Page 11 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

I stopped for more food on the way home, at the same fast food restaurant. “Sixteen chicken sandwiches, please. Fourteen of them with no buns or?—”

“Seriously? Again?”

I paused a moment, then shrugged. “Yep, again. But with an extra sandwich this time.” I looked down at Twist, and remembered her demand for more mayo. “But I guess this time you can keep the mayo on the plain chicken? She liked the mayo. So two regular sandwiches, one with extra mayo and tomatoes.”

“And the rest just chicken with mayo,” the woman on the speaker said, sounding a little disbelieving.

I couldn’t blame her, since chicken breast with mayo didn’t sound great to me, but I wasn’t a hyper-carnivore who needed all the protein. “Yup. And two orders of fries.”

“Okay then,” she agreed, then gave me the total. When I pulled around to the window and offered her my card, she poked her head out and looked around, then back at me. “Who’s eating all these plain chicken breasts?”

“I mean, they have mayo now,” I hedged. “But honestly, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

As if on cue, Twist poked her head out of my jacket and stared at the young—I suspected high school aged—woman, who cooed. “Aww, isn’t he adorable?”

“She,” I corrected.

“She,” she agreed instantly. Then she turned around and said to someone behind her, “Add an extra plain chicken breast for the kitty. It’ll be good for her.”

I refrained from scoffing and explaining that every one of them was for the kitty, but it was sweet that she was doing a kind thing for Twist, so I wasn’t going to be rude. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that,” I told her when she turned back.

They put it all in an extra bag for me, since I was carrying it on my bike, and off we went, back to the shop.

I parked and headed toward the front, only to find a pile of big black trash bags sitting next to the door.

“Your new friend is sure a hard worker,” Suzy said, slowly pulling some leaves away from her mouth as she spoke. “Never seen anyone move so fast .”

I turned and looked at her, motioning to the trash bags. “Davin did this?”

She gave a slow nod, lifting her head slightly and looking at it. “Sure did. Is he a cleaner?”

My eyes narrowed as I stared at the bags. “I’m not sure, Suz. I’ll let you know.”

I didn’t have to unlock the door to get in, which made sense if Davin was—hell, I didn’t know. What the heck was he doing?

I marched through the empty main office area straight to the back, only to find...very little. I looked around the room in dismay, then back at Davin, who was sitting in my office chair, going through a stack of newspapers.

“Where’s my coffee maker?” I demanded.

He looked up at me, one brow lifted. “The broken one, with no pot?”

“I was going to fix it.” Maybe. Maybe I was going to fix it.

I wasn’t going to tell him that part, though.

I’d tried to find a replacement pot, but they didn’t make the same model anymore, and it hadn’t been the standard size and shape.

Then I’d forgotten about it, because who had a ton of time to spend on coffee, when I didn’t even like coffee that much?

He shrugged. “I looked up the parts and they were more expensive than just getting a new one.”

I glared at him, because that was just wasteful. I’d been saving it because I didn’t want to add to a landfill when it was a mostly functional object. Kind of functional. Ish. I swept my gaze over the whole room, trying to locate all the damage he’d done. “What about the extra office chair?”

“Also broken. You had the wrong base for it, and the upholstery smelled like rat piss.” He motioned to the newspapers he was going through. “These are from all last year, and I’ve only found you or your mother mentioned in one, so I’m tossing the rest, yeah?”

“I...” Why had I been keeping those? I didn’t really remember, honestly. So instead of defending the pile of newspapers, I just whined. “My stuff.”

“Yes, I understand,” he said, and his tone was weirdly agreeable. Then he continued, “You Americans call it hoarding, right?”

“I am not a hoarder. Those things were all useful. I?—”

The look on his face was...well fuck, it reminded me of my mother’s expressions.

Like I was the most ridiculous person ever to attempt personhood, and he was not having my shit.

“The ancient tube television that didn’t even have a plug attached to the cord?

The filing cabinet that was rusted shut?

The melted plastic folders sitting on the broken hotplate that sparked when I unplugged it?

The math homework dated two-thousand-three? ”

“That was my emotional support math homework,” I insisted.

His eyes narrowed. “I actually saved the homework, since I thought there might be some sentimental value. The teacher said nice things on it. But don’t use actual mental health issues to pretend something is important when it’s clearly not. It cheapens the real problems people have.”

