Whisper: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (Spectra Book 3)

by Lan Chan

  Bastard. He knew I couldn’t stand it when he tried to communicate with me telepathically, and he used it whenever he needed to prod me.

  “Pay attention,” he said. “You think moving up in this job is about working hard? Think again. All the deals get done in places like this.”

  “I don’t want to move up. I want to make this city safer.”

  His sneer could be seen clear across the restaurant. A swarthy man in a navy-blue suit waved to Moore. Right then I suspected he’d actually made a lunch date. Hell no.

  “I’m outta here,” I said. “Write me up if you want.”

  Opting to sit on one of the stone chairs in the restaurant’s front garden rather than the stale-smelling car, I watched the steady stream of government workers pass by in their neatly pressed suits. Technically, Chancellor’s Hill was still inside the range of Edward Blake’s territory, but you wouldn’t know it judging by the official flags flapping from the roofs of the high-rises above us.

  Territory meant nothing in these six blocks. This was Psi-Ops and Academy country. It also apparently belonged to the lawyers, because just then I spotted Aunt Jenny strolling by with a man I knew only from television. She saw me and after a second of surprise, a smile split her serious face. The raising of her cheeks made her glasses go lopsided as she made a beeline for me.

  At that moment, she looked so much like Dad that my heart felt like it slammed against my ribcage. If Dad were still here, I wouldn’t have to deal with this garbage of following orders from someone I couldn’t respect.

  “Willow, honey, what are you doing here?” Jenny gave me a hug. The grimace on my face must have said it all. I wished I could transmit everything that had happened to her, anything to let her know how much I wanted to go inside the restaurant and kick some ass.

  The man she was with regarded me with curiosity. I didn’t know if I should curtsey or something. He was tall, broader than he appeared on television.

  “Jon,” Jenny said, “this is my niece, Willow. Willow, this is Jonathan Carra, Minister for Defence.”

  His thick moustache twitched as he shook my hand. I think he smiled but I couldn’t tell because it was one of those bushy moustaches that seemed to replace his top lip. “Sir.”

  “It’s lovely to finally meet you,” he said. His voice was smooth, familiar from the interviews I’d seen him give. “Would you like to join us?”

  “I’m on duty.”

  “You’re still a cadet, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And your mentor is…?”

  I pointed inside. Moore’s back was to us but I could see they were on to dessert. At least this was going to wrap up soon. The minister’s moustache twitched. Aunt Jenny frowned outright. “I don’t think this is what the taxpayers are paying for,” the minister said. “We’re going inside anyway, maybe we should give them a little prod.”

  “No!” Forgetting who he was, I grabbed his arm. A second later, I dropped it. Manhandling the Minister for Defence was definitely a step above a citation. “Sorry. But unless you can have him fired from the Academy, I don’t think it’s going to do me much good.”

  “I don’t understand how this is teaching you anything,” Aunt Jenny said.

  “Apparently, I can’t just go off half-cocked because I don’t like the way things are being done.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. They left me to it. “See you on Sunday,” Aunt Jenny said. “I’ll pick you up at ten.”

  I could only nod. Every second Sunday we went to visit Dad’s grave. Every time it felt like someone ripped me apart inside. Though the Minister didn’t approach Moore, my mentor stalked briskly out of there and gave me a dirty look for what I assumed was not warning him.

  If there was anything I would never do in this lifetime, it would be communicating telepathically with Moore. Not unless I absolutely had to. His car was a disgusting mess. I’d hate to think what his mind would look like.

  Somehow I got through a week of not bringing attention to myself. Then came Saturday in which I had to put up with Viktor. My mood was made worse by the fact that I’d had a bad dream the night before. Thankfully, it wasn’t the telepathic kind. Viktor pounced on me as I had just closed my eyes for a tiny second.

  “You don’t get paid to sleep,” he said. I was standing in the produce aisle, stacking the apples. It was hard, so hard, not to pick up the shiny red fruit and just hurl it at his head.

  By the time Sunday rolled around, I was dying from too much contained sarcasm. I lay on Zeke’s bed, watching him get ready to go play basketball with some of his old school friends. My eyelids closed and I must have dozed off for a moment because next thing I knew, he was shaking me awake.

  “Maybe you should just stay home,” he said. I scrubbed my face with my palm.

  “No. I refuse to spend my one day off lying in bed.”

  “Well, you’d better look alive then because if Oz sees you like that he’s going to want to do this sleep scan thing.”

  I made a face but knew he was right. I’d managed to put Oz off for a few days, but eventually, I’d have to come up with a better excuse than that I wasn’t dreaming that much anymore. Which was an outright lie because I was dreaming more than ever. It seemed that as soon as I closed my eyes at night, I was torn from this reality into one where I was some other black-haired girl, running about on top of buildings and doing all the things I’d done as Spectra, but in a really confusing way. At this point, I’d even nicknamed her Fake Spectra. Don’t even get me started on the voices.

  After Zeke left to catch the bus, I waited around with Lily until Aunt Jenny picked me up. My pace to meet her in the parking lot was sedate at best. It was like a shroud of lethargy hit me as soon as I stepped into her car.

