Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1) (33 page)

“Jade, can you hear me?” John asked.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“Put your head between your knees.”

Jade did it. Jonesy hopped from one foot to the
other, not knowing what to do with the water.

John looked at me, the flat of his palm on Jade's
back.

“What's going on, Caleb?”

“I don't know, I had her do the whammy on my
locker because someone's been messin' around in there, and she had
like, I don't know, a moment or something and got all dizzy.”

“The whammy?” Jonesy asked.

“She used her Empath powers to find out who
infiltrated Caleb's locker,” John translated, using his fancy
vocab.

Jonesy surprised us all with, “someone rippin'
off your crap?”

Accurate for Jonesy.

“Nothing's missing, but someone was in here.”

“But...
it's a pulse lock.” Jonesy's look said double-duh... fingerprint
security.

Pulse
security.

John nodded slowly, Jade began to raise her head.
Jonesy gave her the water, which she uncapped.

“Just sip that Jade, no gulping,” John said.

She nodded.

“That means a manual by-pass,” John said.

Jonesy smiled. “Bringin' up that civic crap
again. That bores me 'til I weep, dude.”

“How do you figure?” I asked.

“Because, who is going to be able to by-pass a
pulse lock unless they're 'The Government'?”

“Not bad Jonesy, not bad at all,” John said.

Jade looked scared.

“He's right. They're total posers.”

“Who are posers Jade?” John asked.

“The formula-people,” she replied.

I
sucked in a big breath. Hell, that had been the name I gave those
people when I saw them. But, that wasn't their real name. It's just
what I thought of them as.

“
I
know what
you
thought Caleb. You touched the hook too,” she said.

“How
can you tell it's me and not them thinking?”

Jade did a huge eye roll. Definitely feeling
better now.

She lowered her voice and we all leaned in to
hear, “How do you know one zombie from another?”

Well,
that was easy, they just, felt different. It was like hearing a
voice, no two were alike. Some of what I thought must have shown on
my face.

She leaned back in the chair, satisfied.

“See, it's like that,” she said.

“So, you knew it was me. As if it was my voice
talking?”

“That's not completely accurate, but it'll do,”
Jade said.

“It's like a signature?” John asked.

“I guess. It's hard to explain this stuff to
someone that doesn't do it,” she shrugged.

I noticed the death volume wasn't loud for me at
this moment and mentioned that. The drug was definitely flushed by
now.

“It's kinda random now anyway, right?” Jonesy
asked.

Yeah, now that I thought about it, sometimes the
voices were loud, sometimes hardly there. I couldn't figure out why
it came and went but it was a recent development.

“Who was it Jade?”

“
I
don't know who they are but I know
what
they are.”

“What?” Jonesy asked.

“They're government alright, just not the
government that we know about. They're like a subdivision of a
subdivision.”

That sounded bad. I thought of my ransacked house,
where nothing had been stolen but everything had been looked at,
touched, moved.

“Let's split. I don't want to talk about this
here,” John said, looking around.

Good idea. We gathered our crap up and started to
walk away.

“Wait,” Jade said.

I turned toward her. “You okay?”

She nodded. “Getting there. Let me go find
Sophie first.”

Jonesy made a face. Uh-oh. Jade put her hands back
on her hips and marched over to Jonesy.

Almost nose to nose but she was still shorter.
“You got a problem with Sophie?” she demanded, her face fierce.

“No, no problem,” Jonesy sputtered, caving.

“You looked like you had one.”

“It's just, we used to be an all-guy thing, and
now... well, we may be getting too many hens in the chicken coop.”

“Oh...
please! You bunch of roosters need all the help you can get. Be
grateful!”

And with that parting shot she pivoted on her heel
and went off in search of Sophie. Sophie of the Astral-Projection
persuasion.

We stood silently looking after Jade.

“You handled that well, Jonester,” John said.

“Yeah,” he said glumly.

“Maybe next time just let the girls come,” I
said.

“Yeah,” John said.

