Page 80 of Bent Out of Shade
Crossing her arms, she heaved a sigh. “Not whispering.”
“You’re not making any sense. You just said I had to follow the whispers, but now you’re saying they aren’t whispering? Did the whispering stop?”
She shook her head.
Nora had the presence of mind to call Harry because she couldn’t reach me. There must be something she wanted me to understand. Follow the whispers, but not whispering. I turned the words over and over, growing more and more frustrated until a thought hit me.
When Eli and I had been searching for Teresa Wong, a missing person, we’d initially mistaken a reference to the Human Race as metaphoric instead of literal.
Did “whispers” have a definite article, not an indefinite one? Was it, perhaps, the name of a demon complicit in my parents’ and McMurtry’s deaths?
“Nora, it’s the Whispers? Like with a capital W? A name?”
“Yes!” She clapped her hands together. Great, but why couldn’t she say that in the first place?
“Good. Is the Whispers a person?” No reaction. “A demon?”
She unfurled a smile that was too wide, too manic, and her eyes gleamed. “It’s a broken hallelujah.”
“Enough cryptic bullshit.” I slammed my fist on the table, rattling the coffee mugs.
Nora’s smile turned sly, but she didn’t offer any other clues.
Shadows swirled up my body like a whirlwind and I turned my face to the sky. “You want me? Then talk to me. Quit hiding behind others.”
At the very least, I could stop it from using any more people as puppets. Grabbing the artifact, I ran out the back door, yelling at Harry to stay with Nora.
He caught her around the waist on the porch, the woman bellowing that she wasn’t finished with the amulet yet, and shut them inside the house.
Going deeper into the backyard, I phoned Nav. “If someone had the impulse to burn and deface the amulet I showed you because the figures are evil, would destroying the thing free that person from any compulsion?”
“Most people start a conversation with hello,” he said dryly, right as a muted boom echoed through the phone.
I flinched. “What was that?”
“We tracked down a nest of demons and I promised Clea she could blow their home up after we killed them,” he said.
I shrugged. Sure, why not. “About the amulet?”
“It didn’t affect you at all?”
“No. It compelled its previous keepers into kidnapping Emmett, but I felt nothing when I took it from them. They were Ohrists, like this person.”
“It’s not the amulet. Something is communicating through it. What else was this Ohrist told?”
“It said to follow the whispers, but I’m pretty sure that part was for me.” I tracked an airplane streaking across the sky, wishing I was flying somewhere tropical with frosty alcohol-laden drinks.
“Quite the special little lamb, aren’t you?” Nav said.
“I am, but the clock’s ticking. How do I help her?”
“Find out who’s using other people to give you messages,” Nav said. “Although, it’s rather odd the sender isn’t sending these charmingly creepy little communiques to you directly.”
“Maybe because I’m Banim Shovavim and they can only speak to Ohrists?”
“Maybe,” he said doubtfully.
“Doesn’t matter, there isn’t time to find them. I need to help her now. What do I do?”
