Whisper (Whisper #1)(79)

“No problem, Jane. Glad you’re okay,” Cami says.

She reaches out to touch my shoulder, taking away the throbbing with a quiet Spoken word and a quick smile, before she ushers Ward and Enzo out of my room.

I follow them to the door and close it behind them, then bang my head softly on the wood. “I’m going mad,” I whisper, making sure to keep a tight hold on my intent since they’re the first words I’ve uttered outside of the Karoel room without proper supervision. But if ever there was a time to express myself freely, it’s now.

“I sure hope not. The last thing we need is to have a mad Creator running around.”

I spin, and there’s Kael again, this time leaning over my bed and teasing my kitten. Schr?dinger’s black-and-white paws are batting at the hand Kael waves just above him, his little claws going straight through the noncorporeal flesh. He’s purring up a storm, the traitor.

“Your kitty likes me, princess.”

I don’t know which to address first: the fact that Kael is somehow magically in my room and speaking to me and yet he’s not; or the fact that he, in all his badassery, just used the word “kitty.”

“Dinger’s a bad judge of character,” I say, carefully monitoring each word and keeping my tone low so as to not draw attention from the others again.

“Dinger?” Kael stops teasing my kitten and stands upright. “What kind of a name is that?”

“Short for Schr?dinger,” I explain, though I’m not sure why I bother. It’s not like he’ll —

“Schr?dinger?”

Kael releases a quiet burst of laughter. I’ve never seen him laugh before. It transforms his whole face.

“Now, that is a great name for a cat. Especially one I’m guessing you created.”

“Would you keep your voice down,” I tell him, stepping toward him and glancing nervously at my door. “The others will come barging in again.”

“Ah, yes.” He nods at the wardrobe. “Not your most graceful moment.”

I wonder if throwing something at him and having it go straight through his body would feel as cathartic as if it actually hit him.

“How are you here, Kael?” I bite out. “And … not?”

“Put up a soundproof wall and I’ll explain everything,” he says. At my questioning look, he adds, “Are you a Creator or not? Just imagine a sound-blocking bubble or something around the room, keeping anyone out there —” he gestures to the door “— from hearing what we say in here.”

“But …” I chew my lip and fidget with a loose thread trailing from the hem of my shirt. “Despite you being here, I’m guessing you’re not actually here, so you can’t destroy my words. I’m being really careful not to throw power around right now, but if I deliberately try to Speak, what happens if I accidentally turn the whole world silent or something?”

Kael sends me a “Seriously?” look. “Have a little faith in yourself, Lyss. You’ll be fine.”

I’m surprised by his quick response, by how different he is compared with Ward. Surprised but flattered.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I decide to trust his confidence in me and whisper, “Block.” Perhaps I concentrate a little too hard on my imagery, because when the flash of light bursts out of me, so, too, does an actual multicolored, bubble-like sphere. It circles the boundary of my room, with us in the middle.

Kael looks a touch too amused for my liking. “Let no one say you’re unimaginative.”

He uses a normal volume, and making sure not to power my words again, I say, “Keep it down — what if it didn’t work?”

Sending me a pointed look, in a voice so loud that it could raise the dead, he bellows, “HELP! HELP ME! HELLLLLLPPPPP!”

I jump a foot in surprise and spin around, waiting for Ward, Enzo and Cami to come running. But they don’t.

“Convinced?” Kael asks smugly. “Told you you’d pull it off.” I’m on edge despite his belief in my control. But so far nothing catastrophic has happened. I feel strong. I feel powerful. I also feel contained — like my ability is … waiting. Like I could use it if I wanted, but it would only happen because I made the deliberate choice to do so, rather than it being an accidental slip with disastrous consequences. And because of that, I decide to trust — or at least hope — that I’m not making a mistake by engaging Kael in conversation; my first completely unprotected exchange since awakening my ability.

Taking a deep breath, I carefully ask him what he’s doing in my room — and how he’s actually here.

“One of the Remnants, a guy named Smith, he can project an image — or, say, a person and their consciousness — to another place,” Kael answers. “I needed to talk to you, and this was the easiest way to make that happen.”

“That’s incredible,” I murmur, forgetting that I should hold some kind of negative emotion toward him for showing up out of the blue and scaring the living daylights out of me.

“It is,” Kael agrees. “What’s not incredible is that you only have a couple of hours left until Pandora’s infusions won’t work anymore, and you still haven’t gone to check out the lab.”

There’s a question in his tone, and my immediate response is to form some kind of defense, to claim that he arrived just as I was about to leave. But instead, I trudge over to my bed and collapse across it, not caring about my lack of grace as I admit the truth: “I don’t want to go.”