Greywalker

by Kat Richardson

  I laughed at that. I felt as tough as wet Kleenex. “I’m new to this world myself, Cameron. You’ve already exhausted all my contacts among the undead.” And if I took this case, I would have no choice about associating with the Grey and its residents.

  “I’ll give you some names. I think they’ll talk to you, just because they’re bored. I know I can’t expect you to work a miracle, but, hey, it’s worth a shot. I’m not doing so great at it.”

  “Why would Edward even be willing to negotiate with me? What can I offer him?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m hoping you can figure out by talking to the others. Y’know, maybe once you have a better idea of what the others think, then you’ll know what Edward’s buttons are and we can push them.”

  “You’ve got a lot of confidence in me,” I observed.

  “Why not? You tracked me down.”

  “That wasn’t as hard as you seem to think. This idea of yours is a different situation. I’m also not quite finished with your mother’s case, either. There’s still the matter of informing her of your situation,” I reminded him.

  Cameron squirmed in his chair. “Can’t that wait a little longer? Until after we fix this?”

  “Have you ever heard the word ‘unethical,’ Cameron? We have no idea how long it will take to solve your problems with Edward and the rest of the local bloodsucking brotherhood.”

  “Hey, they’re vampires, not lawyers,” he joked.

  I gave him a thin smile. “I’m willing to try this, but you have to help me with your mother first.”

  “That kind of sounds like blackmail to me. Isn’t that unethical?” he demanded.

  “No. It’s a contractual obligation. You’re the subject of an investigation right now. Until that status changes, I’m not inclined to do anything for you. You want to change that, you need to call your mother and tell her you’re all right.”

  “But that’s not true!” he protested.

  “Didn’t Mara tell you to learn to lie? Start now. It’s true enough. But whatever you choose to do, I am going to call Colleen first thing in the morning and tell her I’ve found you and you’re OK. Technically, as your trust’s executrix, she’s not entitled to more than that. As your mother… that’s another matter. You’re over twenty-one and not of diminished capacity, but morally… What you choose to tell her is up to you, but you’d better come up with something satisfying, or she’ll be on you worse than me.”

  “Thanks a lot, Harper! What am I supposed to say? ‘Hi, Mom, I’m a Vampire?” he shouted at me.

  I shook my head and pushed myself deep into my chair. “Cameron, sometimes you are a whiny little brat, you know that? You’re spoiled. Oh, and there’s something else you should deal with,” I added, stabbing a finger at him. “Sarah. You did all this for her, remember?

  “Leaving her thinking you might be hurt or in trouble is cruel and selfish. And don’t start in on another pity-wallow with me. Of all people, Sarah is the most likely to believe your story. She could have ended up the same way. Or worse. If you go and tell her the truth, not only will you be helping yourself, you’ll be helping her. She doesn’t understand what Edward did, and she’s beaten herself up about it. You got into this by playing hero, so play on or take a hike.”

  He started to say something, then shut his mouth with a click and looked at the floor. “All right. You’re right. Do you know where she is? I haven’t seen Sarah since this started. I assume she’s not staying with Mom.”

  “She’s living in Bellevue, over by the mall.”

  “At Grandma’s house?”

  “That’s the place. No phone, so you’ll have to go there in person.”

  “I’ll go. Right after we’re done, I swear.”

  “Good. She might have some suggestions about talking to your mom, too.”

  He burst into a megawatt grin. “Yeah, she might!”

  “And when you call your mother, ask her to call me,” I said.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Not one hundred percent. Not yet. Trust isn’t a gift, Cameron. You earn it, and it’s not cheap.”

  He shook his head and looked at me sideways. “You are tough.”

  “So I hear,” I said. “Now, give me your list of names and how to get in contact with your vampires. I’ll start working on it as soon as I hear from your mom.”

  He gave me a short list of names and places and we worked out a contract for the job. I shoved my copy in a file and returned my attention to Cameron.

