He Jumped Off The Balcony, Says Nicolas. The Beast Overtook Him, Maybe He Saw A Particularly Delicious

He jumped off the balcony, says Nicolas. The beast overtook him, maybe he saw a particularly delicious looking Kine and the last vestiges of his hunger, for he does not seem the type to finish his meals, reared their ugly head.

Shade himself seems shaken by this suggestion. At the very least she fixed his legs after the fall. Of course it hurt more than natural healing ever would have, but he has not been as good a guest as he could be, so clearly it is deserved.

Of all of them, he seems to cling to his humanity the most. He rejects her work and her vicissitude out of fear or hatred, yet seems to try to empathise with Nicolas, as though such a thing is even possible.

If she could remember how to, she would laugh.

She remembers how Nicolas talked about Elizabeth, her Elizabeth, as though she were no different from the blood bags the Camarilla driver had graciously given them. He thinks of her as an object, but is so crude about it. Would one take a bite out of a particularly useful vacuum cleaner, or drink from a lovely painting? No, Elizabeth may be hers, but her purpose is not to be consumed.

She resolves to keep a close eye on Elizabeth when she next comes for work.

She resolves to keep a close eye on Nicolas, lest he prove himself to be less polite than she thinks.

But, back to the matter of Shade. He seemed to wish to present her with some overwhelming truth about her own existence. He reacted with shock to the news that she had barely left the premises - indeed that she was actually incapable of it - as well as the revelation that she had never been paid a wage, and that she simply worked because she had been told to.

None of this seems particularly odd to her. Is there any particular reason it should?

For Maria he seemed to show great disdain, acting as though she had abandoned her in the house of a stranger, when she was clearly busy with work or preoccupied by some other matters.

She would never abandon Ophelia, right?

These matters have been gnawing on her since she invited the coterie to stay at hers - one of the many reasons for which she made Shade’s legs hurt so very badly. She resolves to dispel her concerns for now, and focus on the task at hand.

Shade fell victim to the beast, and jumped.

Dear Nicolas told her this, and she has no reason to distrust him. He may arouse her suspicion in some regards, but he has yet to lie to her.

But poor Shade. She could spend hours listing the reasons for which she is coming to dislike him. His barely disguised fear, his constant oscillating between treating her and Nicolas as pitiful victims and dreadful monsters, his anger leading him to threaten one of her guests under her roof, his unending infantilising insistence on calling her ‘kid’ out of some deluded paternal affection towards the unfortunate misguided girl he sees her as.

To know that this is the case could well and truly break him. As one of her guests, she has a responsibility to avoid that.

So she lies. It does not matter if all can see that she is lying. The purpose is not to be believed, it is instead to plant seeds of doubt.

‘The balcony is in some disrepair, and I have been meaning to fix it for a while.’

None of this is true.

But, just maybe, it could delay Shade’s inevitable descent towards the savage and violent clutches of the beast until he is out of her house and far away from her Elizabeth.

And if that is not the case, and he is moved to damage what belongs to her, she will tear him apart and rebuild him in the image of the monster that he tries so desperately to avoid being.

Nicolas seems to dislike him as well. Maybe after his limbs are made useless, she should hand him over to Baudelaire for a while before she reshapes him. He has, after all, wronged him.

It would be the polite thing to do, would it not?