The week passed like a type of dream. Rose and Jean were very kind to Eleanora; they treated her as if she was their own daughter.
"This is what families are supposed to be like," she thought every day upon seeing their happy faces in the morning.
Rose constantly fussed over Eleanora, the way a mother should. She began teaching Eleanora the scholarly arts: literature, architecture, music…But what Eleanora mostly liked to do was paint. Rose would frequently lecture her about something: Mozart, the importance of wearing shoes, Romanesque buildings, the way to successfully flip a pancake—and Eleanora would listen while painting. She could do wonderful portraits. She painted Rose and Jean and then Rose and Jean separately and she painted the Telstras and she painted the golems and one time she painted her mother. One time she tried to paint herself, only it took her three hours to realize that she was just staring at a blank canvas. Eleanora knew a long time ago that while other people were a delightful blend of smells and colors, she was just one big blank. She didn't like looking at herself in the mirror because all she would see was a black and white little girl staring back. The only thing that Eleanora could really learn about herself just by looking in a mirror was that her voice sounded like a church organ—she hated the sound.
She sometimes painted the Earl of Phantomhive and Madam Red and Grell and the servants and the dog and all the rest. She never painted the butler.
While Rose educated her in worldly matters, Jean taught her everything about being a vampire, a lesson that she had sorely needed. He took her down into the basement and they had a small wine tasting (wine, of course, being vampiric slang for "blood."). Eleanora was given blood to drink three meals a day and for snacks. She had never been so properly nourished before: she grew another foot and became stronger and healthier.
Jean also taught her how to fight. Eleanora knew how to fight; she had learned from experience; but Jean felt that that wasn't enough.
"Everything out there seems to have the bigger advantage," he told her during her first training lesson. "They're bigger than you; stronger than you; faster than you; tougher than you. But there's one thing that significantly weakens them:" here he leaned in closer to her, "they're dumber than you. And that's essentially the vampire's one asset: intelligence. You're a Special vampire, which means that you're the most powerful species out there—therefore the one with the greater intelligence. Nothing is smarter than a Special vampire. So use your intelligence. Let's fight."
Using intelligence was a lot harder than it sounded. Eleanora tried and failed many times to pin Jean to the floor.
"You're not using your brain!" he scolded her. "You're trying to use your strength, which you don't have. You're trying to use speed—which you don't have. You're trying to use everything you don't have! Stop doing that. Even an idiot understands that. Use what you have."
"How?" Eleanora said, frustrated.
"You can see things that others can't, right? You know things about people just by looking at them, right? So use that. Try to predict my moves before I make them. Use my strengths against me."
Eleanora tried, failed, tried again, failed again. She wasn't one to cry when thwarted, but she started hissing rather threateningly at him, which didn't impress Jean at all.
"Go again. Fight me."
Eleanora hissed and lunged at him. He prepared himself for a torso attack, but she ducked under the last second and slid between his legs. She kicked him in the back of the ankles and he started to fall…
Eleanora's senses sprang into action. She knew where he was going to fall. She knew when he would fall and how much time she had and what he would be like when he would hit the ground. She rolled away just as Jean fell down and leapt up onto him, grinning triumphantly down at him.
Jean started laughing.
"Good! Very nice! You failed for the first two hundred twenty billion times, but still, you're making progress!"
Eleanora began training with the golems. Rose and Jean had a staff of them that would assist around the house every now and then, and every day she would fight one. It began to get easier to use her intelligence to her advantage.
"Am I good?" she asked Jean once after she had fought a golem and won.
"You're beginning to get good," Jean said approvingly. "With more practice you can be unbeatable."
"Could I ever beat you?"
"No. I'm too experienced for you."
"Could I ever beat the demon?"
She always referred to Sebastian as "the demon."
"No," Jean said. "You never will, and you should never strive to. It's wrong for a child to want to defeat their parent. Firstly, he's older and better at you in every way. Secondly, he's your father. Content yourself with beating everyone else. You'll be much happier that way."
He also taught her how to use various weapons and techniques.
"Everyone has a favorite weapon," he told her. "I, to choose an example completely and totally at random, love whips. Rose loves the martial arts: taekwondo, karate, origami, jiu jitsu, uh…other forms of jitsu…You know, the usual."
Jean trained Eleanora in all the weapons that he knew: maces, clubs, hammers, bows, crossbows…She decided that she preferred using swords and guns above all else, but Jean told her that it was important to be well-rounded.
"Just suppose you're locked in a room with only a lance? How are you planning on escaping if you don't know how to use it?"
He taught her about the unholy fires.
"Everyone can use fire," he told her. "Each fire has its own property. Sebastian's fire can burn. Rose's fire can heal. My fire can kill." To demonstrate, he snapped his fingers, sending a ball of bright green fair up into the air. "Everyone has their own fire. Show me yours."
It took a while for Eleanora to conjure her fire, but eventually she was able to spend up sparks of blue flame. Whatever it touched, it froze.
"Good! Use this to your advantage. The demons are cursed with a sense of justice and honesty—probably due to all those contracts they sign. We vampires are free from such boring mentalities. We have no qualms about cheating."