I scowled at that, because how did he know I didn’t have real problems?

The pile of homework alone probably said something about my failure to exist as an adult human being, or whatever.

Daddy issues? No, probably Mother issues, because I loved her, but also.

..Mother. The woman who’d forced an unasked for business and business partner on me, and I’d just accepted it rather than arguing. Clearly, there were issues.

Before I could insist that the hot plate was, in fact, important to my mental health, he cut me off. “If you cared about these things, you’d take better care of them. They wouldn’t all be broken. These are things you meant to do, to build, to make, to organize, and just never did.”

“You’ve been talking to my mother,” I accused, because there was no other way he could have pegged the situation so easily, and his return head-cock and lifted eyebrow said “no shit” right back.

Because of course he’d been talking to my mother. Mother had sent him to me. She’d probably warned him that I was a thirty-something man child who was incapable of doing the most basic things to care for himself.

But hey, I had done the most basic thing! Sure, it was two in the afternoon, and I’d eaten leftover garlic butter asparagus for breakfast, but I had lunch. I held up the bag, still scowling at Davin. “And to think I bought you lunch.”

That got me a second lifted brow.

Also, a plaintive meow as Twist burrowed up out of my coat pocket. “It isn’t for me?”

I frowned at her. “Of course it’s for you. There’s just some for him too. And some for me.”

She narrowed her eyes as she looked at first Davin, then me, and finally huffed and nodded. “I suppose if you are to be able to continue retrieving food, you have to have your own as well.”

Retrieving food. Yup, that was what I was good for.

Weirdest thing ever, just as I sat the bag on the arm of the sofa, there was a ringing sound.

I jerked back, and Twist craned her head around, trying to locate the source of the noise.

Davin, though? He just reached across a pile of papers and.

..picked up a phone. My land line phone for the office, that I’d never actually plugged in. “Knight and Daywalker.”

I blinked at him. Knight and...had he named our nonexistent business?

Actually, that was kind of clever. Probably better than Knight and Byrne. That would be funnier if my surname was Salt, but I didn’t think regular people were actually named Salt.

“Of course,” he agreed, and I ignored it as Twist slid her way up and out of my pocket, down onto the sofa arm.

“I have an appointment available to see the place tomorrow at ten-thirty, or at one.” Another pause, then he nodded and typed something into his phone.

“One it is, then. We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon. ”

He hung up the phone, setting it back on its cradle, where I’d forgotten it even existed, and turned back to me.

I stared at him, waiting. When he didn’t speak up, I frowned. “What the hell was that?”

His “bitch, please” face was...well, I wanted to be able to look that unimpressed. He was almost as good as my mother. No wonder she liked him. “People answering your ad in the Advocate, of course. You’ve got appointments most of the day tomorrow. I think six now, to show the place to people.”

Appointments.

And they’d called...the office, of course. I hadn’t really wanted to put my cell phone number in the ad, so it only made sense to put the office phone in it instead. I just hadn’t really thought about how that would go, since I would have to plug the phone in and like, take messages and stuff.

Wait. “What happened to my answering machine?”

He blinked at me. “Answering machine. You mean that ancient thing with the tiny little cassette tape, that squeaked and rattled and then died when the phone rang the first time?”

Ouch.

Well, that wasn’t the world’s biggest shock.

I’d saved the thing from an acquaintance who’d been planning on pitching it because it was “more outdated than grunge,” so I hadn’t expected that much out of it.

I had kind of expected it to do more than nothing, but also, I’d never properly planned to get phone calls at the office.

It was one of those things Mother and I often argued about: I didn’t plan much...okay, fine, at all. Ever.

Or maybe I planned a ton and sucked at following through.

Whatever, I was fine. I was a grown ass adult, living on my own and doing okay. Ish.

The sound of paper ripping snatched my attention, and I looked down to find Twist once again trying to get into the food source, and probably eat it all before anyone else had a chance to get a bite.

“Okay,” I said, pulling the bag away from her and opening it up to start pulling out chicken breasts.

I spread out the first two paper wrappers and dumped one chicken breast after another onto it, and she...she just ate them. One after another, one tiny bite at a time, without so much as pausing for breath.