Page 14 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

It took Davin a bit to get himself back under control—I was impressed that his driving didn’t suffer for it, but he was clearly very good at it.

No surprise there. He had good hands. Big, strong hands, with long tapered fingers that looked designed for playing the piano.

I was still staring at them when he spoke up again.

“Maybe it was something else. Maybe he was worried someone else was going to try to kill your mam and take over, so he was making a list of people he suspected might do that.”

Now that...was not a bad guess. If I were to make a list of people I thought might want to overthrow my mother, Gerald, Mei, and Carmen would have been my top three choices too.

Charles wouldn’t have even been top ten.

He had reminded me too much of the old comedian Paul Lynde to think of him as violent.

He’d just been so...happy with his life.

And sure, he’d taken every opportunity to insult my mother, but it had always been sort of funny. Maybe almost friendly.

We pulled into my mother’s drive, and Davin parked so smoothly I almost didn’t notice the car had stopped. No wonder she’d sold him her baby; the man was a better driver than some professionals. I wondered if he was always that good with his hands.

For, you know, reasons.

Mother’s housekeeper was the one who answered the door this time, and it made me think of Jennings. Mirabelle had been running my mother’s house my whole life, and apparently, her mother had done the job before her. I wondered what she would do if someone murdered Mother.

Also be murdered, probably. She would come after the killer with a fireplace poker, because my mother wasn’t just her boss, but her friend.

Still, the notion stuck in my brain so much that the moment she led us into the dining room, I looked at my mother and the first thing out of my mouth was, “you have a will, right?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Of course, dear. Everything goes to you. Though I’d expect you to give Mirabelle and her family money, as well as the mountain house. And I think Meg would want to move to where her children live in Washington, so just money for her.”

Because of course my mother had thought this through, even if I’d been thinking just that morning that no vampire did. Because Mother thought everything through.

“Of course,” I agreed. “Anything you want me to give them, just let me know.”

“Worried about Jennings?”

I swallowed and nodded. “I told him I would talk to you about getting things taken care of. He’s got to be eighty, so there’s no way he’s going to just go find another job.”

“Don’t you worry about that, dear. I spoke to Charles about it back when I was arranging my will, after you were born, and he had one made as well.

Maybe he only did it on a lark, but it exists.

And if it didn’t, we would arrange for one to be found.

” She put her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her knuckles, looking strangely like a bird that way.

“You know, I believe Jennings is about to become a very rich man. Not that I think there’s any chance he’d have killed Charles for the cash. ”

“No,” I agreed. “He didn’t say it, since we were speaking in front of the cops, but it was pretty obvious that he didn’t even expect that he was going to be cared for, let alone get a lot of money out of this.”

My mother’s face went all gooey and sympathetic, which was utterly surreal. I didn’t think I’d ever seen that expression on her face in my life.

On the other hand, we’d never been through anything like this before.

Like I’d said: vampires didn’t go around dying like humans.

“Well we would never let that happen. Every person who’s a part of this community is taken care of.” She turned to Mirabelle, lips pulled into a tight moue. “I assure you, dear, if anything happens to me, you’ll have anything you could possibly need. Your husband and daughters as well.”

Mirabelle gave a knowing smile. “I know it, Miss Fiona. Never would have doubted you a moment.”

Because my mother was never a nice person. Never an effusive person or a caring one. But if there was one thing everyone knew about my mother, it was that she was loyal. She would always take care of her own if they needed it. With prejudice if necessary.

I took off my jacket, pulling Twist out of the pocket, and Mirabelle took the thing before I could just hang it over the back of a chair.

When I looked back over, my mother was giving me a glare. Probably offended by a kitten in the dining room.

I pretended to not understand what the problem was. “What?”

“You’re wearing your . . . cereal shirt again.”

I glanced down at myself and realized I had gone to sleep in my shirt, woken wearing it, and then gotten distracted and forgotten to change into something else. Oops.

At least she wasn’t complaining about Twist, though.

“I’m sure it’s a wonder, but he does have clean clothes at the office. Today has just been a bit busy, so I assume he forgot.”

I turned a glare on Davin, because sure, he was kind of defending me, but also, somehow kind of insulting me at the same time.

Mother pressed her lips together in displeasure, but she didn’t insult my clothing again. Instead, she turned to Davin, motioning to a chair next to her. “Come tell me how the office is.”

“It’s not bad,” he said, without looking at me. “I cleaned it up some, since Flynn seems to collect broken things, but”—he looked at me, then pointedly at Twist—“I can’t say I don’t understand it. He’s a lot like you.”

I blinked, staring at him. A lot like...wait, was he saying I was like my mother? Was he out of his mind?

Mother, though, just beamed at him, nodding. “Excellent. Now we’ll just have to get you outfitted for proper business, and you’ll be ready to go.”

He gave her a dopey smile like she was just the best person in the whole universe, and my brain did that blue screen of death thing where I had to take a moment and reboot, because nothing in the whole world made sense anymore.

“Father,” Twist whined. “I hunge—I am hungry. Is there food?”

Thoroughly distracted from the previous situation, I stared down at her in shock. “Seriously, hungry? Again? You’ve eaten like twelve pounds of meat today.”

Mother lifted a brow, for the first time truly paying attention to Twist. “Twelve pounds? That’s very impressive.”

“Considering she weighs like two pounds, it’s freaking impossible,” I pointed out. I hadn’t done that with anyone else, because at best they’d have thought I was exaggerating. At worst, they’d have jumped to the conclusion that Twist was some kind of man-eating monster, and wanted to hurt her.

Instead of responding, Mother pulled out her phone, typed something in, and set it down, then pretended we hadn’t been talking about Twist’s eating habits at all. “Now then, why don’t you sit down and tell me what you know about Charles’s death?”

So as little as I knew, I took my seat, and that was exactly what I did, still holding Twist in my arms as I did so.

When I was wrapping up, just a few minutes later, she nodded. “It sounds like you have your work cut out for you, then. I trust you to find out who killed him, dearling.”

Then Meg came in, followed by Mirabelle, each carrying a tray.

One with minestrone for Davin and me, and one with.

..An entire roasted spatchcocked chicken.

A big one. Which Mira set at the spot next to mine at the table, and looked at Twist as she spoke.

“We’ve another one in the oven dear, and we’ll bring it out when it’s finished. ”

Mother added, “And we’ll make sure to send some meat down to the office tomorrow, so the little dear doesn’t go hungry. I’ll make arrangements with Davin to be sure someone is there to accept deliveries.”

In-freaking-credible.

My mother was the last person in the world to want or care about a pet, but apparently, Twist met with her approval, so she was going to help me feed her. I couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief on the inside. I couldn’t afford that much food all the time, so I was glad to have the help.

I didn’t know why she was going to make multiple deliveries, but maybe she just recognized that apparently my new cat was a literal bottomless pit. Either way, I wasn’t going to turn it down. Twist’s life was worth more than my pride for taking care of myself.

I looked down at her, and then set her on the table next to the tray. “This is for you, Twist. My mother is going to try to feed you up.”

She turned to look at my mother, giving a little meow that translated in my brain to, “Thank you, Grandmother.”

Through what I thought was an immense feat of self-control, I did not laugh, and relayed her thanks to my mother.