Page 12 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
“The usual time for doing business,” he said, agreeably.
I stared at him, waiting, and when he didn’t go on, I added. “Not for vampires. And you’re...not on fire or anything.”
He looked away, reaching over to rifle through a stack of newspapers. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Of course he didn’t. Vampire, ate dinner, wandered out in the day time, didn’t want to discuss it. Totally normal.
He shook his head and turned to me, huffing in frustration. “You have room for two businesses in this building. The sections aren’t even connected.”
“And?”
For a moment, he just stared at me like maybe I was slower than Suzy and eventually I’d catch up. When I clearly didn’t, he huffed. “You can rent out the other half of this building. It’s a seaside business rental. Do you have any idea how much money you could make on that? You were worried about the senator saying you needed to pay for the taxes on the building, but I’m sure rent for the other half could cover it.”
Against my neck, Twist started purring.
A business rental.
Huh.
Why hadn’t I ever thought of that?
Well, because I hadn’t wanted to deal with all that business stuff—taxes and rentals and fees and fuck only knew what else. I’d just wanted to live in my little building, do the job I’d chosen for myself, and squeak by at everything else.
I wasn’t an ambitious guy. I’d never wanted to be super rich. I just wanted to live my life on my terms.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t really a thing people got to choose.
“I could put an ad on Craigslist,” I mused.
Across from me, Davin scoffed. “Sure, if you want someone to open a human flesh restaurant or something like that. This isn’t college, Flynn. This is real life. You put out an ad. A professional one.”
“Expensive?” I asked, considering my slim bank account.
He crossed his arms over his chest, pursing his lips at me. “You want someone to rent the place and give you money, or you want to be on the national news as the victim of a crime?”
It was probably a fair point. I was a private investigator, not Superman. And maybe my mother would hunt down and eviscerate anyone who dared kill me, but that wouldn’t stop them from killing me in the first place.
“An ad,” I finally agreed. “So...how exactly does one do that?”
CHAPTER 4
Two hours later, I was at the office of the local paper, the Avalon Advocate, talking to an employee with a voice like an NPR show host about running an ad. While the paper seemed like a tiny fly-by-night thing to me, they were at least mostly online, which was sensible.
In fact, they had their own app, which she was dragging me through the basics of, step by step, because apparently I could run my ad through that, including taking it down when I rented the place to someone.
That seemed convenient, since I didn’t want to have to come down and fill out forms all the time. The likelihood I would remember that was, like...“Sorry, what?”
She blinked at me a moment, then gave a sigh that seemed a little overdramatized to me, and reexplained...something.
What? It wasn’t my fault she had one of those soothing voices they should have made sleep aid recordings from. Plus learning how to run ads was about as interesting as watching paint dry.
She was telling me about the payment system for the third time, this time having given up and typing in my information as an example as she did so, when the phone rang in her hands.
She jerked back and stared at it, like maybe it was shocking someone would call me.
And actually, looking at the caller ID, it was a little shocking.
“Sorry,” I said again, since it seemed to be most of what I said to her, “but I’ve got to take this.”
