So I'm a Vampire... Now What? - Book 2 (Original Version)

Chapter 10.3 It's a Wonderful Life

Claude had the penthouse apartment in one of the most expensive condos on Bay Street right in the heart of downtown. Due to the nature of how my life works, but mainly because the universe loves to fuck with me, it was directly across the street from Beatrice's building. I had the thought that I should mention that to Claude at some point since it was really fucking important in the grand scheme of absolutely everything. I was instead trying to remember when the last time I had been over to his place and was coming up blank.

"Do you actually own this place?" I asked instead as the elevator zipped upward. Claude had inserted a keycard and then entered a code on the keypad for the Penthouse button to even light up.

"This one I own outright," he admitted, "When I saw it on the market I had to get it. Stupidly expensive too. I got into a bidding war with some rich Chinese guy and he drove the price up way above asking."

The elevator doors opened and sunlight flooded the elevator.

"Shut the doors! Shut the doors!" I yelled frantically.

I instantly stepped back as far as possible, trying to shield myself from the bright sunlight that flooded the foyer beyond the doors, the sunlight—

Wait a second: there wasn't even a tingle to my skin.

I lowered my hands and Claude just gave me a look that said how much of an idiot I was for not trusting him.

"Seriously dude? Do you think I'd want you to go through that again?"

"Why am I not feeling anything?" I asked cautiously, as I exited the elevator into the foyer, feeling the sunlight on my skin, yellowish and warm, but definitely not burning.

There was a lot of glass and I do mean a lot of glass.

Normally this much glass letting in direct sunlight would have been a death sentence for a vampire, but it was a type of glass that Harry himself had overseen the development of, just so he could give both middle fingers to the sun without being burned to a crisp.

"The former owner was a vampire and he made some major modifications to the place. Dude was a huge investor in Harry's vampire glass technology. You know how good this stuff is. This guy brokered a deal with NASA and everything. It was all over the news about a year and a half ago. I do my research you know," he added as condescendingly as possible, which was a lot.

I thought about that for a second and wondered just how many other vampires Claude had tracked down and studied in great detail as part of his research. Did he also have some kind of field report on how best to steal from a vampire like Harry or even Beatrice? I always tried to stay out of Claude's business and respected him for being so good at what he did. Sometimes I even thought of him as more of a spy than anything else since that was a huge part of what he did, but now I wondered what kind of detailed profile he had built on me.

"I'm surprised the entire building isn't covered in the glass," I said instead because that is not the type of question you ask your friend of twenty years. "It's the kind of thing Harry would do. His office building is covered in it and I'm sure all of the glass in HTDK is made of it. He would love every building in Toronto to be using his glass."

"Talk about bringing vampires into the light."

"You have no idea how much you miss the sun until you can't go outside in it anymore without being covered head to toe," I said.

"A conspiracy theorist could have some fun with this idea."

"Lock that conspiracy theorist away from the sun for twenty years and then tell him to get back to me. This isn't some plot to take over the world. This is just allowing vampires something that feels like being human again. Nothing wrong with that."