Page 51 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
He stayed till almost nine and we spent most of it talking about plans for the business. Who we should contact, where we were going to start, and where it might go if we stuck with it. He was confident that if we struck the right angle, we could make money by putting in security systems for vamps. I thought about Amelia and Arthur, the only potential tenants I’d really liked so far, and hoped he was right. If I could afford to pay the taxes myself, then I could have a business I liked next door.
Even though it had been mostly work, I was sorry to see him go that night. I watched him cross the parking lot toward the damned Camaro from the front door, and Suzy, lazily chewing on her dinner, asked, “What kind of mage is he?”
“I—I don’t think he is a mage, Suz. You think he’s magical?”
She stopped chewing and leaned toward me, lowering her tone. “I thinkyouthink he’s magical, the way you keep watching him.”
I scoffed. “I think most people are magical. Especially hot guys.”
She just gave me a knowing look and went back to eating.
Dammit, I was surrounded by magical animals who spent all their time eating. At least with Suzy, it was because she did it so slowly it took her all day. I had fresh food for her on order, but it only had to be delivered once a week, rather than Twist’s over twenty pounds of meat a day.
Thank fuck for my mother taking that off my hands. I would have gone broke trying to feed her.
When I returned to the back room, flipping the front lights off, Twist was already curled up on the back of the couch, soundly asleep and giving tiny adorable little snores. I took a little time to peel the last of the meat off the fish and put it in a container in the fridge for the morning, then got rid of the enormous carcass in the dumpster, so we wouldn’t have the smell of it lurking around the office forever. Besides, maybe there were some rats out there who’d find a use for it.
Then I stripped down to my shirt and boxers, and tucked myself in for the night.
For the first time since she’d arrived, I woke before Twist. So I set the leftover fish out for her, tossed my clothes into the hamper, and headed in to shower and get ready for the day.
This time I was careful to dress inside the bathroom, just in case.
Not that Davin’s blushing hadn’t been very cute, but it was super rude and bordered on harassment to knowingly force him to look at me naked if he didn’t want to. Sure, he knew I livedin the office, but that didn’t mean I had no responsibility in the situation.
So I grabbed a fresh shirt with “My Existence is Resistance” written across it in puffy, cartoony lettering, and threw it on over a plain old pair of jeans.
Twist was eating her fish when I came out, and she glanced up long enough to meow. “Your man is in the outside room. I think waiting in the front because he’s afraid of seeing you wet and naked again.” She paused before taking her next bite, looking a little confused. “Why is that?”
“Humans have a thing called modesty,” I told her, thinking hard and trying to figure it out for myself. Because humans had modesty, not so much vampires. Sometimes Davin was so un-vampire in the most unexpected ways. “I...honestly don’t understand the logic of it, but it means they’re nervous about nakedness. It’s one of the reasons they wear clothes.”
“I thought that was to protect their soft pink skin.”
Trust a cat to go right for the jugular. “I dunno, Twist. People are just weird, maybe.”
She nodded and went back to her fish, but not before agreeing as insultingly as possible. “That’s certainly true.”
I sighed and went out into the office to meet Davin.
“Hey, what’s on the docket for today?”
He lifted a brow, like I was being silly. “Guess.”
“More potential renters?”
“Of course.” Even as he was speaking, the phone rang, and that...was the phone on his desk. And there was one on mine that was also ringing. Did we have a whole phone system now? Fuck me, I hoped we didn’t have multiple phone lines. That sounded like hell. He sighed and dropped into his chair. “Knight and Daywalker.”
Then he went quiet for a bit, listening.
I pretended that he wasn’t working while I stood around with my thumb up my ass, and wandered over to the kitchenette. It was much nicer than the one I had in the back now. The big white machine I hadn’t recognized had a QR code on it, so I checked it out, and it led me to an app download.
What the hell, why not? I downloaded it, waiting until the thing opened, pressed all the buttons to “sync the module” with the app, and then my screen went white. Was the whole thing some kind of weird Apple-virus scam?
Then a line and three dots appeared on the page, and for an instant, I worried it was one of those things I was just supposed to understand but didn’t, like zen theory or some of the more abstract memes out there. Then, I realized it was a smiley face.
“Hello,” drifted across the bottom of the screen. “What kind of tea would you like to drink today?”
Suddenly, I was torn. Because tea? Totally my jam. Weird smiley apps that seemed to be speaking to me personally? Less so.
