Author's Note: T/W: This chapter contains references to self harm.

***

'Are you sure it's safe to be back here?' I said, as the cab pulled up outside Michael's home. I eyed the Georgian style house with suspicion, as it waited, still and silent behind the electric gates.

The journey to St. Pancras on the Eurostar train had been uneventful, but that hadn't stopped me from flinching at every sound, every voice, and every time someone walked past where we'd sat. Michael had taken the aisle seat, a move he no doubt thought protective, but all I'd felt was cornered as Sébastien's cellphone and secret note burned like a veritable beacon inside my jean pocket.

Damn Dufort. How the Hell was I meant to explain to Michael how I ended up with the information he needed on the mysterious Montague Kerr? We'd left without it. Michael knew that. And yet, here I was with the very thing we'd travelled to Paris to obtain. To tell him, meant I had to confess I'd seen Sébastien and having failed to do just that after the bathroom encounter with our Parisian host and then over two hours spent on the train, I was running out of reasons why I hadn't been honest with him already.

'It's a damn sight safer than Paris, trust me,' Michael said, scanning the road regardless as he climbed out of the taxi. 'Besides, we won't be staying.' Waiting until the cab was out of sight, he punched in the gate code, and they whirred into action.

'Exactly how long are we going to be on the run for, thanks to the Sensor?' Dame said, winking at me as he swept past, all sarcasm and gold sequins. 'Enquiring minds need to know how many outfits we're going to need.'

Vincent shook his head. 'I have a feeling that whatever we say, you'll still be determined to pack three Louis Vuitton cases.'

Dame clucked, as we reached the front door. 'But what will I do with the fourth? Seems a pity to leave it home alone.'

'Damien, we're not going on a five-star cruise,' Michael said. 'We're trying to lay low until I can work out what to do next. Three LV cases full of clothes isn't exactly going to allow us to remain unnoticed.'

The vampire huffed as we went inside, quickly tapping out the security code on the alarm system, before heading for the stairs. 'Fine,' he said, rolling his eyes. 'Two it is then.'

Maz laughed as she watched him disappear to the first floor. 'You do realise he's probably not joking?' she said to Michael, who shrugged in response.

'I've learned he rarely jokes when it comes to fashion,' he said, before shooting me a glance as I stood huddled by the doorway, their natural, familiar conversation making the guilt bury under my skin a little deeper with each second. 'Get changed,' he said. 'You can clean up properly when we reach the safehouse.'

'Safehouse?' I said. 'I thought you said this place was safe?'

Bailey flounced past me, glaring daggers, as she followed Dame up the stairs. 'It was until you came along.'

'Bails...' Michael called after her, before turning to look back at me, his expression pensive. I still hadn't moved. 'She'll get over it.'

I swallowed, clenching my fist and instantly regretting it when pain pulsed through my palm. 'It's fine,' I mumbled. 'I'll go get changed.'

Maz, who'd been hovering close by, broke into a wide grin. 'And that's where I come in again.'

'Honestly, you don't need to. I ruined one set of your clothes already.'

'Well, Vincent's clothes are way too big. Bailey's are too small. Michael's are too... well, Michael. And you'd have to pry Dame's clothes from his cold, dead fingers.'

I half-grimaced, picturing Celeste's dead form in my mind.

'Yours it is then. Thank you.'

'No problem, amiga!' Maz said, already halfway up the stairs.

Amiga. Sure. I had all the makings of a great amiga.

***

With clothes changed and even more clothes packed – although I still only had my one backpack – we left the house, Vincent, Maz, Dame and Bailey in the Discovery, and Michael and I in the sporty convertible. Keeping an eye on the signage along the way, I soon realised that we were heading south out of London, towards the M2 Kent-bound.

Apart from the background buzz of the radio, the journey was mostly silent, as Michael focused on the road ahead and I stared out the window, my head an absolute mess as I played through every possible scenario, none of which had an outcome that didn't involve a fuck load of blood – mine, theirs, most likely both.

'So...' Michael said, after a while, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel. 'This whole karate thing...'

I side-eyed him. 'Are you making weird small talk?'

He winced. 'No. Maybe. Look, I'm just not a big fan of uncomfortable silences. Besides, I'm curious. I've never met a self-trained Sensor before.'

I raised a brow. 'I'm hardly what you'd call self-trained. I'm sure most Sensors do far more than a few weekly sessions of martial arts. I started learning karate after... well, after I realised your kind wasn't confined to an episode of Vampire Diaries. Turns out I was pretty good at it. My Sensei said I had a natural affinity for fighting. Maybe a little too much, as it happens. I got kicked out for breaking his arm. After that, I tried kickboxing for a while, until...'

'Until you broke somebody else's arm?'

'No. Until my Gran was killed. After that I didn't have much time for sport. Not that I ever saw it as that anyway.'

