Page 34 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

D avin was pleased.

He didn’t say that in so many words, but when I told him what I’d done, he gave this cute secretive little smile that gave me a warm fuzzy. It was weird that I cared about his opinion, but it seemed that maybe...maybe I did.

Then he reminded me that I needed to cancel the ad, and prodded me until I did it right there in front of him.

It was weird how well he seemed to know me after less than a week.

I decided to accompany him to Doc’s place, for dozens of reasons.

Not least among them was that I wanted to be there as a buffer in case there were any issues.

I’d known Doc my whole life, and he was a good guy.

I was already sure Davin was too. But I knew that Davin, at least, was inclined to take offense from vampires, and Doc was sometimes blunt in that way that rubbed people wrong.

Not the “this is my excuse to be an asshole” way, but the “you look terrible, what’s wrong? ” way.

I wasn’t going to let any preconceived notions keep them from being friendly.

The gate was already open when we arrived, probably since we’d told Doc we were coming out, so Davin drove the Camaro right up to the front of his house.

When we got out, Doc was staring at the damn car, amusement on his face. He raised a brow at me. “She give him your favorite car just to piss you off, kiddo?”

I scowled at that, but turned to Davin. “See? What did I tell you?”

He threw his hands up before turning back to the car, opening the back seat and grabbing the bags of tools and stuff he’d brought along.

“I refuse to get between you and your mam. I respect her and also find her utterly bleedin’ terrifying.

You, I...I like. I will not be a part of this fight.

And I’ll remind you that I bought the car from her. ”

Doc grinned at him, looking utterly charmed. “Look at you. A vampire with common sense. Don’t find too many of those. I’m Carson Boone.”

“Davin Byrne.” While he’d responded in kind, my poor new partner looked nervous as hell. I wondered just how many vampires had been shitty to him, to instill this complete distrust of them.

Doc lifted a brow, cocking his head. “Burning down the house?”

I jerked back, not sure what to make of—but Davin was laughing.

“Me mam was a fan. Don’t know why she didn’t just call me David, but I can’t say I’ve had a vampire notice it before either.”

Doc snorted and shook his head. “I’m not surprised.

Most of them think of modern things as inconveniences.

They’re not interested in music or art made after their own deaths.

I think it’s the old human conceit about how the world should stop when you die.

Fiona always says there’s a reason most of us only live a few hundred years.

What’s the point of going on, when life has no novelty left?

No joy?” He sighed sadly, as though considering his fellow vamps as creatures worthy of pity.

That was weird. I looked between the two of them for a moment before settling on Davin. “So, um...David...”

“Byrne,” Davin finished. “Musician, popular back when I was born. I’m just gonna head down to the outdoor speaker and get that work done first. The rest of it’ll be quick after I get that set up.” He paused and looked at me. “Unless you need me to do something else first?”

“Nope, all good.” I whipped out my phone to find that the musician in question was popular...the absolute earliest was the middle of the seventies. I stared at the article in front of me a moment, then looked up at Doc. “He’s not even fifty.”

Doc gave me a look that fairly screamed “no shit,” and motioned after Davin.

“Boy wears modern clothes, has a modern job, and wears his hair in a modern style. The fact that he was nearly named after a musician popular in the nineteen-eighties is the least of the things that should have told you he’s a baby. ”

As usual, Doc was right about every single thing.

“I know this place,” came the complaint from inside my pocket, distracting me from the revelation. A moment later, Twist was poking her head out of my jacket, blue eyes blazing. “He’s the fixing man.”

“He is the man who fixed you,” I agreed, opening my jacket and holding out a hand to let her climb out and join us. “Twist, this is Doctor Carson Boone, if you remember him. He’s a friend.”

Doc was pleased to remake her acquaintance, and we passed some time in light conversation. Doc didn’t seem at all interested in asking about Charles’s murder, but...well, he was technically a name on my whiteboard, so eventually, I asked.

“Have you heard about Charles?”

His whole face scrunched up for just a second, and he gave a lofty sigh.

“He and Fiona are—were—always in for that...that...politics. I’ll just do my own insignificant thing, thank you very much.

This is why I want someone like Fiona as our senator, and not myself.

She’s good at it, so the city isn’t in chaos, but I also don’t have to deal with the damn vampire drama myself.

” He paused, turning to look at me, brows drawn together. “Why do you ask?”

I didn’t even stop and wonder if he’d be offended by the truth.

He was Doc, and he wanted to be given blunt truth as much as he offered it himself.

“Mother and Charles were plotting, because someone’s been trying to kill her.

He was pretending to turn on her to try to make connections with people who wanted her dead.

She thinks the person who’s trying to assassinate her did it.

” I pursed my lips, annoyed once more by the whole disaster, but pressed forward anyway.

“It’s possible, but I thought maybe it could have been someone who wasn’t impressed at his apparent betrayal. ”

The instant disgusted face he made was a little hilarious. His expression contorted through a dozen emotions after it, finally settling on plain old sad resignation. “That’s terrible, but a sensible thought on your part. So I’m a suspect because I’m an ally of your mother’s. Who else?”

