Sure, I’m free.
As opposed to all the other nights when I was busy watching him.
In a year or two, I’d need to get serious about finding a job and learning about investments from Bennie or find a hobby or something like that.
Bennie had said that vampires should take a couple of years to get stable and comfortable with their new bodies and abilities before going back to work.
Then, if they did it correctly, they should start amassing money. Not too much to gather the interest of the media or government, but enough to tide them over for a couple of centuries.
Bennie had hit the jackpot. He’d lived through the golden age of IT and had invested heavily in Bitcoin when it first became a thing. I think he also mentioned having purchased Tesla stock in the early days.
I snorted, still incredibly amused by the fact that a vampire—a being from an ancient species known to be a little stuck-up—had made money by investing in IT. I guess Bennie and I were part of a new generation, like Boomers and Millennials or Gen Z, with the difference that vampires produced a new generation every couple of centuries instead of every couple of years like humans.
Laughing quietly, I imagined telling someone like Alaric, “Okay, Boomer.” If it weren’t for the fact that vampires got stronger with age, it would definitely be something I’d want to do.
Finn: Great, text me the address, and we can meet up at six? I need to shower; otherwise, my stench will send you running.
I highly doubted anything about him could ever send me running, but I was aware of the fact that telling him that would be considered creepy by anyone—hell, even by me. So I kept quiet and simply texted him a thumbs up, followed by the address.
Six should work in terms of the sun setting, otherwise I’d have to get creative.
I’d had to get creative.
Fucking hell.
I was a vampire. I was basically dead, yet I could still itchsofucking much. At least I couldn’t sweat. Because if I could, I’d have melted into a puddle by now. For one, the temperature in here was always high. Apparently, most of the customers enjoyed the cozy, warm atmosphere, and having a shit-ton of Persian rugs and vintage armchairs and couches wasn’t enough to achieve that. Not even the brocade throw pillows and crocheted afghans helped. No, the temperature was only right if one felt like a lizard in a terrarium bathing under an infrared light.
And then there were the layers of clothes—I was certain the two UV protective layers and heavy hoodie I was wearing would give a human heatstroke.
But they’d saved my vampire ass. Because, of course, today had been a sunny day. If there’d been clouds, going out at five thirty wouldn’t have been a problem, but no. When I’d opened the blackout curtains and raised the blinds, I’d been attacked by a concentrated ray of sunshine directly focused on my face.
Now I was meeting Finn while my face was streaked red, if it didn’t heal in time.
I shifted in my armchair again, trying to move the seams of the UV shirt to somewhere they weren’t bothering me as much, but they kept digging into my skin.
Fortunately, I’d been able to snag one of those cozy armchairs tucked away in a corner, far, far away from the windows. I loved this particular set of armchairs, even though they were the most hideous mix of vomit green and diarrhea yellow. The cozinessand placement made up for the ugliness. No natural light reached this corner; the single light source was a vintage lamp with a horrible rosé lampshade tucked in the corner. As soon as Finn got here, I’d be able to go to the bathroom and change out of the UV clothes. Then I’d feel less itchy for sure.
I straightened a bit in the chair and peeked around the backrest to check whether Finn had arrived yet.
He still had three minutes until he’d be late, but I couldn’t wait for him to get here. My stomach was doing the whole tying itself into knots thing again, and I didn’t like it. If it hadn’t been such a sunny day, I’d have waited for Finn at his apartment and secretly followed him here, just to make sure nothing bad happened to him on the way.
Car crashes were a thing, and rush hour was a prime time to get hit by a car.
But alas, the sun had been way too bright to risk it, so I needed to rely on the fact that Finn had managed to get through life for twenty-three years without getting himself killed—his noteworthy effort at killing himself by gastritis excluded.
Still, I felt a wave of relief crash into me as I saw him rounding a corner, his eyes flickering to the bar on the left and then deeper into the sizeable café. I raised my hand, and he immediately noticed, his face lighting up.
“Hi,” he said. His cheeks were a little rosy, his skin looking less pale and sickly already. The wonders of modern medicine. “I’ve got to admit, for a moment I thought you were pulling a prank on me. This place… it doesn’t look like something someone our age would enjoy.”
I laughed, pointing at the armchair opposite me. “Yeah, the décor is a lot. But everything here is amazing.”
The coffee was to die for, but mentioning that would be quite rude, seeing as he surely wasn’t allowed to have coffee right now.And I definitely wouldn’t be the one tempting him into eating or drinking something that might hurt him.
Finn sat down, wiggling his ass until he found a comfortable position. “It smells amazing, for sure. How did you discover this place?”
Damn. As innocuous as the question might sound, it had me scrambling for an answer that wasn’t a lie.
“I found it one day after I had to get away from my… roommate for a while.”