  “All right. Now tell me what put the wedge between you and Edward.” He looked anywhere but at my eyes and began to fidget. “If you think I’m a bigot who’s going to be offended that you went to bed with a man, you can forget it. Half this town’s gayer than Paris in the spring.”

  “I’m not gay,” he protested.

  “I don’t care,” I pointed out. “Do you want me to repeat that?”

  “No, I get it.” He took a deep breath he didn’t need and launched in. “He’s an arrogant ass.”

  “How very diplomatic of you to tell him so.”

  “I did, too.”

  “Was that all?”

  “No. I didn’t say that much more, but it was all pretty much on the same theme. I mean, I had figured out that he was weird, kinky, sadistic, and a major control freak before I even got close to him, from what Sarah told me. It took me a while to get how psychotic he is. He just doesn’t believe that the consequences of any of his actions are ever going to boomerang on him. He’s beyond arrogant. He’s a sociopath. Nobody’s rules apply to him.”

  I gave a slow nod. Maybe sociopathy was in the eye of the beholder, in this case. If you’re not a mortal, why care what they think? I started mulling the implications, then stopped. Cameron was staring at me, as if he could see the processes revving up in my head. He made a bitter little stretching of his mouth and went on.

  “He didn’t give a damn about what he’d done to Sarah. It was five minutes’ diversion for him, and then he forgot it. He didn’t give a damn what he did to me or what he’s done to me. He never asked for anyone’s consent.”

  “You said you went along with him willingly in exchange for Sarah,” I reminded him.

  “I did, but I didn’t understand the whole thing. How could I? But he knew I didn’t know what I was getting into. I was stupid for jumping into a situation I didn’t have a real handle on. But what happened was not what I agreed to. Somewhere along the line, he changed his mind. I didn’t know he was going to—to turn me into a vampire! I don’t think he meant to, at first. But he just went ahead with what he wanted and he didn’t care about what I thought.

  “I wasn’t mad at first. I was too scared and confused. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I still wasn’t sure that he was a vampire. I mean, how do you wrap your mind around that concept for the first time? For real?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. I hadn’t wrapped my mind around it yet, either. Broken contracts I understood. The rest would have to wait.

  “When I told him what was happening, he laughed at me,” Cameron continued. “He thought it was funny that I was sick and puking because I was trying to eat regular food. Then he explained it to me and he laughed even harder. I was humiliated and upset, but I was so sick I begged him to help me. He agreed because I was ‘amusing.’

  “I was like a trained monkey that he liked to show off to his friends. I listened to them, though, and I figured out that they knew things weren’t going too smooth for me because of Edward. Except for the humiliation, I didn’t even care. I was getting through it and that was what mattered to me. But Edward… likes messing with people. Does it like a sport. I mean ordinary humans who have no idea. He can be cold or nasty to other vampires, too, but it isn’t the same. He’s got a whole collection of butt kissers and flunkies. He treats anyone he thinks is inferior like an animal or a toy. And he seems to think all ordinary humans are just dirt to walk on.

  “When I started to feel OK, I told him I
didn’t like it. I told him, y’know, what comes around goes around. But he was still laughing at me. He said I didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, that I was a ‘foolish little boy’ who was still more animal than vampire, that I should shut up, mind my betters, and do as I was told. He also told me that I should stop thinking that the rules and morals of ‘stupid animals’ had any hold on a higher species. ‘Higher species,’ ” Cameron snorted.

  “I flipped a bit. I told him he was scum. That he wasn’t any more evolved than a protozoa whipping its tail through the mud of the primordial ooze. That he wasn’t any better than an oversize tsetse fly, sucking the blood of creatures better than him and infecting them with his own brand of sleeping sickness. I said that every society had rules of some kind and that it was only bullies who preyed on those weaker or less fortunate than they and that any reasonable society would pitch someone like him straight into the nearest volcano for recycling.”

