Nikola was the only one who didn't think she was crazy. Well, he might have thought it, but Helen was pretty sure he knew he had no room to judge, so he kept his mouth shut. Nigel was less vocal about his disapproval, but he had a way of pursing his lips that Helen knew meant he was holding his thoughts in. "Look, I understand your concerns," Helen began, before immediately being cut off by James.

"No, you don't. If you did, you wouldn't be insisting on this…this madness!"

"It doesn't sound like we have much of a choice," Nigel murmured. Helen smiled softly. Oh Nigel, always the realist. Nikola nodded in agreement, which caused Helen to wonder how this always happened. John and James on one side, Nikola and Nigel on the other. Helen felt like she was always having to choose between them, and while she was happy she was there to be the tiebreaker, she worried what would happen if the occasional tensions between the men escalated.

Attempting to push that out of her mind, Helen rolled out the map she'd brought and pointed to their destination. "This is where we're going to have to go."

"Romania?" She wasn't sure if that was excitement or dread she heard in Nikola's voice.

"Yes. The Traders don't just lose cargo. They pride themselves on doing the impossible, that's why we hired them. For this to have happened at all…someone wanted that blood more badly than we did."

"I didn't realize that was possible," James murmured.

"Who else even knows about it? Stashes of ancient vampire blood aren't exactly common knowledge." Normally, Nigel's question would be left primarily to James. He was their deductive reasoning expert, after all, but one look at his face, and Helen knew he wasn't saying anything, even if he was already going through the permutations and possibilities to figure out which one was most likely. James couldn't resist a mystery, but he was remarkably stubborn, so if he had an idea, he wasn't about to share it any time soon. So, Helen took it upon herself.

"Well I'd wager that whoever is behind this wants that blood desperately, like I said. So, who would have both the knowledge and the desperation to pull this off? I came up with two possibilities that are anywhere close to likely. One, the vampires. Though we know the Church killed off most of them, this is a race of exceedingly brilliant and resilient creatures. I'm sure there are survivors out there. It's just a matter of finding them. Now, if I were a vampire who feared for my life but wanted to maintain a connection to all the kin I'd lost, where would I go?"

"Somewhere familiar," John murmured, arms crossed and a look of serious contemplation on his face. Helen couldn't help but grin at the sight. She knew by know what it meant, that his curiosity was getting the best of him. It was why he'd joined them in the first place. John wasn't a natural scientist, though he certainly had the aptitude for it, but he went to Oxford to study poetry. In a way, Helen wondered if that, aside from James's introduction, had drawn him into their group. They were, after all, a Shakespearean tragedy waiting to happen.

She and John often spent time after their meetings discussing such things. John always insisted she was Viola. "A woman dressed as a man but no less beautiful because of it." Helen in turn reminded him that if she were truly dressed as a man, she'd be much more comfortable, but that didn't stop her mouth from turning ever so slightly upwards and her cheeks from coloring. Helen Magnus prided herself on being independent, rejecting traditional roles for her gender, but ultimately she liked being John Druitt's favorite heroine. Neither of them stopped to think about the fact Twelfth Night was a comedy. If they were fated to be a tragedy, their story would follow a much different path.

"Helen!" It was Nigel's accent, a bit of a cymbal crash compared to the smooth melody of the others, that brought her out of her reverie.

"Yes, I'm sorry, what is it?"

"Johnny here was just saying he agrees with you," Nikola murmured, clever eyes shifting between them expectantly. Later on, Helen often wondered if he knew before they did. Sometimes, on her more cynical days, she even wondered if he knew the whole story, from start to finish, of who exactly John Druitt would become. For now though, her daydreaming was simply a cause for mild embarrassment, and she cleared her throat. Her mother's family always insisted on decorum. It was a harsh lesson that had ingrained itself in her body; her posture would straighten when she was uncomfortable, her hands would fidget, all in all it was how she dealt with embarrassment: trying to be perfect.

"Well that's because John's a very clever man," she mused, and she was proud of how her heart rate only increased slightly at the smirk he gave her. The combination of that smirk and the way he peered at her through his fringe of hair made him look every inch the dashing male lead of the romance novels Helen certainly didn't read on lonely nights.

"I just know you Helen," he husked, "and I figured I might as well get on board now before you force me on by sheer strength of will." Nigel barked out a laugh and Nikola had that infuriating smirk on his face, and they didn't need to say or do anything else to tell her they were on her side. So it was then that she turned her gaze to James. They locked eyes and, for a moment, electricity sparked between them, and not the kind that led to soft sighs and panted moans in the dark of night. No, this was a thunderstorm brewing between two people who cared about each other, but who each believed they were in the right.

"We could always go without him," Nikola suggested, causing both parties to send a glare his way. "What? It was merely a suggestion!"

"This is mad," James said, voice low, almost a growl.

"Perhaps," Helen replied, "but it's the only choice we have."