When Mrs. Frederic had announced that Nikola Tesla would be paying a visit to the Warehouse, Claudia had stifled a laugh. Who knew she had a sense of humor?

Then she noticed Artie having a bit of a meltdown, hustling around the office and shouting instructions to Pete, Myka, Steve and herself.

Huh.

Over the course of the next few days, which were full of intense scrubbing of everything, the four of them managed to pry a few tidbits of information from Leena and Artie, but what they heard didn't make a whole lot of sense. Words like demanding, obsessive and vampire were bandied about.

It was the vampire bit that set Myka and Steve twitching while really peeking Pete and Claudia's interest.

When the man (vampire?) himself arrived, in a flurry of swagger and condescension, he immediately began sniffing out any and every modification and upgrade ever made to the Warehouse.

The exasperated (and hot) guy who'd accompanied him just rolled his eyes and asked to be directed to their computer core. Since Artie was following Tesla around, it fell to Claudia to accompany his friend.

"So that's Nikola Tesla? He's a vampire?" Claudia couldn't help but ask about the fastidiously dressed man, who was currently harassing Artie.

With a snort, Henry, Tesla's…friend, co-worker, long suffering acquaintance, whatever, said, "Yeah, but go easy on the hero worship. His ego gets any bigger and you're gonna have to add a new wing to this place."

"You act like the vampire thing is normal," she said, then looked around and reevaluated her statement. "Though I guess normal is relative."

He grinned up at her from where he crouched by an open access panel. "Normal is overrated. Check this out."

As he hefted a PDA sized array of circuitry, Claudia cocked her head and knelt beside him. "What's that?"

"Your boss, scary lady, by the way, and I am no stranger to terrifying women, made a deal with mine. This database will let you folks contact a variety of Sanctuaries in various cities around the world, in the event you need some back up…plus a few other odds and ends," he said, flipping the device around happily and opening an access port.

"Sanctuaries?" she asked, pulling out a cable to connect the drive to their system. "And what would a Sanctuary be?"

"You guys deal with Artifacts, we handle Abnormals, sasquatches, mermaids, HAPS etc."

"Seriously? Cryptids are real?"

"Seriously."

As they connected the drive, she blinked, "What's a HAP?"

"Hyper Accelerated Protean life form," Henry replied. "Werewolf, basically, without the random, bloody rampages."

Well, that was interesting.

"Oh. My. God!" Tesla's voice rang out from the armory, two rooms over. "What are these tiny toys?"

Claudia bristled. Tiny Toys? "Is he talking about my mini-Teslas?"

Henry's brows reached his hairline. "What is a mini-Tesla?"

"Tesla's are our stunners that he designed a billion years ago. I improved them, made some smaller models and rifles. Not to brag, but they're awesome," she said, peering toward the door and wondering if she should go defend her improvements.

Henry chuckled. "Oh, we have some of those old models, though we don't call them Tesla's. Probably Magnus's call."

"Is Magnus your boss?"

"Boss, fearless leader, surrogate mother," her replied. "She's also the only person I know who can keep reign on…."

"Heinrich!"

Heaving a sigh, Henry said, "He's kind of a pain in the ass, but he has his moments."

"Now, fuzzy!"

Claudia was all too familiar with the long suffering look on her fellow techs face. Clearly, it was a universal rule that no one appreciated their IT people.

Comments, pretty please?