“This mundane thing blows goats. And the girls
are taking over the world,” Jonesy stated.

“
Not
yet,
”
I said, winking.

Jonesy smiled and we walked out the door into the
school parking lot where cars swarmed everywhere. We hiked over to a
small grassy knoll, waiting for the girls. I threw my backpack behind
my head and laid down, my head balancing on a lump of junk. Jonesy
and John flanked me.

We waited as the sunlight warmed our bodies.
Almost summer, I thought. Not hot and crummy yet, still spring.

“We have to find out what these...”

“Formula-people,” I supplied.

“Yeah them. What they really want from you,”
John said.

“They're just rooting around, hoping to come up
with something,” I said.

“Good thing you didn't put that pill bottle in
your backpack,” Jonesy said.

“Right. Isn't that the truth,” John said.

We thought about who was watching.

We were lying there all languid when two shadows
fell over our bodies. All three of us put our hands up to shield our
eyes from the sun. It was the girls; Sophie's shadow, completely
shading my body, Jade's covering Jonesy up to the neck.

“Let's go,” Sophie said.

“Where?” Jade asked.

“The cemetery,” Jonesy said.

“No,” I said.

“Oh,
come on Hart! You can clean house if anyone shows up!”

Jonesy sat up, shaking off the languor and
pantomiming punching.

“
I
don't want to. Every time I go to the cemetery a bunch of crap rains
down on our heads!
No
.”

“What could happen?” Sophie asked.

We looked at her. She laughed. “It's that bad?”

“Yeah,” we said in unison.

“But
it is the safest, the most private. They can't hear us.” Jade
reasoned.

I thought about it, wavering. There really wasn't
a very good alternative.

I made a decision. “Okay, everybody pulse the
parental authority, get the go ahead, and let's book to the
graveyard.”

“Wait,” everyone's attention turned to John.
“Let's have a look-out. We don't want to be followed.”

“Brilliant. I'll do it,” Sophie said.

I nodded and we dug out our pulses, getting the
parents handled.

Jade's face fell.

“What?” I asked, my hand landing on her
shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Aunt Andrea says I need to go home and check
in,” Jade made airquotes.

John said, “I don't like it.”

That made two of us.

“Not normal Jade.”

“I know, right?”

“You don't think it's your crazy-ass dad?”
Jonesy asked delicately.

I glared at him. Jade saw and said, “It's okay,
he's crazier than a shit-house rat.”

Sophie barked a very un-girl like shout of
laughter.

“Where
did you get that one?” she asked.

“Andrea.”

“I guess she's good for something.”

“Sophie,
she really tries. They were raised in the same family ya know.”

“I know,” her hand squeezed the opposite
shoulder. Now we both had our hands on our girl. Sophie's eyes met
mine, Jade was fragile and we loved her. A fierce grip of possession
blossomed in me and I felt a new focus for my life.

She gave us that radiant smile reserved for us; me
and her best friend, I'd take that.

CHAPTER 21

Any graveyard always affected me the same way. As
I got closer the voices grew louder. It was Jade and I in front with
Sophie slightly behind, the Js pulling up the rear. Voices of the
dead droned; I hadn't missed their absence (internal sigh).

Jade and I, our hands held tightly as we swept
under the arch of scrolling metal, looked up at me with questions.
Touching me like she was, I was tuned to the frequency of the dead.
Brave girl, her hand was still dry.

John trotted up to us and the whispering dimmed.
“So, where do you want to go?”

That was easy. “Let's head over to Clyde's
grave.”

“Clyde?”

“Yeah, he's by far my favorite corpse.”

Jade laughed. “Ah... okay, whatever you say.”

“I've never seen the fun, so I'll assume being
in the cemetery is kinda risky,” Sophie said.

Jonesy
caught up with us, hearing the last comment. “Hell yeah! That's the
full throttle of hanging out with us! It's the way we roll,” Jonesy
said, folding his arms across a muscular chest.

Sophie
looked at him.“Well, good for you,” she snarked, turning to Jade,
eyebrows shooting up. Gee, how did we ever live without them?

