Page 2 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

She nodded and motioned me over to my usual chair. “Let me know when, and I’ll have Meg make us all dinner.”

Okay, so that was all...something. It meant that whatever this was, she hadn’t intended it to be a blind date. Probably. Of course, she had never much liked me hanging around vampires anyway, so setting me up with one would have been weird.

Still, you never knew with my mother. She hadn’t become as powerful as she was by being simple and straightforward.

No, I sometimes suspected the word “Byzantine” had been invented to refer to her.

And unlike most people who thought things like that, I might actually have a mother old enough for it to be true.

The hot guy nodded to my mother as she reached the head of the table, and waited for her to sit down before reseating himself. “Senator Knight,” he rumbled, a hint of some kind of accent there. Irish, maybe?

I glanced down at my T-shirt with the horrible leprechaun caricature and tried not to cringe.

When I got to the table, my mother gave me her best serene smile while I seated myself, motioning to the man. “Flynn dear, this is Davin Byrne. He’s just joined us from the Dublin region. Davin, this is my son, Flynn Knight.”

From . . . oh. He was definitely a vampire, then.

I knew plenty of vampires, of course. I’d grown up among them, since they were forever coming to my mother for her help or political support or any number of other things.

But she rarely invited me to dinner with them, unless they were close friends or members of her staff.

When I’d flirted with one at an event when I was a teenager, she’d insisted I never, ever do that, because vampires, by and large, could not be trusted.

Plus she didn’t approve of the fact that the woman I’d been flirting with had been almost three hundred years older than me.

All that to say that my mother introducing me to a vampire was a bit weird.

Davin nodded to me, respectful as one might expect in front of my mother. “Mr. Knight.”

“Flynn,” I corrected automatically, because ew. Who the heck ever wanted to be called “mister” anything? “And you too.”

“Davin is an expert in security,” Mother told me, voice crisp, as she snapped her napkin out then smoothed it over her lap. Her tone said she thought this information was very important. “Sort of like you.”

Curiouser and curiouser. “I’m a private investigator, Mother.

I don’t know anything about...what, computers?

” I glanced at Davin, who nodded, then cocked his head a little and squinted one eye, shrugging, like there was more to it than that.

“That sounds like the sort of thing you’d go to school for. ”

“You studied,” she insisted. “And there was that test.”

It was...hell, it was almost sweet, like she was defending my awful career choices.

Because she did think they were awful. She’d begged me to stay in college, even if it was to get a criminal justice degree and become a human cop or something like that.

She didn’t have a lot of use for the human authorities, but she did consider them safer than hanging out with vampires.

And instead, my choices had led me into closer association with vampires, because a human who was awake and able to move in the daylight?

More, one who knew about them, and could investigate their problems?

That was a novelty they were unused to. So the majority of my clients were vampires, which my mother definitely did not approve of.

She didn’t seem to want me anywhere near her own people. Maybe she thought I’d be a terrible vampire. If it was that, she was probably right. If “smooth” had an opposite, that was me.

Not that anyone knew how the hell I was a human. It was obvious from looking at the two of us that I was her son. We had the same coloring, yes, but also, the same small upturned nose and high cheekbones and delicate features. I looked almost more like her clone than her kid.

Plus there were pictures of her pregnant.

So how had an ancient dead woman given birth?

She sure as hell wasn’t telling anyone, not even me.

“So, as Davin has just arrived, he is in need of a job,” she said, changing the subject when I didn’t respond to the comment about the test for my PI license.

“And it seemed to me that you were in need of a partner who could do more than just...what you do. Bethany told me you recovered that Picasso that was stolen from her last fall, and while that’s lovely, perhaps with Davin’s help, you can keep things like that from happening to begin with. ”

I cocked my head, looking at her in confusion. “Like...set up security systems for vampires?”

“It is what Davin does.” She pursed her lips and looked over at him. “Isn’t it?”

“It is, Senator. I worked at a security agency in Dublin before I had to leave there.” He stared at the blank white tablecloth in front of him as he said it, like maybe something had gone horribly, terribly, awfully wrong to force him to leave Dublin.

My mother...reached out and laid her hand on top of his.

What the hell alternate universe was I living in, where my mother comforted someone who was struggling? The only person she’d ever done anything like that for...was me. And frankly, she’d almost never done that.

“Don’t you worry about that, dear. Flynn owns a whole building to run a business out of, right down on the beach. A perfect location. I should know, I gave it to him.” She turned and looked at me, once again raising that brow, like she was challenging me to question her.

I winced, but I couldn’t disagree, really.

Avalon, the town we lived in, was up the coast a bit from Los Angeles proper, less populous and crowded than the city itself. And when I’d passed my test to get my PI license, she’d given me an empty building she owned, “to start my business.”

