The days passed kindly for Jean. Things settled back into their routine. Her mind settled as well. She spent more nights than not in Lucien's bed. He was still apt to come home late, and on those occasions, she would sleep in her own bed as a small show of her own independence rather than get into his alone or wait up for him all hours of the night. But of course, when Lucien did come home, he came to join her upstairs. And Jean wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

There had been another vampire-related death, and they still weren't any closer to finding out who it was or how to stop them. Lucien had gotten a little sloppy with the last one, apologizing to Jean profusely for it, as he'd rolled up his sleeves to move a victim and Matthew Lawson had noticed the wounds all over his arms. Wounds that matched the victim's neck. Lucien had told Jean what happened and asked her to see if Matthew had made the connection.

Jean was well adept at reading Matthew Lawson. His thoughts were rather loud. Well, not loud, per se, but insistent. And Matthew was certainly suspicious. He hadn't given any thought to Jean causing those marks all over Lucien's arms, but he did think that Lucien was up to something he was keeping to himself to the detriment of their cases. Matthew was very unhappy about it.

And so Jean had done what she always did when there were problems that could lead to the exposure of the truth of her. She removed Matthew's memory of seeing Lucien's arms. He was still curious about the victim and those wounds, but now, as far as Matthew knew, he'd only ever seen them on the victims. Lucien and Alice had made notes of them in the autopsy reports, and that was all. Unknown bite wound.

"Insistent is a good way to categorize Matthew Lawson's thoughts. Lucien's much louder, though obviously you wouldn't know. But there's a relentlessness to the way the Chief Superintendent thinks that is quite intriguing. Exhausting, actually."

Jean jumped slightly from where she was putting water in the kettle. "Alice," she grumbled, "I really wish you'd stop that. You know I'm not used to anyone being able to read me."

Alice just shrugged. "You'll have to get into better habit of shielding your thoughts. It'll be even worse if you go to Melbourne."

Another sore subject. Alice had been trying for weeks now to convince Jean to go with her to Melbourne to meet with the vampire council there. The idea that there even was a vampire council was so foreign to Jean. She hardly knew where to begin. "You could go to Melbourne yourself," Jean suggested weakly for the tenth time.

"If they come sniffing around Ballarat and find you before you go to them, you'll be sorry," Alice explained, also not for the first time. "Jean, you need to talk to them. They need to know you're here and about your powers. They should have records of it. And just because I've never heard of shapeshifting like yours doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The council will know. They'll have record of Christopher and his lineage. He might have had powers you didn't know about, or perhaps whoever turned him had those powers. Don't you want to know?"

"I know everything I need to know about my powers," Jean snapped, turning off the whistling kettle and pouring the water for the tea. "They've served me all my life, and I've managed perfectly well on my own," she insisted.

"We both know that's not true," Alice answered.

All of a sudden, Jean felt the ruffling of Alice searching her mind. She pulled out all the instances of Jean's most acute loneliness. The nights she had curled up outside under the moon, unable to stand on her own two feet for the pain of her existence. The times she had tried to avoid feeding in hopes that she could wither away and be free of her curse. The tears that woke her from her nightmares when she cried without even realizing it.

Jean felt her heart begin to ache at being forced to relive those memories at Alice's hand. She needed to close off her mind and shield herself from it, something Alice had helped teach her but she'd yet to master. Jean shut her eyes tight and tried to push Alice away.

"Enough!" she shouted, feeling her power put up the wall around her mind that would protect her. The shouting wasn't necessary—a hindrance, in fact—but Jean couldn't quite control it in that moment.

A loud crash made Jean open her eyes. She was shocked to see that Alice had been thrown back into the cabinets behind where she sat. The woman was still seated in her chair and looked unharmed, thankfully, but she was shocked.

Jean didn't know what to say or what had happened. Alice wasn't saying anything. So Jean did what Alice always seemed to do in these situations: read her mind.

In Alice's thoughts she saw herself push Alice from her mind, but it seemed she'd pushed to hard. Her power had been a physical force, pushing Alice backwards. Alice had never seen anything like it before. She was more than shocked. She was afraid.

"I'm so sorry," Jean breathed. Fear clenched her own heart, having seen inside Alice's thoughts. "I've never done anything like that before."

"I don't…" Alice breathed.

