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

Partner In All Things

As we toured the rooms, the kids saw the air mattresses and were thrilled by the idea that they got to decorate their rooms from the walls in. Paint. Flooring. Everything. Every two bedrooms has one shared bathroom connecting them. It is almost like having their own bathroom as well.

I debated that design with myself for a while since Nakoma is at college and dating. My compromise was to add a hall bathroom next to her bedroom as well. She can choose the level of privacy from her little sister as needed.

Nakoma understood my unspoken intent perfectly and gave me a daughter-to-dad smile. Nakoma and I have always been open and frank with each other when it comes to topics like sex and love. I am not the kind of dad that waits up at home with a shotgun. I trust my little girl implicitly.

I left catalogs in each room from various stores with pages open to furniture ideas I had. Not to steer, only to inspire.

Helen looked at one of them, open to a picture of a bed with a headboard with a built-in bookcase, not dissimilar to the one in the Master. She handed the catalog to Diana. "Whatever you want, honey. Bed, desk, chest of drawers. You just pick out whatever you want in your room. Just be thinking about needing a desk for your schoolwork. When we are here, you might have some things you need to work on, like Nakoma always does."

"What are you going to get?" Diana asked Nakoma.

"I don't know! I haven't seen the catalog yet! Maybe we should sit down and look at it together?" Nakoma offered.

"OK!!" Diana was so happy she had a thing to do with her big sister like that.

Laura's room has two things in it aside from the air mattress. A wall screen and a computer set up to control the observatories' two telescopes.

"You can put this screen wherever you want, honey. I hung it on the wall for now because it had to go someplace. The observatory has two telescopes. One to look at the sun, and the other to look at the sky. You can drive it from here, and that screen will show whatever you want to look at. Right now, it's tracking the sun. See? Sunspots. This is the only star we are close enough to see things like that, but all stars probably have them. We don't have a solar telescope at the other house, so you have to come here to see that. You and Grandpa can drive around looking at the sun and the moon and even Saturn. The nighttime telescope is powerful enough to see that, although the one at the other house is better for nighttime."

Laura was slightly drop-jawed at her new 'toy' and watched the screen for a moment. "Thank you, Daddy."

She hardly ever talks, unless she has something to say.

That just made 200 million in debt all worthwhile. I love it when Laura calls me 'Daddy'.

Morgan looked equally happy. It should not matter when our million horsepower minded daughter does a normal thing as much as it does, but it does.

After the girls were set up in their rooms, and with catalogs of furniture and even wall art, we next peeled off Rachel and Helen at Rachel's new home office.

Rachel looked over the empty space. "It's... big."

"Not a converted bedroom for a change." I said. "It's big so you can load it with things from New York, so you can spend more time here. Everything you need for your human-world job and your Council stuff can be loaded into here. We are already set up with the fattest Internet connection you ever saw. The entire building has redundant high-speed Internet, as a draw for tenants. Data Center in the basement to control everything and keep it all first class. Our floor gets a big dedicated chunk of access to the world. There is nothing you cannot do from here. This is all a hint."