Greywalker - Kat Richardson [66]
Cameron stared down at his hands clasped in his lap. He sighed in disgust. “It really is a mess, isn’t it?”
“It could be worse, but it’s not good. Why didn’t you get in touch with anyone?”
“At first, I thought I was just . . . sick. I didn’t believe all that vampire junk. I thought I might have something really nasty, but I figured I’d either get better soon, or I’d have to go to a doctor. When I found out what was happening to me—I mean when I believed it—I panicked.”
“You seem to have adapted. If you’d called your mother, you could have avoided panicking her, too.” I wanted to kick myself for sounding like a stereotype.
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hi, Mom. Sorry I can’t make the birthday party, I’m a vampire and I wouldn’t want to upset you by biting the guests’?”
“How about ‘I’m sick, but I’m going to be fine and I’ll see you soon’?”
He sighed again and lowered his head even farther. “I guess I didn’t think, but I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not very good at this vampire stuff.”
“You mean you don’t just wake up one night and know how to be a vampire?”
“No. Usually you have somebody around to take care of you, teach you, until you can take care of yourself.”
“So, what happened to your . . . tutor?”
Cameron shrank. “He threw me out,” he whispered.
In a cartoon, the wooden desktop would have slammed into my lower jaw as my mouth popped open. Cameron squirmed and snuck a peek at me out of the corner of his eye. I clenched my eyes shut and smoothed out my face.
“Threw you out?” I repeated, choking on a dry throat. I swallowed and restarted. “Why?”
“He said—He didn’t—I didn’t want—I—” Frustrated, he plunged his face into his hands. “I can’t do this!” he howled. “I suck at this!”
I didn’t laugh. I stood up and walked over to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder . . . and fell straight through to the Grey.
I couldn’t breathe. I was cold, frozen, falling, sliding through something writhing, oozing, squeezing into me. Black cold. Cameron raised his head and looked through me with a gaze like a razor. I yanked my hand away from that burning cold/hot, live/dead flesh. . . . and stumbled backward, falling against the desk and sitting down hard on its top, gasping.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, jumping up to offer assistance.
I pushed at the air between us. “Don’t touch me!”
He recoiled as from a blow, drawing his hands back against his chest.
I gnawed air and fought back to some kind of equilibrium.
“I—I really wasn’t expecting that.” I straightened myself up and tried to smile.
“What happened? Are you OK? You . . . flickered.” He peered at me, ducking his head to squint at my face. “What are you?” he asked, backing away a step.
I laughed. “Are you afraid of me?” I waved a hand over my body. “Look at me—an ex-dancer with a run in her stocking and rips in her blouse. Why should you be scared of me? You’re the vampire, the transcender of death. Who the hell am I?”
“You . . . you’re something—I don’t know. You’re—you’re more here than most people.”
“I’m more somewhere. Look, Cameron, I’ll tell you my nasty secret, then you can tell me yours. OK?”
SEVENTEEN
Cameron gave a slow nod. “I seem to be able to see things most people can’t,” I started. “I met a couple recently who said there’s a . . . another sphere of existence sort of parallel to, or on top of, the normal one. The paranormal. In between here and there, there’s a place where things like ghosts and vampires exist, the same way ordinary people do in the ordinary world. Making sense?”
“I get it.”
I nodded and made my best stab at the story, dawdling over my words. “I got into an accident a while ago, and afterward I started seeing, moving, into this . . . place. It’s called the Grey. Sometimes I just see things like film projected on fog. Sometimes I can go all the way in—but I try not to. I don’t know if I leave the ordinary altogether or not. But I’m getting pretty good at catching sight of things that sort of waver in the Grey, even when I’m here.”
“You mean like ghosts?”
“Yeah. I see a lot of ghosts.