While shuffling a deck of cards, Grayson daydreams about being able to walk out into the sun and splashing water from a nearby fountain on his face. For once, he’s happy with himself and spreads his arms out in celebration of being whole again, only for the dream to end and reality to come screaming back. Elsewhere, Lady Jayne is still trying to convince the Order that Grayson is not the old one that had been causing terror in their city, if not to protect her relationship with him than to keep her reputation as a fearsome huntsman alive. But Browning points out that Grayson still hasn’t attended an event in the sunlight and that all of the obstacles standing between him and control of British Imperial have died since he arrived in town.
That evening, Grayson and Jayne go to dinner at the Savoy and he spies Mina and Harker witnessing a bit of parlor magic. Though Harker patronizes Mina’s enjoyment of the slight of hand, Grayson comes over and explains the trick, which involves seemingly tearing a card and putting it back together, before Lucy storms off. As Grayson apologizes for leaving the engagement party and offers to pay for Mina and Harker’s dinner that evening, Lucy gets stopped by Jayne, who tells her that she knows what it’s like to be denied one’s heart’s desire and implies that she knows that Lucy is in love with Mina. Jayne then invites the young girl to visit with her the following day, an offer that Lucy accepts.
Following dinner, a drunk (and very giddy) Harker and Mina get caught in the rain and eventually make it back to his place. They go inside and begin taking off their wet clothes, with Mina stopping near the foyer and staring at Harker while wearing only her slip. Once he makes sure that she’s sure about this decision, Mina and Harker make love for the first time and spend the next morning bathing in the afterglow of their love for one another. Harker suggests that they should run off and elope, but Mina takes the suggestion less as a wildly romantic ideal and more as evidence that he regretted what they did last night and looked at their relationship as something less than sacred now. She gets him to agree to still have a church wedding with their families before she takes off for the university and he arrives at Grayson’s to find that his boss has the nickel steel alloy that will solve the casing problem. Harker reveals that one of Empire & Colonial’s biggest players, an American shipping heir named Ewan Telfor, has a special interest in the wild west and a regular 5-card draw poker game that is happening that night. In order to get enough alloy, Grayson will need to go to the game and either win it off of him or charm him enough to get him to go into business together.
Renfield comes into the room with a slip of paper that makes Grayson noticeably tense, tense enough to send Harker from the room. The contents? Knowledge of an upcoming auction that will feature the Dresden Triptych, which Grayson has been searching the world for these past 12 years. Unfortunately, the Order knows about the Triptych as well and Lord Davenport has decided to made a play for it the following week at the auction. At the poker game that evening, Grayson doesn’t have the best of luck and folds his cards nine straight hands, causing Telfor to question whether he played this game before. However, Grayson was merely biding his time and used his powers to win Empire & Colonial from Telfor in the game. The good news doesn’t last long, though, when Renfield reveals that a stock meeting at British Imperial has been moved up from Friday evening to Friday at noon in the solarium. Though Grayson wants to send his regrets and forget about it, he leaves himself vulnerable by not appearing, as a proxy vote could be held and he could be forced out of the company.
Over at the university, Mina looks at slides of cheek cells and injects the container of blood she found onto the slide, regenerating the cells in the process. She gets a dead rat that had been experimented on and injects it with the blood, only to be disappointed when it doesn’t immediately come back alive. It does, however, start moving after she puts it back in storage. Lucy meets with Jayne and hears that the urges that she’s been having and the feelings that have developed for Mina are all a natural part of the maturation process. Jayne mentions having several female lovers before ever being intimate with a man and suggests that the next time Mina drops a hint about her own closeted feelings (a touch, a hug, etc.), Lucy should confess her feelings and make things easier on the both of them. Back in the lab, Van Helsing explains that the reason the serum didn’t work the first time was the viscosity of vampire blood – that a heart isn’t strong enough to pump the serum through the rest of the body. There is a machine coming that he thinks could fix this specific problem; while he wants a few days to test it out, Grayson has grown desperate and will be the first guinea pig the following day.
While Grayson calls Harker into his home and berates him for writing an article about General Shaw’s bribery, Lord Davenport learns about Grayson paying off Vera Markham and Mina gets caught in Van Helsing’s office. She is immediately discharged from her position as his assistant before confessing what she did with the cheek cells. Van Helsing lies to her about what the substance she thought was blood actually is – he says that it’s a 
parasite from Sumatra and that what she’s seeing isn’t rejuvenation. He grabs the hammer he used to kill the seers with the intention of killing her, only to be surprised when she blurts out that her mother died of cancer. Mina doesn’t wish to cure cancer, though. She wishes to cure death and Van Helsing chalks her reaction to the cells up to overenthusiasm and the Freudian concept of projection.
