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

Chapter 10.4 - It's a Wonderful Life

We were in the middle of discussing the plan when Jaime called.

Claude had pulled out a digital whiteboard from somewhere and Ronnie had gone to work, pulling up as much info as she could. She had a direct line to Madame Vera's archives due to her job as Madame fucking Vera's personal fucking assistant and had zero qualms about using it for her own gain.

"You're glaring at me Bobbo," Ronnie had intoned as she had typed away on her brand new MacBook Pro, apparently a perk of the job. Hell, she even wore a brand new and very stylish suit that was befitting of someone in her position.

"I'm not glaring," I denied, aware that I had suddenly developed a very visible twitch to my left eye. Possibly from glaring so hard. "Am I glaring? Can't be glaring because I have no reason to glare, nope not me, no sirree."

Ronnie snapped the cover of the MacBook shut and turned to glare back at me.

"Either quit glaring or let's fight, right here right now."

"I don't even know you anymore," I spat. "Who are you even?"

"I could say the same thing about you, mister got turned into a vampire and didn't tell anyone."

"That is a completely different thing than you being a hacker--"

"Says the former junkie," Ronnie spat back at me. "Didn't see me judging you back then, did you?"

Ow.

I tried to rally and turned to Claude. "How does she get to work for possibly the most powerful vampire in the city."

"I needed a hacker I could trust," Claude said blithely. "She's a hacker. Besides, Madame Vera agreed only because she's got a soft spot for you, and since Ronnie is your cousin and a genius, it was an easy win. Can we quit the bickering and get back to the planning?"

"Madame Vera likes me?" I said more to myself. That surprisingly made me feel quite nice all by itself. Beat that Ronnie.

"No idea why," Ronnie sniped as she opened up the laptop and got back to work. I stuck my tongue out at her, not letting her take away my momentary happiness; she flipped me off and I pretended not to see.

"This isn't over," I whispered hoarsely at Ronnie. A well-aimed whiteboard marker, thrown by Claude, bounced off my head; I tried to look as innocent as I possibly could. "Who said that cuz it wasn't me!"

Claude continued the details of the plan, but since this part included gathering as much information as possible on the various factions who were out to get me, I really had nothing to do except twiddle my thumbs and plot revenge against Ronnie for getting so close to Madame Vera.

"Bring up everything we have on the assassins," Claude said. Ronnie did some fast typing and a number of images and profiles popped up on Claude's SmartBoard(TM), just like in the cop shows on tv. I recognized one of the men as the assassin Beatrice had taken out in her kitchen.

It would have been a good time to tell Claude that Beatrice had a condo in the building across the street. In fact, it felt incredibly pertinent to the discussion and I'd actually have something to contribute but I got distracted by how many pictures had popped up. Louise's photo was up there as well but crossed out.

"They sent five assassins after me? What the fuck?"

"Montreal really doesn't like you," Ronnie noted, but did she look a little worried at that? I thought she did.

"Your girlfriend took out three of them and Harry paid off another two. Louise was the only one who turned it down."

Something was bothering me.

"Yeah, she told me they hired her," I said distracted, then: "What's to stop them from going after my family to get to me?"

"There's this agreement that goes back hundreds of years that you don't involve families. Montreal broke that code when they allowed fuckwad to prey on your family the way he did. They're about this close," he held up his thumb and forefinger about a centimetre apart, "to having every vampire in Montreal wiped out of existence, along with their families and descendant and various pets. That's what would happen if they touched any of your family."

"Fuck."

"Goddamn right," Ronnie agreed.

Harry and Madame Vera had a vast spy network in place to monitor those kinds of transactions. There was a lot of dark web stuff going on, which I thought made it sound a lot more like a bad movie plot, but the screens that Ronnie brought up on her computer looked like any other website to me, so I quickly lost interest despite my neck being on the line.

My phone rang and I glanced at the number.

Jaime.

I instantly put up a finger to put Ronnie and Claude on hold by pointing at the phone and making the universal sign for "I have to take this call, you guys go on without me" which mostly consisted or me mouthing the words at them, and them looking confused because I hadn't been involved anyway. I turned and walked away with the phone to my ear.

"Hey Jaime, is everything okay?"

I quickly walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind me, trying not to make too much noise.

"Am I catching you at a bad time? This sounds like a bad time."

"No it's okay," I said, my heart pounding my chest. "You can call me anytime."

I wandered over to the window, enjoying the feel of the muted sunlight on my skin. Damn, it felt so much like being almost human again.

"I just wanted to thank you again for listening to me last night, and for just being there. I know things aren't great between us, so thank you for that."

"It's the least I could do," I said. "You needed someone and I'm just glad it was me."

"We're planning the funeral," Jaime said. "It's in three days. Will you be there? Dad would really have liked it if you could be there."

"Of course I will. Just tell your cop friend, okay? I'd hate to be the guy who gets arrested at a funeral."

"I'll text you the details."

"Sure thing."

There was a long awkward pause and I wanted to say something, anything, but couldn't find any words that would make me not sound like an asshole.

"Thank you, Bob," Jaime finally said and hung up.

I looked at the phone for a long while, my heart still pounding.

The view over the city caught my attention after a moment, a view that I'd had very few occasions to enjoy before and had taken for granted every time. As I looked out, two things hit me at once.

One: funerals were usually held during the day.

Two: Beatrice was looking up at me from a window in the condo building directly across the street.

######AUTHOR'S NOTE#####

Well, that's it for that chapter. Time for some fun and games