Page 8 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
“Hey kiddo, you should try to eat some of this if you can,” I told her, sliding the salmon closer to the cap-turned-kitten-bed.
She opened her mouth, licking her chops, looking like nothing so much as a sleepy person who’d just woken from a nap. She then turned toward the salmon, and her eyes rounded. She glanced back up at me, before carefully scooting closer to it. “Not kiddo,” she informed me before taking a bite.
“No? You’ve got another name?”
Delicately, she chewed the fish and swallowed, not eating like any kitten I’d ever met before—aka by shoving her face into the fish and not coming up for air till she had to. “I am That Which Stalks the Darkest of Nights,” she told me, and while I considered that, she took another bite, chewed, swallowed, and then continued. “Shatterer of Peace. Haunter of Nightmares. She Whose Name Shall Never Be Spoken.”
“Plot twist,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head.
On the other side of the—of she whose...fuck me, ofher, Doc lifted a brow in my direction. “Does she?”
Unlike most of the adults who’d come through my life, Doc had never questioned my ability to talk to animals—it was one of the reasons I wondered if he knew about my parentage.
Maybe he had reason to expect me to talk to animals.
“She’s, um...it’s a lot.” I glanced back down at the kitten, who was still munching away on the salmon. “I hate to be that guy, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to call you all that every time I talk to you. It’s not hard to pronounce, it’d just take me like ten minutes.”
She lifted her head, licking a stray morsel of fish off her nose, then nodded. “You can call me Plot Twist. That’s fine.”
Plot . . . oh, because I’d said—well sure, why not?
“Plot Twist it is. Though I’ll admit it now, it’s probably going to end up Twist. That’s the kind of guy I am.”
She shrugged as she continued eating, not deigning to respond.
Doc raised a brow, so I shrugged at him. “She says we can call her Plot Twist.”
By the time he finished laughing at that, she’d finished the entire serving of salmon. He looked at the plate she was steadily licking clean, and stood, heading to the fridge. “Maybe not right this minute, but she’ll need more. I’ll just send the rest of the fish home with you.”
“Oh you don’t need to?—”
“What else am I going to do with fish, Flynn? Heck, I’ll send you the vegetables too. You should eat those, even if she doesn’t need them. Unlike her and me, you’re an omnivore. You need your vegetables.”
It was hard to deny, so I shut up and let him pack it all in a bag to hand me.
“What do I owe you?” I finally asked, biting my lip. Doc didn’t really work much anymore. He owned a private hospital that served magical people and creatures, and I cringed to imaginewhat my mother had paid him to see me personally, giving house calls to her manor.
He scoffed and shook his head. “We’re a community, my boy. I know some of the others don’t see it that way, and maybe they’re not part of it. But you’re part of my family, Flynn Knight. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that you don’t charge family. You just keep taking care of yourself, and of little Plot Twist here, and we call it all even. You eating enough? I might have?—”
“I’m eating plenty, promise. I just had dinner at Mother’s. Ahugedinner.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “She handing you the Byrne boy?”
Handing me the Byrne boy. An odd way of putting it. First off, Davin Byrne was nothing like a boy, and secondly, I’d sort of thought of it the other way, me being handed off to him because I was too irresponsible to take care of myself.
“She, um, wants us to work together, him and me,” I admitted. “I was actually just thinking that we could replace your old intercom system, since it’s pretty staticky. Maybe, um, set you up with some security. I know you’re probably not worried about burglars or anything, but no harm in getting a warning if someone is around who shouldn’t be, right?”
He beamed at me. “Well that’s downright neighborly of you, kiddo. I certainly wouldn’t turn down a better system. Love new technology. Could you maybe send it to my phone, so I didn’t have to go to the door every time someone buzzes?”
“I’ll bet we could. Let me talk to him, and I’ll see what we can do.”
He grinned at me as he handed me the bag of food for both me and Twist. “Much obliged, Flynn. You drive careful on the way home now, you hear? Too many reckless folk out there who don’t care enough about living to see tomorrow.”
“I will sir,” I promised, nodding to him and accepting the bag. Too bad I hadn’t brought my handy backpack to carry extra stuff. I just hadn’t expected to end up heading home with a cat, fish, and vegetables. Usually I only went home with a little shame and annoyance after dinner with my mother.
Take care of Twist, he’d said, like she was staying with me forever.
But that was silly. I didn’t have a cat.
