Blog Tour Excerpt & Giveaway - The Delphi Effect by Rysa Walker

 

The Delphi Effect

(The Delphi Trilogy, #1)

Author Links: Rysa Walker

Published by: Skyscape

Publication Date: October 11th, 2016

Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult

Book Description:

In this thrilling new series from Rysa Walker, the award-winning and best-selling author of Timebound, a teen psychic is the key to stopping a government conspiracy. 

It’s never wise to talk to strangers . . . and that goes double when they’re dead. Unfortunately, seventeen-year-old Anna Morgan has no choice. Resting on a park bench, touching the turnstile at the Metro station—she never knows where she’ll encounter a ghost. These mental hitchhikers are the reason Anna has been tossed from one foster home and psychiatric institution to the next for most of her life.

When a chance touch leads her to pick up the insistent spirit of a girl who was brutally murdered, Anna is pulled headlong into a deadly conspiracy that extends to the highest levels of government. Facing the forces behind her new hitcher’s death will challenge the barriers, both good and bad, that Anna has erected over the years and shed light on her power’s origins. And when the covert organization seeking to recruit her crosses the line by kidnapping her friend, it will discover just how far Anna is willing to go to bring it down.

Buy Links:

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EXCERPT

At 2:12, I pull into the driveway of a tall, narrow building that is light- years from my mental image of a cottage. It’s a full-fledged house. There are two additional stories above the two-car garage, both with decks overlooking the rocky shoreline across the street. And there’s another smaller level at the very top that’s just a sundeck.

I get out and hold the QR code that Kelsey sent against the reader. I pull her car into the garage and retrieve my pack and the bags of groceries. Seeing Deo’s stuff, still scattered over the backseat, is like a gut punch, but I shove it back into his bag.

Kelsey’s sister had very different taste, or maybe there’s a mandatory seashore décor if you live near the ocean. The entire place is painted in varying shades of blue and seafoam green. All of the lamps in the liv- ing room have seashells glued around the base, the windows look like portholes, and there’s a fake-looking pointy-nosed fish over the mantel.

I call from the cottage phone, as I promised Kelsey I would. She answers on the second ring and I release the breath I was holding. She’s safe.

“Anna! I’m glad you made it. I was beginning to worry. Did you have trouble with the car?”

“No,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice light. “No problems. We stopped for gas, and I took it kind of slow on the road. Didn’t want to get pulled over.”

“You looked exhausted when you were here. I’m glad Deo managed to keep you awake on the drive.”
I clench my fist, digging my nails into the palm of my hand. “Yeah. He was great.”

“Well, get some sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.” “Yeah, I’m wiped out. Thanks again, Kelsey.” I grab a bottle of water, then drag myself up the stairs. Four bedrooms, each with a bath. I drop my backpack onto the bed in a room that overlooks the water and cross over to the sliding glass door that leads onto the deck. The road in front of the house is so narrow that you only see it if you look straight down from the railing. Otherwise, you can almost imagine that you’re directly over the water. It’s too cold to leave the door open, but I crack it to let some fresh air in.

When I put my phone on the nightstand—surprise, surprise— there are three calls from Aaron. Two texts from Taylor. Eventually they’ll call Kelsey to get the address, and once they tell her about Deo, she’ll either give it to them or come looking for me herself. But Kelsey will be on her flight to Indianapolis in about an hour, so I don’t think they’ll reach her before tomorrow morning at the earliest.

I set the alarm on my phone for 7:00 a.m., turn the ringer back on, and crawl under the covers. My mind is still racing. And each time it circles back around to Deo, it’s like a knife twisting. As much as I want to take the two pills that are still in my pocket, I put them back in the bottle. If Dacia, Cregg, or whoever is holding him tries to contact me—

The phone buzzes and I bolt straight up, knocking the phone off the nightstand in my rush to grab it. The timing is almost like someone is reading my mind. Which, given the events of the past twenty-four hours, might actually be the case.

The text is just four words, two of them misspelled. 152

The Delphi Effect

  Patients is a virtute.

I type in that I’ll do whatever they say, but before I can hit send, more words start popping up:

   Silents is golden.

Do not call police. Wait for instructiun.

   Fiecare pasare, pe limba ei piere.

I have no idea what the last one means, but I hit send on my response:

Just let me know what you want. Please don’t hurt him!

Silence, which I find not at all golden, is what I get in return.

I run the last quote through Google Translate. The answer is an ominous “each bird perishes by her tongue,” which seems to be Romanian for be careful what you say.

I send several more pleas, and get nothing in return. So I try calling the number that sent the texts.

A chipper woman’s voice comes on immediately. “This number has been changed, disconnected, or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”
 

About the Author

Rysa Walker is the author of the bestselling CHRONOS Files series. Timebound, the first book in the series, was the Young Adult and Grand Prize winner of the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Rysa grew up on a cattle ranch in the South, where she was a voracious reader. On the rare occasions when she gained control of the television, she watched Star Trek and imagined living in the future, on distant planets, or at least in a town big enough to have a stoplight. She currently lives in North Carolina, where she is working on the next installment in The Delphi Trilogy. If you see her on social media, please tell her to get back to her Writing Cave.

Author Links:

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