She was right that it was a perfect location. Literally five feet away from where the beach started. Big enough to house two full businesses, separated down the center. A huge modern building, and I had cringed when they’d mailed me the tax assessment.

And Mother wasn’t terribly thrilled with what I had—or rather hadn’t—done with it. It was still basically empty, except that technically, I lived in the back room.

Yes, that was illegal, but who was going to arrest me for sleeping on a couch in a building I owned, even if it was zoned for business? It made my rare paychecks from vamp clients stretch further, not having to pay rent.

“I’m not much of an investigator,” Davin told her. “Not to question you, Senator. I just...well, if there’s a test, and?—”

“Now dear, no one expects you to investigate anything. That’s Flynn’s job.

But I can speak to how difficult it is to get a decent security system in this town, working with humans who’ll only come out in the daytime.

Whom we still have to hide from. There are over three hundred vampires in the greater Los Angeles area, and the majority of them almost certainly could use your services.

” She turned to look at me. “Maybe it would save people like Bethany from having to use your services when her Picasso goes missing, if it never does.”

I glanced at Davin as he was looking at me, and I saw the same thing in his eyes that I was feeling myself: doubt.

Sure, we were sort of two sides of the same coin, career-wise, but...opposite sides. I made money only when his profession failed.

“It would be a regular living,” Mother added, starting to sound exasperated.

“Not all this waiting for a job to appear and subsisting on starvation rations when it doesn’t come soon enough.

Security companies charge people monthly fees, dear.

And Davin can certainly set them up, but you’re.

..” She stopped, frowning, and took a breath, but didn’t speak again.

Odd. I’d never seen her at a loss for words.

“I would imagine he’d make a better go-between with vampires,” Davin said, his voice going a little soft. When I looked at him, he was once again staring at the table.

That was when the butler, Evans, came bustling in with a tray.

Before I could even begin to try to figure out what was going on with Davin’s odd attitude, Evans set a bowl down in front of him. A bowl. With what looked like some kind of light golden cream soup.

Then in the center of the table, a basket of dinner rolls.

Then another bowl that looked identical to Davin’s in front of me, before setting a glass in front of Mother and bustling right back out.

For a moment, all I could do was stare at the bowl in front of the vampire. The man? The Dublin region, Mother had said, not “from Dublin.” I wasn’t wrong. That meant he was a vampire. But even as I watched, Davin picked up the proper spoon, dipped it into the creamy steaming soup, and took a bite.

“Close your mouth, dear, you’ll gather flies,” Mother told me.

I snapped it shut and focused on my own food. Curried crab soup. Absolute perfection, and I could have eaten it for every meal for a month. Meg was a wonder. A vampire who still loved to cook, even though she couldn’t eat anymore.

Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Vampires were capable of eating, but there was no purpose to it.

They didn’t get sustenance from it. Then there was the unpleasant side effect of having to.

..get rid of that consumed food later on.

And worst of all, their taste buds were different, and food no longer tasted like food. They didn’t want it, in my experience.

Meg had once sadly likened it to eating bowls of sawdust, while staring at her perfect chocolate torte with longing.

But there Davin was, eating Meg’s soup. And from the blissful smile on his face when he took a bite, enjoying the hell out of it.

“Now then,” Mother said, leaning back in her seat at the end of the table and looking at me until I had to wrench my eyes away from the spectacle of a vampire eating soup and turn to her.

“The tax payment on the building was about eighty thousand dollars last year, so I expect it will be similar this year.”

I blinked at her, uncomprehending. That did follow with how much I knew the building was worth, but why was she telling me?

She slow-blinked at me, unimpressed, like I was the slowest student in class. “You own the building, dear. I covered you for the last few years, but you’re going to have to start paying it yourself.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

My mother wanted me to raise eighty grand? On my own? Just to continue to stay in the building she’d given me?

“So you see, getting down to business and starting that security company simply makes sense. Don’t you think?” She waved at Davin, who was still eating the fucking soup, and I started to wonder if I was dreaming.

This was all entirely surreal. Vampires eating curried crab soup, my mother acting like I was suddenly going to become a productive member of society, and eighty thousand dollars I was going to owe to the government of California in like...ten months?

This couldn’t be real.

Still, there was my mother, talking again. “You and Davin have perfectly complementary skillsets, and you should get started right away. I’ll let the others know you’ll be available to install security systems, and send someone down to take care of the office.”

“I’ll need a week or so before I can start doing installations,” Davin said, pausing his eating to bite his lip a moment. “I’ll need to order things, and?—”

“Of course, dear. I’m sure they’ll all be very understanding.” She waved a hand behind her. “And Klaus will extend you a line of credit, of course, to make sure you have all the stock you need to get started. I’ll send everything down in the morning.”

And just like that, I was in business with Davin Byrne, vampire who ate soup and apparently, installed security systems.

What the hell was my life?