I figured Sophie had about five and a half minutes
before she succumbed to Jonesy's charms.

The Js did a high five to cement the moment and I
grinned. The friends were it, they just flat were. Sophie gave them a
look, knowing her presence was not going to change our supreme
maleness.

We made our way to Clyde's grave... ole'
twice-raised Clyde. He looked a little “smart” on that last run
and I'd felt uneasy. No guts, no glory. Jerking corpses out of the
ground more than once, I pondered that. Nope, I really wanted to
know.

We plopped down in a semi-circle around his grave.
The thrumming of the dead sounded very low in the background. I just
couldn't make sense of that. They should be shrieking with me being
in the cemetery and all. Jade was on my left, John on my right.
Jonesy and Sophie had an unspoken truce, sitting together. Jonesy had
his legs splayed out in front of him with his elbows locked behind
him and Sophie sat legs crossed, elbows on knees and palms holding
her chin.

“Okay we're here, now what?” Sophie asked.

“I want to talk more about the testing,” I
said.

Jonesy frowned “What's to talk about? I mean,
I'm a mundane, you guys have the juice, end of discussion.”

Maybe he was jealous. He was the only one that
hadn't pinged paranormal. Didn't matter to me, Jonesy was always
gonna be Jonesy. It just was.

John looked at him. “Remember, you get things
done.”

My thoughts exactly, Jonesy was our main man.

“Yeah, I'm feeling that,” Jonesy said.

“Don't wanna take you guys away from your love
fest or anything but I want Jade to let us in on this spy crap.”

Jade laughed. “It's not a 'spy thing,' it's more
like a government within our government.”

“Okay, we've got that. What's their objective?”

Silence.

“You know, what's their goal?” John clarified.

John was gonna be my dad when he grew up.

“What I felt was they're trying to identify kids
that have rare paranormal abilities and are also powerful.”

“
Why
were they looking in my
locker?”

She looked down at her hands, twisting and
untwisting. “They suspect you.”

“Why?”

“The dog. Garcia saw what you did with the dog.”

I looked at Sophie, big-eyed. “You're sworn to
secrecy.”

“Ah... okay.”

“But I didn't raise the dog, the dog wasn't dead
yet.”

“Come on Caleb, that's what my parents call
splitting hairs.” That's like saying you're almost pregnant,”
John said.

Sophie and Jade laughed, mutual amusement.

I guess he had a point, dammit.

“Okay, so I did some AFTD crap, he saw it and...
what?”

“I felt, that they have fingers of their group
within the police department,” Jade finished.

“Haven't we figured out that Garcia is dirty?”
Jonesy asked.

I wasn't absolutely sure but it was circling the
drain of possibility.

“What was that cop that showed up when you
raised granny?” John asked.

I thought about that... McCain? McRaw...

“McGraw!” I remembered.

“Yeah, him. You said he pulled some scary shit.”

“He did; gave us a little elemental show,” I
said.

“Didn't he cause, what, a mini-tornado?”
Jonesy asked.

“Not really, it was more like we were all in the
eye of the storm.”

“Was it righteous?” Jonesy asked, eyes alive.

“No, it was an intimidation thing. And he's
Garcia's partner. Two plus two equals four, pal.”

Sophie shook her head, ringlets bouncing.
“Whatever. We have dirty cops and adults that are lurking around
looking for ways to force us to do their dirty work. All good news!
What's the plan?”

John was the thinker, Jonesy the schemer and I was
becoming the leader. Not a role I thought I'd be in.

“One
thing is obvious: they all know what we are. In Caleb's case, they
don't know how much he is, but that's a matter of time. Too many
people know that he can corpse-raise. Jade's dad knows!” John said.

That was true, but...

“He won't say anything,” I said with
conviction.

“Why not?” John asked.

“Because,
A) he'd look bad, B) he would have to explain why he was there and
what happened.”

“Caleb's right, he doesn't like to look bad. He
wants to be right all the time,” Jade said.