Page 6 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

T wo hours later, I was at the office of the local paper, the Avalon Advocate, talking to an employee with a voice like an NPR show host about running an ad. While the paper seemed like a tiny fly-by-night thing to me, they were at least mostly online, which was sensible.

In fact, they had their own app, which she was dragging me through the basics of, step by step, because apparently I could run my ad through that, including taking it down when I rented the place to someone.

That seemed convenient, since I didn’t want to have to come down and fill out forms all the time. The likelihood I would remember that was, like...“Sorry, what?”

She blinked at me a moment, then gave a sigh that seemed a little overdramatized to me, and reexplained...something.

What? It wasn’t my fault she had one of those soothing voices they should have made sleep aid recordings from. Plus learning how to run ads was about as interesting as watching paint dry.

She was telling me about the payment system for the third time, this time having given up and typing in my information as an example as she did so, when the phone rang in her hands.

She jerked back and stared at it, like maybe it was shocking someone would call me.

And actually, looking at the caller ID, it was a little shocking.

“Sorry,” I said again, since it seemed to be most of what I said to her, “but I’ve got to take this.”

She seemed less annoyed than amused, probably because the caller ID in question had come up “Scary Mary, Answer the Damn Phone.”

“Miss Windsor,” I answered, as chipper as I could manage before noon.

But that was the weird part. It was almost noon, and my mother’s assistant was calling me.

The sun had been up for hours, and Mary Windsor, vampire for hundreds of years, was awake and on the phone, to me. “What can I do for you?”

“You can go to Charles Mailloux’s house,” she answered, crisp and businesslike, as always. “Your mother wants you investigating as soon as possible.”

“Investigating”—a click on the other end indicating she’d hung up left me uselessly asking—“what?” to dead air.

Still, I pulled the phone away and looked at it, like maybe it would say something other than “call ended” along with a count—the all of ten-point-four seconds that the conversation had taken.

Huh.

A second later the call screen disappeared, and I was back to the screen to pay for my ad in the Advocate. I turned back to the woman who’d been helping me, and gave her my most charming smile. “Sorry, I guess I have to wrap this up. I have a job to get to. Anything else I have to do?”

“Just click the ‘pay now’ button, and then remember to cancel the ad when you rent the space, or it’ll keep running and charge you twenty dollars every week.

” She gave me a look, like she knew full well that I wasn’t going to remember to cancel the thing, so I just smiled even more brightly as I hit the payment button, nodding.

“Thank you so much for your help. Hopefully a week will be all I need.”

She gave a little shrug, her expression dubious. “If the space is good, maybe. You never know.” From the look on her face, I was pretty sure she thought the place I was trying to rent out was a former hoarder-home, filled with a lifetime of garbage and a family of rabid raccoons.

That . . . might have been cool, actually. I liked raccoons.

Well, not the rabid part. I hated for anyone to be sick, especially animals, who sometimes struggled to understand why things like that happened.

Speaking of animals, a tiny black head popped up out of the inside pocket of my motorcycle jacket to look at the woman, blinking sleepy blue eyes.

The woman jolted back at the motion, then in real time, I watched her melt at the adorable face Twist was giving her.

Meanwhile, it was good, as usual, that people other than me didn’t understand animals. “I hunger, Father. Is she for eating?”

The words came out as a meow aloud, and the woman further melted at the tiny kitten mew. “Aww, how adorable. What’s her name?”

“This is Plot Twist,” I told her, then looked down at Twist. “We’ll stop and get you some lunch on the way to Charles’s house, kiddo. How does tuna sound?”

Twist cocked her head at me. “I do not know how it sounds. Is it an animal? Does it make a sound?”

Right. Baby animals, the most literal creatures in existence. Why would she understand random human colloquialisms? I had no idea how my words translated to animals at all, but sometimes multiple meaning words and terms got a little jumbled up.

“Aww, it’s like she’s talking to you,” the newspaper-employee lady cooed, one hand to her chest in a gesture I was more used to meaning she was scandalized by me than that she thought I’d done something adorable.

But also, it wasn’t me who was cute, it was Twist.

Fair enough. I probably hadn’t been cute in close to thirty years.

I refrained from pointing out that the kitten had asked if she was lunch—people usually reacted poorly to hearing what animals said, even when they believed I wasn’t making it up.

Besides, everyone deserved an illusion or two, especially after she had kindly dragged me through the whole process of setting up my ad to rent out half of the shop, and hadn’t even complained—much—when my attention had drifted.

Still, I needed to get moving, especially if I was going to stop and get Twist food before I went to Charles’s place.

I didn’t want to piss off Mary—no one in their right mind wanted to piss off Scary Mary. She was not only an extension of my mother, but she was an ancient vampire who was terrifying in her own right.

So I thanked the lady for her help, then headed out.

Twist had downed most of a pan of salmon already, and she was already hungry again. While I’d never had a cat before, I also wasn’t an unintelligent guy.

Twist? Was definitely not your average house cat. She hadn’t vomited it all back up, and wasn’t in horrible pain from eating more than her body weight in fish.

And Doc had said that she’d had a surprising amount of energy, so there was that, too. She was also trying to replenish after a magical healing, which took a lot out of a guy. Or a lady, as the case may be.

