Page 25 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
When I looked back over, my mother was giving me a glare. Probably offended by a kitten in the dining room.
I pretended to not understand what the problem was. “What?”
“You’re wearing your . . . cereal shirt again.”
I glanced down at myself and realized I had gone to sleep in my shirt, woken wearing it, and then gotten distracted and forgotten to change into something else. Oops.
At least she wasn’t complaining about Twist, though.
“I’m sure it’s a wonder, but he does have clean clothes at the office. Today has just been a bit busy, so I assume he forgot.”
I turned a glare on Davin, because sure, he was kind of defending me, but also, somehow kind of insulting me at the same time.
Mother pressed her lips together in displeasure, but she didn’t insult my clothing again. Instead, she turned to Davin, motioning to a chair next to her. “Come tell me how the office is.”
“It’s not bad,” he said, without looking at me. “I cleaned it up some, since Flynn seems to collect broken things, but”—he looked at me, then pointedly at Twist—“I can’t say I don’t understand it. He’s a lot like you.”
I blinked, staring at him. A lot like...wait, was he saying I was like my mother? Was he out of his mind?
Mother, though, just beamed at him, nodding. “Excellent. Now we’ll just have to get you outfitted for proper business, and you’ll be ready to go.”
He gave her a dopey smile like she was just the best person in the whole universe, and my brain did that blue screen of deaththing where I had to take a moment and reboot, because nothing in the whole world made sense anymore.
“Father,” Twist whined. “I hunge—I am hungry. Is there food?”
Thoroughly distracted from the previous situation, I stared down at her in shock. “Seriously, hungry? Again? You’ve eaten like twelve pounds of meat today.”
Mother lifted a brow, for the first time truly paying attention to Twist. “Twelve pounds? That’s very impressive.”
“Considering she weighs like two pounds, it’s freaking impossible,” I pointed out. I hadn’t done that with anyone else, because at best they’d have thought I was exaggerating. At worst, they’d have jumped to the conclusion that Twist was some kind of man-eating monster, and wanted to hurt her.
Instead of responding, Mother pulled out her phone, typed something in, and set it down, then pretended we hadn’t been talking about Twist’s eating habits at all. “Now then, why don’t you sit down and tell me what you know about Charles’s death?”
So as little as I knew, I took my seat, and that was exactly what I did, still holding Twist in my arms as I did so.
When I was wrapping up, just a few minutes later, she nodded. “It sounds like you have your work cut out for you, then. I trust you to find out who killed him, dearling.”
Then Meg came in, followed by Mirabelle, each carrying a tray. One with minestrone for Davin and me, and one with...An entire roasted spatchcocked chicken. A big one. Which Mira set at the spot next to mine at the table, and looked at Twist as she spoke. “We’ve another one in the oven dear, and we’ll bring it out when it’s finished.”
Mother added, “And we’ll make sure to send some meat down to the office tomorrow, so the little dear doesn’t go hungry. I’ll make arrangements with Davin to be sure someone is there to accept deliveries.”
In-freaking-credible.
My mother was the last person in the world to want or care about a pet, but apparently, Twist met with her approval, so she was going to help me feed her. I couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief on the inside. I couldn’t afford that much food all the time, so I was glad to have the help.
I didn’t know why she was going to make multiple deliveries, but maybe she just recognized that apparently my new cat was a literal bottomless pit. Either way, I wasn’t going to turn it down. Twist’s life was worth more than my pride for taking care of myself.
I looked down at her, and then set her on the table next to the tray. “This is for you, Twist. My mother is going to try to feed you up.”
She turned to look at my mother, giving a little meow that translated in my brain to, “Thank you, Grandmother.”
Through what I thought was an immense feat of self-control, I did not laugh, and relayed her thanks to my mother.
CHAPTER 9
As we were leaving the house a few hours later, I looked at Davin. “You going to drop me off at my bike or take me to see Gerald Forsyth next?”
He blinked at me a moment, looking surprised. “You want me to go with you?”
