"The Dresden Files is copyright Jim Butcher. This story is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, noncommercial fiction."

"I need your help finding something, Mr. Dresden," the woman in front of me said, pushing the glasses up on her nose. "Your ad says that you find lost items."

You're going to think the connection to the larger case should have been obvious from the get go. But really, I often have cases that I run simultaneously which have nothing to do with each other. The fact that some of my more prominent case files involve complex multi-layered plots that started out looking like completely unrelated situations has nothing to do with the hundreds of cases I deal with where there is no connection at all.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

She was dressed in a rather conservative manner, with long hair tied up in a tightly formal bun. She had a rather solid looking face that showed a number of early wrinkles on an otherwise young face. A small white line across one cheek was almost unnoticeable against the tan of her skin, but I've collected a few scars of my own, some quite recently, so I noticed fairly easily.

And she was avoiding looking me in the eye, which wasn't all that uncommon with people that came into my office, a lot of clients did that just in case. What was noticeable about this woman was that she was doing it well. She was used to avoiding eye contact and being polite about it.

I wasn't the first practitioner she'd met. Which isn't that odd either, I get jobs out of the community fairly frequently.

"That's right Miss Agallon," I told her, nodding. "I can do that for you. What is it you're looking for? Wedding ring?"

I probably shouldn't have assumed like that, but most of the time I have a woman looking for a lost item, it seems to be wedding rings.

Or engagement rings.

Or class rings.

Or other pieces of jewelry that were given to them by significant others and which they wanted recovered before said significant others discovered the item was missing.

However, none of them seemed to like it when I guessed that ahead of times. Some got a little scared, as if I might be reading their minds, but, for the most part they just got annoyed.

And I never quite seem to get it through my head not to pre-guess the lost ring thing.

The frown on the woman's face was normal, her answer was not.

"It's a family heirloom," she said. "A knife about three quarters of a foot long, engraved bone handle with a leather wrap. It is probably bronze, the records are vague."

If I had been lounging instead of politely attending to my soon-to-be client's wishes I would have sat up at that. As it was, I did lift my head and arch an eyebrow.

"And how long has this knife been missing?" I asked.

"It was last seen about fifteen years ago," Miss Agallon said simply. "In Miami, Florida. My family has reason to believe that it's here in Chicago, but we've hit a dead end."

"I have to tell you, Miss," I told her, shaking my head. "That it'll be a bit difficult to track with such a minimal description."

"Will this help?" Miss Agallon asked, pulling out a small white envelope and passing it over to me.

Opening the envelope I found an old piece of dried leather wrapping.

"Fifteen years you said?" I asked, receiving a nod in return. "Have you done anything to the leather?"

"No. It has been kept as it found and kept away from the elements as much as possible," she explained. "My family has dealt with practitioners before. We just hoped to handle things ourselves. Not to mention that most creditable wizards don't hire out for such work."

I glanced over to her trying to decide whether that comment was a compliment, insult or just neutral. In the end, it really didn't matter and I was more concerned with the assertion that my client's family had hoped to "handle things" on their own.

"Was this knife lost, or stolen?" I asked pointedly.

"Does it matter?" she responded, which meant stolen or worse.

"I like to avoid getting involved in vendettas that aren't mine," I explained. "At the very least, I like to know the risks going in. I'm guessing you saw the knife fifteen years ago yourself, when you were a kid perhaps?"

I pointedly indicated the woman's faint scar. I had to admit, I didn't like to push her on the question, but I'd learned a few times that not speaking up about such things caused more trouble than it solved overall.

"Fine," she said. "The knife was stolen. All I am asking is that you find it. Recovering it is my task."

I frowned and looked her over briefly. She didn't look like someone that could handle herself, but I knew a lot of people that didn't look like they could handle themselves while still being complete badasses. Part of me wanted to insist on her staying out of anything dangerous.

This may sound a bit old-fashioned and sexist, but I didn't like it when women were hurt, and this woman would have had to been barely a teen when she gained that scar. And I didn't like kids being hurt any more than I like it when it happens to women.

I struggled with that for a moment and found that the chivlarous part of me wouldn't let it go. But it was satisfied with leaving the decision until after I'd learned more about the whole situation.

