"Cameron has been having problems… adjusting. He's hired me to help make some kind of reconciliation with Edward and work out a way to receive the mentoring he didn't get. He suggested that you might be sympathetic to his position."

"Sympathy is expensive. What are you offering in exchange for my help?"

"That depends on what you bring to the table. If you can give information or make a suggestion that helps me out, I may be able to help you. So…?"

"Kill him."

"Edward?"

"Of course."

"Is that your suggestion or just what you want?"

"Both." She leaned forward, trying to snare me with her stare. "Edward's been in charge long enough, and he's getting long in the tooth, making mistakes. Just look at Cameron. And he doesn't even know about you. And what kind of leader is that, who can't even protect us from one little boy and his" — she looked me over again, licking smoke from her lips—"very interesting friend."

I felt like something nasty was sliding over me as I looked back into her eyes.

She continued, grinning very slightly. "I think it's time we had someone a little younger in charge. Someone more capable of sympathizing with a young man in a hard spot. Someone with sharper teeth. Her lips closed slowly over the knife-edge gleam of her canines.

I felt myself leaning forward, breathing shallow, numb breaths. "You hate him."

She raised her eyebrows. "Hate? Oh, yes." She hissed voluptuous delight. "With every drop of borrowed blood. It would be so easy for you to attack in daylight when he's weakest. You don't even have to kill him, just show his weakness."

"I'm not getting it."

"Let me tell you the way it is with us. We're like wolves, and the toughest wolf gets to lead the pack. But if he shows weakness, instability, insanity, the pack will shred him. He must be strong and his actions must be in our best interest. Attack him, show his weakness, and they will kill him for you." "I see."

"Yes," she hissed. "You do. Once Edward is truly dead and I am in charge, I will, of course, be very, very grateful."

Something crawled over my skin. Twitching my gaze aside, I caught a red thread of movement in the Grey and pulled back from it, taking a deep breath and shaking my head. The red thing slid away, dissolving onto the air. I blinked rapidly, shedding a sudden sleepiness, but unable to get the ringing of Alice's voice entirely out of my head.

"What's to stop him from killing me first?"

She laughed, and I tried not to cringe. "You don't look like a threat. Who regards the twitching of insects? Once the mud is stirred up, it'll be too late and killing you off won't clear his waters. Quite the opposite. He'll be far too busy to squash you. When the pack turns on him, they will rend him limb from limb." She paused and licked her lips before taking another sip of her drink. She shivered and smiled horrors at me. I swallowed bile.

"I don't see how Cameron benefits from Edward's demise."

"By my gratitude," she growled.

I shook my head. "No. I don't think so. Not inclined to rely on the generosity of vampires, considering Edward's example. Who protects me from you?"

She ground her teeth. "I assure you you'll come to no harm if you do what I say."

I managed to shake my head. "I won't kill anyone. I'm not a hired gun and I'm not interested in playing in your political pool."

Alice leaned forward and her eyes blazed. "Then what good are you to me?"

"I'm not here to help you. I'm here to help my client. I'll find Edward's weaknesses, his mistakes, rake up the muck, but the rest is up to you. And you'll owe me."

She laughed and stabbed out her cigarette with a hard jab in the ashtray. She sipped her drink and watched me over the rim, smiling razor slashes. "All right, we'll do it your way, for now. But I will still be watching you." Then she sat forward and put out her hand, palm up. "Let me see your list."

"What list?"

"The list of names. Cameron must have given you one, else how would you have found me? Hand it over," she demanded, beckoning her crimson-clawed fingers at me.

I dragged out the list. Alice snatched it and read it. A new gleam entered her eyes. "Oh, very interesting…" She pulled a fountain pen from her tiny purse and wrote a new name at the bottom: Wygan.

"There," she said, flinging the page back to me as dismissal. "Start with Carlos. That should loosen up the dirt under Edward's feet. And don't worry—I'll keep Edward's attention off of you. I did promise. By the time you've finished with that lot, his problems will have just started."

I got up from the table and walked out. I could feel her gaze on me all the way to the elevator, like freezing water rolling down my back.

I did not want to follow Alice's orders, though I felt a mental nudging to do so. I stared at the list as the elevator descended. Unfortunately, the closest vampire was Carlos. If I was going to talk to anyone else tonight, it would have to be him.

I was crossing the lobby when my pager went off. I used a desk phone to call the number. Cameron answered at the other end.

"Where are you?" I asked. My head throbbed and a matching ache had grown in my innards.

"I'm at Sarah's place. Uh, she says to say hi and she got two ferrets instead of one."

"I'm happy for her. I just finished talking to Alice and things are… well, they're trickier than I thought. Could you meet me tonight?"

"Not tonight. Tomorrow. Call it an hour after sundown, which is… eight twenty-seven, so, nine thirty?"

"All right. I'll see you then. For now, I'm going to see Carlos."

"Oh, man… be careful, Harper. If I don't see you tomorrow, I'll know who to ask, at least."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cameron."

I checked my watch as I left the lobby; it was twelve thirty-nine and dread was twisting in my stomach. I did not want to precipitate a palace coup, but Alice's point about the protective behavior of vampires was giving me an idea. I didn't know if I could manage it, but my other options seemed feeble. I had to trust Alice to cover my tracks as she'd said. If she hated Edward enough, she would. I was banking on hate.

The list said I could find Carlos at Adult Fantasies, a sex shop just behind a strip of businessmen's motels from which they probably culled most of their clientele.

Less than ten minutes' walk from the swanky shops and condos of downtown, the tangled area of odd-shaped blocks housed a strip joint, two all-night bar-and-grills, and Adult Fantasies in their own little commerce park of public embarrassment and private greed. Efforts to move them off or shut them down were never completely successful. Even a plan to make the area into a park had come to naught; eighty years of industrial dumping had made the ground too toxic. So the nighthawks' wasteland remained and Seattle's history of making money off sin continued in all its tawdry glory.

The Adult Fantasies building was a sharply pointed triangle. Full-height windows at the point opened up a view right through the fetish wear and lingerie. I pulled open the plate glass door, went past the stairs that led to the video parlor and "home of live girls," and into the store proper. To my left was the clothing: on my right, the stuff even a sex shop doesn't put in the window. Ahead was a glass counter of X-rated impulse items, guarded by a cash register and a Goth girl.

Her hair was deep, oily purple, her face rice-powder white around black lips and battered-raccoon eyes. Two small, black niobium rings pierced her right eyebrow and a fine silver chain connected the ring in her left nostril to one in her left ear. For balance, the earring on the right was a heavy black spider web with its ruby resident dangling within. A studded leather collar with swags of chain imprisoned her neck. She glanced at me over a notebook she had spread on the countertop. Realizing I was coming straight to her, she closed the book and put her pen down on top of it.