Disclaimer: I own nothing

Author's Note: Aaand I'm back! I actually finished a chapter this month! Sorry it took so long! No beta.

Enjoy!

The castle had several doors, not apparent at a distance. The first one that Helen saw was black, with no step, but she went up to it all the same. If she stretched up, she could reach the knob and she would be able to haul herself inside.

But when Helen reached up, she realized that it was, not in fact, a door. It was wooden and it had a handle, but there were no hinges and she saw that it was mounted firmly in the stone on either side. There was no way to open it. It was, apparently, only there for show. Helen withdrew her hand, feeling more than a little bewildered by this.

She started to circle the castle, which was even uglier up close. The stones were all black or dark gray, inconsistent in shape. Helen could not fathom how it was able to move without falling to pieces, but it obviously managed it every day. There was something about it that excluded a sinister feeling, but it was not going to deter her. It was getting cold and she doubted that even vampires would dare to search for her in Tesla's castle.

Abandoning the not-a-door, Helen went to the next one, only to have the exact same problem. She whacked her hand on the door, as if that were make a difference.

"Open up!" she demanded, childishly.

Nothing happened.

"Very well." Helen muttered, circling again. The next door was far too small for her to even consider that it was the real one. If Tesla's goal was to deter people from getting inside, he had done a fine job in prevention. Most probably gave up out of sheer annoyance. Helen said a word she had learned from John that young ladies were not supposed to know, let alone say, whether they were alone or not.

Helen stumbled across the uneven ground, going around the castle, trying to find a way to open it. The smoke continued to stream across the moor.

"This isn't not very welcoming." she snapped at the castle, as if it were a sentient being that could understand what she were saying and be scolded for not acting as a building ought to.

The smoke blew down in her face, making Helen stop and cough. "I'll speak to Tesla about this!" she threatened, still coughing. Perhaps she were going a little mad, Helen thought, as she continued her trek around the castle. Talking to the building as if it could understand her. She was getting angry now.

Helen finally found another door, rather plain looking compared to the others, and it had a few steps leading up to it, where the others had not. That must have been the real door.

"At last!" Helen cried.

The castle seem to decide-and she was almost beginning to think it somehow understood her-that she had been taking enough time, because it started to move again as she started to approach it, to Helen's dismay.

"Don't you dare!" She hitched her skirt up and ran to the step, pulling herself up just as the castle began to pick up speed, making her unbalanced. She clung to the knob, but the door seemed to be locked. Now, it wasn't just the fact that Helen wanted to get in. It was that she didn't want to fall off and hit the ground at this speed.

The black blocks of stone crunched and groaned, shifting against each other as the castle moved. She wondered how it managed to stay together.

"Hello?" Helen banged on the door. "Open up, please!"

The door opened and Helen nearly fell inward, catching herself up on the frame, breathing hard.

"What a stupid way for a building to be treated! There's a reason no others move!" Helen gasped to herself.

As she caught her breath, she realized that there was a person standing in front of her, holding the door open. He was staring at her with wide eyes, seeming stunned by her appearance, as Helen was by his.

He was about two inches shorter than Helen, around her age, perhaps younger. He had sandy brown hair and his brown eyes looked mildly alarmed. He looked as if he were about to close the door on her and shove her out into the cold. And off the step.

"Don't throw me down the hill, please!" Helen snapped, gripping the frame harder for balance.

"I wasn't going to." he protested in a Cockney sounding accent. "But you're keeping the door open. What do you want?"

Helen blanked. She wasn't certain how to explain herself. she thought she would have been able to get in the door before she had to explain anything. She stared past the man to the room beyond, which boasted a lamplit, low beamed ceiling. Shelves and a work bench housed jars and wooden boxes, herbs and net bags hung from the beams, and firelight flickered over everything. Bits of metal were heaped on the workbench as well. It was all very strange looking.

"I need a place to stay." Helen blurted out.

"Well, miss..." he trailed off, hesitating.

Helen took the opprotunity to push her way in, because she felt like she was going to fall off the castle at any moment in her precarious position. The man made a sound of protest that sounded half hearted and closed the door behind Helen.

He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. Helen had the impression from that reaction alone, his hesitation, that he was he sort of young man that had been raised to respect a woman and didn't know what to do now that she had succeeded in gaining entry to the castle.

"Sit down, I suppose, while I...I decide what to do with you."

"Thank you." Helen murmured, rubbing her arms.