“Charles’s assistant Kate. András Bajusz would make sense, since he’s basically Mom’s biggest fan.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s got anything to do with you or him, though.

Two people tried to kill me last night. A man and a woman, and the woman was definitely a vamp.

The man...isn’t a concern anymore, but I didn’t recognize him. ”

Twist gave a tiny growl and swiped out with her paw, as though to indicate how she’d dealt with that problem.

Doc didn’t even seem to notice, staring off into space, nodding. “András makes sense. He’s been in love with your mother, or at least her leadership, since before you were born. But you’re looking for a woman. Who’ve you got for that?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I mean, Scary Mary? My mother doesn’t have a ton of female allies. Probably because fully three-quarters of the vamps who live in LA are men. On the other side, Carmen and Wu Mei hate her, but Wu Mei was out of the country when it happened.”

Doc nodded at that, then waved dismissively.

“Mei’s too smart to get herself embroiled in that kind of nonsense anyway.

Her sister got killed a hundred years ago getting her brother installed as the senator in Taipei.

She knows politics aren’t worth her life.

Carmen...she’s smarter than she acts, which makes me think she’d have been too clever to fall for any act Charles was giving.

You want someone who wasn’t smart enough to see it was a trick, probably. ”

Someone who wasn’t smart enough to see it was a trick.

The only person who’d indicated belief that Charles had turned on my mother so far had been his own assistant, Kate. I hadn’t believed it possible that she could have anything to do with it, but maybe...

Maybe she’d told someone else what was going on, and they’d done it.

Davin joined us then, and he set up a few other things inside the house. An actual panel for the security system replaced what had previously been a speaker, and then Davin helped Doc download the connected app, and showed him how it all worked.

Doc had been entirely right, I realized while watching them.

Davin was way too familiar with the newest, most cutting edge tech.

Even Doc, who was pretty open-minded about technology for a vampire, struggled with it a little bit.

Davin? Didn’t have a second of pause when explaining something about the system connection on wifi versus doc’s phone connection, and how they differed.

“You’re like forty,” I said to him, accusatory, interrupting the lesson on how the security app worked.

Davin scowled at me. “I beg your pardon. I am thirty-seven.”

Fuck me entirely, it was worse than him being forty. He was barely a handful of years older than me.

Rather uncharitably, Doc cackled.

Damn vampires.

I called Kate on our way down Doc’s driveway, figuring we could head up to Charles’s house to see her, but she told me she was in town and offered to meet me at the office.

“In fact,” she told me before hanging up, “there’s something I think you should know.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a very bad one.

Either way, we headed back into town, stopping only long enough to grab some burritos in a drive-through. When I asked for extra hot sauce, Davin looked at me like I was nuts, but come on. What was a burrito without a little hot sauce?

Or a lot of it.

I was in the middle of stuffing my face when we pulled into the parking lot, and Davin kept shooting me glares, but come on, what was the point of not driving myself if it wasn’t to be able to eat while someone else did the work?

Plus we both knew that I was going to have to be the one to talk to Kate when we got there, while he’d have the chance to eat then. I was so not waiting till after the drive and after she left to get my food.

“You’re like a snake,” he muttered as he turned the car off. “Like you’ve got to fill your whole self up with food, right to the brim. As bad as your cat. You planning to take a nap back at the office?”

And that just wasn’t fair. Who didn’t like a good nap after eating?

Kate was waiting near the parking lot, though, so I didn’t really have time to argue with Davin. Or for a nap, sadly enough. I had to go chat with her first.

“Take your food and go eat,” I mumbled, waving him off. “I can handle this.”

He lifted a brow at me, but he didn’t complain, just took the bag with the remaining burritos and headed for the shop door rather than where Kate stood on the beach walk, looking out at the dark ocean.

Her mood was oddly pensive, and that was even more concerning than the comment on the phone.

“Kate? Is everything okay?”

She turned to me, brows scrunched together, biting her bottom lip so hard she’d left dark indentations in the skin there. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

She looked away again, back toward the water, so I stepped up beside her so that I could see her reaction when I spoke. “Do you have more information on who killed Charles?”

“I didn’t think so,” she said, but the look on her face said something else.

Something pained. “I thought it had to be one of those awful people he’d been talking to about turning against the senator.

Those are the kind of people who commit murders, right?

Traitors. But then I was thinking about it.

About everything that’s happened. About everyone he’s talked to in the last few months. ”

She was struggling to just spit out her suspicion, clearly.

That meant it wasn’t someone expected. It was someone she hadn’t thought would be a traitor or a murderer, like Mei or Gerald or Carmen.

The main person on my list that fit those specifications, though, was her.

So I really needed her to tell me what was going on in her head.

She turned to me, and there were actual tears in her eyes. “It’s her, though. I’m sure now. I didn’t want it to be her, but it has to?—”

And then her head was just...gone, in a spray of gore.