"You just can't help yourself, can you, Blake?" Matthew Lawson asked him testily.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Lucien demurred.

That was, of course, a lie. Lucien knew precisely what Matthew meant; Lucien had, once again, mortally offended Patrick Tyneman, the Patrick Tyneman, owner of half the business on Lydiard Street, unparalleled authority within the Colonists' Club, charitable benefactor of anyone in town he thought might eventually make a good return on his investments, all-around entitled bastard extraordinaire. Wherever Tyneman went people hurried to give him precisely what he wanted, fell all over themselves in an effort to worm their way into his good graces, but Lucien could smell the rot of a greedy soul, and he did not care for the man, not one bit, and he didn't care who knew it.

"You didn't have to turn your lion loose on him," Matthew said.

"I did nothing of the sort. Nemea just doesn't care for him, do you, darling?"

She was blessed with a remarkably expressive face, Lucien's lioness, and when she turned those deep golden eyes on him he saw laughter there, and smiled.

"He got too close," Nemea rumbled softly.

Tyneman had made the crucial error of stepping up to wag his finger in Lucien's face, and been rewarded with the low, terrifying growl of a three hundred pound lioness, the weight of her sliding between them and pushing him away, and when he'd sputtered she'd bared her teeth at him. The terrible scar that ran across her muzzle only amplified the ferocity of her appearance, and Tyneman's kookaburra had taken flight, squawking, the little bird as chubby and unlikable as his human, and Lucien had only just managed to keep from laughing in the man's face.

"I thought you were meant to keep him in line," Matthew said to her. Nemea only shrugged, or came as close to that as she was able, and gave a great stretch before settling down on the floor at Lucien's feet.

"It was rather fun to watch, though, wasn't it?" Athena, Matthew's daemon, piped up from where she lay nestled amongst a pile of papers on his desk.

Matthew and Lucien had known each when they were children, had gone to school together for those few short years before Lucien's mother passed, before he was summarily shipped away to boarding school, and so Lucien recalled Athena as the ever-changing daemon of childhood, a field mouse one moment, a lizard the next. He had been surprised, upon his return to Ballarat, to discover that Athena had taken the form of an echidna. About a foot long, and rather prickly, she was possessed of a good humor, and he smiled at her now, for he knew that she had only said what Matthew had been thinking.

"The man is a pompous windbag," Matthew allowed. "But you haven't been here very long, and he can make life difficult for you. You could at least try to be civil."

"All right, Matthew," Lucien agreed. "We'll behave, won't we?" he added to Nemea, reaching down to run his fingers through her soft fur. Nemea lifted her head, pressed herself into his touch, but she did not answer, and a wry grin tugged at the corner of Matthew's mouth.

"Your father never gave me half so much trouble," he said.

"Yes, well. I'm not him, am I?"


With his work at the police station complete Lucien stopped off for a drink at the Colonists'. Mrs. Beazley wouldn't have approved, he knew; supper was served at 6:00 every evening, and she went to rather a lot of trouble to make it, and Lucien was late more often than not, and his tardiness did always make her frown. It wasn't that he was trying to be disagreeable. He didn't care for her frowns; he much preferred her smiles, though they were few and far between. It was only that he felt as if he required some fortification, some extra strength and courage in order to re-enter his father's house once he had left it. The old man had been dead and gone nearly a month, and still Lucien's steps seemed to drag every time he made his way up the front walk. As if he half expected to find Thomas Blake and Artemis inside, waiting for him with grim expressions and mouths full of reproach. But of course he would never see them, either of them, again, and that thought brought with it its own sort of grief, a grief he wasn't sure he'd earned. How he could lament the loss of the man, when he'd spent his entire adult life trying to put as much distance between himself and his father as possible? Wasn't this what he'd always wanted? To be rid of Thomas, once and for all?

Only he wasn't rid of him, not really, because he could still recall the final conversation he'd had with Artemis, his father's soul reassuring him that he had been loved, however coldly. He wasn't rid of his father for he slept in his father's bed, and attended patients in his father's surgery. Everywhere he looked he found his father's fingerprints. Yes, a pint or three was far preferable to such melancholy thoughts, and besides, he found it difficult, at times, to make conversation with the ladies of the house. Not Mattie, who was young and curious and lovely, but Mattie and Jean together, for Jean behaved as if she were Mattie's own mother, and Mattie often tempered herself for Jean's sake, and Jean...Jean was a puzzle Lucien had yet to piece together.

With a belly full of drink Lucien made his way home, stumbled in through the side door that opened into the kitchen and found his plate waiting for him at the head of the table, covered by a dishcloth. He ate quickly, almost desperately, for he'd not realized until he sat down just how hungry he was. When the last bite was cleared away he took his dishes to the sink, and wandered off in search of occupation for himself.

Perhaps if he'd had the house to himself he might have sat a while at the piano in the parlor, but Mattie and Jean were in the sitting room with the television on, and he did not wish to disturb him. Jean had left the evening paper folded neatly on the armchair that had become Lucien's customary place, and so he ventured there at once.

They greeted him, Jean and Mattie and Halcyon and Osiris, but returned almost at once to their program, a quiz show of some sort. Jean was knitting while she watched, but Mattie's focus was wholly on the television. It was rather nice, he thought, coming home to people, so long as those people did not ask him where he'd been or chide him for his foolishness. It felt...rather homey, settling down in the armchair and unfolding the paper. It felt like belonging.

"Tannhäuser is a romantic opera by which German composer?" The presenter asked in his gratingly cheerful voice, and a dreadful tune began to play while they waited for the contestant's answer.

