“My first priority is expanding my skill set; I’m already more graceful and agile and strong than I need to be, and I’ve invested enough in anti-aging and regen that they aren’t short term priorities, so I’m moving on to illusions and healing other people. I can either stay here, and get those by drinking from you, or I can leave and make other arrangements. If and when Alexandra comes by again I’ll want to leave immediately, but I don’t have an immediate preference on whether I should stay here for a few months before then, it’d be convenient.”

" - Oh!  Yeah, that works.  That's - sure."

“Thanks.”

"Cool.  Cool cool.

"...I'd kind of thought you wanted to head out immediately."

“Do you want me head out immediately.”

"What, no.  I just thought - you said."

“... I don’t actually remember every conversation I’ve had in the last several months. Could you elaborate.”

"Uh, I dunno.  You were like, 'once I get turned I can leave and you won't have to worry about Alexandra anymore' and then I went for a walk and was like 'you don't have to do that', and you were like 'appreciated, I'm going to anyway.'  - I mean I thought, I don't remember the words; I guess it was probably ambiguous and I just assumed.  But so then I was like 'cool,' and then directly after that is when I fucked everything up.  As I recall."

“I probably assumed that Alexandra would still be actively harassing us. Anyway. I’ll probably have to work out a feeding schedule that doesn’t overlap with Hana?”

"I mean, do we know she's not?  How would we tell the difference between staying ahead of her and being left alone - I guess we did spend a longish enough time at the cabin that she probably would've been able to find us, from what you've said."

“If she wasn’t occupied, there would’ve been something in the house when we arrived, or something at the art show.”

"Okay, I'll take your word for it.  Um, that's fine with the feeding, although I have enough magic reserves that I'll probably just replace my blood every time and we won't have to worry about scheduling.  - Oh, or if you're going in for healing other people I guess you should probably do it, either way."

“We’ll see.”

More time passes.

Jaime does, in fact, go for healing other people, but fails to invest enough into it that it really makes sense for her to replace Ari’s blood each time they feed, in part because she’s also dabbling in making herself directly harder to notice, and secondarily starts poking at the magic system to see if it’ll let her directly acquire a resistance to mental tampering or if she’ll have to take some indirect route towards it.

Alexandra fails to show up in any obvious way.

There is no catch-all for mental tampering, but she can improve at each of the individual skills.  In fact, dampening her noticeability goes towards that, since apparently all mental magic categorizes both use of and defense against each aspect as a single unit.

(The magic has a different flavor, now that she's turned.  Less gleeful infodumping, more a quiet offering of the selection available to her, interspersed with the occasional NO DON'T DO THAT when she tries to push something too fast.)

They settle into a routine similar to the one they had before Alexandra first showed up.  After several months, Hana alerts Jaime that there's a ball being thrown for and by vampires to which she's invited, here's her outfit budget for if she's going and the card for Hana's tailor, the theme's 'masquerade' this year, she's so sorry but please send the designs to her ahead of time so she can run them by her aunt.

Jaime quietly updates away from her initial hypothesis that older vampires were deliberately conspiring to make other vampires think that gaining power too quickly would have negative effects, as a way of cementing a quiet coup and giving themselves a ready made excuse to disappear anyone who got too uppity. 

She’s about a month away from moving on; she’s discovered an online community of vampire LARP enthusiasts who seem well selected for conscientiousness, and some of them seem like decent candidates for having limited amounts of magic. She’s moderately suspicious that it’s some sort of trap, but she’ll figure that out when she gets there. 

She declines to tell Hana or Ariel about her plans in more than extremely vague terms; she does mention that she’ll probably continue visiting, once in a while.

Her outfit specifications are detailed. A sleeveless cream dress, in marbled velvet, with a conservative neckline, beaded with fake pearls in a vaguely yonic pattern; opera length gloves, also beaded; high heels, also beaded, because even though she prefers flats she’s the most graceful person in the world and she doesn’t really need to care about how they might impact her mobility. A mask, also covered in fake pearls, and densely bedazzled in black pearls around the eyes, in an imitation of the sort of eyeliner you’d expect of someone playing the black swan in swan lake.

Hana's aunt approves this.

They arrive at the resort a day early, which is not-particularly-coincidentally the one she's been staying at.  When they stop by her suite, she greets Hana with a cool hug, Ari with a nod, and Jaime with a "Ms. Berlanga, it's such a pleasure to finally meet you."

“My only recent interaction with you was an attempt on your part to police my fashion choices, so we have nowhere to go but up.”

"If you'd preferred to fund your outfit yourself I hardly would've had grounds to object."

“I could’ve worn the jorts, tartan, and bubblegum paper mache mask of my wildest fantasies. I’ll settle for being pretty. What is your name, again, Ms...”

"Rohner.  I wouldn't have stopped you, although the staff might've - Ariel, what are you doing."

Ari is going a step beyond finding the floor very interesting (which Hana does) and is overtly looking down and away from the conversation rather than at any particular thing.

"Uh."

"Is something the matter."

"I meant to mention it before.  Could we have this conversation later."

"....Certainly."

Ari nods and takes this as her cue to flee the room!