Page 64 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
Twist gave a tiny growl and swiped out with her paw, as though to indicate how she’d dealt with that problem.
Doc didn’t even seem to notice, staring off into space, nodding. “András makes sense. He’s been in love with yourmother, or at least her leadership, since before you were born. But you’re looking for a woman. Who’ve you got for that?”
I sighed and shook my head. “I mean, Scary Mary? My mother doesn’t have a ton of female allies. Probably because fully three-quarters of the vamps who live in LA are men. On the other side, Carmen and Wu Mei hate her, but Wu Mei was out of the country when it happened.”
Doc nodded at that, then waved dismissively. “Mei’s too smart to get herself embroiled in that kind of nonsense anyway. Her sister got killed a hundred years ago getting her brother installed as the senator in Taipei. She knows politics aren’t worth her life. Carmen...she’s smarter than she acts, which makes me think she’d have been too clever to fall for any act Charles was giving. You want someone who wasn’t smart enough to see it was a trick, probably.”
Someone who wasn’t smart enough to see it was a trick.
The only person who’d indicated belief that Charles had turned on my mother so far had been his own assistant, Kate. I hadn’t believed it possible that she could have anything to do with it, but maybe...
Maybe she’d told someone else what was going on, and they’d done it.
Davin joined us then, and he set up a few other things inside the house. An actual panel for the security system replaced what had previously been a speaker, and then Davin helped Doc download the connected app, and showed him how it all worked.
Doc had been entirely right, I realized while watching them.
Davin was way too familiar with the newest, most cutting edge tech. Even Doc, who was pretty open-minded about technology for a vampire, struggled with it a little bit. Davin? Didn’t have a second of pause when explaining something about the system connection on wifi versus doc’s phone connection, and how they differed.
“You’re like forty,” I said to him, accusatory, interrupting the lesson on how the security app worked.
Davin scowled at me. “I beg your pardon. I am thirty-seven.”
Fuck me entirely, it was worse than him being forty. He was barely a handful of years older than me.
Rather uncharitably, Doc cackled.
Damn vampires.
I called Kate on our way down Doc’s driveway, figuring we could head up to Charles’s house to see her, but she told me she was in town and offered to meet me at the office.
“In fact,” she told me before hanging up, “there’s something I think you should know.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a very bad one.
Either way, we headed back into town, stopping only long enough to grab some burritos in a drive-through. When I asked for extra hot sauce, Davin looked at me like I was nuts, but come on. What was a burrito without a little hot sauce?
Or a lot of it.
I was in the middle of stuffing my face when we pulled into the parking lot, and Davin kept shooting me glares, but come on, what was the point of not driving myself if it wasn’t to be able to eat while someone else did the work?
Plus we both knew that I was going to have to be the one to talk to Kate when we got there, while he’d have the chance to eat then. I was so not waiting till after the driveandafter she left to get my food.
“You’re like a snake,” he muttered as he turned the car off. “Like you’ve got to fill your whole self up with food, right to thebrim. As bad as your cat. You planning to take a nap back at the office?”
And that just wasn’t fair. Who didn’t like a good nap after eating?
Kate was waiting near the parking lot, though, so I didn’t really have time to argue with Davin. Or for a nap, sadly enough. I had to go chat with her first.
“Take your food and go eat,” I mumbled, waving him off. “I can handle this.”
He lifted a brow at me, but he didn’t complain, just took the bag with the remaining burritos and headed for the shop door rather than where Kate stood on the beach walk, looking out at the dark ocean.
Her mood was oddly pensive, and that was even more concerning than the comment on the phone.
“Kate? Is everything okay?”
She turned to me, brows scrunched together, biting her bottom lip so hard she’d left dark indentations in the skin there. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
