Page 33 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
Even as annoyed as I was at that moment, it made me smile. “How about...gobshite?”
I could almost see her raise an eyebrow, even though ravens definitely didn’t have eyebrows. “Turning Irish, are we?”
I turned and looked back toward town, considering. “Mother forced him on me, but...I kinda like him. Even if he did eat most of the rolls I was going to give you last night.”
“Unusual, someone like that keeping company with your mother.”
“I, um, asked him if he was my brother. She’s been nicer to him than I’ve ever seen her be to anyone but me.” I thought of the Camaro, and narrowed my eyes. “And maybe nicer than she is to me, in some ways.”
“Of course,” the raven agreed. “You were looking for a connection that’s not there because she doesn’t usually like people. But she’s usually surrounded by people who want something from her, or might want her dead.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I agreed, even though I thought it was more than Davin just not wanting her dead. He actively liked her, even though he’d met her and knew that she was cold, calculating, and distant. He clearly saw something else in her.
My raven friend seemed unbothered by my hesitance and went on, which was unusual for her. Usually she let me talk, but tonight, it seemed, she needed me to understand something. “He’s a change for her, so she likes him. It’s uncomplicated, something she rarely gets. The way she feels about you can never be uncomplicated. She loves you, and wants the best for you, but she also wants you to do more. Be more. She thinks you can do anything, but you don’t try as hard as she thinks you should. She only likes him. There’s no real comparison. It’s what being a mother is.”
I truly stopped to consider that. She was certainly spot on about how my mother acted toward me, constantly complaining that I wasn’t living up to my potential. But then she’d pressed Davin into my life, so neatly I hadn’t even wanted to say no. “Then why introduce us, why push us together, if she only likes him?”
“Because she knows you’re lonely, and he might be a good friend.”
Wow, that was a lance to the gut.
I was lonely.
It wasn’t wrong, either.
It was also way more than I’d ever read into any of my mother’s actions before. I turned back to look at my raven friend. “You’re pretty smart, you know that?”
“Only because you listen.”
The door opened above me, revealing my mother’s assistant, Scary—err, Mary Windsor. She’d been turned in her fifties, with mostly grayed blonde hair and lines around her sharp blue eyes, and she’d always put me to mind of strict nuns who taught at a Catholic school. At least, the ones in movies. It wasn’t like I’d ever gone to a Catholic school to know for sure.
On the other hand, I was never in my life going to call her “the penguin,” so how much difference did it make?
“Ms. Windsor,” I said, as respectful as possible. “I’m here to see my mother, if she’s available.”
She looked me over for a long, deeply uncomfortable moment, like maybe if there was a soup stain on my shirt she would turn me away. Then she nodded and walked away, leaving the door open behind her.
I followed, jogging up the stairs, pausing only long enough to look back at my raven friend, who was sitting on the tree branch nearest the door. “And people wonder why I’m screwed up.”
The caws that followed me inside sounded very much like a cackle.
My mother was in her office, on a computer, and it was such a strange picture. Like she was a business woman, her long red hair tied neatly back in a chignon, reading glasses perched on her nose.
Reading glasses.
Huh.
She looked up at me when I entered, then motioned me in, so I complied, closing the door behind me with the thump of a soundproofed seal. That was my mother in a nutshell. The kind of person who soundproofed her office in her own home.
I watched as she removed the glasses and closed the laptop, but my eyes followed the things to where she put them on her desk. “You need those?”
She lifted a brow, but followed my gaze, then shrugged. “I keep the font on the computer small. They make it easier to read it. Besides, I was over forty when I was turned. Everything got a little better with the change, but no one is perfect. If you’ll recall, Charles always wore glasses.”
“I thought that was a fashion statement.”
She smiled at that, cocking her head to one side, her vision going distant. “That is a distinct possibility. He started wearing them in the seventies, and his initial style choices were certainly...unique.”
“He was your friend,” I said, letting my tone go flat and cutting to the chase.