"I know," Jean interjected. "I…I saw." Jean had never been afraid of herself before. Even when she was newly turned, she understood what was going on. She had Christopher telling her about how to retract her fangs, how to sense the way blood flows so she never took to much, how to cull through the thoughts of those around her for her best advantage and to keep her sanity. All that she understood. Even the shapeshifting, which she had discovered later, she had not been afraid of. This, though, this strange power. She had never experienced that before. And she worried about her own ability to control it if she didn't understand what it was.

"You've got to go to the council," Alice insisted, standing up from her chair.

Jean's mind filled with worries over being found to be a dangerous monster by those of her own kind, locked away to protect others, studied and tormented. Though perhaps she was a more dangerous monster than she had ever imagined. Perhaps she should be locked away.

"Stop that."

She looked up to see Alice standing over her with a determined expression.

"You let the shield drop, and I know you're worried about what this all means. But you are not a monster, Jean. You are kind and good and smart and lovely. No one is going to lock you up anywhere. But it isn't good for you to be alone with all of this. I've reached the end of what I can tell you. You'll need to see the council to learn anything more," Alice explained gently. It was a bit strange. Alice wasn't usually a gentle sort of person.

Jean wasn't sure what to say. Alice was right, she knew. But Jean still desperately did not want to go see the vampire council. She was terrified of what they might tell her. What they might do with her. Not just because of her powers but for everything else. She had been living off on her own without any other vampire for so long. She had been independent, and she had fended for herself. Jean was able to support herself and get a job and manage just fine, regardless of the loneliness. And in over one hundred years, the vast majority of women could not say the same. Jean would not give up her self-sufficiency so easily. Even if she was a monster. She'd be a monster all on her own.

Alice, obviously still reading Jean's thoughts, asked softly, "What about Lucien?"

Oh Lucien. Alice did have a point with that. Jean was not independent and self-sufficient now. She had a man she loved. Who loved her. Their love was the deepest, most powerful thing she had ever experienced. She would not give him up. She couldn't. "I don't want him involved," she said. "Lucien wants me to turn him, and I will. I have to, I know I do."

"Why are you hesitant?"

"He'll need time after the turn before he can go back to work," Jean explained, just as she'd explained to Lucien himself. "There's a killer on the loose and he's got to focus on that."

Alice frowned. "That's not all, though."

"Stop reading my mind!"

"I'm not. I've learned to notice when you aren't telling the truth," Alice said, pulling her chair closer to Jean and sitting back down.

Jean felt another pang in her chest, but this time it was not pain from shame or fear. It was the sharp realization that, for the first time in longer than she could remember, Jean had a friend who actually knew her. Understood her. Knew her and understood her enough to know when she was being withholding. And she was. But perhaps, to Alice, Jean could admit it out loud. "I don't want it to change. We…we're alright for now. Things are so lovely. Better than I could have ever imagined, actually. When he's turned, things will change. We'll both have to hunt, we'll have to figure out how to stay in Ballarat or were else to go, if we can't leave. And I don't want to bring on him all the same problems that I have. Everything that makes me so different and terrible, I don't know how it will affect him if I'm the one to turn him."

"All the more reason to see the council, Jean," Alice pointed out.

Resisting the vampire council in Melbourne had become more of a habit than anything else at this point. But Alice was right. "As soon as we catch whoever is killing these people," Jean finally conceded.

"We?"

"Lucien and the police are going to need our help, I assume. I don't imagine Matthew Lawson's got much experience catching vampires. And I don't much like the idea of Lucien getting too close to a vampire who's killed far too many people in these last months. I imagine you and I will need to step in."

"Or the council."

"Now you're the one being resistant," Jean said, brow arched in interest. But Jean knew why Alice was reticent to get involved any more than her position as pathologist required. She had a horrific experience with rogue vampires as a girl, and Jean did not blame her for wanting to keep far away and let the council handle things. But Jean would not shirk the responsibility she felt to Ballarat and the people here. This was her home, and she would protect it. How, she wasn't sure. But she wouldn't allow this to continue any longer. And when it was all over, perhaps then she would be ready to turn Lucien. Perhaps then they could start a new life together.

Alice sighed, having read all of those thoughts from Jean's head. "Alright. We'll help."

Jean gave a curt nod. "I'll make another pot of tea. This one's gone cold."