Page 22 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
It wasn’t like we were going to have kids together, even if?—
“She called the office line,” he added, like maybe he’d read my mind. Or maybe like my face always said exactly what I wasthinking, and he’d noticed. “She’s worried about...the situation with Charles, she said. And she wants us to come to dinner.”
For a moment, all I could do was sit there staring at him. “My mother wants you to come to dinner tonight.”
“Mostly you,” he said, tone odd, like he was worried about something. “I’m sure she wants to see you more than me.”
I scoffed at the placation, rolling my eyes at him. “She wants to know if I’ve figured out who killed Charles Mailloux, that’s all.”
He frowned at me, and for a second, I thought he was going to defend her. But then he said the obvious thing for a brand-new vamp in town. “Who’s Charles Mailloux?”
“Elder vamp, ran against Mother for the senate position fifteen years ago. Brand-new maid discovered him dead in his study this morning, and called the cops.”
Davin almost choked on his next fry. “The cops? Like the Gardaí? Vamps never bring in the actual authorities.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “New maid, human. Didn’t know the truth, and probably wouldn’t have lasted long even if Charles had lived. Also told the cops that he had late night meetings, and I quote, like a drug kingpin.”
Now that I wasn’t in front of the cops, I let myself react to that—with a laugh. So did he, and a moment later, we were both laughing uproariously.
“So your mam wants you investigating,” he managed, once he stopped laughing and...caught his breath? How did a vampire become breathless? “But now you’re going to have to dodge the humans at the same time.”
“I am. And then there’s the mess of what happens to the killer when we find them. Chances are they’re a vampire, because let me tell you, I’ve never met a human who could do that kind of damage. Maybe a bodybuilder?”
He winced. “And rare’s the human who can take down a vamp in any fight, even an unfair one.”
“Exactly.” I leaned back onto the sofa and let my head loll backward. “Charles might have looked like an old man, but he was as fast and strong as any vampire. A human getting the better of him was pretty unlikely, and the killing blow was...”
The scene swam up before me, and I shoved my food away. No surprise to anyone, Twist immediately pounced on it. She took a giant bite from the bun on my sandwich, then looked up at me and asked, food still in her mouth, “I can have this, right?”
“Yeah, Twist, all yours.”
For a moment, we just sat there, Davin staring at Twist like she was the shocking one, even as he ate another french fry.
“It wasn’t a human,” I reiterated to him, barely even able to look at Twist eating the remains of my food. “But that leaves us with a whole lot of suspects. Over three hundred vampires live in the greater Los Angeles area, and it’s always possible someone else has come into town that we don’t know about.”
For a moment, he stared at me. Then his eyes went round. “You truly mean to investigate a murder? Yourself?”
I couldn’t hold back an eye roll at that, because, “Who the heck else is going to do it? You think the human cops are going to catch a vampire?”
“You’re human too,” he pointed out, which...well, it was certainly possible. I wasn’t as strong or as fast as a vampire, which was his point. I couldn’t take on Charles’s killer by myself.
So I shrugged, picking up Twist and setting her on my chest, where she first bathed herself, then curled up in a ball and started purring. Finally, I looked back up at him and gave him the only answer I thought he’d accept without question. “My mother said she wants me investigating. What else would I do?”
He didn’t have any rebuttal for that.
CHAPTER 8
There were three more phone calls on the shop phone before we left for dinner with my mother, all wanting to set up appointments to see the empty space.
“That’s good, right?” I asked him. “I mean, people wanting to see it means it’ll rent fast.”
He glanced over toward the empty side of the building as I locked the front door, and offered a shrug. “If it’s anything like the half you’ve been using as a trash bin, then yes.”
I scowled at him, because I had not been?—
“Speaking of which, we should carry all these over to the dumpster. Where is that?” He glanced around, frowning. “I looked out the back door, but didn’t see one there. Figured you’d know.”
“It’s around behind the other side of the building,” I said, motioning toward the end where the empty shop was. I didn’t want to be complicit in him getting rid of all my stuff, but...if I was telling the truth, it was a bit of a relief to have it all out of the back office. I’d gathered it with the best of intentions, but every added object had been another burden. Another thing I’d intended to do, but then hadn’t done.
