Page 9 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
Right?
CHAPTER 3
If 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 ofit, 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.