"I believe I can help you then," I told her finally.

She might have been relieved at my acceptance, it was hard to tell. In any case she started to reach into her jacket again to pull out a second envelope.

"A retainer is cust..." she winced and dropped the envelope to the floor. "Excuse me."

The voice was weaker as she spoke then and this time she went into her purse to look for a plastic case of pills of some kind.

"Do you need some water?" I asked, standing up and heading for the sink near the coffee machine.

She lifted her hand to forestall me and produced a small thermos out of her purse next. Carried her own water for her medicine. There's paranoia for you.

After taking the pills and downing them with a swig from her thermos, she put the medicine away and reached down again for the white envelope which I presumed carried my first payment.

"Are you sure all you want me to do is find the item?" I asked cautiously.

Miss Agallon's lips briefly twitched as she stood up and held out the envelope.

"Your chivlary does you credit, Mr. Dresden," she said. "But I can handle myself for that."

"Chivalry?" I responded. "Most women call that chauvinism."

"I'm sure they do," Agallon said. "When should I expect results?"

"It's an old link," I warned her. "Even with the steps you've taken to avoid contamination. But I should have something for you in a day or two."

The woman nodded and turned toward the door, I moved ahead of her to hold open the door, getting a nod in response.

"I left a number for my cell phone on a note with the money," she told me before exiting.

I moved to the desk, pulling the money out of the envelope and counting it out. It was a generous retainer.

Always a bad sign.

The phone rang as I was putting the leather sample back in its envelope and thought about how best to go about running the tracking spell in consideration of the problems. Picking it up I encountered a familiar voice.

"Dresden, are you up for a quick consultation?" Murphy asked.

"Hi, Murph, good to hear from you," I responded snarkily. "I'm doing great, thanks for asking."

"Are you free or aren't you?" Murph snapped back, though there was good humor and a trace of teasing behind the barking demand.

"Yeah, need me at a crime scene?"

"Actually, Butters passed this on to me," she said. "Down at the Forensic Institute."

"The morgue, huh?" I asked. "Yeah, I can be there pretty quick."

"Provided the Beetle's running you mean?" Murphy asked and I could just see the smirk. "I'll be waiting."

"It's a vampire right?" Butters asked as I bent over the body he had on display, Murphy was at the doorway.

The body on the slab appeared to be a woman in her early twenties with lovely, classic features from a clearly Eastern European family She had black hair that had been bleached white and dyed blue in streaks. She had modest but attractive curves.

And she had an extra smile drawn ear to ear.

The reason Butters thought she might be a vampire was clear.

"Only Red Court vampires have fangs," I told him as I looked at the canines.

"Oh," Butters responded.

He knew better than to ask whether the girl was a Red Court vampire, he'd down autopsies on Red Court bodies in the past. His report on that was the reason for his professional exile.

"Just a girl with a vamp fetish then?" Murphy asked. "I know some dentists do custom work."

"Probably," I said shrugging and straightening myself.

"Are you sure?" Butters asked. "Aren't there Dracula style vampires out there?"

"Black Court," I said nodding. "But a Black Court would have fallen apart by now, this corpse is way too fresh to be one of them. Normal human teeth, smelly. They're basically walking rotting corpses with lots of power."

"Wouldn't that explain why her internal organs all look like they belong to someone forty or fifty years older?" Butters asked. "That and the lack of blood in her system?"

"No, not older, rotting," I clarified. "This is just some girl with a..."

I paused and considered something else and took a long breath and pinched the bridge of my nose briefly before moving toward the body and pulling an arm out from under the blanket. There were yellow and blue lines running up and down the woman's arm along with a number of old scars which looked suspiciously like human teeth marks. Moving around to the other side, I found the same "tattoos" and old bite marks along with a set of fresh teeth marks, deep enough to have been bandaged before she died.

I could see the indentations where the bandage had been.

"Did she come in with perhaps three or four other women who had tattoos like these somewhere on their body?" I asked cautiously.

"Well," the mortician said. "Yeah, but I haven't had access to those three. My boss thinks this one was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"In other words," I said. "They dumped you with the weird one."