It was considerably warmer in the castle than out and there was no wind. It was nice to be inside. She stepped away from the door, keeping her bag tucked close to her side in case she was kicked straight out. here was no way that this young man was Tesla. He wouldn't have been so uncertain of himself.

She moved towards the chair he had indicated and stopped when she got a look at the fire. There wasn't a traditional fireplace. There was a raised half circle of stone against the wall and a chimney obviously vented outside, but from the edge of the half circle up to the ceiling was a glass tube.

Inside, a fire twisted and moved, surging up over the remains of a few logs. The material, Helen realized, could not have been glass. It was not blackened in the slightest and she had a feeling that the heat it contained was far beyond what normal glass would have been able to handle without shattering or even melting. Because, it looked like the fire was...

"A Tunisian fire elemental." she breathed.

She never would have dreamed of finding abnormals here, let alone something like this. Helen stared at it, not sure what to make of it. Tunisian fire elementals were very destructive creatures and Helen had never seen one.

So she sat in the chair, staring at it in wonder.

It was contained. It was somehow not burning down everything around it. She had heard of nothing destroying things like a fire elemental would in Britain. So Helen just sat and stared, forgetting for a moment what had driven her to this place.

Tesla must have been a smart man indeed if he had figured out how to contain a Tunisian fire elemental. James and her father had tossed the idea around and James had talked about designing something capable of containing such creatures, but a need had never arisen.

"You know what it is?" the boy asked, startling Helen.

"Yes." she said, leaning back in the chair a little, weariness nagging at the edge of her mind. "You should tell Tesla that this place is likely to fall down."

"It won't." he paused. "I'm afraid Nikola isn't here right now."

That was probably for the best, Helen realized. She had a feeling that Tesla would have been a lot more direct in kicking her out. The boy-or man, he really was at that awkward age where he was both and neither, like Helen herself-in front of her clearly didn't know what to do with her. If she could just stay the night, she could leave in the morning before Tesla arrived and figure out where to go from there.

"When will he be back?" she asked, hoping that it wouldn't be at least until morning, otherwise her plan would be foil and she'd be out in the cold and the dark.

"Not until tomorrow, at the least. But I'm Nigel, his apprentice. Perhaps I could help you?"

Helen shook her head, ducking it a little as Nigel's eyes raked over her face. He had the grace to flush and look away, eyes settling on her own instead of anywhere else.

But his words were good news to Helen. It meant, with a little more wrangling, that she would be able to shelter here the entire night and leave in the morning. She was exhausted and she didn't want to be thrown out on to the chilly moors if she didn't have to be.

"I'm afraid only Tesla could help me." she said. It was an outright lie, but Nigel need not know that. "I will wait for him, if you don't mind."

Nigel looked a little helpless. He was clearly torn between kicking her out-as his master certainly would have wanted-and being polite to her because she was female. He ended up hovering by the chair, tapping his fingers against his leg. Helen took a little pity on him.

"My name is Helen." she told him. "I'm sorry to inconvenience you, but I do need help."

That was the way Gregory had taught her to talk. To be honest, but to say the honesty in a way that left it up to interpretation if needed.

This seemed to sway Nigel, though he still didn't seem happy.

"All right. You'll be waiting all night, however."

"I do not mind."

That was true. Helen's eyes were feeling heavy and so was her head, too much for her to even bother too much with the fire elemental mere feet away from her. She leaned her head back, letting her eyes close. She heard Nigel shuffle and mutter to himself, but he eventually went to the workbench on the other side of the room.

Helen didn't feel too guilty. Tesla was said to be such a wicked man, some of it had to be true. He deserved to be imposed on. Nigel didn't seem like he did, but he was collateral damage in this case. She glanced at Nigel through mostly closed eyes. She was surprised that he was so polite, honestly. She wondered how he had ended up apprenticing under a man like Tesla.

She watched him, thinking about how kind and friendly he looked. If she had met him anywhere else, she would have simply taken him for an ordinary, polite young man. Anyone would have. It was strange to find that here and she wondered just what it was he was apprenticing for.

Helen was more than half asleep as Nigel went about his business at the bench, tinkering with bits of metal and delicately fitting the pieces together. She didn't hear when he burned his fingers on a hot piece of metal and swore, sucking on his fingertips. She didn't hear him move around to pour cold tea into a mug and gulp it down. She didn't stir when he knocked pieces off the bench and on to the floor. Neither did she stir when he put the things away for the night and circle around the chair to look down at her with a frown.

"She looks harmless." he remarked to the fire. "And pretty too, under those scars. She's not one of Afina's, is she?"

