North American Vampire Council & Past Calling (Hypernaturals 12 & 13)

Phone Call

Casa de Gato is a madhouse most of the time. Way too many people in it. It's hard to remember the time I lived here alone. Not that I yearn for those days. Me being suddenly on the Vampire Council but still doing all the things I used to do? Even crazier.

Denise is always telling me that if I got three Leads for Crew so that they could share the load, I should consider letting someone take a load off of me.

I tell her to carry me to bed then.

Sometimes she even does so win!

I am not ready to give up anything about my old life yet. I still need to be Morgan's partner in things like the computer business, the detective agency, and the bar.

Morgan fixed part of the computer business by having us add Olivia to it. How to know Morgan loves me: Olivia has starry eyes for Morgan, but Morgan would rather deal with that than have me buried. Olivia is a world-class computer nerd. Far better at it than me. She is far older and has been at it longer, and her entire job is Crew and now working at Olsen and Sagan. She can focus.

I envy that. A little. There are things I would not give up about this madhouse life though, and that starts with the craziness that is breakfast.

Morgan, Nakoma, and I zoomed around in our well-honed morning kitchen routines, getting breakfast ready for the hoards.

Nakoma was counting heads. "So let's see: Today's roster is me, Dad, Morgan, Jessica, Helen, Rachel, Danny, Lori, Vera plus passenger, Angel plus passenger, Grandpa S, Grandma S, Grandma O, Grandpa O, Diana, Rachel H (Nakoma calls her sister and big Rachel's namesake 'Rachel H' to distinguish them, since 'Little Rachel has connotations), Laura, and Denise. Eighteen mouths of varying sizes plus two passengers. Seems to me those passengers eat a lot. All my life I have never seen A-Mom eat like this. I think that means we need about sixty eggs? Minimum. Seventy to be safe."

Morgan looked at the bowl for the mixer. "You know, love: Next remodel, we should think about making a more industrial-sized kitchen, with a bigger mixer and related items. More like one over at New Ninovan. Or the kitchen down at Holly's."

"We are running out of places to grow this place." I said. "These two walls here are outside walls. Structural. Even if we bump out towards Vera and Angel's old place that way, and Danny and Lori's place that way, I doubt we can do more than add forty percent. If we move out that way, into the driveway, we can get a lot bigger, I guess. We have to leave some driveway between the house and the pool house, though. You have to be able to drag the RV through there. Be hell eating around here till we had that all done. Not as if we can cook up in the apartment for this group. Cooking for four would be a challenge in that efficiency kitchen. We could spread out meal prep to the RV kitchens too, but still. Crazy train."

"Or get a lot of to-go for a while." Morgan said.

"I can see that order going in at the breakfast Taco truck!" I had to grin at the idea. "Hi: I'd like 60 breakfast tacos, please..."

"Sounds yummy." Nakoma said.

Helen breezed in carrying envelopes. She looked around, visually measured progress, and headed to the master bedroom. "They are not even started. Going to be a while." She reported.

"Good. Come back to bed." Rachel said.

"I guess we need to get cracking." Nakoma opened the industrial fridge to starting pulling out flats of eggs.

We finished up the cracking and adding various other things to the eggs to punch them up and had them spinning when Morgan jumped as if someone goosed her. I heard her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out, looked at it. To ring this early, it would be a known number.