"That's not a bad idea," Katherine said, slipping on her own shoes. "I wouldn't mind a bus tour of Bucharest." She grinned a bit as she grabbed her purse. "Bus tour of the city, then maybe some of the historic sites?"

"The only way that would be better is if it were personally narrated by someone who had lived through some of the said events." Leila shot Katherine a grin, but she seriously doubted Vlad would be doing anything of the sort.

Katherine snorted.

"Good luck convincing Uncle to do something like that," she replied with a bit of a grin. "And don't look at me, I lived through American history, not Romanian."

"Yeah, I know. That's okay." Leila grinned, although she looked faintly embarrassed. "I, uh, kind of took some classes that had bits and snippets of Romanian history in them. The book by Stoker made me curious, it's not my fault."

Katherine couldn't help but snicker.

"It's alright," she said. She grinned. "That's about on par with me taking that vampire-themed literature class sophomore year. Really, I can't blame you."

Leila grinned briefly. "I do remember that. How hard were you laughing after every class?"

"Pretty hard," Katherine admitted. "I wrote to Uncle once or twice about it, it amused him too. Some of the lore wasn't all that far off the mark, though."

"Well, it can't all be wrong. There's too much lore for all of it to be wrong. The vast majority, yes, but not all of it." Leila shrugged.

"Oh I know," Katherine said. She grinned a bit. "Though I'm glad you took the other class instead. It would have been awkward for you to have figured everything out while we were stuck together in a dorm."

Leila just snorted and shook her head, instead heading out of the hotel to start looking for food. "Well, I was a history major, and I only needed so many electives for my English minor."

"I needed most of the same electives," Katherine pointed out. "But the literature class was gen-ed anyways." She shrugged. "Bad lore is still better than 'American Dreams and Nightmares.' That was my only other option."

"Yeah, I'll agree with that one. How those two ended up qualifying for the same GE I'm still puzzling out."

Katherine shrugged.

"I don't know, either," she said. She grinned. "But I bet I know how the vampire lit class got on the class roster. One of us works in the English office, I know this for a fact."

"Really? How many were there at the school?" Leila blinked, curious now.

"The number fluctuated, year-to-year," Katherine mused, thinking back. "I remember running into two or three others. There may have been more I never came across, but I doubt it. Even a total of four or five would have been taxing on the school population. Any more than that would have brought attention to us as a whole."

Leila nodded. That made sense. Then she realized what Katherine was hinting at, and she paused.

"So have you ever...?" She made a vague gesture at her neck, where she could still feel two pinpricks from being bitten.

"Not... recently," Katherine replied. "It's tricky, nowadays, if you want live. I tend to prefer avoiding that kind of trouble, and I pick up bagged."

"So how does that work?" Because of course Leila had read Dracula, but she had no idea how accurate it was, and didn't want to take anything for granted.

"What, getting bags?" Katherine asked. "Or taking live? Taking live is tricky, people tend to notice nowadays if someone is suddenly pale and dazed, and it's very easy to create thralls."

"So if you bite someone it doesn't, um, turn them? Or something?" Leila blinked. Because now she had to clear up all the fiction and stories.

"Turning is an active decision, most of the time," Katherine replied, a little uneasily. "The human has to be drained completely, and given the blood of their sire." She paused for a moment. "I've never done it myself, but I've seen it done."

Leila nodded slowly, absorbing that. "Okay. So it usually doesn't just happen on accident. Good to know." She bit her lower lip. "I know you sort of mentioned that there's a heirarchy to the chain of command of things, so how does that work? Oldest are most powerful, or not always?"

"The oldest are the most powerful, yes," Katherine replied. This subject was a bit easier. "Uncle is the first, essentially. Everything comes from him in some way. He turned his own, and they turned their own, and it goes on, with each generation being a bit more... diluted, I guess you could say."

"But still stronger than human." That Leila was sure of, because if it weren't true she didn't see why people would bother to be turned.

"Certain abilities always breed true, yes," Katherine said. "Strength, speed, such things like that. Other things... Well, it seems to be a bit random as to what will be inherited and what won't."