Page 3 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
From . . . oh. He was definitely a vampire, then.
I knew plenty of vampires, of course. I’d grown up among them, since they were forever coming to my mother for her help or political support or any number of other things. But she rarely invited me to dinner with them, unless they were close friends or members of her staff. When I’d flirted with one at an event when I was a teenager, she’d insisted I never, ever do that, because vampires, by and large, could not be trusted.
Plus she didn’t approve of the fact that the woman I’d been flirting with had been almost three hundred years older than me.
All that to say that my mother introducing me to a vampire was a bit weird.
Davin nodded to me, respectful as one might expect in front of my mother. “Mr. Knight.”
“Flynn,” I corrected automatically, because ew. Who the heck ever wanted to be called “mister” anything? “And you too.”
“Davin is an expert in security,” Mother told me, voice crisp, as she snapped her napkin out then smoothed it over her lap. Her tone said she thought this information was very important. “Sort of like you.”
Curiouser and curiouser. “I’m a private investigator, Mother. I don’t know anything about...what, computers?” I glanced at Davin, who nodded, then cocked his head a little and squinted one eye, shrugging, like there was more to it than that. “That sounds like the sort of thing you’d go to school for.”
“You studied,” she insisted. “And there was that test.”
It was...hell, it was almost sweet, like she was defending my awful career choices. Because she did think they were awful. She’d begged me to stay in college, even if it was to get a criminal justice degree and become a human cop or something like that. She didn’t have a lot of use for the human authorities, but she did consider them safer than hanging out with vampires.
And instead, my choices had led me into closer association with vampires, because a human who was awake and able to move in the daylight? More, one who knew about them, and could investigate their problems? That was a novelty they were unused to. So the majority of my clients were vampires, which my mother definitely did not approve of.
She didn’t seem to want me anywhere near her own people. Maybe she thought I’d be a terrible vampire. If it was that, she was probably right. If “smooth” had an opposite, that was me.
Not that anyone knew how the hell Iwasa human. It was obvious from looking at the two of us that I was her son. We had the same coloring, yes, but also, the same small upturned nose and high cheekbones and delicate features. I looked almost more like her clone than her kid.
Plus there were pictures of her pregnant.
So how had an ancient dead woman given birth?
She sure as hell wasn’t telling anyone, not even me.
“So, as Davin has just arrived, he is in need of a job,” she said, changing the subject when I didn’t respond to the comment about the test for my PI license. “And it seemed to me that you were in need of a partner who could do more than just...what you do. Bethany told me you recovered that Picasso that was stolen from her last fall, and while that’s lovely, perhaps with Davin’s help, you can keep things like that from happening to begin with.”
I cocked my head, looking at her in confusion. “Like...set up security systems for vampires?”
“It is what Davin does.” She pursed her lips and looked over at him. “Isn’t it?”
“It is, Senator. I worked at a security agency in Dublin before I had to leave there.” He stared at the blank white tablecloth in front of him as he said it, like maybe something had gone horribly, terribly, awfully wrong to force him to leave Dublin. My mother...reached out and laid her hand on top of his.
What the hell alternate universe was I living in, where my mother comforted someone who was struggling? The only person she’d ever done anything like that for...was me. And frankly, she’d almost never done that.
“Don’t you worry about that, dear. Flynn owns a whole building to run a business out of, right down on the beach. A perfect location. I should know, I gave it to him.” She turned and looked at me, once again raising that brow, like she was challenging me to question her.
I winced, but I couldn’t disagree, really.
Avalon, the town we lived in, was up the coast a bit from Los Angeles proper, less populous and crowded than the city itself. And when I’d passed my test to get my PI license, she’d given me an empty building she owned, “to start my business.”
She was right that it was a perfect location. Literally five feet away from where the beach started. Big enough to house two fullbusinesses, separated down the center. A huge modern building, and I had cringed when they’d mailed me the tax assessment.
And Mother wasn’t terribly thrilled with what I had—or rather hadn’t—done with it. It was still basically empty, except that technically, I lived in the back room.
Yes, that was illegal, but who was going to arrest me for sleeping on a couch in a building I owned, even if it was zoned for business? It made my rare paychecks from vamp clients stretch further, not having to pay rent.
“I’m not much of an investigator,” Davin told her. “Not to question you, Senator. I just...well, if there’s a test, and?—”
“Now dear, no one expects you to investigate anything. That’s Flynn’s job. But Icanspeak to how difficult it is to get a decent security system in this town, working with humans who’ll only come out in the daytime. Whom we still have to hide from. There are over three hundred vampires in the greater Los Angeles area, and the majority of them almost certainly could use your services.” She turned to look at me. “Maybe it would save people like Bethany from having to use your services when her Picasso goes missing, if it never does.”
I glanced at Davin as he was looking at me, and I saw the same thing in his eyes that I was feeling myself: doubt.
