Page 27 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

T he rest of the afternoon was quiet, other than meeting with a few more potential renters, which went about as well as most of the previous ones, and another enormous meat delivery for Twist—what I was pretty sure was an entire smoked salmon. The thing had to weigh like twenty pounds.

It was even more impressive, frankly, because for the first time ever, she didn’t finish every scrap of food in front of her.

Davin and I ordered sandwiches while she ate, and sat there and watched as she steadily worked her way up one side of the fish, then asked me to turn it over, and ate back down the other side.

“Never seen anything like that in my life,” Davin muttered, shaking his head before taking a deep drink from a beer he’d walked down to the nearby bodega to grab.

Suddenly, it was all I could see. The way he tilted his head back.

The way he swallowed, throat moving...

well. I probably needed to not stare at him.

Also, maybe get laid so I’d stop staring at every hot guy I saw, especially the ones who I was going to have to deal with for a long time to come.

“I’ve seen stranger things,” I announced, instead of focusing on my annoyingly hot business partner.

I didn’t wait for him to ask what stranger things I’d seen before motioning to him.

“For instance, I once met this vampire who has excellent taste in beer. Except that vampires don’t drink beer.

Plus I’d have thought you’d buy Guinness. Is that rude?”

I figured if he didn’t bite on the vampire stuff, he’d at least point out that stereotypes were shitty.

Instead, he rolled his eyes at me. “Guinness is fine. I prefer this. As far as a vampire eating, I’ve heard of stranger things than that.

” He set down his beer bottle on the side table next to him with a heavy thunk and leaned forward in his chair, meeting my eye steadily.

“I once met a human with a vampire for a mother, who speaks to animals. Tell me that’s normal. ”

“I mean . . . it probably is for him.”

“Day I stop being hungry, I’ll stop eating,” he said, like that was any kind of answer.

Well, it might be.

I felt the same way myself.

He stayed till almost nine and we spent most of it talking about plans for the business.

Who we should contact, where we were going to start, and where it might go if we stuck with it.

He was confident that if we struck the right angle, we could make money by putting in security systems for vamps.

I thought about Amelia and Arthur, the only potential tenants I’d really liked so far, and hoped he was right.

If I could afford to pay the taxes myself, then I could have a business I liked next door.

Even though it had been mostly work, I was sorry to see him go that night. I watched him cross the parking lot toward the damned Camaro from the front door, and Suzy, lazily chewing on her dinner, asked, “What kind of mage is he?”

“I—I don’t think he is a mage, Suz. You think he’s magical?”

She stopped chewing and leaned toward me, lowering her tone. “I think you think he’s magical, the way you keep watching him.”

I scoffed. “I think most people are magical. Especially hot guys.”

She just gave me a knowing look and went back to eating.

Dammit, I was surrounded by magical animals who spent all their time eating. At least with Suzy, it was because she did it so slowly it took her all day. I had fresh food for her on order, but it only had to be delivered once a week, rather than Twist’s over twenty pounds of meat a day.

Thank fuck for my mother taking that off my hands. I would have gone broke trying to feed her.

When I returned to the back room, flipping the front lights off, Twist was already curled up on the back of the couch, soundly asleep and giving tiny adorable little snores.

I took a little time to peel the last of the meat off the fish and put it in a container in the fridge for the morning, then got rid of the enormous carcass in the dumpster, so we wouldn’t have the smell of it lurking around the office forever.

Besides, maybe there were some rats out there who’d find a use for it.

Then I stripped down to my shirt and boxers, and tucked myself in for the night.

For the first time since she’d arrived, I woke before Twist. So I set the leftover fish out for her, tossed my clothes into the hamper, and headed in to shower and get ready for the day.

This time I was careful to dress inside the bathroom, just in case.

Not that Davin’s blushing hadn’t been very cute, but it was super rude and bordered on harassment to knowingly force him to look at me naked if he didn’t want to. Sure, he knew I lived in the office, but that didn’t mean I had no responsibility in the situation.

So I grabbed a fresh shirt with “My Existence is Resistance” written across it in puffy, cartoony lettering, and threw it on over a plain old pair of jeans.

Twist was eating her fish when I came out, and she glanced up long enough to meow. “Your man is in the outside room. I think waiting in the front because he’s afraid of seeing you wet and naked again.” She paused before taking her next bite, looking a little confused. “Why is that?”

“Humans have a thing called modesty,” I told her, thinking hard and trying to figure it out for myself.

Because humans had modesty, not so much vampires.

Sometimes Davin was so un-vampire in the most unexpected ways.

“I...honestly don’t understand the logic of it, but it means they’re nervous about nakedness.

It’s one of the reasons they wear clothes. ”

“I thought that was to protect their soft pink skin.”

Trust a cat to go right for the jugular. “I dunno, Twist. People are just weird, maybe.”

She nodded and went back to her fish, but not before agreeing as insultingly as possible. “That’s certainly true.”

I sighed and went out into the office to meet Davin.

“Hey, what’s on the docket for today?”

He lifted a brow, like I was being silly. “Guess.”

“More potential renters?”

“Of course.” Even as he was speaking, the phone rang, and that.