The Order is furious about the article on Shaw, as it makes him useless to their cause and further points to Grayson being the old one. Lord Davenport is already looking into finding out who’s behind the article and Browning warns Jayne that if Grayson turns out to be a vampire, she’ll have to face the wrath of the brotherhood and himself. Meanwhile, Harker and Mina’s time on an indoor carousel gets interrupted by Davenport, casting his suspicion of Grayson at the journalist and giving him tickets to a showing of A Doll’s House at a small local theater. The show goes on mostly as expected until Harker spots Vera Markham on stage; she’s not the book keeper that she presented herself to be when they met and she gave the information that fueled the article against Shaw. She’s an actress. Lucy and Mina pour over wedding books and while Mina recounts her suspicions of Van Helsing, things turn tender when Lucy begins flirting with her. After touching her friend’s face, Lucy leans in and kisses her, causing Mina to start giggling, but when Lucy begins speaking of natural maturation and doesn’t break down giggling with her, she knows that it’s serious. Lucy reveals she broke up with Allistair for Mina, except Mina doesn’t see it as something to be proud of. She begins running through some events of their friendship and questioning Lucy’s motivation in undermining Jonathan and sleeping in the same bed with her before kicking her out.
Grayson gets hooked up to Van Helsing’s table and hears that the machine, which will step several needles into his chest cavity, is designed to augment blood pressure and saturate tissue. Renfield pulls the lever on two separate occasions and sends electric currents into the extremities of his friend, causing him to seize and cry out. It ends up working and Grayson’s heart beats once more, except that now’s the time for the second machine to do its job. When he gets stuck with the needles, Grayson’s veins blacken and his body experiences great pain, pain that is worth it as he makes the British Imperial meeting. Granted, he only has a short time before he has to be back, but it still sent a message to those working under him that he’s not the vampire they suspect him to be. When Renfield comes in to drag Grayson away before he starts to burn, Davenport deliberately tries to delay him and expose him as a vampire. Grayson makes it out of the meeting with severe burns on his face and goes to the theater, where he feeds on Vera Markham and returns back to normal.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Here’s a better look at the Dresden Triptych. Also, a Dracula documentary from 1985.
-In honor of the episode title, let’s all listen to this song as high as it will go.
-Favorite shots: the looks at the solarium and the table full of British Imperial employees were pretty nifty. Additionally, the opening scene had some beautiful colors and was a nice contrast to the darkness of the rest of the episode. Also cool, the look of the indoor carousel.
-I am so looking forward to Lady Jayne finding out that Grayson is a vampire. I mean, she’s my favorite character on the show and I think she would be a fantastic protagonist of a series of her own, but the face that she makes when she sees Grayson as a vampire will be tremendous.
-I like that Grayson practices card tricks in his room in order to get one over on Harker. Because you know he did the two magic tricks he showed a million times each trying to understand them and make them just right.
-Should the poke game have been a more prominent portion of the episode? I thought there was a lot of potential there, both for dark comedy and slow burning manipulation, and the show just kind of shot by it. I enjoyed the episode as it was; I’m just a fan of dramas that use tightened spaces in order to build tension and I think that this show is moody enough to be able to pull off something claustrophobic like that.
-What happened to the rat that came alive? Is it still slowly regaining its life force? Did Mina ever notice that it was actually brought back?
-Raise your hand if you wanted Jayne and Lucy to make out. It got very lesbian softcore there for a moment, I have to say. Of course, there was a sadness to the flirtation due to Lucy being so vulnerable and so wrapped up in her feelings for Mina, but I wouldn’t have been opposed to them going whole hog and having Jayne use her sexuality more overtly to convince Lucy to go after Mina. Which, what is her end game there? Why was she so gung-ho about Lucy confessing to Mina?
-The scene where Grayson received the serum was very Jesus-y, between the crucifixion pose and the clothing he was wearing. Alexander Grayson, our new Messiah?
-I loved Renfield’s “what are you doing?!?” look to Grayson when he stopped leaving and made his final comment. The man’s pride and penchant for showmanship will get in his own way each and every time.
-Interesting use of flashbacks with Van Helsing. I was a little annoyed that we were seeing the same thing for at least the third time and yet, they revealed that Browning was the leader behind the execution of his family. I don’t mind going back to the same flashback or the same time period of flashbacks if new information is parsed out, although it’d be nice to move on to another time in Van Helsing’s life from here on out if they wanted to do more flashbacks.
-Since Grimm is having a two-hour fall finale next week, Dracula is now off until Friday, January 3rd.
