She nodded her head and drank some more tea. She set the cup down on the glass-covered table beside the sofa. "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't take any more of that muck. I need a drink."

So much for my assessment of character.

Cameron got up and went looking for liquor. Colleen, face streaked with mascara and lipstick, looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

"What am I going to do?" she asked.

Chapter 20

"Improvise." Her eyes were chasms of confusion. She started shaking her head. "No, no. I don't 'improvise. I plan things, I prepare for contingencies. This is—this is not something I have any plan for."

I started thinking out loud. "I suppose you could think of it as it Cameron had an exotic medical condition that requires a change of lifestyle. He's still your son. He's still a decent, intelligent young man. He's just… different."

Her mouth turned down in distaste. "You sound like a counselor." Cameron came back with the cognac bottle and some glasses. He poured generous measures for all of us. I gave him a sharp look.

He returned a "what?" look and a shrug. "It's alcohol, I can practically absorb it through my skin. It's not going to hurt me." He sat down next to his mother.

We sipped. Colleen Shadley gulped. She shuddered and finished off her drink.

"All right, Cam," she gasped, setting the glass down, "tell me how this happened. Help me understand it."

He refilled her glass, avoiding meeting her eyes. "Well, Mom, the details are kind of unpleasant. I did something I felt was necessary, but I did it badly. Can't we just say that it happened because I thought I knew more than I did?"

"All right. Someday I expect to get the whole story out of you, but I can let that go for now. Go on with the rest."

"I met someone who wasn't very pleasant and he took advantage of me, because I wasn't as clever as I thought."

Colleen stiffened and began to cough on alcohol fumes. She waved Cameron away as he tried to help and caught her breath on her own. "Go on," she repeated. Her eyes watered. She dabbed at them as her son talked. "I got sick."

"I remember you were ill for a while after Christmas." "More like February, Mom, but it doesn't matter. Anyhow, I was mega-sick and I didn't know why. And when I found out, I didn't know what to do. So I tried to get some help, but things haven't worked out so well. I've got a few problems to settle before everything will be… acceptable. But the plain fact is I'm a vampire, and that's not going to change. It can't be undone. I just have to live with it—or unlive with it," he added and laughed. His mother made a face. "Oh, come on, Mom. It's a joke." She mumbled her discomfort. "Mom, can you live with it?"

This time, Colleen played with her glass. "I suppose I don't have a choice. You're my son. I can't just pretend you've ceased to exist. I can't—I couldn't bring myself to… do anything to you. Are—are you really all right?"

"As all right as this gets. Better, now that you know. Harper and I are working on the rest. See, I have a plan now, like you always tell me. So it's going to be OK. But I could use some of your help, too, Mom."

"My help? What can I do?" She sounded younger than her son. "We'll have to work out some new arrangements with the trust—I can't go to classes in the daytime. And I need to make some new living arrangements, too. My car's nice, but the trunk is kind of cramped."

Her smile wobbled. "I'm sure we can think of something. Oh, Cameron, why couldn't you have gotten into some normal kind of trouble?"

"Just precocious, I guess."

We sat around the white room for another hour, working out details—including my billing. By the time I left I was envying Cam his cozy bed in the trunk of the Camaro. I dragged myself home to my own, head bobbing like a somnolent drinky-bird's all the way.

When I got out of bed, noon was cracking overhead with the bing-bang-bong of the Catholic clock. I rushed for my office.

My first job was contacting Lenore Fabrette to say I could pay for the information. She replied that she'd gotten it and would bring it on Thursday, as planned.

I tried to make a little more sense out of the TPM papers I already had and the new ones that came in over the fax, but most of it was too dense with corporate legalese to plow through with speed. I set the pile aside and made more phone calls, phone calls, phone calls. I had a date for dinner with a friend and I didn't want to miss a moment of normalcy before diving into an evening of interviewing vampires.

Even at a quarter to eleven, it seemed that the vampire community was still just waking up. It was nearly midnight before I found Alice in the top-floor lounge of a downtown hotel.

The host at the door pointed her out to me: a petite woman with deep red hair and the same shadowy, filmy-gleaming eyes that Cameron exhibited. She lurked at a corner table, watching. I skirted around the dance floor and approached.

"Hi," I started. "Are you Alice Liddell?"

She looked up from under arched brows. "At the moment." She stretched one corner of her broad mouth into a smile and floated a hand at my side of the table. Alternating waves of heat and cold flushed over me. "Why don't you sit down?" she offered. My knees resisted a bit as I sat across from her, frowning as I wrestled with my sense of familiarity.

Her amused, silent evaluation hammered my spine with spikes of frozen fire. I didn't have to look sideways to see that all light around her seemed to have been sucked away, leaving a pulsing corona of dark red around her pale face. I checked my shudder and stared back at her. My stomach did a slow roll. Apparently, vampires brought their Grey effects with them, whether I liked it or not.

Her voice was chill velvet, stroking over my skin. "How do you happen to come looking for me?"

I had to swallow before I could talk. "Cameron Shadley sent me. My name is Harper Blaine—"

She seemed to be on the verge of laughing—a sound I did not want to hear. "Yes, I know. Do you smoke?" she purred, picking up an old-fashioned cigarette case from the table. "Oh, no. Of course you don't. You're one of those delicious, healthy people." She extracted a pale cigarette from the case with the tips of her long, manicured nails and placed it between her lips with all the slow tease of a golden-age movie siren. She could have ignited it with her own heat. Instead, she used a slim gold lighter and let her first drag ooze out of her mouth. It made a rising blue veil between us. "What does Cameron think I can do for you?"

"You know about his problems with Edward?"

"Of course."

"I think he was hoping you could offer some kind of entree."

She chuckled and I felt a pain in my stomach. "How delicious," she said, twisting my meaning. Her teeth showed a little. They seemed very wet and very sharp. "Just how well do you know Cameron?"

"Why? Are you not in the habit of dining on the friends of friends?" I shot back. "Cameron is my client and I know a vampire when I see one." I glared at her and refused to drop my eyes, even though her gaze razored my spine. I wanted to throw up, or scream, or anything that would make her stop looking at me, but I clenched my teeth and sat still.

She played with her cigarette. "What an interesting proposition you are, Ms. Blaine. I wonder if you appreciate it."

"Probably, considering I believe you could snap my spine before I could see you move," I replied. "But Cameron knows where I am and how to find me just as well as you do. So, do you want to break my neck or do you want to help us?"

She hummed a cloud of smoke at me and propped her pointed chin in her hand. "Oh, I want to help, believe me. Cameron's a… sweet boy." She smirked and sat back in her chair, sipping at her glass of… something. "What does he think I can do for you?"