He demonstrated to her how unholy fire could be used as a weapon. He sent up bursts of green fire from his hands which he carefully molded until he was holding two whips.
"Try it."
All Eleanora could conjure was a small dagger and a bullet.
"Never mind; you'll get the hang of it eventually. Keep practicing and soon you'll be recreating the Leaning Tower of Pizza!"
"…I've never heard of such a place."
"Oh, well, it's something like that."
One day, Rose and Jean took her outside to teach her about mediums.
"Another perk of being unholy is that everyone can turn into some animal—just one animal—and communicate with them. But demons cheat," Jean frowned at Rose. "They can turn into anything—living or nonliving; any animal, any object, take any form they wish."
Rose smirked and batted her eyelashes at him.
"But vampires cheat too," she said sweetly. "In the Beginning, the vampires struck a deal with the bats. Vampires have two mediums: the bats and their own personal animal."
"Yes, well, demons cheat more," Jean said sulkily. "Now, then, sugar cookie: what animal is your medium?"
"Oh, I don't know," Eleanora said. "I never really thought about it."
"Come, come; everyone has a medium. Sebastian's medium is ravens…or crows. I always forget which. Kidding!" he added quickly upon seeing Rose's expression. "Of course I know which one is his."
"Then what's your medium?"
"Isn't it obvious? Spiders!"
Jean whirled around and transformed into some kind of monster. His face and torso was the same, but he had eight arms with eight fingers on each hand and eight legs balancing on feet with eight toes each.
"Aren't I glorious? And I can bite people too—spiders have venom, you know."
"Yes, and hairy legs," Rose said sourly.
"What's your medium?" Eleanora asked her and Rose looked away.
"Oh, she's just upset," Jean said, turning back into his normal self. "Everyone assumes that such a pretty face will have a pretty medium, like a peacock or something. But no."
"What is it?"
"Rats," Jean said.
"Where?"
"No, that's her medium: rats. They can be very cute when they want to be, and are extremely intelligent…Personally, I think that it's nothing to be ashamed of." He placed his arm comfortingly around Rose's shoulders. She smiled at him weakly.
They took Eleanora to a zoo.
"Just wander around," they told her, "and find whatever animal speaks to you."
They walked around for a bit, stopping at every cage, waiting. Eleanora tried to listen, but she must have been doing something wrong because she couldn't understand a single word that the animals were saying.
They passed an employee who was demonstrating something with an Eastwest Python. Eleanora stopped to watch the show and then she heard something:
"Sssilly fool…Let me go…Ssso that I could ssstrangle you…And wrap you in my coilsss…Foreversss…"
"Eleanora dear, don't run off like that," Rose scolded, running back to her. "What is it? Did you hear something?"
"The snake—The snake spoke."
"I'm not surprised," Jean said. "You always did have something of the serpentine about you."
Eleanora wasn't pleased to hear this and she showed it by hissing at him.
But her week wasn't all fun and games. One time she was dueling with a golem, as usual, when the golem darted behind her and slammed its hand in the back of her neck. Eleanora immediately blacked out, and when she woke up next, she was in the hospital with a splitting headache and tubes sticking out of her nose, mouth, and ears, feeding her blood back into her body.
"What happened?" she whispered. Rose was sitting next to her hospital bed, holding her hand. Jean was pacing around the room.
"It was my fault," he said. "I should've warned you."
"No, it's no one's fault," Rose said. "Eleanora, sweetheart, Jean told you that Special vampires are the smartest of all the unholy?"
"Y-Yes…"
"Unfortunately, that power comes at a price, as does everything. You see, the average human has about 100 billion nerves. You have ten times that amount—and unlike a human's nerves, where they are linked to the brain in chains, every nerve in your body is linked directly to the brain. That's what gives you your synesthesia—that's what makes you so smart."
"It also makes your brain incredibly fragile," Jean said. "So many nerves can't be connected without a price. This is called the 'synesthetic attack.' It's when your brain overloads and essentially shuts itself down to repair itself. You must always take great care of your head and your neck. The doctor said that you were lucky this time, but you have centuries of cerebral damage. If you're very careful, your brain should slowly heal itself without any consequences to you. But if there's any more serious overloading, you could be in very big trouble."
Eleanora nodded and she was released from the hospital.
After a week of staying with Rose and Jean, she woke up one day with an epiphany. She went downstairs and was very quiet throughout breakfast.
"Good morning, bacon beautiful," Jean said when she had come downstairs. Whether he was talking to Eleanora or the plate of bacon in front of him was unknown.
"Darling, is there something wrong?" Rose asked. "You look so…sad."
"My mother wasn't a good mother, was she," Eleanora said.
"Well…no. No, she wasn't."
"And it's better that she's dead, isn't that right?"
"That's putting it so strongly, dear…"
"She never loved me. She never would love me. She would have killed me if given the chance."
"Eleanora…"
"I understand now," she said quietly and breakfast resumed normally.
After the meal, Rose called Sebastian.
"You can come for her now," she said quietly.