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“What?” I said, not entirely sure I liked being left out of the conversation like this.
He said it was nice to meet us, Cat said. But could we tone it down because we’re giving him a headache.
“You’ll get used to it.” Then I blinked. I’d heard Cat clearly, and her energy hadn’t been touching me. Bear? Say something but stay back.
You sometimes give the strangest orders. He paused and his happy amusement ran like quicksilver through my thoughts. This is a nice development.
It was indeed. I switched my attention back to Jonas. “How clearly can you hear them?”
“It’s not like you and me conversing, or even telepathy. It’s more a muted, muddied stream. If I concentrate, it clears enough for me to understand it.”
“It might intensify with time.”
“And it might just remain an incoherent buzz in the back of my mind.” He touched a hand to my spine and briefly directed me to the left. “How on earth do you cope with the noise, given that there’s . . . how many children in the bunker?”
“One hundred and five. But they don’t all talk at the same time.” I paused, my amusement growing. “Most of the time, anyway.”
“And what about the déchet soldiers in the bunker?”
“They don’t talk to me at all.” My amusement died. “It is likely you’ll be able to hear them, though whether they’d feel inclined to converse with someone they consider an enemy is another question.”
“Something I have no problem with.” His expression bore remnants of the cold distrust he’d cast my way when we first met. “Just because I trust you doesn’t meant I’ve changed my opinion overall on déchet.”
Meaning you dislike us? Because we’re déchet, too, remember?
Bear’s question came across like a shout, making me wince slightly even though I knew he was doing it to help Jonas hear him better—and he succeeded, if the apologetic expression that momentarily crossed Jonas’s face was anything to go by.
“No,” he said. “I don’t hate you. I was simply talking about those who fought in the war. That war killed a lot of my kind.”
Your people killed all of our kind, Cat countered. All except Tiger. Yet we do not hold that against you.
“And I,” Jonas murmured, “have been firmly chastised. Are you sure these little ones of yours are actually children?”
The two ghosts laughed and danced around the both of us. It is so good, Bear said, to be able to talk to another.
I raised an eyebrow, my amusement growing. Meaning you were getting sick of talking to me?
No, but he’s male.
Meaning Jonas had better learn the art of switching off the constant mental chatter sooner rather than later, because Bear was obviously going to make full use of having a man to talk to.
“I’m gathering,” Jonas said, voice wry, “that you three are having a conversation involving me?”
I glanced at him. “You can’t hear it?”
“No. But just heard Cat’s giddy laughter, so I’m figuring either you or Bear said something she found highly amusing.”
I ducked under a tree branch, veered to the left slightly, and stepped onto the remains of an old path that would lead us to a rear section of the museum. There was no accessible entrance into the museum from that area—Central had made sure there was only one way in and out of the place when they decided to transform the remnants of bunker’s day-to-day operational center into the museum, but we would at least be out of the immediate sight of anyone who might be watching in Central. Whether we’d be out of sight of the vampires was a different question, but given I couldn’t smell any hint of them in the slight breeze sweeping up the hill, it was probable they weren’t in the immediate vicinity.
“Bear was just telling me he was happy to finally have an adult male to talk to.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” I grinned. “Be prepared for nonstop chatter until the novelty wears off.”
“Or I learn to filter them. Nuri might be able to help with that.” He glanced at me. “I wonder what you’ve gained out of the DNA exchange.”
I shrugged. “My connection with them has strengthened, but so far, that appears to be it. And you said yourself some people come through without any physical change.”
