Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

The Middlemist Red blossoms framed the porch, but now they appeared to be simply normal plants, very large roselike bushes rather than something much more. He was suddenly completely alone when before, since entering the garden, he’d been saturated with awareness and vitality. His blood had buzzed with life, sparking with energy and an ever-flowing feed of sensory information. His body, his mind, forming countless connections to his surroundings, bright hot splashes of light, now completely burned out.

He took a deep breath. Whatever Whitney had done to him, he had done to Camellia first. She had been experimented on long before Jonas was. And by his instinctive revulsion over discovering yet another piece of his monstrous makeup, Jonas had broadcast a violent rejection not only of what Whitney had done to him but of Camellia herself. Everything about her. Who she was. What she was. At a basic level, he’d made her aware he was repulsed by what she was.

Jonas groaned inwardly. He’d just made a major blunder. He hadn’t been thinking in terms of Camellia. How could he explain to a woman who had endured years of Whitney’s experiments what it had been like for him those first years after he and his teammates had received Whitney’s “enhancements”? The discoveries and the accidental deaths? The self-loathing when innocent people you’d sworn to protect paid the price because you had no idea of the power you wielded or how to control it? He hadn’t marshaled his thoughts. He hadn’t considered he would have to, but he should have. His response had been a knee-jerk reaction.

“Camellia, forgive me. I don’t do well any time Peter Whitney’s name comes up in conjunction with what he did to me. I still haven’t come to terms with some of the things I did before I knew what I was capable of. Now, at the first sign of anything new or different in me, a part of me panics.”

It was difficult for a man like him to confess this sort of vulnerability—this sort of weakness—to a woman he wanted to claim for his own. Yeah, maybe he had a bit too much pride, but damn it, no man wanted his woman to think he was weak.

He hoped she could hear the sincerity in his voice, because she had already distanced herself so far from him, he knew she couldn’t feel the truth. In a way, that was a good thing, because he still loathed the idea of having a fungus be a part of him. What did that even mean? Why had Whitney ever thought to put that in him?

Of course, if the fungus was the source of his early warning system, he could certainly see the value. Was that possible? If so, it was an invaluable resource, and one he shouldn’t have been so ready to reject simply because he didn’t like the word “fungus.” Or because it came from Whitney. Some of the enhancements he had given them had turned out to be assets once they learned how to control them, and Lily had taught them how to put up the barriers needed to protect their unfiltered brains.

Camellia sent him a vague smile, one that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. No longer entirely blue or silver but somewhere in between, her eyes had gone to those of a cat. He found himself looking at a focused leopard, not a laughing woman. He’d hurt her. Really hurt her. She’d spent a lifetime being regarded as a science project. No doubt the guards in the laboratory had called her a freak more than once. Probably often.

“There’s always a danger when listening to someone else’s private thoughts of hearing no good about oneself.”

Her voice was light. Just the right hint of amusement, as if she were sharing an inside joke with him, but he knew she wasn’t. She wasn’t sharing anything of herself at all anymore. Not only had she withdrawn completely from him, but she’d also somehow cut him off from that extraordinary network he’d tapped into.

“Don’t do this, Camellia. My reaction had nothing to do with you. I’m just so damned tired of finding out all the different crap Whitney put inside me. Every time I know what I am and feel like I’m starting to get a handle on it, something new pops up.” He watched her closely, hating that an unguarded reaction had damaged the growing trust between them. “I never understood how I could sense danger so much faster than the rest of my team. I thought I had some kind of built-in radar no one else had. I mean all of us have the acute senses of animals. Leopards. Wolves. Owls.”

Deliberately, he named the ones he knew she would be drawn to because she had those in her as well. “But I always had that little extra something they didn’t. I was able to warn the team of danger long before anyone else felt it, and I couldn’t tell Ryland or any of the others how I did it. Now that I know, I feel especially foolish for having such a negative reaction to the very thing that saved my team so often.”