'Which is what I meant. You were training yourself. Learning how to fight.'

'Learning how to defend myself. Learning how to survive. And when Luther Baines – at least that's what I believed at the time - sent his people to kill my Gran, well... then I figured I could put it to good use. It wasn't enough though. Stupid and naïve of me to think it would be. One black belt against a whole den army.'

Michael glanced at me. 'It was more than enough. If it wasn't you'd be dead by now.'

'More's the pity, huh?' I said with a wry grin, but Michael didn't smile at my poor attempt at humour, instead he just looked more troubled, the crinkle in his brow thickening.

'You think I wish you were dead?' he said, scraping his teeth over his lower lip.

'Pretty sure I remember you saying something about how much satisfaction you'd get from killing me,' I said, recalling Michael's words when we'd first met, vowing revenge for me stabbing him in the stomach.

He scowled. 'You put a knife in my gut and tied me to your bed. I wasn't exactly going to wish you a long and happy life after that, was I?'

'So, you didn't mean it? It was all fake bravado?'

He made a choking sound, his eyes flashing with anger. 'For your information, I don't need to fake anything. And I don't do bravado. I don't need to.'

I rolled my eyes. 'Oh, sure, sure. Like you weren't pretending to be the big, bad vampire when you were tied to my bed, when actually you were totally freaking out, thinking I was going to keep the curtains open and cook you up like a barbequed chicken? No, Michael. No fake bravado at all.'

His hands gripped the wheel even tighter. 'I never believed you were going to do it.'

I laughed. 'Oh, come on. You absolutely did. You thought, this bitch is going to watch me fry.'

'No. I just thought you were a bitch.'

I stared at him, mouth open, before I saw his scowl drop, and his mouth twitch into a smile, soon morphing into a low chuckle, and I joined him, shaking my head as we both laughed. It felt weirdly good to laugh. Easy, even.

'God, you're a total arsehole,' I said.

His grin widened, but he didn't take his eyes from the road. 'And you really are a bitch.'

'Cheers.'

'No worries. Anytime.'

The silence stretched out again, except this time, it nestled in between us, and the muscles in my shoulders relented their hold a little, relaxing my back into the car seat. I glanced around, admiring the interior of the car.

'Can I ask you something? The house. The cars. You clearly have money. I mean, not Sébastien Dufort money and definitely not Marcus DiCenzo money, but you're doing okay. Where do you get it all from? It's not like you have a job or anything.'

'I could have a job...'

'Except you don't.'

He relaxed his grip on the wheel, glancing in the mirror before changing lanes. 'Some of it belonged to my parents. The rest – well, most of it – I earned for myself. When you have abilities like mine, let's just say it's easy getting into places you're not meant to go and taking things you're not meant to take.'

I gawped at him. 'You're a thief?'

'I prefer to call myself an opportunist,' he said, noticing the way I was staring at him, absolutely stunned. 'What? Where did you think I got it all from? Murdering old ladies for their fortune?'

Pulling a face, I shifted slightly towards him in the seat. 'Well, I'm glad you don't do that, but you're still a thief. Wow, I never had you down as the Artful Dodger of the vampire world.'

'Excuse me, more like the Mission Impossible Tom Cruise of the vampire world. You'd be surprised at the places I've managed to get into. We're talking high security facilities. Top of the range alarm systems. I'm in and out before they even realise I'm there.' He shot me a glance. 'You're impressed, I can tell. Come on, you can't say you're not impressed?'

I couldn't help but laugh. 'God, you're really proud of this, aren't you?'

Michael grinned, looking hugely smug. 'I mean... maybe. And it's not like I take from people who can't afford it or don't deserve it.'

'How noble of you.'

'I like to think so.'

'You are a constant surprise, you know that?'

He cocked his head to one side. 'Better than being an arsehole I suppose.'

'Oh, you're still one of them, trust me.'

'Right.' He nodded. 'I'd hate to be completely unpredictable.'

As he continued to focus on the road ahead, I found myself still smiling, stealing a few glances at him as the journey went on, wondering how the Hell I'd gone from loathing this vampire just a few days ago, to relaxing into this easy, and quite frankly, weird banter with him now. All I knew was that it made the guilt even harder to bear, because despite what I'd said, even I had to begrudgingly admit, Michael wasn't a complete arsehole. In fact, he really wasn't anything like I'd thought him to be.

Unease crept into my bones, and I bunched my hands into fists, instantly feeling the familiar sting.

'Why do you do that?'

I glanced over it him. He was, as before, keeping his eyes fixed on the road, but he looked troubled, that frown he wore so well tugging on his features, thickening his brow.

'I notice you do that a lot. Sometimes you do it so hard that it hurts.'