  “Hi, honey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  That was all we said to each other on the drive through the city and out into the suburbs closer to Kew Gardens. Gran had a number of burial plots out here and she’d insisted that Dad be buried with the rest of the family. Even though it was all Mum’s side of the family.

  That was Gran all over. She was superstitious and you were just stupid to argue with a woman who’d spent the better part of her life running a notorious Street Court.

  Sundays were bad days at the cemetery. It seemed that everyone and their dog came here after church to pay their respects. I hated walking through the neatly paved paths and well-kept lawns. Some of the gravestones were so old it was impossible to read the inscriptions. You could always tell the graves that were visited often by the state of the flowers next to them. Except for the ones that had artificial flowers. But that was just cheating.

  I never knew what you were supposed to do while you visited a dead person. Jenny was too academic to believe in spirits and the afterlife. We were so far from being faithful that it wasn’t even funny. And yet, as we stood there, a strange kind of calm always washed over me. It was as though the dead quietened the living and even their thoughts slowed down.

  After a little while, Jenny decided to go for a walk. She did it every week. I was sure it was just an excuse to give me some alone time. I wished we could just go. Dad’s gravestone was a simple grey marble fixture with his name and date of birth and death on it.

  My throat was clamping up and I tried to clear it by coughing. The middle-aged couple down the row peered up and gave me sad smiles.

  Crouching down, I pulled at some weeds that had managed to seed themselves between my grandfather’s gravestone and the grass. Unsure of what exactly I was meant to be doing, my focus invariably turned to resentment. Where was she? If she wasn’t dead like Aunt Jenny wanted me to believe, what the hell was she doing that was more important than being here for her family? Would he have lived if she’d been around?

  She never spoke about her childhood but Mum didn’t grow up in Australia. My grandfather relocated his family during his time as the Kew Gardens Street King in order to keep them safe. Mum had met Adrian, Gab
e’s older brother, while at school and he’d gotten her into the local law-enforcement track.

  My thoughts circled back to the day of my Psi-Q test. There were espers that day. My mother was more dangerous than any number of espers. If she’d been there, he would still be alive. If I’d been there, he would still be alive. We’d both failed him.

  I shrank down to the ground and ran my fingers over the carving of his name. William Theodore Atherton. If anyone were checking, at first glance they wouldn’t have even realised he was my dad.

  Heels clicking on the cobblestones alerted me to Jenny’s return. Her skin was sallow and her makeup seemed freshly applied. I drew up beside her and linked our elbows.

  “I really miss him,” I said. “It’s supposed to get better but it’s not.”

  She reached out with her free hand to smooth strands of hair that had come loose from my ponytail. “He wouldn’t have wanted us to stop living our lives because of his death.” She grew quiet. “Are you hungry?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  “What do you feel like?”

  I shrugged. “Is there someplace here that doesn’t charge a fortune for something the size of my thumb?”

  She did a couple of drive-bys because Sunday lunch seemed to be peak time in the cafés. She didn’t take too kindly to my offer of using my Hyper ID to double-park. Finally, we got a spot a million miles away. It took ten minutes to walk back.

  Groaning, I joined the queue that wound out to the pavement of an upscale burger place. If the smells wafting out the door weren’t so heavenly, I would have walked away.

  “Honey,” she said. “Could you at least try and be less disdainful about this? Your Aunt Claire already gives me the evil eye whenever she sees me. I don’t need her accusing me of raising a savage again.”

  I didn’t get a chance to respond because the waitress waved us over and seated us on the upper level overlooking the street. We copped a few death stares from people who had been in the queue longer than us. “How much money did you bribe them with for this table?”

  “Jon has a standing table here,” she said. I narrowed my eyes at her.

  “Do you and Jon have any other arrangements I should know about? Because I gotta tell you, I could use the Minister for Defence in my corner right now.”

  She had the best poker face on the planet. Not a single straight brown hair fell out of place of her bob as she poured us water.

  “The pork-belly burger is good,” she said in her end-of-discussion voice. Oh brother. I couldn’t help getting in one more dig.

  “Promise me you’ll use protection,” I said.

  Uh oh. I was getting the eyebrow raise. That was her version of a slack-jawed open mouth. That she wasn’t denying any of it made it even worse. No comment was no good.

  “Just for that, you’re picking up the bill.”

  The waitress arrived and we ordered. “Can I get two pork-belly burgers, a large strawberry shake, chicken wings on the side, and another order of fries?”

  “Sure thing, hon. Coming right up.” She made to leave and I flagged her back.

  “Umm…that’s just my order.”

  The waitress’s bright smile wavered for just a second. They trained them better in these swanky places apparently. Usually, I got an explanation about how big the portion sizes were. Once someone even brought out a plate to show me. Instead she very graciously took Jenny’s order of a single burger and coffee before she scooted off.

  “How’s school?” Jenny asked. I loved that she still called it that. Like I wasn’t in some accelerated class designed to spit me out the other side a perfect Academy cadet.