  Cameron slumped back in his chair, the agitation of his recitation seeming to drain him of energy. “He beat the crap out of me. Then he dumped me on a street corner in Tacoma and told me the next time I spoke to him, he’d stake me out on the top of the Washington Mutual Tower for the morning sun. And that’s the last word I ever had out of him.”

  I had to take a couple of breaths and slow my brain back down before I could say anything. “That was quite a speech.”

  “Yeah. The one time in my life I was eloquent,” he admitted.

  “And after that, no one else was willing to talk to you, either?”

  “That’s right. Alice warned me off once, but even she won’t look at me anymore.”

  “Alice?”

  “Alice Liddell. Another vampire.” Cameron waved away the details for now. “Doesn’t like Edward, but even she said I might have gone a bit too far.”

  “You regret what you said?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I do. Not the sentiment, but… losing it like that. He could have killed me. It was just stupid. I should have found some other way to get out of the situation.” He was fidgeting again.

  “So what you’re so embarrassed about is that you lost your temper?”

  “Well, yeah… it’s a pretty ugly temper.”

  I leaned forward and gazed at him until he looked back at me. I managed to hold his stare even while the sensation of cold knives shredded me. “You’re an idiot,” I said.

  “Hey. That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”

  “No,” I replied. “You dove into a situation you hadn’t fully evaluated and didn’t understand. Under the circumstances, that makes sense. But after that, you only made your own situation worse. You should be embarrassed. Your temper got you into deep kimchee with Edward and it’ll get you in just as deep with me, if you don’t keep a lid on it. You ought to be scared out of your damned mind. I am.”

  I sat back, tired out by my own annoyance and underlying fear.

  “I am scared,” he muttered. “I’m scared of everything. Daylight. People. Myself. I’m afraid that I’ll hurt someone. What if I attack my sister or my mother? What if I flip out and kill someone? I don’t need to kill for food, but what if I do it by accident? All my friends come down to the Square, you know. What if someone figures me out and… and… I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be a monster!”

  Who does? I sighed. “Oh, for the gods’ sweet sakes. You’re not a monster. You didn’t harm the Danzigers, did you?”

  “No, but they knew and they were prepared. They had… magic and stuff.”

  “So do you, if what the Danzigers said is true. You are a creature of magic, a denizen of the Grey. This is going to be hard,” I added, shaking my head.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not good with this ghosts-and-magic stuff, so I can only do things in the way I already know, and that’s the ordinary human way. Investigation and legwork and shuffling papers. If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’ll have to do, but I hope it won’t get us killed.”

  “It has to work… I know you can make it work. You just have to.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Luckily, it seems that Edward used a condo that belongs to TPM to house Sarah. I’m already trying to track down his connection to TPM. You wouldn’t happen to know his last name?”

  “Edward’s? I don’t know if I ever heard it. But TPM… Wow. They’re pretty heavy.”

  “Yes, they are. And here’s a funny coincidence for you. In addition to the condo building, they also own several clubs in Seattle, including two in Pioneer Square

  .”

  “They do?” Cameron leaned forward. “Which ones?”

  “The After Dark, which I’ve never heard of, and Dominic’s, which happens to employ the bouncer who confirmed that you were in Pioneer Square

  just last night.”

  “Jesus H—I thought Edward owned Dominic’s. But if he’s connected to TPM…”

  “Edward can’t be the principal of Dominic’s. Steve the bouncer told me he’d never heard of Edward.”

  “He’s lying. Maybe he never heard his first name—that’s a possibility—but he sure knows him on sight. TPM. That might explain why so many people kowtow to Edward, though. And he seems to be a very important guy among the vampires. Lots of bootlicking there, too. He said I was out and by the next night I might as well have been the invisible man.”

  “So you don’t know what his connection is to TPM? Or exactly what his position is relative to the vampire community?” I clarified.

  “No, I don’t, but I’d guess if he’s not the top dog, he’s very close to him.”

  “Oh, terrific. I’ve just agreed to take on Seattle’s top bloodsucker. Thanks, Cameron. I always did like to live dangerously.”