The dismay must have played out on my face, because he shot me an apologetic look. 'You break the skin,' he said, softer then. 'Not all the time when you do it, but sometimes. I can... you know, detect it in the air.'

'Well done, Detective Holmes.' It was a barbed response, and I regretted it as soon as it shot out of my mouth. 'Sorry.' I chewed on my lip, mulling it over as I looked out the window, trying to work out how I could even say it out loud. I'd never said it out loud before. Not once.

'It just... helps sometimes. Life isn't exactly easy, you know?' I swallowed. My throat felt dry and scratchy, and I almost clenched my hands into fists again to stop myself from crying, until I remembered he would know I was doing it, so I took a breath instead. 'I mean, it was never easy. Mum was wonderful and sweet and amazing and fun, and then she wasn't. And that would go round in this never-ending circle. Mum being there. Mum not being there. That's just the way it was. I never knew which version of her I'd get from one day to the next. The only thing I did know was that she always loved him more than she loved me.' I stopped, hearing my voice crack and hating the sound. 'Okay, I didn't mean it to sound quite like that. I know she loved me. She did. But that whole obsession she had with DiCenzo... it was like I could never quite live up to the fantasy, you know? Our life together never quite enough. And I wanted it to be enough so badly. It just never was.'

I sighed. 'And I was living this weird double life, pretending to be normal and yet not knowing what the Hell I was. Just this freak kid who was terrified of the sunset because she knew that real monsters existed in the dark. Then, just like that, Mum was gone. Like, really gone. I didn't know how to process it, apart from being angry and terrified all the time, and this?'

I unfurled my hands in my lap. Blood was already seeping through the bandage Maz had used to wrap my injured hand, but on my other palm, the small crescent marks remained where my nails had dug into my skin too many times not to leave a mark.

'I just needed something. So, I'd do this and hold it for a few seconds. That's it. It helped. It still helps.'

'Does it?'

I always knew that this was one of the reasons I had never wanted to say it out loud. In my head, I could always justify it. Always. But to speak it, and have it questioned, was the whole reason I'd kept it buried, even from my Gran.

When I couldn't speak, when I couldn't physically form the words, Michael was the one who broke the pause. 'Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. This really isn't my business.'

I shook my head. 'It's fine. Honestly.' And the weird thing was, it did feel fine. 'I've just never spoken about it before, to anyone.' I frowned. 'In fact, I don't speak about anything to anyone. I don't really know anyone but you and the others.' My eyes widened. 'God, the only people I know are vampires! You do know this is truly, utterly fucked up, right?'

Michael broke into a grin. 'You're totally right,' he said, laughing. 'That really is fucked up.'

We both laughed then, the tension slipping easily away, shrouded in something malleable and warm, like a blanket draped over your knees in the cold bite of winter or the soothing reach of the ocean lapping over your feet in the summertime. I didn't hate this, and it surprised me that I didn't.

'Look, like I said, not my business,' Michael said. 'But if you feel the need, my hands are always available.' His face dropped. 'Fuck. I really didn't mean that the way it sounded.'

'You mean, pervy?' I wrinkled my nose. 'Good, because that really would be overstepping the boundaries. It's one thing for the only people I know in the world to be vampires, but that?'

Michael stiffened, but smiled quickly, his grin looking more like a grimace than anything else. 'Right. Yeah. What I meant was, you know, I heal quick. If you need to, you can...'

'Use you as my pin cushion?'

He shrugged. 'Yeah. Just not with knives.'

'I'm not making any promises about that.'

'Told you that you were a bitch.'

'And you're an arsehole. A pervy one too apparently.'

He chuckled, the tightness around his eyes softening.

I stared down at my palms, still open in my lap, wondering why the Hell this felt okay. In fact, it felt more than okay. It felt good. Good to laugh. Good to talk. Good to just sit in the passenger seat of Michael's car and listen to the radio, faint song buzzing from the speakers, feel the vibrating hum of the engine. Michael's hand on the steering wheel, the other resting casually on the gearstick. Thinking about how he'd tugged my hood up over my head and told me everything would be okay.

'Michael...'

'Yeah...' His voice sounded gruff, thick, and I couldn't help but wonder if he was thinking the same.

'I know how to find Montague Kerr.'

'What?'

'Sébastien gave me the info to find Montague.' I fumbled for the piece of paper in my pocket. 'I know how much this means to you, so...'

Before I could say anymore, Michael suddenly switched lanes again, cutting so fast across the motorway and dragging us onto the hard shoulder where he braked hard, the car screeching to a violent halt that probably would have launched me through the windscreen if I hadn't been wearing my seatbelt.

He yanked hard on the handbrake and turned in his seat to glare at me, his eyes blazing with fury.

'Do you want to say that again?' he said. 'Only this time, explain to me why the fuck you didn't think it was a good idea to mention it to me until now?'