Page 10 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
Eight-thirty in the morning.
Definitely a dream, because first of all, I hadn’t been up before ten in the morning willingly since I’d been a kid, and secondly, because there was a vampire standing at my office door, bright and early in the morning.
Bright being the operative word there.
He met my eye through the glass door, then pulled his dark sunglasses off and lifted his hands to his sides as though to ask “what the hell?”
I crossed to the front and flipped the lock, pulling the door open, then glancing around for further signs that this was a dream. I looked at Suzy, the sloth who lived in the bushes just outside the office door.
“You see him, right?”
She blinked and smiled up at me, looking at Davin then back. “Sure do. He seems nice, though. Not really a threat.”
“I...no, I didn’t think he was a threat.” I glanced back at the vampire, considering. He could be a threat, if he wanted to be.He wasn’t a small guy, and vampires were stronger than humans to begin with. “He’s just not supposed to be here.”
She gave a little motion almost like a shrug. “Well I don’t know anything about your plans, Flynn. If you let me know who you’re expecting and when, maybe I can help with that. But I’ve never even met this one before.”
“Are you talking to that sloth?” Davin asked, then looked harder at Suzy, frowning. “What the heck is a sloth even doing here? Sloths don’t live in California.”
“Suzy does,” I informed him. Then I turned and nodded to her. “I guess that’s fair. I’ll try to let you know if anyone important is going to be dropping in. For now, this is Davin, and he’s...I guess he’s my business partner, and he’s going to be around often from now on.”
She gave him a nod, then stuffed some leaves into her mouth and turned back to her business.
I grabbed Davin by the cuff of his black motorcycle jacket. Hm. That was nice. No doubt my mother would like that better than the brown one I wore, which she’d long ago deemed “unfashionable.”
I closed the door behind us, then looked at the windows, like maybe they would have curtains they’d never had before. “Back there,” I told him, motioning to the back office. “There’s only one window, and it’s got blinds. You should be okay back there.”
Davin just stood there, staring at me, so I motioned to the office again.
But he didn’t seem particularly uncomfortable. No, he was just standing there. In the sun. All vampirey and still alive.
“What the fuck?” I asked, so cleverly.
He lifted a brow. “There’s a sloth in your bushes. Should someone call animal control?”
I scoffed and waved him off. “I’ll have you know she’s a registered exotic familiar.”
“Yours?”
“I’m not a mage. Probably. No, my friend Grady registered her, because she was brought here by some rich asshole as an exotic pet, but like most rich assholes, he lost interest in owning a wild animal. But she didn’t want to be deported or put in a zoo. She likes it here. So now she lives in my bushes, because she’s a grownup who has the right to make her own choices. She...she’s our security system.”
“A sloth,” he repeated, like maybe I’d forgotten the whole purpose of the conversation. “A sloth is your security system.”
“She has a name,” I reminded him.
“Suzy. The sloth.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I prepared for a fight. I’d had this argument before, thanks to people who thought they knew best for everyone. Thank fuck for Grady’s help the year before, registering her as his familiar, or she’d have been off to the San Diego Zoo after being thrown in a literal dumpster by the asshole who’d paid to kidnap her from the land of her birth. “Suzy the sloth.”
Davin reached up to rub his eyes, like maybe he also thought he was still sleeping.
Except I didn’t usually have the Suzy argument with strangers while asleep.
“All right then,” he finally said, stopping to look around. “This is nice. The office building. Your mam gave you this half?”
I shrugged, uneasy. “Technically both halves. But I don’t really mess with the other half.”
