"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 kimchi 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."