The fire pressed against the glass-like material, swirling in an annoyed way. Nigel sighed and dragged a hand over his face.

"No, no, I know you would not have let her in if she were. And you're right. Vampires do not have scars."

He patted the glass-like material, opening it to slide a log in. He hung Helen's bag politely over the back of the chair, hesitated over her for a moment, then headed up the stairs.

The fire settled low around the log, facing Helen.

Helen woke up in the middle of the night with a start. She wasn't at first certain what had woken her. Perhaps it was a dream or the fire, which had snapped loudly. Her neck felt stiff from sleeping in the chair, though she had thought it had only been for a few seconds. But the light was dim, the fire low, and Nigel seemed to have disappeared in those few seconds. She remembered, unpleasantly, that she was in the castle of a supposedly dangerous man and that another man was somewhere nearby.

A draft stirred some of her finer hairs and Helen shifted, noting the stack of wood by the fireplace. She got up, stiffly, to put a log in. It took a little figuring out how to open the thing and Helen knew her father would have scolded her for this, considering the nature of the abnormal, but she opened it anyway and put the log in.

The fire elemental seemed to politely wait until she had closed its habitat again, sealing it neatly, before it started to consume the long. A wave of gratitude hit Helen.

"You're welcome." she said automatically in response.

Then she realized what she had said and started, staring at the elemental in shock. That gratitude had to have come from somewhere and it wasn't from her. And there was no one else in the room. So, logically, it had to have come from the fire.

Helen stared at in fascination. No one knew all that much about Tunisian fire elementals when it came down to it. They were so deadly and destructive. They could be locked away-at least, that was the assumption because you couldn't truly kill one and they did disappear-but they were so dangerous that hardly everyone had ever lived to tell a tale about a firsthand experience about one.

"Was that you?" she asked, sitting on the edge of the chair and tilting her head.

The fire elemental flickered and bobbed around its logs. Helen felt a sense of smugness touch her mind. Some abnormals could do such a thing, but it was rare and Helen hadn't experienced it much firsthand. Her father's journals said that merfolk could do so, to communicate with others, but she had never met one. And a Tunisian fire elemental certainly was not a mer.

"How are you here? Did Tesla capture you?" she asked.

She could have sworn that it shrugged. The movement of the flames did suggest it, but the emotion that touched Helen's mind matched the movement. Uncertain. She frowned at this.

"Is he forcing you to be here?" she asked instead, thinking that if Tesla was even half as wicked as people said that he was, he would see no problem in capturing an abnormal and forcing it to do whatever he wanted. Which was, apparently, to be his fireplace. Helen didn't like that, but she couldn't just go around freeing it either.

The fire elemental jetted up indignantly and images, suggestions, and emotions touched Helen's mind. Apparently, it could be quite communicative if it wanted to be. She made note of that in the back of her mind, a part of her wishing that she had thought to take a journal during her flight from the house. This was all very fascinating.

"You made a deal?"

A sure of confirmation on those words, if Helen was any judge. She wondered why in the world a fire elemental had made a deal with a human, but she didn't pursue it at the moment. Especially since it did seem rather rude. Helen never pressed the abnormals she worked with for more information than they were willing to share. She never wanted to pressure them. she wanted them to feel safe with her. They would open up when they were ready.

More images and a quizzical feeling. It was a rather strange thing to be experiencing but growing up with abnormals made Helen feel more than well equipped to handle it. She wondered if she really did need to be speaking out loud or if the elemental could tell what she was going to say before she said it because of her mind.

"No, I'm not an abnormal." she said in response to the images, shaking her head. "My father raised me to protect and care for them. I've worked with them for the majority of my life."

An image of a fangs and sharp claws, along with the image of her own face sprang into Helen's mind as the fire elemental flickered and swirled in it's habitat.

"Yes, a vampire did do it to me." she whispered, reaching up to touch her face. Helen still couldn't feel the scars beneath her fingertips and she had, for some reason, kept forgetting that they were there until she was faced with a reaction that forced her to remember. She supposed it still hadn't sunk in yet. "I do not know why. Apparently...apparently the vampire queen is angry with me."

The fire elemental sank broodingly low and Helen had the distinct impression that it was studying her. Which seemed strange for a being with no eyes. Or body for that matter. She stared at it, trying to figure out. She would have loved to study it, though it seemed it would be rude to ask. She also wondered what Tesla knew about it, but she wasn't planning on sticking around long enough to find out.

