Page 40 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
Last time—maybe only time—I’d done that was when I was being interrogated about the dumpster body I’d discovered, and I thoroughly did not recommend that day to anyone.
Dammit.
I couldn’t get in bed with modern day slavers. The amount of money didn’t matter. Better to live next door to the hot dog people.
We had a bit of a break between meetings after that, so we headed back over to the office, only to stop in our tracks.
The office was . . . it was incredible.
I didn’t know why I was surprised in the least, since it was my mother’s plan, but this wasn’t little uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting area and particle board desks with wooden veneers. Oh no. This was the most professional setup I’d seen in my life.
Two enormous dark wood desks that faced each other, each with giant leather office chairs. All the usual office accoutrements were there. A giant white-board on rollers. A charging station in the corner with a dozen little spots to plug in devices. Even basic equipment like staplers and paperclips. Did furniture places even sell those?
The small waiting area had been set up with a rectangle of exceptionally comfy-looking dark green chairs, which went with the already-existing green stripes on the wallpaper as though they had been planned that way.
Because it was my mother, and they had.
I wouldn’t have even been surprised if she had bought all the stuff already when I moved into the office, and had just been waiting for an excuse to lay it on me.
The wet bar in the front office had been fitted out with a professional-looking coffee machine and a big white thing with a carafe that looked like it was from a futuristic movie. Soda maker maybe? Did we even need that much soda? There was a fridge that was almost full sized, for fuck’s sake. The office was an office, entirely separate from my little back-room-apartment, and it wasnice.
For a long, silent moment, we both just stood there, staring at the opulence.
Then a tiny scratch grabbed my attention.
“Father,” Twist called from the back office. “Father, my beef is gone.”
And, no doubt, she hungered.
CHAPTER 16
True to her word, Twist had eaten the entire hunk of meat, which was...I didn’t know if it was impressive or scary, but I was slowly getting used to it. That was, I had learned young, a danger. Getting used to something meant that you dismissed it, and didn’t remember to avoid discussing it with humans.
Having grown up around vampires I’d learned early that no, you couldn’t tell the lady at the restaurant that everything was okay, because Mother never ate anything. Chances were she didn’t know about vampires, so that was strange behavior and raised red flags.
At least in that case, it had just been Mother getting lectured on eating disorders by a stranger. She’d been...decidedly unimpressed, and explained to me that we didn’t tell humans things.
So it would be the same with Twist.
No, of course my kitten did not eat an entire barbecued brisket. She’s a kitten, a brisket would weigh more than her, so don’t be silly.
We brought her out and let her sit in the sunny spot on one of the desks, where she promptly curled up and took a nap. Sincemy kitten liked it, it was decided that specific desk was mine. And while she napped, we took the new whiteboard out for a spin, making two lists of names.
The first was the obvious one, the people we’d started questioning the day before. Then, the new ones. “These are the names my mother sent me of her biggest allies among the local vampires,” I told Davin as I started writing. “I added Kate, even though it’s not too likely to be her, and a few names Mother left out that I think should be in there.”
“You know all the vampires in the city?” Davin asked, looking the list over, frowning. “The way your mother talked, she avoided ever introducing you to vampires.”
“She mostly did,” I agreed. “But she’s the local senator, and sometimes they come to her house, where I lived for the first decade that she was a senator. Plus she still takes me to art, museum, and theater events, where we constantly run into them. Even the ones I don’t know personally, I’m aware of their existence.”
He nodded at that, staring at a list of people he probably didn’t know. “That makes sense. How well do you know them? Any idea if they’d be violent?”
Instead of answering, I grabbed the different colored markers and started putting dots beside names. Holding each one up as I went. “Red means they’re over five hundred years old, which is about when the senate enacted a law against killing humans except in self-defense. Green means I’ve actually seen them commit a violent act, or they’ve got a firm reputation for it. Blue means I’ve never seen them so much as smack someone on the back too hard—not that that means they would never kill someone. Purple means I think they’re as likely to have killed him as to show up here and express their undying love for me.”
When I was finished, he was frowning. “Are you a pessimist, or are vampires just violent bastards?”
I took a step back, looking at the board, considering. There were only three purple dots, by Wu Mei, Kate, and Doc—whose name had been on my mother’s list.
“And do you just think Wu Mei has a little crush on you?” he asked, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