So instead of stopping at a grocery store and buying fifty cans of tuna, I decided to go through a drive-through.

Unusual cat, unusual diet, right? “I’ll take fifteen unbreaded chicken sandwiches,” I told the lady over the speaker.

“Fourteen of them without the buns, or the sauce, or the vegetables.”

“So you just want, like, chicken breasts?” The young woman on the drive-through speaker sounded either confused or dubious. Maybe both, which was...fair.

“Yup. And the one sandwich. Extra tomatoes, extra mayo on that. And an order of fries, aaaand...that’s it.

” I’d have loved to get a soda, but I couldn’t exactly carry it while riding.

I could get a drink later. Charles would probably give me a bottle of water when I got to his place, if nothing else.

When I got to Charles Mailloux’s mansion on the edge of the city, though, I was in for the surprise of my life.

Cops.

There were cops at a vampire’s house.

Now, I wouldn’t have said that cops were never involved with investigations involving vampires.

It did happen. People also won the lottery, escaped from horrific car accidents unscathed, and found previously unknown artistic masterpieces at garage sales.

It was about the same regularity with which I saw vampires willingly become involved with police.

If the police were involved with something at the home of an elder vampire, this was something seriously important, and not in a good way.

A moment later, it got even worse. Because I knew the guy who came out the front door onto the steps of the house as I parked my bike. Police Detective Tobias Cain, Avalon’s answer to hot TV show cops everywhere, and homicide detective extraordinaire.

What could a homicide detective possibly be doing there?

He was in his forties or fifties, with salt and pepper hair that was always just a little longer than the other detectives in the department. His piercing blue eyes made you want to confess every ill you’d ever committed, and also, apologize and hope he’d call you a good boy.

I mean, it wasn’t generally my kink, but it wasn’t hard to see the appeal. Besides, I was open-minded. I was willing to give all the kinks a shot, at least once.

Cain was on his phone, but he turned and scowled at me as I headed up the steps, bag of chicken in my hand.

“I have to go, I’ll call you back,” he said into his phone, then he tucked it into his pocket and he was just scowling at me. “Knight. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Hey Detective Cain. Lovely day, right? What are you doing at my friend Charles’s house?”

“Your friend,” he said, deadpan and clearly as unimpressed as ever with me. “You were friends with a septuagenarian shut-in?”

Were. That . . . no, that couldn’t be what he was saying.

“I wouldn’t call Charles a shut-in. He went out to the theater all the time. Art openings, museum dinners, all that stuff. But sure I was friendly with him,” I agreed. For good measure, I shook the fast food bag. “Dropped by with lunch and everything.”

Twist, unimpressed, poked her head out of my pocket and glared up at me. “Father, that is my lunch. You may not give it to this man. You promised .”

“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed with her. “Yours is in here too. But it’s not all for you.”

Technically, I had not brought lunch for Charles, but also, I hadn’t lied and said otherwise. The bag didn’t only have Twist’s lunch, but mine as well. Besides, Charles was a vampire and wouldn’t want to eat lunch, and he should be asleep at this time of day.

Cain stared at Twist for a moment, then shook his head and turned his face back to me. “Well I’m sorry if you were close, but I don’t think Mr. Mailloux will be having lunch with you today. Or anyone. Ever.”

I blinked for a moment, flabbergasted by the very.

..That really was what he was saying. He was saying that.

..no. That was ridiculous. “I...you can’t be serious.

Charles? Charles Mailloux? That’s not—” I broke off, shaking my head, because words were failing me.

Charles was almost six hundred years old.

He couldn’t just be dead. Like, real dead.

Cain stared at me a moment, those shiver-inducing eyes unreadable, then he motioned for me to follow him inside.

The house looked the same as it ever did, full of expensive furnishings and priceless art.

The only noticeable change was the loud sobbing coming from the general direction of the dining room.

Charles hadn’t had a huge staff, but I didn’t see any of them as we walked through the place.

“I’ll warn you,” Cain said as we walked, “it’s bad. If you were close?—”

“He’s—he was a rival of my mother’s,” I corrected. “I’m not exactly friends with him. I was planning to talk to him about his security system.” That, finally, was an absolute lie. I might have talked to him about his security system eventually, but I’d had no plans for it, let alone today.

The detective paused and turned to me. “Was he looking to have something installed? Is that what you’re doing now?”

Cain had, of course, met me in my work as an investigator, and like most cops, he thought private investigators were about one rung up the ladder from drug-addicted police informants.

Fortunately for me, for once in my life, my mother’s plans were going to work in my favor.

“I’m working with a computer guy now, and we’re installing security systems. I was gonna talk to Charles about getting something set up.

There wasn’t a plan in place yet. No agreements, nothing signed. ”

We stopped in front of a closed door that I knew led to the office, since I’d been inside it before.

“Too bad it wasn’t already done,” Cain said, then frowned and reared back a little, shaking his head.

“No. I’m sorry, that was—obviously this isn’t your fault.

Also, I’m not sure a security system would have helped, since it looks like whoever did this, he invited them in.

Are you sure...I mean, it’s not pretty. ”

“I’m sure I’ve seen worse,” I promised. The dubious look on his face was more than a little scary, but he opened the door anyway.

And he was right. Frankly, “not pretty” was too kind.