Despite what Helen had told Nigel, she wasn't planning on staying. It would be too risky for multiple reasons. Tesla, for one. She was also still very close to home and she knew it would be better to put more distance between her and the boys. The last thing Helen wanted was to put John and James in danger, especially from vampires. Vampires were another thing entirely.

More pushes against her mind and Helen had to sink back in the chair at the implication. "Stay?" she whispered the word, because the idea was a little terrifying when she thought about it.

She swore the elemental nodded.

"I don't think-" Helen broke off, fanning her fingers over her face. She hadn't been planning any of this, but now a fire elemental of all things was suggesting things. More things pressed on her mind and she laughed, lowering her hands. "You want to help me?"

The elemental was quick to correct her on that one.

"You want us to help each other? How-" Helen broke off as the suggestion eased into her mind and she sank deeper into the chair, mind swirling. This all seemed to be moving very fast and she didn't know what to do. She wished that she had stayed asleep. That may have been preferable to this, really.

"How can you help me?" she demaded, straightening up and shifting to the edge of the seat again. "I'm on the run from vampires. I do not know why they want me. I simply do not them to hurt the only family I have left."

Helen's throat clogged, though she had no idea if it was with tears or fear. Perhaps both. The fire elemental flickered low, then swirled high. Helen had the feeling that she had upset it, which had to have been a dangerous thing to do. She was grateful for the barrier that was between them, though logic told her that it should not have existed.

She watched the elemental swirl around, feeling miserable and trying to collect herself. Helen felt foolish and scared and those were two emotions that had never had much place in her life. They had never been allowed much place in her life. Dealing with them in such quantities, especially alone, was overwhelming.

The elemental pressed closer to the barrier and pressed into her mind again. Helen's head snapped up and she stared at it, twistng her skirt in her hands.

"You can protect me?" The elemental flickered and swirled more and Helen had to correct herself as she realized she had interpreted what it meant the wrong way. "Tesla can protect me? The man takes girls like me! He might not kill them, but he surely takes advantage of them!" More, this time highly smug and Helen scowled. "I know I thought he wouldn't because of my face, but-"

Helen sighed, letting her shoulders slump. She couldn't argue like this. She was arguing with a fire elemental-which by all rights should not have been here at all. She was sitting in a potential mad man's castle after having imposed on his apprentice for a warm place to spend the night. She had been attacked by a vampire and fled everything she knew. Nothing made much sense anymore.

"And you want me to free you in return." she murmured as the rest trickled in. "Safely. You don't want to hurt people." Helen had no idea what else to say to that, because it seemed an impossible task. Tunisian fire elementals were deadly. Tesla had found a way to contain one, but it was obviously a limited solution.

She felt her heart, despite her misgivings and everything else, go out to the fire elemental. It just wanted to free and it didn't want to hurt people. So many abnormals desired that, but for the fire elemental especially, it was an impossible wish. Helen wavered as she thought about that. She had no where else to go. And it was very possible that the vampires wouldn't look for her here.

"All right." Helen said, a little reluctantly, thinking that she was probably going to regret agreeing to this. Of course, if it came to it, she could always just leave. Breaking her word, but she would do what she had to do.

At her words, the fire elemental shot up so high Helen was fairly certain it had made it more than half way up the chimney. She had clearly made it feel overjoyed and a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told Helen that was perhaps not the best thing she could have done when it came to one of the most dangerous known abnormals in the world.

When the elemental settled back down, she got down to business. "How am I to convince Tesla to allow me to stay? I barely convinced Nigel." she asked. "What possible excuse could I give to convince them?"

The response that came made it clear that the elemental expected her to figure it out herself.

Helen sighed and settled back more comfortably in the chair to sleep. It seemed the elemental was much to excited at the prospect of their deal to easily allow her sleep, because it kept filtering suggestions into her mind. Helen was too tired to tell it to stop, so was treated to half formed image in her dreams that made little sense. They must have come from the elemental, but they escaped before she could make much sense them.

A song started to filter through her mind and at first, Helen thought it was some silly thing of nonsense words, until she realized that it was in a language she had never heard before. The song started to lull her to sleep and Helen resettled herself, thinking that, at least for a while, she would be safe...

Author's Note: Yay, Nigel and a fire elemental!

I don't know when the next chapter will be up, honestly. I'm participating in Fictober, Flufftober, and am hosting/writing in my own Sanctuary challenge and probably won't have much time to work on my other stories for the duration. But I'll the next chapter as soon as I can.

Let me know what you think!