Disclaimer: I own nothing. I am to a spiritual level beyond material possessions. Therefore, I must borrow everyone else's.

Fun little one-shot taking place between Blood Rites and Dead Beat.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

By five o'clock, I declared the day productive and threw my black leather duster over my shoulders. At my office, I avoided a confrontation with my landlord, created a new brochure, "Sexy vampires will kill you too," for posterity, and finished the latest Janet Evonavich novel. It doesn't sound like much, but the lack of fae, mobsters, and dried killer scorpions the size of a Jack Russell terriers made me smile. Sure, it would have been better to have a real human client walk through the door with a nice fat deposit on my wonderful wizarding services, but lately those days seem to end in more than a few near death experiences.

Usually I came out of my adventures in one piece, physically at any rate. I might have to sleep for a week and have a few new manly scars to show off, but I've been lucky. Until last fall, anyway. I'd been trying to kill a black vampire sorceress and nearly burned my left hand off. Every doctor I'd talked to was surprised it was still attached and wanted to rectify that problem. My stubborn pride and I had a different opinion and kept it. I bought a pair of nice leather gloves, threw the right one out the window, and started working on my Johnny Truman impression. Now in the middle of a Chicago winter, I wished I had kept the right glove too.

The walk from my office to my basement apartment wasn't a long one, but it was a wet one. Who doesn't love the January thaw? The melting snow and ice leave deep puddles and large muddy slush piles that no longer held that pure white color of snow. More like piles of discarded snow cones of the color of stale coffee. It smelled like exhaust and felt like cold and wet. By the time I got back to my apartment, my socks were soaked and also colored of the stale coffee variety.

After lifting my wards, I opened the door slowly, afraid of what might lay behind it. Mister, my resident giant tom cat/right hand thug, threw the door open and rammed my legs as he escaped up the stairs into the approaching darkness. Another animal bounded to the door, but in his clumsy dog-adolescence, ended up closing the door instead of tackling me in slobbery kisses. I was secretly glad Mouse had four left feet. I am definitely not a dog person.

Once Mouse re-holstered his tongue, I scratched him behind the ears and poured some large breed puppy chow into his bowl. My stowaway Foo guard dog may have fit in my pocket once, but those days were long gone, and he wasn't even full grown yet. I watched him gobble down the kibble while I debated what to fix for dinner.

By looking at the state of the apartment, I guessed my cleaning service had come through while I was at the office. Sometimes they went grocery shopping for me. Eagerly I threw open the door to my pantry, and my shoulders dropped. Apparently they mixed up my order with Wallace & Gromit's. The fairies stocked it with anything that had cheese in the title. Cheese-nips, cheesy sandwich crackers, canned spray cheese, cheesy potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and more. I cringed as I opened the ice box. I had entire cheesy alphabet from brie to Velvetta. I sighed. I was going to be constipated for weeks.

Footsteps on the concrete steps to my apartment drew me away from my dinner dilemma. I summoned my staff from its place in the popcorn tin next to the door. I had enough wards protecting my place to fry a small elephant but you can never be too careful. Or as Murphy liked to call me, paranoid. There were no screams or crashes when someone turned the knob. My roommate/half-brother Thomas stumbled in.

As I relaxed and leaned my staff against the wall, Thomas opened the door further to reveal – not one but two – giggling women in scrubs. The one with the short auburn hair shoved Thomas playfully through the door. He lit a smile back and brushed his hand lightly against hers. The other woman had strong Indian heritage, and probably reached my armpit in height. Her movements were slow and calculated. She blushed and looked away whenever her friend and Thomas flirted. She was completely uncomfortable with the situation, but here she was.

My brother did a poor job of picking two women for a threesome. Hell, I didn't even know women actually went for that. I thought threesomes were an urban myth. I suppose if anyone could convince two women to sleep with him at the same time it would be a white vampire like my brother. He did get all the looks in the family.

