all over the place. All the other ghouls are gonna laugh at you.”
    Another volley, another electric shock. But this time, Quinn stepped around Cole, behind him. Using him as a shield. Quinn ducked his head, whispering something. Cole’s face hardened, and he nodded.
    The wraiths’ chains were flailing now, rising anger at the impasse channeling out through the metal limbs.
    “You throw like my grandma,” Cole snickered, holding out his arms and posing. Making himself a target.
    “What the fuck are you doing?” Jenna screamed.
    “Cole!” I started running, and things started happening so fast.
    Quinn pushed Cole down and then threw himself against the wall, dropping the knife and shouting a spell I didn’t catch. Cole went sliding across the floor, straight towards Jenna.
    The wraith snarled, his targets suddenly not where they’d been a moment before.
    I was already in motion, and I couldn’t stop myself in time. I heard another spell, and I was thrown into the air, pulled towards Quinn just as the chain lashed out.
    It caught me around the arm, burning through my shirt until it decayed and collapsed into ash. The metal was cold , burning brands into my skin and even reverberating through my bones.
    “Justin!”
    “Justin!”
    Twin shouts, seconds apart.
    I could feel the wraith’s power ripping through me. It tore at me, at the part of me that wasn’t skin and blood and bone. Draining me. A vortex pulling away the part of me that was living, the spark that kept my heart pumping and my fear rising.
    A switch flipped.
    Polarity reversed. Life became death became life again.
    The vortex became a geyser, and everything that was mine returned in a flash flood of light and life.
    “No,” the wraith hissed. “No!”
    A dark pall burst into murky light around me, like an aura made from shadowed half-truths and eclipse light. It wasn’t magic, not exactly. Parts were, scraps that felt like something I should recognize, but they were threads in a much larger tapestry.
    “Justin! Grab the chain!” Quinn gestured to my arm, and the iron that was already trying to unravel itself from my skin.
    I twisted my forearm, grabbed the chain, and refused to let go. The chain shook, contorted, and tried to break free, but I wouldn’t let go.
    The aura grew darker, like storm clouds summoned above my head. I could feel something , an invisible pressure that settled against my skin like a shirt that was too tight. It swept around me, a presence and a power that dwarfed anything I’d ever seen.
    The wraiths’ eyes had looked like they were incapable of emotion, but there was one there now: fear. “You were to be rescued,” it hissed at me.
    The aura swept forward from me, slicing through the air like a scythe, and cut the wraith down like it was the firstborn son, and this was a plague.
    Shadows swallowed up the wraith, until there was a portal of tangible darkness where it had once stood.
    I squinted, feeling the pressure around me ease. The light in the room was more intense than it had been a moment ago.
    “What’s going on?” Cole asked, worried.
    “Just relax,” Quinn directed. “Close your eyes.”
    Close our ey—oh. The light continued to intensify, coupled with a ringing sound that sounded exactly like electronic feedback, a high-pitched whining that was just as intense as the corona of light that blurred everything.
    The light grew too intense, the sounds too loud. The humming got so loud, but after our experience with the chains, it was very nearly nothing.
    When it faded, the wraith was gone.

Three
    “There is a presence over them. Some
call it a binding, some a curse.