Whisper (Riley Bloom 4)

1

The first thought that popped into my head when we entered the Roman city limits was: Hunh?

I squinted into the wind, droopy blond hair streaming behind me, feeling more than a little deflated as I soared over a landscape that was pretty much exactly the same as all the others before it.

My guide Bodhi, my dog Buttercup, and I had flown a great distance to get there, and even though flying was hands down our favorite way to travel, there was no denying how after a while the scenery tended to get a bit dull—fading into a continuous blur of clouds, and nature, and man-made things, all piled up in a row. And though I’d grown used to it, I guess I still hoped that Rome would be different, but from where we hovered, it all looked the same.

Bodhi turned to me, his green eyes taking note of my disappointed face. He shot me a quick grin and said, “Follow me.”

He thrust his arms before him and somersaulted into a major free fall as Buttercup and I did the same. And the faster we spun toward the earth, the more the landscape below came to life—blooming with such vibrant color and detail, I couldn’t help but squeal in delight.

Rome wasn’t boring. It was more like the opposite—a city chock-full of visual contradictions practically everywhere you looked. Consisting of a maze of crazily curving, traffic-choked streets that curled and swooped around newly renovated buildings and crumbling old ones—all of it looming over dusty old ruins dating back thousands of years—reminders of a long-ago history that refused to go quietly.

Bodhi slowed, his hair flopping into his face when he nodded toward the ruin just below him and said, “There it is. What do you think?”

Buttercup barked with excitement, wagging his tail in a way that made him spin sideways, as I gawked at the massive old amphitheater, marveling at its size, and finding myself suddenly sideswiped by doubt.

I mean, yes, I’m the one who’d practically begged the Council for a more challenging Soul Catch—I wanted to glow brighter, wanted to turn thirteen more than anything else in the world, and I wrongly believed that excelling at my job was the one and only way to speed that along. But the longer I gazed upon that massive stone structure with its arching columns and sturdy old walls—the more I took in its sheer size and scope—the more I thought about the activities it was known for: barbaric cruelty and slaughter, blood-soaked battles fought to the death—well, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d maybe been a little too ambitious, if I might’ve overreached.

Not wanting to let on to my sudden fit of cowardice, I gulped hard and said, “Wow, that’s um … that’s a whole lot bigger than I thought it would be.”

Continuing to hover, my eagerness to land all but forgotten until Bodhi yanked hard on my sleeve and got us all moving again. But instead of leading us to the middle of the arena, he landed on the balcony of a very fancy restaurant, its all-white décor serving as the perfect backdrop to what may be one of the earth plane’s most spectacular views.

He perched on the balcony’s gray iron railing, gazing down at the landscape that loomed several stories below, while I sat alongside him, hoisting a not-so-cooperative Buttercup awkwardly onto my lap, his legs flopping over either side, as I said, “Do we have a dinner reservation I don’t know about?” Knowing the joke was a dumb one, but I couldn’t help it, nerves made me jokey.

Bodhi gave the place a once-over, taking in the spacious terrace filled with well-dressed diners enjoying elegant candlelit dinners and a sunset-drenched view that bathed the Colosseum in a glow of orange and pink—all of them blissfully unaware of the three ghosts sitting among them.

Then returning to me he got down to business and said, “Okay, here’s the deal, this ghost you’re supposed to deal with—his name is Theocoles. No last name that I know of. And, please, do yourself a favor and call him by his full name. No shortcuts, no Theo, or T, or Big T, or—”

“I got it, Theocoles,” I snapped, thinking it was certainly a mouthful but it’s not like it mattered, his name was pretty much the least of my concerns at that point. “What else?” I stared straight ahead, hoping to appear confident despite the way my fingers were twisting in Buttercup’s pale yellow fur.

Bodhi squinted through his heavy fringe of thick lashes, his voice low and deep as he said, “According to the Council, he’s been haunting the Colosseum for a very long time.” I turned to Bodhi, arching my brow, in need of a little more detail, watching as he shrugged, pulled a dented green straw from his pocket and shoved it into his mouth, where he proceeded to gnaw on it. A habit meant either to calm his nerves or help him think, I could never be sure. “This guy is intense,” he continued. “He truly is a lost soul. He’s so completely immersed in his world, he has no concept of anything outside of it, or just how many years have passed since his death, which, by the way, number into the thousands.”

I nodded, giving Buttercup one last scratch on the head before allowing him to leap from my lap to the ground so he could go sniff all the diners and beg for table scraps—clueless to the fact that they couldn’t see him.