There are several different flavors of vampire. Unlike the Bram Stroker kind, usually referred to as black vampires in the magic world, white vampires feed on emotions instead of blood. They are kind of a psychic vampire and people can get addicted if fed on too often. Slowly the victims loose their free will and become Happy Meals on legs until the vamp is too hungry or tired and takes so much out of them it kills them. Thomas had been trying to break the habit after almost killing his love Justine, but a vampire's got to feed. By the looks of the women, a bar next to a hospital was having a two for one special.

"Harry!" he exclaimed. "Great! You're here." He turned and motioned the Indian woman with thin-framed practical looking glasses. She stepped forward and smiled shyly and held out her hand. I took it as Thomas introduced us. "Harry, this is Bindu. Bindu, my roommate Harry." He turned and wrapped his arm around the other woman's waist. "And this is Carrie."

I pasted a smile on my face. "Nice to meet you both."

Thomas winked at me and nodded toward Bindu before leading Carrie to the second hand couch in the living room. Mouse glared at him as he walked by, ears back. I glanced back at Bindu who was still at my side. She coughed to fill the silence, then slipped her hands in her pockets. "Uh, so. . .How did you meet Thomas?" she asked.

"Big costume party a couple of years ago," I replied. It was a big costume party put on by the third flavor of vampires, the red, similar to black but with addictive saliva and bat looking bodies hidden underneath a human exterior. The party ended badly, with me starting a war between wizards and the Red Court vampires, and my girlfriend being abducted and half-turned into a red court vamp. All that she had to do to become a full-fledged vampire is to feed on someone until they were drained dry. She ended up breaking up with me and moving to South America, because it was hard for her to tell the difference between passion and hunger. God, I missed her. I hadn't been laid since she was in town.

My eyes grew wide. I looked from Bindu to the couple on the couch who were now whispering and giggling with each other. Mouse was still watching them. "Uh, Thomas?" I croaked and stepped out from the kitchen and headed to the bedroom.

Thomas's head of dark curls lopped to my direction. "Huh?"

"Thomas, can I speak with you for a second?" I gestured with my head toward the bedroom.

He shrugged and left the girl on the couch. "Sure." As he crossed the room, Mouse's eye followed him and stumbled toward Carrie on the couch. The puppy bumped his head into her knee and sat with his big puppy dog eyes begging to be petted. Carrie obliged, I saw Bindu make her way over as Thomas closed the door to my bedroom behind him. "So, what's up? Pretty cute, isn't she?" He elbowed me in the side.

"Uh, yeah. That's not the problem." I took a step back and looked at my feet. "Uh, you brought two girls home."

"Good job, Harry. Glad to know those tutoring sessions with the Count have gone well."

"Two girls for you?"

Thomas chuckled. "Oh! No, man. I brought B for you."

"That's what I was afraid of."

"She's built like a stick and barely reaches your shoulder, and you're afraid of her?"

"No!"

Thomas raised an eyebrow. "Is this about your hand? Because I already covered that in the pre-screening in the bar. She's okay with it. She went out with a guy with a prosthetic leg once."

My mouth dropped. "You pre-screened girls at the bar for me?"

Thomas grinned and punched me in the shoulder. "No need to thank me, bro!"

"Thank you? I'm not going to thank you!"

"Geez, Dresden. Swallow your pride for once. You haven't been laid in years. Years. Enjoy yourself. She's a pretty little doctor. She's seen death all day and wants to blow off some stress and feel alive."

"I can't believe you did this."

"Yes, you can."

"Yeah, but -"

"But, what?" Thomas turned around and opened the door. "No more excuses."

I watched from the bedroom door as my brother glided over to the couch were the girls were cooing over Mouse. He sat on the arm of the sofa near Carrie and put his arm around her shoulder. When his hand made contact with Carrie, Mouse bounded up onto the woman's lap and bared his teeth at Thomas' hand.

Thomas sprung from the couch arm. "Dresden! Call your dog off!"

