"Enh, not the word I'd use. Vampires're faster, more capacious, but not more - creative, insightful, we just do more of whatever we were doing before we turned, per second. Smart human is an encyclopedia and a stupid vampire's a big old library of insipid high-def reality television shows. Technically more information in the second one, first is the better reference book."
"Like, Her Majesty's bodyguard - Renata - she's dull as a post. She can, say, find prime numbers in her head better than some computers and better than any human even if you give the human pen and paper, but that's not smart, she's still dull as a post. But she's a post with lots of room in her dull-as-a-post head to fall hard for some dull-as-a-post mate if she ever runs into the right person."
"You've won the lottery and we're retiring to the Isle of Wight to raise chickens?" asks Nathan brightly.
The surprise is: he made himself all squishable again.
Her Majesty meets them on the side of the highway they're tracing north, teleporting there at a moment when no cars are going by. "Hello again," she says.
"Yep," he says, and squares her the whole selection again. "Have you been putting 'em to good use?"
"A variety of things great and small. My sister Rosalie is at long last expecting a baby," she offers.
"She's very pleased. It was her least favorite thing about being a vampire, that she couldn't have one."
"The very reason I'm still on newly-mated leave," says Nathan, grinning. "The very reason."
"Is your newly-mated leave going to stop?" inquires the Joker. "'Cause let me tell ya, the sex ain't."
"He gets six weeks of no non-emergency work," says Bella. "Then he's on the job again. I'll do my best to accumulate questions in batches, the way I do for Maggie when it's not urgent, so you can block off time to talk instead of being interrupted."