Page 5 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

I f I didn’t have a cat, it was probably weird that I woke with a cat sitting on my chest, staring down at me.

“Holy fuck,” I . . . said.

I did not shriek it.

At all.

“I hunger, Father,” Twist said, while staring at me with her giant blue eyes.

“What the hell? I’m not . . . I’m not your father, you know.”

Her response to that was a sort of shrugging motion. “You are male. You are the provider. Is Father incorrect?”

I opened and closed my mouth, then again, because...well, the logic was there, if flawed.

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“As am I.”

“No, I mean...That’s how you say it.” Gently, I picked her up in one hand and sat up, stretching while being careful not to drop her. “You say ‘I’m hungry.’ Saying ‘I hunger’ makes you sound like some kind of eldritch horror that’s going to sprout tentacles and eat the planet or something.”

We crossed to the small fridge in one corner of the room so I could retrieve her fish.

There were still four or five portions of it, so that ought to work for a bit.

I doubted she’d manage to eat that much before it went bad, in fact.

I didn’t like salmon all that much, but maybe I should eat some of it so it didn’t go to waste.

I pulled out the container, flipped it open, and set it on the floor in front of her. “Only eat what you can right now,” I told her. “Don’t make yourself sick. I promise you can have more later.”

She looked up at me, narrowing her eyes and considering, her tail lashing back and forth. “You promise there will be more?”

“I do.”

She turned and started eating.

I pulled out the garlic butter asparagus and started eating it cold, because well.

..Doc hadn’t been wrong. I didn’t eat enough vegetables, and honestly, I didn’t have anything else in the building, unless one counted those noodles you added boiling water to, and they were kinda gross.

Also, maybe a bag of beef jerky shoved into the couch cushions.

I might have already eaten that, though.

There were also a couple cans of off-brand cola in the fridge, but that wasn’t going to help Twist. Heck, it didn’t help me.

They were just a less gross tasting form of caffeine than coffee, and everyone had mornings when they wished they weren’t awake, didn’t they? Something something, days ending in y.

There was a banging in the outer office, the one connected to the front door of this half of the building, so I pulled myself up and turned in that direction. “I’m gonna go get that. Like I said, don’t eat too much.”

She paused eating and looked up at me. “What is too much?”

“If your stomach hurts, that’s too much.”

She narrowed her bright eyes, considering. “My stomach hurts now.”

Oh jeez. From hunger, I supposed. “Okay, so it should stop hurting after you get some food in you, I think? Then if it starts hurting again while you’re eating, that’s when you stop?”

She nodded to me, decisive, as though that had been a reasonable answer. I wasn’t sure it had been, but the banging came again, so I needed to handle whoever was at the door.

The front office was enormous and airy and bright—because of a giant set of windows that covered the front of the building, looking out across a paved walkway and down to the beach just beyond. A giant set of windows flanking an also-glass door.

A door Davin Byrne was standing at.

I blinked at him for a moment, incapable of doing anything other than stare. This was a dream. It had to be.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

Eight-thirty in the morning.

Definitely a dream, because first of all, I hadn’t been up before ten in the morning willingly since I’d been a kid, and secondly, because there was a vampire standing at my office door, bright and early in the morning.

Bright being the operative word there.

He met my eye through the glass door, then pulled his dark sunglasses off and lifted his hands to his sides as though to ask “what the hell?”

I crossed to the front and flipped the lock, pulling the door open, then glancing around for further signs that this was a dream. I looked at Suzy, the sloth who lived in the bushes just outside the office door.

“You see him, right?”

She blinked and smiled up at me, looking at Davin then back. “Sure do. He seems nice, though. Not really a threat.”

“I...no, I didn’t think he was a threat.” I glanced back at the vampire, considering. He could be a threat, if he wanted to be. He wasn’t a small guy, and vampires were stronger than humans to begin with. “He’s just not supposed to be here.”

She gave a little motion almost like a shrug. “Well I don’t know anything about your plans, Flynn. If you let me know who you’re expecting and when, maybe I can help with that. But I’ve never even met this one before.”

“Are you talking to that sloth?” Davin asked, then looked harder at Suzy, frowning. “What the heck is a sloth even doing here? Sloths don’t live in California.”

“Suzy does,” I informed him. Then I turned and nodded to her. “I guess that’s fair. I’ll try to let you know if anyone important is going to be dropping in. For now, this is Davin, and he’s...I guess he’s my business partner, and he’s going to be around often from now on.”

She gave him a nod, then stuffed some leaves into her mouth and turned back to her business.

I grabbed Davin by the cuff of his black motorcycle jacket. Hm. That was nice. No doubt my mother would like that better than the brown one I wore, which she’d long ago deemed “unfashionable.”

I closed the door behind us, then looked at the windows, like maybe they would have curtains they’d never had before. “Back there,” I told him, motioning to the back office. “There’s only one window, and it’s got blinds. You should be okay back there.”

Davin just stood there, staring at me, so I motioned to the office again.

But he didn’t seem particularly uncomfortable. No, he was just standing there. In the sun. All vampirey and still alive.

“What the fuck?” I asked, so cleverly.

He lifted a brow. “There’s a sloth in your bushes. Should someone call animal control?”

I scoffed and waved him off. “I’ll have you know she’s a registered exotic familiar.”

“Yours?”

“I’m not a mage. Probably. No, my friend Grady registered her, because she was brought here by some rich asshole as an exotic pet, but like most rich assholes, he lost interest in owning a wild animal.

But she didn’t want to be deported or put in a zoo.

She likes it here. So now she lives in my bushes, because she’s a grownup who has the right to make her own choices. She...she’s our security system.”