I sighed and fetched his lead. "I know how you feel, Mouse." The hairy beast reluctantly left the attentions of the two women. I caught Bindu's eye. "Look, I don't know what Thomas told you, but I'm not comfortable with this...situation. I'm going to take Fluffy here for a walk. Do you need a ride somewhere?"

Thomas voice dripped with disappointment. "Harry. . ."

The woman rose and shook her head. "No. There's a bus stop a few blocks from here that'll get me where I need to go." I nodded and held the heavy steel door open for her. Mouse bounded after her. As I closed the door, I reminded Thomas, "I'm putting the security system back up, so be a gentleman."

After I bounded up the steps to ground level, I caught sight of Mouse standing next to my car and wagging his tail.

"Sure, we can go for a drive," I answered and opened the door for him. Off on an aimless drive we went.

Mouse figured out where we were going before I did. The buildings and houses became familiar, and we pulled up to tiny house that had been in the Murphy family for generations. The current occupant was Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, head of Chicago P.D.'s Special Investigations unit aka the weird stuff dumping ground. She didn't look like a cop, especially not tonight. When the door opened a blonde curly haired woman no more than five feet tall was dressed in a knee-length black skirt, shiny blouse, and a ratty multi-stained apron greeted me. Her voice snapped with business formality hiding just a hint of fear. "Something wrong, Dresden?"

I blinked. The only other time I had seen Murphy in a dress was when I picked her up from her family reunion to battle nasty black vampires and turn my hand into charcoal. It just isn't Murphy. Don't get me wrong, she's looks great, but it feels wrong. Like I should be looking for other signs of the Apocalypse.

I smirked. I couldn't help myself. "No, and I'm sorry to bother you, Donna Reed. Do you know where I can find Lieutenant Murphy?" And that's when I got an oak door to the face. Mouse jumped back, then looked at me, confused. "Don't worry. She slammed the door on me, not you," I told him. He snorted and turned his shaggy head towards the closed door. "Hey, don't take her side. Remember who feeds you."

On cue, the door opened and a small chunk of processed grains and meat flew at Mouse. He easily caught it and chomped on the dog treat. "He knows exactly who his friends are, Dresden. You should take a lesson." Murphy scratched Mouse behind the ears as he licked up every last crumb. I stepped up to slip past her into the house, but I got an open palm-to-chest shove back onto the porch. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Me and your friend here," I pointed to the dog enjoying Murphy's attention, "are seeking refuge for a few hours." I tried again to enter the house, but was twice refused.

Stretching her arm across the doorway, Murphy tried her best to block the entryway with her tiny body. "No, I'm having company for dinner, and I don't want the place to be blown up before they get here."

Then it dawned on me. Murph doesn't go around playing dress-up when she's alone in the house. She's usually in sweats or pajamas. "You got a hot date?" She raised an eyebrow and ground her teeth but said nothing. I felt something in my chest drop, but I hope I put my poker face on before it reached exposure. "You're fixing dinner for them so it has to be, what, at least a third date?"

After a ten second stare-down, Murphy sighed and dropped her arm that was blocking the doorway. "It's not a date. You can stay a half hour." My grin blew off my poker face, and I accepted the reluctant invitation.

Passing over the threshold, I felt a tug on my magical power. When crossing a threshold to a home, a house owned, loved, with memories and lives etched into the woodwork, magical entities have to be checked at the door. Unless, of course, you're formally invited, which Murphy doesn't do incase someone is running around with my face on trying to trick her, again.

Mouse took Murphy up on her offer too and bounded in at the same time, shoving me into a small table Murphy had next to the door. I used my right arm to catch my balance while I reached out my left hand to catch some ashtray-looking thing Murph used to hold her keys. I saw the ceramic thing make contact with my hand and told it to close. Unfortunately, since the burning, my left hand doesn't really receive messages anymore. It doesn't really send messages either, and I didn't even feel the ceramic creation bounce off my gloved hand and onto the hardwood floor. It busted into several big pieces and a few little ones. I swore.