  “Well, I didn’t say it was going to be a normal job.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  At seven a.m. Wednesday morning, I rolled out of bed to stagger around the water tower. It was the worst I’d felt in a week, but I was doing much better at keeping the Grey at bay—at least when there were no ghosts or witches or vampires around. It was an ever-present thin mist dodging around the edges of my vision now, throwing occasional ghost-shapes over the landscape ahead. The constant flickering at the corners of my eyes left me a little dizzy.

  When I stumbled home, I called Colleen Shadley to say I’d found Cameron.

  Silence sat on the line a while before she asked, “Under what circumstances?”

  “Living in his car down in Pioneer Square

  .” “Why? That’s not like him.” “He had a personal problem and he panicked.” “Ridiculous. Why didn’t he call me? I certainly could have taken care of it.”

  “He was scared but wanted to take care of the problem himself. He got in a little over his head. I’ve agreed to help him deal with it,” I explained. “He should be calling you soon. If you don’t hear from him, please let me know.”

  “It must be drugs,” she stated. “It’s the only way I can account for this behavior.”

  That sounded familiar. “This has nothing to do with drugs. He’s just young and his situation was more complicated than he realized.”

  “What is this situation you keep talking about?” she demanded.

  “Cameron wanted to discuss it with you himself.” I was biting my tongue pretty hard as my temper rose. Sarah’s view of her mother snapped into focus.

  “I paid for this investigation. You have a contractual obligation to tell me.”

  The temperature of my voice hovered near freezing. “No, Colleen. The contract gives me discretion on matters not directly bearing on the job, and I’m exercising that clause. You paid for me to find your son, not to spy on him. If he doesn’t call you within twenty-four hours, then I’ll be glad to discuss whatever you want. But your son asked for some time to straighten out a few things and I’m giving him that courtesy.”

  “Will I be billed for this ‘courtesy’?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I
hear from Cameron. Or not.” She cracked the phone into the cradle as she hung up.

  I slithered out of my sweats and running shoes and flopped back into bed. I felt like a Chihuahua in a wind tunnel. Flat on my back, eyes closed… I was more tired than I should have been, but the constant wearing nausea was gone. I couldn’t see the Grey. I was aware of it, but it wasn’t immediate. Without the flickering, the treacherous false ground, the heaving, unstill world on top of the world, only fatigue remained. It was the Grey that left me queasy and worn, the uneven, sporadic view, the constant expenditure of energy to figure out what was real and hold back the rest.

  Groaning, I got up and called Mara. Inside an hour, I was back in the Danzigers’ kitchen.

  I held on to a cup of coffee, but I wasn’t drinking it. “I have to get a handle on this. I know I’m a lousy student, but bear with me. I agreed to help Cameron with his problem, but I’ll have to get closer to the Grey to do it.”

  Mara started to say something and I waved her down. “And much as I don’t like it, you were right. This isn’t going away. I don’t want to be a witch or a psychic or a Greywalker or anything else. I just want to do my job, but I can’t seem to without help. Cameron is… well, he’s not quite like the rest of us, and I’m going to have to deal with more like him. And this other investigation keeps turning up dead men. I’ve never dealt with this many recently deceased in my life. I’m at three now and the coincidence is bugging me. What’s with the dead guys?”

  Mara swallowed a bite of muffin. “I’ve been considering that. You’re like a pebble in a pond, putting out Grey ripples, and all the fishes in that pond come swimming to see. That’s part of the difficulties you’ve been having. They swarm around and frighten you. And perhaps a few of them are pushing you in some way you can’t yet discern.”

  “You mean like that geas thing?”

  “No. What I’m wondering, now that it’s come up, is this. If a vampire, like Cameron, can have problems which need help solving, why not other creatures of the Grey? Some of them can’t communicate well, and others may need help which cannot be easily found. And here you are. Perhaps the number of dead you are turning up is no coincidence at all, but a sign that you’re dealing with something out of the ordinary. And as they’re attracted to you, so are a lot of other Grey things.”