Page 24 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
Studying history was a little different from having seen it in person. It was easier to understand how benign monsters could look, if you’d personally seen them before.
Still, Davin had asked me a question, and I’d drifted off into my own head, as I tended to do. Oddly enough, he wasn’t glaring at me or tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He was just driving. Waiting.
Weird. Most people got sick of trying to have a conversation with me pretty quickly. Yet another reason I did better with animals. If they were impatient for my answer, they made a demand. They didn’t just sit there stewing in annoyance and silence.
“I don’t think Charles would have started a coup,” I finally answered, and found that as I said the words, I believed them. “He and mother were like two teenagers from one of thosemovies. You know, insulting each other’s fashion sense and being superficially rude, but never actually violent. They were frenemies.”
He nodded, like there hadn’t been a huge minutes-long lull in the conversation, then sat back and considered it himself, if not quite as long as I had. “So why would he have been making a list of your mother’s enemies? Something rude he intended to do to her? Throw a party and only invite people who didn’t like her? Leave her out of some charity event and only invite them? I’ve never been rich, I don’t know how it works.”
“I mean, you’ve basically got it. Bitchy backbiting crap. Nothing violent, nothing...important, you know? Nothing that matters. I’m sure some of them believe insults over that designer being ‘so last decade’ matter, but mostly it’s just a bunch of ancient teenagers entertaining themselves.”
He snickered, then laughed aloud, apparently so amused by my summary that he couldn’t help himself. Of course the asshole had a great laugh, deep and rich and infectious.
I hadn’t thought I’d been that funny, but I’d also grown up not taking these people seriously, however seriously they took themselves. If there was one thing my mother had taught me incredibly well, it was how to stick a pin in an overinflated ego.
It took Davin a bit to get himself back under control—I was impressed that his driving didn’t suffer for it, but he was clearly very good at it. No surprise there. He had good hands. Big, strong hands, with long tapered fingers that looked designed for playing the piano. I was still staring at them when he spoke up again.
“Maybe it was something else. Maybe he was worried someone else was going to try to kill your mam and take over, so he was making a list of people he suspected might do that.”
Now that...was not a bad guess. If I were to make a list of people I thought might want to overthrow my mother, Gerald,Mei, and Carmen would have been my top three choices too. Charles wouldn’t have even been top ten. He had reminded me too much of the old comedian Paul Lynde to think of him as violent. He’d just been so...happy with his life. And sure, he’d taken every opportunity to insult my mother, but it had always been sort of funny. Maybe almost friendly.
We pulled into my mother’s drive, and Davin parked so smoothly I almost didn’t notice the car had stopped. No wonder she’d sold him her baby; the man was a better driver than some professionals. I wondered if he was always that good with his hands.
For, you know, reasons.
Mother’s housekeeper was the one who answered the door this time, and it made me think of Jennings. Mirabelle had been running my mother’s house my whole life, and apparently, her mother had done the job before her. I wondered what she would do if someone murdered Mother.
Also be murdered, probably. She would come after the killer with a fireplace poker, because my mother wasn’t just her boss, but her friend.
Still, the notion stuck in my brain so much that the moment she led us into the dining room, I looked at my mother and the first thing out of my mouth was, “you have a will, right?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Of course, dear. Everything goes to you. Though I’d expect you to give Mirabelle and her family money, as well as the mountain house. And I think Meg would want to move to where her children live in Washington, so just money for her.”
Because of course my mother had thought this through, even if I’d been thinking just that morning that no vampire did. Because Mother thought everything through.
“Of course,” I agreed. “Anything you want me to give them, just let me know.”
“Worried about Jennings?”
I swallowed and nodded. “I told him I would talk to you about getting things taken care of. He’s got to be eighty, so there’s no way he’s going to just go find another job.”
“Don’t you worry about that, dear. I spoke to Charles about it back when I was arranging my will, after you were born, and he had one made as well. Maybe he only did it on a lark, but it exists. And if it didn’t, we would arrange for one to be found.” She put her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her knuckles, looking strangely like a bird that way. “You know, I believe Jennings is about to become a very rich man. Not that I think there’s any chance he’d have killed Charles for the cash.”
“No,” I agreed. “He didn’t say it, since we were speaking in front of the cops, but it was pretty obvious that he didn’t even expect that he was going to be cared for, let alone get a lot of money out of this.”
My mother’s face went all gooey and sympathetic, which was utterly surreal. I didn’t think I’d ever seen that expression on her face in my life.
On the other hand, we’d never been through anything like this before.
Like I’d said: vampires didn’t go around dying like humans.
“Well we would never let that happen. Every person who’s a part of this community is taken care of.” She turned to Mirabelle, lips pulled into a tight moue. “I assure you, dear, if anything happens to me, you’ll have anything you could possibly need. Your husband and daughters as well.”
Mirabelle gave a knowing smile. “I know it, Miss Fiona. Never would have doubted you a moment.”
Because my mother was never a nice person. Never an effusive person or a caring one. But if there was one thing everyone knew about my mother, it was that she was loyal.She would always take care of her own if they needed it. With prejudice if necessary.
I took off my jacket, pulling Twist out of the pocket, and Mirabelle took the thing before I could just hang it over the back of a chair.