Grumbling, I moved the table back into position and squatted down to pick up the pieces. I picked up the pieces with my right hand and laid them in my left. Some of them slipped between my fingers, but eventually I got them all on there. If there was one thing my left hand could be, it was a dust pan. When I straightened up, somehow my hand got the brilliant idea to tilt a little too far and the pieces fell for a second time. I swore and bent down again.

Murphy laid her hand on my shoulder. "Forget about it, Harry."

"No," I snapped. Her hand recoiled as if it had been burnt. "I can pick up a goddamn whatever the hell this was."

Murph nodded and backed away. She walked to the back door and let Mouse into the yard. "Rare Peter the Great tobacco dish."

My brow furrowed trying to remember what it looked like in one piece. I failed, but I managed to put all the pieces on the table next to the door. "Priceless heirloom?" I asked

I heard cabinet's opening from the kitchen. "The Antiques Roadshow guy said it was worth five hundred," she called.

My shoulders slumped. Usually I'd rant and rave about how much crazy people will pay for ugly crap, but my day had plunged too far down to recover it with a tirade. I looked at my hand and cursed the useless thing. I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Murph." I looked up as she walked back into the entry way, trash can in tow. On her face was her usual banter smirk, but as soon as she saw my dreary expression, it fell.

She rolled her eyes and set the can next to the table. "My nephew Peter made it. I traded him five hundred Monopoly dollars and a 'Get out of Jail Free' card for it."

"Oh." I brushed the pieces into the can. Usually Murph and I banter all the time, but it had been ages since either of us fell for it. I was not in the game today, but it wasn't too late to recover. "You got another one of those jail cards for sale? I betcha I could make an awesome hand print wall hanging."

Murphy raised an eyebrow. "I thought you weren't in trouble, Dresden."

"Not yet, but give me another few weeks with Thomas in my apartment, and we might have a dead body to deal with."

"We?"

"'Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.'"

"You better -" Murphy's cell phone rung from the kitchen. "Oh, God. What now?" She jogged to catch the phone. "Hello?...Yeah..." she spoke into the phone.

I gave Murph some privacy and headed to the backyard to play with Mouse. Somehow, he knew I was coming and had a ball ready. "Here you go, boy," I called as I threw it across the yard. Mouse bounded through the grassy mud puddles and soon plopped a slobbery, muddy, tennis ball in my hand. "Ew, Mouse! This is gross," I exclaimed. We continued to play until Murph knocked on the back window. I opened the patio door. "Come on, boy. Wipe your feet." I pulled out a rag of a towel from Murphy's laundry room and wiped down the shaggy fur as best I could. When I was done, I tossed the towel on the washer and moved to the front door. "Thanks for the hospitality, Murph. It smells good."

Murph emerged from the kitchen carrying a covered plate. She was wearing oven mits. I giggled in my head. She must have heard me because her expression soured. "Where do you think you're going, Dresden?"

I shrugged. "Away from this glorious dinner. Back to my hole in the ground."

She shook her head. "Think again. Once my mom realized you were here, you were invited to dinner."

A grin spread from one ear to the other. I sat down in the nearest dining room chair. "What are we having?"

Murph snorted as she headed into the kitchen to fetch her last dish. "I don't know why she likes you."

"I have a great appetite and an appreciation for food."

Our conversation was interrupted by a high pitched giggle beyond the front door. We both turned toward the noise, but out of the corner of my eye I watched Murph take a deep breath and count to five. She and her sister didn't get along. It only made it worse since she decided to marry Murphy's ex-husband and move to town. Finally the giggling subsided, and the doorbell rang. Murph sighed and looked down at her outfit. "Donna Reed? Really?"

"Eh, no, not really. A little to risque for Donna. She'd never show that much calf."