"Think of something, Harry?" Murphy asked.

"Lamia," I told them, I pointed to the teeth marks. "And the other three are her brides, you'll find their teeth match these marks. And you'll find her bite marks on them. I'm guessing the crime scene looked like a war zone. Lamia are minor talents, usually have influence over a single element, and their brides are physically powerful and usually well trained."

Butters started to flush a little as a predictable image probably started to come into his mind.

"Brides? You mean, like..." he stammered a bit and glanced toward the glowering Murphy.

"If you're asking whether I thought they were lesbians," I said with a smirk. "I wouldn't know about their private lives, but if they had that kind of relationship, I'd expect these bite marks and tattoos to be in a different place."

"Cut to the chase and explain what a lamia is, Harry," Murphy said. "And watch the innuendo."

"Lamia come out of some sorcerer's experiment," I explained. "Just before the dark ages, maybe a little bit before Merlin's time even in the area that became the Byzantine empire. Big time breach of the second law. No one's exactly sure of what the sorcerer was attempting. Some say they were looking for a way to prolong life, others say merely beauty. Others say they were basically running a Roman super-soldier project."

"So there's some sorcerer out there turning people into monsters?" Murphy asked tightly.

"No, this would be a descendant of the original victims, it's passed mother to daughter," I explained. "They live about fifty years longer than most humans on average, some live longer. It's one of the rare instances where the victims came out relatively okay. Body altering warlocks love to cite it all the time. Characteristically they don't visibly age..."

"So the organs on the inside look older than the body would," Butters said.

"Wow, I know some women that would kill for that," Murphy noted.

Somehow, I had this image of Murphy's younger sister traipsing through her mind. Then she widened her eyes as she followed that thought.

"Go on Harry, talk about these 'brides'," she said with a darker tone of voice.

"Lamias can't survive without being involved in a sort of...spiritual and physical partnership," I said.

"Symbiosis?" Butters asked.

"That'll work," I agreed. "The brides are formerly human women that have been transformed by the lamia. They get stronger, faster, tougher and they gain lasting beauty and increased lifespan comparable to the lamia's. Most lamia families have old alliances with specific human families to maintain a pool of brides. Baby lamia are generally fed off the blood of an existing bride until they can get their own set of brides."

"Let me guess," Murphy said. "The symbiosis is maintained by exchange of blood."

"A bride without a lamia would die within months, I think," I said shrugging. "A lamia without brides...well, you've heard of Elizabeth Bathory."

"So lesbian vampires?" Butters asked.

Murphy and I turned to look at him.

"Fangs, blood sucking..." he said shrugging. "Long life. Look human."

"You know, that describes a large number of supernatural creatures that aren't vampires," I told him. "My faerie godmother for one."

"You have a faerie godmother?" Butters said blinking.

"Psycho faerie godmother," Murphy corrected. "Apparently, psycho bloodsucking faerie godmother."

"And we don't know they were lesbians," I reminded him. "Though they probably lived in the same house and were single. Imagine a gaggle of girls who are literally BFFs and seem to have a psychic communication with each other so they have a creepy sort of hive mind going on."

"On to the important stuff, Dresden," Murphy insisted. "Do I have to worry about these lamia hurting people?"

"By and large they don't hurt people," I assured her. "Bathory was reportedly psychotic. And even the bad ones don't usually end up that blatant."

"So, next question," Murphy said. "Would this be a former bride trying to harvest lamia blood to stay alive?"

"Wow," I said looking toward the tiny scary woman. "Jumped right to that didn't you. I'm impressed."

"It seems obvious," she said. "Why else take all her blood?"

"It is," I nodded. "And if that is the case, the killer is probably still around."

"Why's that?" Butters asked.

"Minorities like to stick together," Murphy said. "If these are so rare..."

She glanced toward Harry.

"They got spread around the world," I said. "But there aren't more than two or three thousand out of the entire population of the world. Maybe ten or twelve major bloodlines, mostly European and Asian."

"Right," the detective said nodding. "They'll make sure they have neighbors on hand to watch their back. And that means that our killer has more targets."