..was the phone on his desk. And there was one on mine that was also ringing.

Did we have a whole phone system now? Fuck me, I hoped we didn’t have multiple phone lines.

That sounded like hell. He sighed and dropped into his chair. “Knight and Daywalker.”

Then he went quiet for a bit, listening.

I pretended that he wasn’t working while I stood around with my thumb up my ass, and wandered over to the kitchenette. It was much nicer than the one I had in the back now. The big white machine I hadn’t recognized had a QR code on it, so I checked it out, and it led me to an app download.

What the hell, why not? I downloaded it, waiting until the thing opened, pressed all the buttons to “sync the module” with the app, and then my screen went white. Was the whole thing some kind of weird Apple-virus scam?

Then a line and three dots appeared on the page, and for an instant, I worried it was one of those things I was just supposed to understand but didn’t, like zen theory or some of the more abstract memes out there. Then, I realized it was a smiley face.

“Hello ,” drifted across the bottom of the screen. “ What kind of tea would you like to drink today?”

Suddenly, I was torn. Because tea? Totally my jam. Weird smiley apps that seemed to be speaking to me personally? Less so.

Still, there was a blinking cursor, and when I tapped it, a keyboard appeared on the screen. So I typed my favorite kind. “ Jasmine .”

The machine in front of me clicked, and a bowl-shaped container on the front opened.

The app said “please open a jasmine packet and empty it in the receptacle .”

It took me a while, but I managed to find little white packets of tea in the cupboard that seemed to match the tea maker, and followed the instructions. After a moment, the creepy white smiley face said “ enjoy your tea ,” and went blank.

I continued staring at my phone screen until Davin appeared next to me, making me jump. “Just another person wanting to rent the empty shop. Why are you staring at a blank white screen?”

“I...I don’t like this. The machines are going to judge us wanting and kill us all.”

The machine in front of me beeped, and the carafe attached to the front was full of tea.

I opened the cupboard again and pulled out one of the mugs inside; purple, green, and white things that—of course—went with the rest of the office decor.

It took me a moment to figure out how the carafe attached to the machine and pull it away, then pour it into the mug.

Then I picked it up and lifted it to my lips, breathed softly on the steaming tea, then took a sniff. It smelled right, so I took a sip.

Fuck me, it was perfect .

“Never mind. I welcome our new robot overlords. Thank you terrifying phone tea-maker hybrid.”

My phone pinged, and the words, “You’re welcome” drifted across the bottom of the white screen.

Nope, not thinking about it.

What was that saying about looking gift-tea makers in the mouth?

Davin was looking at me like I was crazy when I turned back to him, but he didn’t ask if I’d cracked, so I just smiled. “So, a murder investigation and potential renters are all we’re going to be dealing with for the rest of our lives?”

We sat down and started discussing the day’s appointments, three more scattered across the morning and afternoon, but then he shifted, pulling out an actual paper notebook.

“I made some plans about a system for your friend the doctor,” he said.

“Thought you’d want to look at them and give me your input. ”

He dragged his chair over behind my desk, and we looked at the sketches he’d made, discussing the technical details of Doc’s request and how we could fulfill it. Apparently, we could do so quite easily.

I was drawing Davin a rough map of Doc’s property when the phone rang again. But...it wasn’t the office phone this time.

It was my phone.

I scowled and set down the notebook. “Sorry, just a second.” I answered the phone, even though caller ID said it was a blocked number.

Normally I might not have, but I was in the middle of a murder investigation, and I dealt with vampires, bunch of paranoid bastards that they were.

They’d all had their numbers unlisted or blocked as soon as that had been an option.

It was how I knew the helpless old person act they tried to pull with new tech was half bullshit.

Still, I pressed the button and put the phone against my ear. “Flynn Knight.”

“Come to Broken Dreams tonight,” a mechanical voice said, and everything about it was just wrong.

It was like the opposite of hearing an animal talk, and it made my skin crawl.

I wanted to drop my phone and get away from it.

I’d never reacted so dramatically to anything in my life, but the voice was just. ..repellant.

“Who is this?” I demanded.

The voice didn’t answer, it just said, “Eight o’clock.” Then, there was the telltale click of the line disconnecting.

When I turned to him, Davin was glaring at my phone. “You’re not doing that,” he told me. Cute. Like he had a say.

“Of course I am. I mean, it’s obviously about Charles, right? Maybe it’s Whisper. Maybe they killed him and want me to stop snooping around.”

He stared at me, and when I just waited, he groaned. “You’re serious. Someone who doesn’t even sound human demands you go somewhere, and you just do it? Automatically? No questions?”

“I had lots of questions. They hung up,” I pointed out, useless but determined. After all, I would have asked questions. Probably. I had asked one, at least, even if it hadn’t gotten answered.

Twist, who had once again been napping on the corner of my desk, stood, stretched, and sauntered over in front of us. “Worry not, Father. I will come along to protect you.”

Given the fact that she’d probably eaten my body weight in meat over the last few days, it was more reassuring than a kitten offering protection should have been. Besides, it wasn’t like I was going to leave her behind if she wanted to go.

The cat distribution system had chosen me, and I had duly given in.