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1.
Women are so much more trusting of other women.
Even with the high alert and the extra policemen standing in the shadows, all Polly does is wink at her as she tucks the money into her dress. They walk the short distance to her room arm in arm, and no one thinks to look.
There's a jug and basin at the foot of the bed, and afterwards Helen has to kneel down to wash the blood from her hands and wrists. She's careful to work the carbolic lather under her fingernails this time. Before long the cold water turns to the color of rust, the air smells faintly of tar, and the body on the mattress is just another piece of furniture in this unfamiliar room.
She's back at her father's house before John arrives to collect her for their evening walk; cheeks flushed from the jump and a warm feeling in her chest. She always makes it back with time to spare. She's a doctor; she knows exactly where to cut.
2.
The first time Helen looks down and sees her limbs slowly vanishing, something in her stomach sinks like a stone.
The ability not to be noticed. The ability to move without being seen. It's a familiar feeling. Two years spent in the back of lecture halls taking notes for classes that have no official record of her presence. Two years of knocking on doors that refuse to open, of meeting with professors who look right through her when she talks.
To the frustration of the others, she refuses to use the power. The last thing she wants to be is invisible. Helen Magnus knows she has a duty to move through life making as much noise as she can.
Her granddaughter inherits the capability, much to Helen's dismay. At night she strokes the child's hair and promises her that there's nothing you can do behind someone's back that isn't best done to their face. That you have to push against the world with both hands, not creep up at it from behind.
3.
What was the quotation again? When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? Those bloody books were going to stay with her forever.
It's not a problem with the machine; she's already gone over the wiring piece by piece. No degradation of circuits to explain why her limbs feel heavier under the metal braces than the week before.
It's not her body; she's screened her blood for everything. No infection, no parasite, no radiation.
She sits at her desk and starts at the beginning, traces it back to the first assumption. As x increases y increases, but the source-blood alters the shape of the function. It stops the line. Put a needle in your arm and your heart will beat forever. It's a shaky premise at best, she has the year she spent in a wheelchair as a rebuttal. The year her nerve endings decided they'd received enough instruction for one lifetime. She'd had to innovate.
Findings contrary to expectation. The observable data do not support the original hypothesis. She takes out a new piece of paper and draws an axis. Second proposition: the line doesn't stop, but flattens out, softens its slope. She maps it on the paper, drawing a slow, even rise. There are one hundred and forty-five candles on the cake she refuses to let them bake for her. Age carves at them all slowly, like drops of water on a rock. As x increases y increases, always.
She frowns at the graph, it still doesn't fit. Two weeks ago she looked the same as she has every other morning, today there is grey in her hair and a pull in her chest when she breathes too deeply.
What's left, Helen? She draws a new axis. As x increases y increases, but the source blood alters the shape of the function. She draws a new line, one which is level to a threshold point and then rises sharply. If she can quantify the slope she can calculate the intercept. Her hand on the desk shows blemishes that weren't there yesterday. She traces the line as far as it will go, until her pencil meets the edge of the paper, and she has to stop.
4.
"So what do I get?"
"Excuse me?" Nikola tries to look like he hasn't been staring at the way the soft leather she's wearing stretches across her hips. He drags his eyes up as she moves across the room towards him.
"What do I get? For staying cooped up in your Sanctuary at your beck and call. For lending my considerable intellect to your little map project?"
She sits on his desk, legs in his personal space, smiling as the proximity makes him roll his chair back.
He clears his throat. "A safe haven?"
News of her de-vamping was travelling quickly, and rumor had it that a lot of Helen's chickens were coming home to roost. He tilts back to see her face better. "I hear you don't get much sleep these days."
She huffs out a laugh. "You did always keep harping on about my manners."
It's quiet for a moment, and he thinks that's the end of that until she says: "I can take care of myself."
He watches her fingers curl and wonders if he's finally hit a nerve. "How exactly?"
Something flashes in her eyes and she leans in towards him, hair sliding past his face. She's close enough that he can hear the leather of her outfit crack. Her mouth moves slowly against his ear. "You think I can't cause trouble without my fangs?"
Nikola focuses on keeping his breathing even. Damn woman. "No."
She draws back again, smug. "So I'll ask again, what's in it for me?"
As if on cue, Kate walks through his office door. "Boss, the big guy said you wanted to see me?"
Nikola stands, beckoning the younger woman over. "Kate, this is Dr. Helen Magnus, I don't believe you've been introduced yet. She's had a long trip and I was wondering if you could help her get settled?"
Kate comes in closer, hand outstretched. "Sure Doc, nice to meet you."
He watches Helen turn to take the girl in, and when she looks back he meets her gaze and tries not to smile. Just as he'd suspected. "That is if you've decided to stay?"
Helen quirks her eyebrows at him before taking Kate's hand and bringing it to her lips.
"A pleasure, my dear."
Kate doesn't have time to react to the greeting before Helen slides fluidly off the desk and starts walking towards the door. "Well come along, I've had a long day. Nikola's right, I need to get out of these clothes." The grin she throws him from behind Kate's back is almost obscene. He can't help but smile back. Kate shrugs and turns to follow Helen out of the room, but not before Nikola sees the flush starting to spread across her cheeks.
He doesn't feel guilty. Kate can handle herself, and over the years he has learned that Helen is much easier to work with when given an outlet for her more basic frustrations. They'll unravel the mysteries of the city in no time.
And they call Magnus the genius.
5.
Nothing happens.
She marries John after Oxford, then watches him grow more distant and more cruel with each passing year. The night she leaves him she is turned away from her father's house, Gregory's patience with her headstrong ways finally at an end.
No hospital will hire her as a physician, despite her qualifications. At the start of the Boer War she joins the Army Nursing Service. She puts pieces of soldiers back together under an unforgiving sun, and it stops being important that she's addressed as 'sister' and not 'doctor'.
She falls in love again, and has a daughter with blond hair who never hides her face from anything. She lives to see her grow tall and have children of her own. Her heart aches with joy.