  “S’okay. Zeke wants me to drop forensics and do profiling with him as extracurricular next term, but he’s dreaming.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I just stared at her. “I’m already the black sheep because everyone knows Gabe is my godfather. I don’t need flack for a whole term about how I should know exactly how a criminal mind works.”

  “Fair point.” The food arrived and I dug in. It didn’t stop my ability to talk. “Have you decided to join any of the social groups?”

  “No, Aunt Jenny. I have not made any other friends.”

  “I think you could if you tried.”

  “I have five friends now. Isn’t that enough?”

  “One friend and four work colleagues,” she corrected.

  “I have to spend all my time with them. I think I’ve got enough on my plate without having to make pointless conversation with other people.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t think it was pointless conversation if you found people with similar interests.”

  “What is this, find Willow a friend day?”

  “If it is,” a low male voice said behind me, “you’re in luck.” I froze. Opposite me, Jenny beamed.

  “Hello, Ryan,” she said.

  He came into view on my left, pulled out the spare chair, spun it so the back was facing the table, and straddled it. He placed his forearms over the back and leaned his chin into it.

  “Hi.” He eyed the mountain of food in front of us. I shoved a handful of fries in my mouth and chewed loudly.

  “I’d ask how you know each other but Mr. Popularity here seems to get around.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, honey,” Jenny said.

  He grinned at me. “Yeah, honey.” I did not appreciate him swooping in and interrupting my one day with my aunt. I also did not appreciate how blue his eyes seemed to be against his tanned skin. The New China sun had bleached his brown hair a shade lighter. I took a sip of my shake and did not allow myself a second glance at where the V-neck of his black T-shirt cut into his chest and showed a single line of his tattoo.

  “Did you pick up that book I was telling you about?” Aunt Jenny asked him.

  “Yes, ma’am. I finished it in a few days. It was good. A little heavy but worth it.”

  Confusion stopped my loud chewing for a moment. “What’s going on here?”

  He raised a brow at me. “I’m not sure about you, darling, but we’re having a conversation.”

  I kicked him under the table but he didn’t flinch. Bastard. “Seriously, how do you even know each other?”

  “Hospital,” he said. “Ballarat.”

  “Oh.”

  Oh, he said in my head. Why the heck was my shield always down when he was around? I could slap myself. Especially since I couldn’t raise them now or he’d give me shit.

  Aunt Jenny’s phone started buzzing. “No!” I said. Her eyes darted to it. “Come on! You said you’d turned it off.”

  For the first time, her serene mask cracked from guilt. She bit her lip. There were few things Aunt Jenny was more passionate about than me, and one of those things was work.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. I have to take it. I’ve got open files on a few murder cases and...”

  Knowing her attention had already fled, I waved a hand at her dismissively. Holding up a finger at me to indicate she wouldn’t be long, she moved off in the direction of the bathroom to answer her phone. Less than a minute later she returned looking flushed.

  “You’re leaving, aren’t you?” I pouted.

  “I’m handling the treaty agreement between us and New China for the investigation into Second Sight. This really can’t wait. Can you get your own way home?” Opening her wallet, she threw a bunch of notes on the table.

  “I can take her,” Ryan offered. Just great.

  She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, then placed a grateful hand on Ryan’s shoulder and then she was gone. The grin Ryan gave me could not have been any bigger.

  14

  He didn’t make a move to sit in her empty seat, preferring to get on my nerves from as close as possible.

  “Glad to see I’m not the only one you use that scowl on.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He eyed the food speculatively. “I told you I’d be coming back this week.”

  I gro
aned. “I meant here, here. In this café, right now.”

  “Believe it or not, the rest of us like to eat too.”

  Having lost some of my appetite from Jenny’s sudden departure, I pushed one of my untouched burgers in front of him. After a couple of seconds of peering at me as though I was leading him into a trap, he reached out and took the burger with one hand. It seemed tiny in his grasp. I waved at the waitress and asked for the menu again. Now she was really going to talk about me behind my back.

  “Do you live around here?” I hedged.

  “Is this where you picture me living?” He ate the whole burger in about four bites.

  “To be honest, I don’t really give it much thought.”

  That was a total lie. Ever since Abigail clawed her way into my life, I’d been wondering non-stop about the guy behind the mask. The arrogant jerk who took his disabled sister to see their mother every week and paid for her to live in an expensive home.

  The waitress came back and he ordered. His order was bigger than mine but all she did was smile brightly at him. Bloody double standard.

  “Grace lives near here,” he said after the waitress left.

  I frowned. “Does this mean she’s back in Melbourne now?”

  “She’s convinced her dad to let her come back to finish her studies. He agreed, on the condition that I stay on retainer with her.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  He shrugged. Except it wasn’t really a shrug with his arms still locked in front of him. It was more a twitch of his corded muscles. “It pays a lot better than the grocery store.”

  I made a strangled sound. Until now I’d assumed when he came back it meant Viktor would be getting the boot. It never occurred to me that his sabbatical would be a resignation. I wasn’t good when caught by surprise. He must have seen something amusing in my expression because suddenly his head turned in my direction.

  “You could just ask me to come back and I might consider it,” he said. Over my dead body. Thankfully the waitress returned and very methodically placed his food in front of him.