“A sloth,” he repeated, like maybe I’d forgotten the whole purpose of the conversation. “A sloth is your security system.”

“She has a name,” I reminded him.

“Suzy. The sloth.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I prepared for a fight.

I’d had this argument before, thanks to people who thought they knew best for everyone.

Thank fuck for Grady’s help the year before, registering her as his familiar, or she’d have been off to the San Diego Zoo after being thrown in a literal dumpster by the asshole who’d paid to kidnap her from the land of her birth. “Suzy the sloth.”

Davin reached up to rub his eyes, like maybe he also thought he was still sleeping.

Except I didn’t usually have the Suzy argument with strangers while asleep.

“All right then,” he finally said, stopping to look around. “This is nice. The office building. Your mam gave you this half?”

I shrugged, uneasy. “Technically both halves. But I don’t really mess with the other half.”

His head dropped from where he’d been inspecting the line of the vaulted ceiling, and he stared at me.

Damn, those eyes were black. Even in daylight, so very black. Like the guy had been made to be a vampire. Goth stereotype: black hair, black eyes, black leather jacket, black soul.

Well, except for that, because I’d seen no indication he was anything but a decent guy.

“You own a building on the beach, and you’re worried about money.”

I scowled at that. “Who said I was worried about money?”

He scoffed and turned away, taking a step, then pausing to look down at Twist licking the fish container. “You did, last night,” he said, kneeling down next to her. “Hello there, kitten. Did you eat your da’s breakfast?”

Did she . . .

Holy shit.

The container was empty. Twist was licking it because it was entirely empty.

I stared at her in shock, sure that she’d somehow managed to eat more fish than the volume of her entire body. Where had she put it?

I swooped down and grabbed her up, looking her over. Then I realized that was a terrible idea because she might throw up on me.

Except she didn’t. And her belly wasn’t swollen or distended.

I blinked in shock.

Twist, for her part, seemed entirely unaffected by the manhandling. “My hunger remains, Father.” She glanced down at Davin. “He called you my da. Is that the correct word?”

“I...Father is fine, Twist. Da is just slang.” Was I telling the kitten to call me daddy? I?—

“You said there would be more food if this was gone,” she continued. “Where is it?”

For a moment, all I could do was blink at her. “You want...more? You’ve just eaten an amount of salmon that weighed more than you, and you want more.”

“Of course,” she agreed.

All I could do was stare at her a moment, flabbergasted.

“Twist, is it?” Davin asked, holding out his hand to her.

She sniffed it, then gave him a decisive nod. “He may also call me Plot Twist.”

“It’s, um, short for Plot Twist. Which is short for...something else.” I scrubbed my face with one hand and sighed, sitting back and leaning against the couch.

That, it seemed, drew Davin’s attention to it and the blanket on it. Then my messy state of dress. “You slept here.”

“Of course I slept here. I own the building. It’s the only building I do own.

Where else would I sleep?” I didn’t meet his eye, just stared at Twist as I scratched behind her ears, and she stretched up into the touch, clearly enjoying it.

“Also apparently I have to buy more fish. Like, a lot more. And find my hot plate so I can cook it.”

Davin looked around again, this time slightly horrified.

“Or you could buy tinned fish,” he pointed out.

I looked at him, and then held Twist out to him. “I don’t think you understand. That dish? Was literally almost full. I’m not saying she ate a lot, I’m literally saying that in the last ten minutes, she’s eaten close to twice her weight in fish.”

He reached out and stroked her back, watching her innocent blue eyes as she slow blinked at him. Then he shrugged. “Bet you could buy it in bulk from that place that sells things by the dozens.”

It was a valid point, I supposed. I might have to get myself a store membership, just to keep Twist from either eating me out of everything, or maybe just eating me when she got hungry.

“So it’s morning,” I said lifting Twist up to set her on my shoulder and meeting his eye.

“The usual time for doing business,” he said, agreeably.

I stared at him, waiting, and when he didn’t go on, I added. “Not for vampires. And you’re...not on fire or anything.”

He looked away, reaching over to rifle through a stack of newspapers. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Of course he didn’t. Vampire, ate dinner, wandered out in the day time, didn’t want to discuss it. Totally normal.

He shook his head and turned to me, huffing in frustration. “You have room for two businesses in this building. The sections aren’t even connected.”

“And?”

For a moment, he just stared at me like maybe I was slower than Suzy and eventually I’d catch up.

When I clearly didn’t, he huffed. “You can rent out the other half of this building. It’s a seaside business rental.

Do you have any idea how much money you could make on that?

You were worried about the senator saying you needed to pay for the taxes on the building, but I’m sure rent for the other half could cover it. ”

Against my neck, Twist started purring.

A business rental.

Huh.

Why hadn’t I ever thought of that?

Well, because I hadn’t wanted to deal with all that business stuff—taxes and rentals and fees and fuck only knew what else. I’d just wanted to live in my little building, do the job I’d chosen for myself, and squeak by at everything else.

I wasn’t an ambitious guy. I’d never wanted to be super rich. I just wanted to live my life on my terms.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t really a thing people got to choose.

“I could put an ad on Craigslist,” I mused.

Across from me, Davin scoffed. “Sure, if you want someone to open a human flesh restaurant or something like that. This isn’t college, Flynn. This is real life. You put out an ad. A professional one.”

“Expensive?” I asked, considering my slim bank account.

He crossed his arms over his chest, pursing his lips at me. “You want someone to rent the place and give you money, or you want to be on the national news as the victim of a crime?”

It was probably a fair point. I was a private investigator, not Superman. And maybe my mother would hunt down and eviscerate anyone who dared kill me, but that wouldn’t stop them from killing me in the first place.

“An ad,” I finally agreed. “So...how exactly does one do that?”