dragged me to the shack where that other vampire found me." Penny shuddered and drained her bottle of synthetic. "He was deranged, dirty and touched me in a way that my dad would never . . ." Penny shuddered again. "Sick bastard. Anyway, Damian said the council didn't tolerate that kind of thing, the turning part. Guess I know now it earned him the death penalty. Earned me one too." She set down the bottle on my magazine and wiped her wet cheeks.
I wanted to hug her again, but I could see she had decided to try to move on. I had to admire her for that.
"And immortality, Penny. Like you said before, that's the cool part." I sighed when I saw her dig into her bag and pull out a compact.
"Damn, I keep forgetting, we really can't see our reflection. Jenny will hate that." She snapped the compact shut with a frown.
I gritted my teeth against the urge to argue about Jenny again. "We all hate it. But I have a computer setup in my bedroom that works like a mirror. Help yourself. You've got mascara and lipstick everywhere." I wondered what this sudden urge to tidy up was about. Was she still thinking to make a break for it? Just because she felt full of synthetic . . . I'd definitely keep a close eye on her.
"Seriously?" Penny darted into my bedroom and came out with the white laptop with the mini-cam. "This is neat."
"It was a gift from Ian MacDonald. He's a California vampire and a techno-genius. He invented it and a lot more cool things to help make the vamp lifestyle more livable. You'd love him. He's a very clever guy."
"Sounds interesting." Penny quickly fixed her face, which unfortunately included adding a new coat of black lipstick, then closed the computer. "Makes me think, though. I need my stuff. From my apartment. How do I explain to my family and Jenny that I'm moving here?" She swept her gaze around my admittedly tired-looking digs.
"What's wrong with here?" I'm not much for housekeeping and spend most of my time downstairs in my shop, but the mix of secondhand treasures and Ikea bookshelves wasn't that bad. Especially when compared to dorm rooms and college apartments.
"Nothing, really. I like the location. Sixth Street is cool, though a little farther from campus than where I'm living now. Guess we can make this work. It's near the end of a semester. Logical time to move, if I'd been thinking about it." Penny sighed. "Didn't mean to come off as critical. This place is nice, much nicer than my digs. Blame my attitude on the vampire thing. I'm still reeling. Who knew you guys even existed?"
"That's because we're careful, Penny. Your sire's behavior could have put a spotlight on us." I had been through quite a few near misses in my time. Rogues made life uncomfortable for all of us. "It sounds harsh, but the council did the right thing, taking him out."
"Yeah, would hate to think he was still running loose out there, making more daughters." Penny shuddered. "So I'll move in here, learn the drill. But I need my stuff - research books, my big-ass computer and my cat. Damian said he arranged for someone to feed him every day, but I have to go get Booger."
"You named your cat Booger?" I shuddered. "That's cruel and unusual."
Penny smiled for a moment. "What can I say? He's fifteen and Jen and I have had him since he was a kitten. We liked the sound of the word and my mom hated it. So of course we kept saying it." Her lips trembled. "My parents! God, I can't just let them get old and die when I could turn them too. And Gram!" She grabbed me again.
"Oh, no, we are not turning your entire family into vampires, Penny. Just get that idea right out of your enormous brain. Sit, I mean it." I could actually see her mind working this out as she slouched over to the couch again. Thinking about how the process might work. Hell, by the time an unleashed Penny got through, there would be a whole colony of vampires populated by her family, friends of her family, anyone her family thought deserved to live forever. It was worse than a freaking cell phone network. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of vampires could be made from this one brainiac teenaged vamp.