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."
Claude pointed up at the huge skylight directly above the foyer and I glanced up nervously. It had been a while since I had been under this much sunlight even with Harry's patented Vampire Glass protecting me.
"There's an interesting security feature where this entire thing will open up and flood the place in direct sunlight."
My heart pounded at the thought of it, my mind instantly flashing back to my memories of burning alive on that beach. I still couldn't even smell barbequed meat without having a flashback.
"I thought you said it was vampire safe?"
"Well, just don't be in here if you ever have to set off the alarm, and it should be perfectly safe," Claude said with a grin. "Come on, let me show you around the rest of the place."
"Hopefully the rooms where I don't get burned to death."
The penthouse was a dream. It took up an entire quarter of the floor, way more space than anyone could possibly need. I'd like to say it was about 4000 square feet, but that would just be me talking out of my ass. Let's just agree that the place was huge.
"Four bedrooms, each with a private bathroom. I've got the one on at the end there, so don't even think about it. You can choose any one of the other three. They're all gigantic and they come fully furnished."
I checked out the first bedroom. It was furnished in Ikea chic, but looked expensive, as if they had used actual wood. It was subtle, but there was just something about the furniture that yelled "not cheap". Oh did I mention? The bedroom was about the size of my shithole apartment. There was a king-sized bed against one wall, a walk-in closet and a huge fucking bathroom. There was also a desk with an iMac and a MacBook Pro, waiting to be used. On the wall facing the bed was a huge 70" flatscreen television, currently dark, but promising some epic Netflix binge-watching in my future. The windows were floor to ceiling huge, but also had layered heavy blackout curtains that went all the way to the ground. The curtain rods looked like they were motorized.
My duffel bag looked dingy and kind of small sitting on the floor all by itself. Not worthy of the surroundings.
"Where's Ronnie staying?" I asked in what I thought was a casual voice.
"She's actually on her way over right now.," Claude said, easily matching my level of casualness. "She can grab one of the other rooms."
I whirled on him and glared at him. This had been bugging me since yesterday and needed to be dealt with.
"You so know that's not what I'm getting at! I sent her to you to keep her safe—"
Claude stayed perfectly calm, He wasn't about to be baited into a fight.
"Dude, you sent her to me to get her out of the way. You had no idea what to do with her. I get it, totally do, but at least be honest about it."
Goddamit.
"I hate you sometimes you know," I muttered. "Why do you always have to be right?"
"I'm going to avoid the easy fight lurking in that statement," Claude said and I made a face at him. "Do you even know what your sweet innocent cousin Ronnie has been up to over in Montreal?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Dude: she's a hacker, and not the good kind either. She'd fallen in with a pretty bad crowd. They were targeting banks and other businesses. Some pretty nasty stuff."
"So now she's working for you instead?"
"She's talented dude. Would you prefer her learn the right way to do this kind of stuff or get busted inside of a year? A lot of people don't last long doing this kind of work you know. You have to be careful."
I looked around the room, taking in the entire apartment, knowing that the entire place had to be worth several millions of dollars for just the address along. This was all the direct result of Claude being careful. I had known he had been growing wealthier over the years, but I seriously had no real idea what he had going on or how much he was making off of his occasional jobs. Some things you just don't ask.
I was going to have to have a holy shit moment later on when he was gone.
The apartment had a panic room.
It was accessible through a door at the back of the walk-in kitchen pantry that required a handprint and a good old-fashioned but highly intricately designed metal key. Claude handed a copy of the key to me and looked me in the eyes.
"There are only two copies of these keys made and each one is different. Do not lose this key or you won't be able to get inside this room, understood?"
"What's the keypad for? Don't I have to get my hand scanned?"
"Only if you really want to. It's a diversion. These keys are the only way in, but the scanner can keep anybody trying to break in occupied for a good while."
"That's... seriously evil."
"Yup," Claude agreed as he opened the panic room door. It was more like a heavy vault door than anything else, at least two feet thick and opened onto a narrow downward stairwell. "The door is reinforced steel and is almost impossible to drill through," Claude offered as he pounded on the door. "Designed to slow down even the most determined. They'd have to blow up the building first to get through this door and maybe not even then."
"Why does it feel like we're preparing for some kind of attack?"
"I'm always preparing for some kind of attack. Especially the unexpected ones. I make it a habit not to buy anything too flashy, just enough to make me look moderately successful, but not throw money around the room successful, you know what I mean? The more money you appear to have, the more people want to take it from you. People just like me. Someday I'm going to meet someone who can outthink me, is better and smarter, but I'll have had time to prepare." Claude headed down the stairs. "Coming?"
I followed Claude down the stairs into a moderately furnished apartment that lacked windows. It was as if the upstairs apartment had sprouted a basement. There was a basic living room with a comfortable couch and a big screen tv, a smaller kitchen and doors leading to what I assumed were bedrooms. The walls were made up of square doors that opened easily to reveal storage areas packed with different kinds of survival gear and supplies.
"You could survive a year down here if you needed to," Claude said wryly. "It's entirely self-sufficient. Unless someone blows up the building of course, then it's just you and gravity."
"Vampire proof huh?"
"Completely. You can either fight them or just hide from them until they get bored and go away. Hell, it would even work if you wanted to disappear from the face of the planet. Nobody would even know you're here."
"So what's the plan?" I asked as I followed Claude back upstairs to the enormous kitchen. I closed the panic room door behind me and listened as what sounded like a dozen locks slid into place and then the decoy handprint sensor turned red.
Claude threw a can of Gingler-Ale to me and I entered the kitchen proper. I noted that the fridge appeared to be fully stocked and wondered when Claude had had time to do all of this.
"I don't actually have a plan," Claude admitted, "This is all new ground for me and I'm still figuring things out. Why don't you come up with a plan this time?"
"You're the brains of this outfit and I'm just the sidekick. Besides, you're the criminal. You've gotten out of some pretty serious jams like this before haven't you?"
"Correction: I'm a very good criminal. I make it a point to not get caught or be on anybody's radar. If I do my job right, they don't even know I've been there until I'm completely gone. I've had some close calls, but I always walk away. Total opposite of what you've done."
I shook my head, thinking as fast as I could, then something occurred to me. It was as if a bolt of lightning had gone off in my head.
"Holy shit," I gasped, almost choking on my ginger-ale. "I think I have a plan." I turned to look at Claude. "And I think it might actually work."
###AUTHOR'S NOTE####
Bet you didn't know Claude was this rich did you? All part of the plan! And finally an idea of what was going on with Ronnie. Now, what could Bob's plan possibly be?