Harry Dresden saw the bedraggled - well she was a bit too heavy to be a waif - standing outside MacAnaly's in the rain, and sighed. It was that time of year again. While it had some benefits, the negatives far outweighed them. Sighing once more, he brought her inside and bought her a meal he really couldn't afford to be paying for. Why the hell did he have to be so chivalrous? It always ended the same way.

Her story was one he'd heard a dozen times before. Woke up in the hospital...dark alley...morgue...shack in the middle of nowhere 1, 5 or even - as in her case - 10 years in the past, got kidnapped by a monstrous creature from the NeverNever - in her case it was a little twerp with a box cutter - and mysteriously ended up in Chicago.

From the power he could feel from her, she was potentially Wizard level, not that it really mattered.

&!&!&

"Another one?" Karrin Murphey mouthed to Dresden who seemed to be tuning the woman standing in front of him out and bracing himself for what was coming next.

This one's protestations of undying love sounded an awful lot like "I'll be going now. Thanks for letting me crash on your couch."

Dresden, being the gentleman that he was, made some vague offer of escorting her home.

Her breathless acceptance at a chance at spending more time with him sounded suspiciously like: "Travel with you? I'd be safer hitching a ride with a serial killer. No offense, I mean you're nice and all, but you attract enemies like a magnet does iron filings. I'm a big fan of the books and all, but who in their right mind would want to live in them? Here, along with all of the dangers of the normal world, there's also a chance that you would be eaten or worse by something out of a horror movie. Meeting you was cool and all, but I don't want to do it again anytime soon since my chances for survival would dramatically increase by staying the hell away from you. If I had a choice of which world I ended up in, I'd choose Dr. Who. Since I live in California, I wouldn't have to worry about too many of the events affecting me. It'd be like "England has been invaded by aliens...again. And in other news..." and "Hello Cybermen...Goodbye Cybermen." and "What Year That Never Was?" that would pretty much be it. Since I'm stuck here I'll just have to make the best of it, though I don't know how since you said that my "powers" were "awakened" and I wouldn't be able to keep a T.V. a Computer or a PSP."

With that, she turned and left.

"That one's smarter than the last dozen" Karrin Murphy idly commented a minute later when the latest woman to enter Harry Dresden's life turned the corner and was out of sight. "She used the crosswalk and looked both ways."

An hour later, after he and Murphy had discussed the latest case over a beer, Dresden did something with a couple strands of longish brown hair.

"She's still alive?" Dresden said in surprise after he was done.

"What are the odds of that?" Karrin asked.

"I owe Bob a crate of brand-new romance novels" Dresden replied.