Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

“Have I been able to all along?”

Camellia pulled her head back to look up at him. There was a note in his voice she didn’t like. Guilt? Sorrow? It was nearly impossible to read his expression, but she felt the way his heart was troubled, and the burden of grief weighed heavily on him. It was impossible, as close as they were, not to share those feelings with him.

She chose her words carefully. “It took me a very long time to discover I was capable of changing the temperature in the air. I was experimenting with growing things and trying to change them slightly to develop the types of healing properties I needed or food or even weapons from plants. It was a lot of trial and error. Discovering how to change the air or ground temperature was an accidental by-product of everything in my experimentations. It happened in an enclosed structure the first few times. You would have had no way of knowing it could be done. Even though it happened to me, I didn’t realize what it was at first.”

He tipped her head up again toward him until her eyes met his. “Thank you.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I know it is. I can feel that it is, and even hear it, but I could tell you were very careful in the way you wanted to present the facts to me. You’re . . .” He broke off and once more brushed his lips over hers.

This time, his touch was featherlight. A butterfly’s kiss. Gentle. Tender even. Stealing a piece of her heart.

“You two going to keep that up?” There was a wealth of amusement in the voice that came out of the fog.

Camellia stepped back immediately and turned to face the speaker. A slight breeze swept through the fog, thinning it enough so that they could see the newcomer. He was sitting on top of one of the boulders, looking relaxed, smiling. He appeared to be a little taller than Jonas if he stood. His thick sun-bleached blond hair hung around his head as if he were badly in need of a haircut, although on him it looked wildly appealing. With his lean muscles and dark suntan, he looked more like a surfer out of one of the magazines she’d seen than a soldier. She knew not to be deceived. If he was with Jonas, he was every bit as enhanced and therefore dangerous, and she hadn’t spotted him when she’d first looked for him. His energy was still so low she could barely feel his presence.

“Jeff,” Jonas greeted immediately. “This is Camellia. Camellia, Jeff Hollister.” He looked around. “Where’s Kyle?”

“He’s still moving a little slow. He’ll be here in a few minutes,” Jeff assured, that friendly smile still on his face. He was incredibly handsome and appealing in a charming way. There didn’t appear to be any of the rough edges to Jeff that were in Jonas—until you really looked into his eyes.

His eyes were different, the color almost a crystal blue. He looked directly at her with his charming, open smile that warmed his expression but not his eyes. His eyes assessed her, taking in every single detail of her appearance. He didn’t miss anything. She would bet anything she was looking at a man with an enormous IQ. Whitney wouldn’t have missed that. He wouldn’t have liked it either, not if Jeff had been declared more intelligent than he was. Whitney very well could have responded to that perceived threat by making this man’s life much more difficult than Jeff would ever admit to his friends.

Camellia didn’t want to feel empathy for the other members of Jonas’s team. That would only draw her in even more, and she was already having a difficult time deciding whether or not to stay. She knew she shouldn’t. She was already allowing herself to get too close to Jonas. To want to be with him when it was sheer madness. She forced a smile on her face to match surfer boy’s, even though she knew he was lying about their friend Kyle. He wasn’t being slow. He was trying to maneuver around to make certain he had a clear shot in case they needed one.

“So nice to meet you.” Liar, liar. Your good friend Kyle has a rifle on me right now. That’s okay, I’m calling in my soldiers.

That was just a little wicked of her, but she liked seeing the shock in Jonas’s eyes and feeling the alarm spreading through his body.

She used the mycelium network, reaching out to the alpha wolf. I have need of your eyes and ears. Of your nose. Is the pack close?

The answering howl came immediately, quite close, nearly on top of them. The sound was eerie, the call to hunt. It wasn’t a mere summoning of the pack but the call of the alpha that he was already on his prey.