Murph smirked. "She'd probably need a couple of drinks before spending an evening with my sister too."

The door opened, typical introductions were made. Murphy's mom arrived before the door shut and soon we were all sitting around the table, soaking in the wonderful smells. When Murph took the cover off the main plater, I thought I was dreaming.

At first I only stared. The steak could have come from a magazine advertisement. It sparkled with moisture and seasoning. I drooled a little, but I don't think anyone noticed.

"Sis, what's this?" The girl turned up her nose.

Unphased by her sister's act, Murphy described her creation. "Steak. I marinated it all night in -"

"How could you do thing? Don't you ever listen to me?"

Murph sighed and flopped down in her chair. "What did I do this time?"

"You know I'm a vegetarian!"

Murph raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Since when?"

"Since forever."

"I bet that hamburger at the family reunion has a different story," I foolishly added.

The young girl glared at me. "It was a BOCA burger."

"A what's it?" The girls ignored me and continued arguing.

"Veggie burger," Rick translated quietly.

I nodded. "My mistake." I turned my attention back the food on the table. Future note to sell: Never insert yourself in a sibling argument; there's no point.

"I don't know why you're complaining," Murph said. "It's not like you'll eat more than the salad, anyway." She lifted up a bowl and started passing.

"You know how horrible it is to eat meat? Not only is it morally questionable, but it's horrible environmentally too." The vegetarian scooped a spoonful of mashed potatoes on her plate.

"Not when you know the farm your meat came from." Murph cut a large piece of moist steak and threw it in her mouth. She chewed it open mouthed, like a cow chewing cud.

"Please don't make me feel bad about enjoying a good steak, now and again, baby," the Murphy mom added.

The conversation went on, but my attentions were reserved for the nice slab of precious meat on my plate. I hurriedly reached for my knife and fork. It only took two tries to get a good handle on my fork. At least I thought it was a good handle. When my steak flew across the table, narrowly missing Murph's head and landed on the floor, I reconsidered my rating of the grip.

The conversation stopped. All eyes were on me. I felt like I was standing in front of my fifth grade class talking about a book I hadn't read. My wide eyes. In a few seconds a nervous grin spread across my face. I used the knife, secure in my good right hand to point at Mouse. "I thought he looked hungry." On cue, the Foo dog ran over and gobbled up my delicious steak. My nervous chuckle didn't seem to fool anyone.

Mama Murphy lifted the last steak from the platter and set it on my plate. "There you go, honey." Although grateful for another slab of meat, if she started cutting the thing for me like I was a five year old, I'd have to leave. Nothing like being babied by your best friend's mother in front of her, her sister, and her ex-husband/brother-in-law.

"I can't believe you, Dresden!" Murph exploded. Hey, maybe she'd kick me out of her house before I was humiliated by her mother. "Never feed the dog from the table," she scolded. "He's going to start begging now."

I smiled. "I don't have a table at my house, so it's not a problem." I glazed longingly at my steak and sighed. Once again I attempted to get a hold on my fork. I dropped it on top of my steak this time. Maybe I should just cut the damn thing off. What is it good for anyway? Embarrassing me in front of strangers, that's what.

Murph would not let it go. She shook her fork at me. "If you want to bring Mouse over here, then you'd better be training him. I won't have him begging at my table." Then she dropped her utensils and picked up her steak with her hands. She ripped a chunk off with her canines.

My jaw dropped. I'm not sure if there was another moment in my life that I loved this woman more. Her mom was no slow cookie either. After picking up her own steak in her hands, she elbowed me and asked, "What are you waiting for?"

"Nothing." I grinned and picked up my steak with my good hand. It was more tasteful than I had imagined.

Rick shrugged and followed suit as well. Murphy's sister looked around at all of us eating with our hands. "You're all animals." She sneered and picked up her fork and stabbed her lettuce with enough fierceness to kill it.

A/N: Another fun one-shot completed. Any comments? That's what the review button is for!