"Wagner," Lucien said, not looking up from his paper, but as he spoke he startled, just a little, for Jean had also answered the question - correctly - at precisely the same moment. She looked up at him, a hint of mirth sparkling in her brilliant eyes, and Lucien could not help but smile.

"You are full of surprises, aren't you, Mrs. Beazley?" he asked, but he returned his gaze to the paper to spare her the discomfort of looking him in the eye while he praised her.

"Everyone knows that one, Dr. Blake," she said primly.

Lucien hummed, but inwardly he found himself delighted by the exchange. So Jean knew a bit about opera, then, he thought; what else did she know a bit about? How did she entertain herself, when she wasn't cleaning his house or sitting in church? The hallowed, inner life of a woman her age was a mystery to him, for it had been quite some time since he'd had any woman in his life at all, and he hardly knew where to begin go about getting to know her.

The next few minutes passed in an easy sort of quiet, all of them enjoying the evening's entertainment, but a soft rustling sound drew Lucien's attention away from his paper, and he flipped the corner of the page back just in time to see Halcyon come to light on the arm of his chair. Jean had not noticed her daemon's movements, for she had turned to engage Mattie in conversation about some decent young man about town whose name made Mattie sigh in frustration at the very sound of it.

Lucien watched the blue kingfisher, curious; Halcyon looked at him, and then looked away, and then took a few shuffling steps, sidling closer. He looked up at Lucien once more, as if trying to ascertain whether his movements had been noticed, and then looked away quickly when he caught Lucien's eye. A few seconds passed, and then he did it again, almost skipped up the arm of the chair until he was very nearly touching Lucien's bicep.

What a funny little thing he is, Lucien thought. Nemea was lying, as ever, at his feet, and Osiris was perched on Mattie's lap, but Halcyon had flitted away from his mistress, eager for some new mischief.

"Halcyon," Lucien said, very quietly.

"Jean says you've gone to work for Matthew Lawson," the little bird told him. Though he'd tried to keep his voice low it did carry, and Jean looked up at once, alarmed.

"Halcyon," she chided him. "Leave the good doctor alone."

It seemed to Lucien that she was saying that rather a lot, these days.

"It's quite all right, Jean," he assured her. "I am working as the police surgeon now, yes," he added for Halcyon's benefit.

"So you know what happened to that lad they found in Paul Harrold's field?" Halcyon cocked his head to the side, and the faint bluish light of the television reflected off the shiny black of his eyes, making him look almost curious, or as close to curious as a bird could manage.

"He had rather too much to drink, and...erm...injured himself trying to climb over a fence. No one knew where he was, and so there was no one around to help him, and I'm afraid he...succumbed to his injuries."

Technically the lad had impaled himself and bled out in the dirt, but Lucien tried to be respectful of the ladies' sensibilities.

"How awful," Jean said with a shudder - a shudder that Halcyon echoed, ruffling his feathers uncomfortably there by Lucien's arm.

"But how do you know that's what happened?" Halcyon asked him earnestly. "How can you tell just by looking what's killed someone? Couldn't someone else have done it, or maybe he had a heart attack, or-"

"Halcyon," Jean called warningly, but Lucien ignored her; he was quite delighted by Halcyon's curious little mind.

"Well, partly it's science. We know what happens to the body as a result of certain injuries. In this case, the lad's internal organs were damaged, and he would have bled immensely. If it had been a heart attack, there would have some signs of distress around his heart. We can tell just from looking what sort of state a heart is in. So really, it's just interpreting the facts that are in front of us. But there's some investigation, too. The field was muddy, so we would have seen two sets of footprints if someone else had been with him, but in this case there were only his."

"Oh, you're like Sherlock Holmes," Halcyon crowed, delighted.

"And you have bothered the good doctor enough for one evening," Jean said. "Really, Lucien, you're kind to indulge him but I think I have heard enough about this poor dead boy for one day. I know his mother, and she is positively beside herself, and I don't think it's right to make entertainment out of her grief."

Halcyon bowed his head, defeated, and Lucien was feeling rather sheepish himself, and so he did not protest. He meant to read his paper, instead, but before he could even raise it up Halcyon had half hopped, half fluttered down from the armchair to the floor, and shuffled towards Nemea until they were very nearly touching. The lioness slowly lowered her head until her chin was resting on her paws, and their eyes were of a level with one another.

"Good evening, Nemea," Halcyon said to her shyly, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

"Good evening, little one," she rumbled back.

Lucien watched their exchange hardly breathing; it was not uncommon for daemons to speak to one another separate from their humans' conversations, but there was something rather...different about the way these two regarded one another. From the very first Halcyon had been drawn to Nemea - Lucien could still hear him sighing, oh, I like her, Jean - but they made for rather an odd couple, given the differences in their size and demeanor. And really, he thought, why should they seek one another out, when Lucien and Jean were at best cordial to one another, and hardly friends? And Halcyon stood so close; he had been close to Lucien, and was close to Nemea now, and that was most uncommon, for daemons preferred the company of their persons to other daemons, except, of course, in the cases of married couples, or families. But Lucien and Jean were hardly family.

For a moment he watched them, the lioness and the kingfisher, the unblinking way Nemea regarded him, calm and relaxed and not pushing him away as she so often did when anyone got too close to Lucien, the curious, eager way Halcyon shifted towards her, as if some gravity pulled him in, and would not let him go. Perhaps Halcyon meant to say something else to her, Lucien thought. Perhaps -

In a sudden burst of speed Halcyon spread his wings and shot up from the floor, and flew quickly back to Jean, perching on her shoulder. Lucien's eyes followed his progress, and as the kingfisher came to light on his mistress's shoulder he saw a questioning look in her eyes. It was the same question, he was sure, that echoed within his own heart.