Title: Why the Sixth Law of Magic Exists

Rating: T

Summary: Emily Mulder, wizard for the White Council, is the victim of someone's violation of the Sixth law of magic. Of course the White Council decides to help her and naturally the X-Files brings them all together. Crossover of the Dresden Files.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of Jim Butcher's or Chris Carter's characters and I'm making nothing from this.

Chapter 2

"Let's see who you are," I said when I got back home and opened the door to the subbasement that held the lab that the council had gotten for me.

It still amazed me that they could put an effective lab together in no time. The lab was divided into two parts. The first part, like with Harry's lab, had a circle made of silver that had been pounded into the floor, the other half consisted of books, three long tables that had all sorts of ingredients that one needed to brew anything that was in liquid form or even in solid. I had mojo bags, plastic bottles, stones, feathers, bones, a couple of vials of animal blood, and boxes after boxes of paper. Everything was filed away nice and neat and in the corner was my robe that I wore when I worked.

Ever try to get dragon bile out of your clothes? Don't, it's a nasty thing to even attempt.

Unlike in the future I didn't have Bob. He was currently residing with Harry Dresden in Chicago and I wasn't about to ask to borrow him. He didn't know who I was and wouldn't believe me if I told him. No, I had McCoy to help me and at least he didn't do research on sex. I still couldn't understand his obsession over it and I was twenty-five.

I mixed a simple base potion using cola, I didn't have an I.D yet to buy alcohol, and if you're going to drink potions most of your life having a messed up liver doesn't help matters, and a couple of other ingredients that I remembered Bob telling me. Wizards don't have computers; they have things like Bob. And trust me, their better than the Internet. I added the blood to the slimy gray mass, and would have to wait a couple of hours. Magic usually is instant, but potions take time.

I checked the clock that McCoy had given me that went back to the time when women sucked on Radium, and timed when I would go back down. I parked my butt on the couch and pulled out a book that was bound to be dead boring. I thought over two things in the course of five seconds. One: I knew that it was a Hand of Fate. One of the things that I was called upon by the council was to identify any hint that a magical object was, or had been, used. That was the area that I was an expert in, along with telling you how someone's intestines had ended up outside the body.

The second thing was a certain. My parents were going to find out what they could about me. You just don't announce that some dumb idiot that thinks that money is free went through a wall without someone finding out who you are so they can keep track on how much of a nut you actually are. The Hand of Glory, and I was most certain of it, was an artifact of dark magic. And I mean dark magic. Just like with Necropants, the thief has to agree to have their hand used like a candle wick.

Their soul is trapped inside the hand and has total control over the person. Hence why they decided to even do it. You have to be the lowest form of life, and a sick moron, to even consider this. Better to get the judgement gig over and done with and let Fate do what was needed. Also making a Hand of Glory is the work of the darkest of the magical community, like those that live in the sewer and only come out to see what the naughty call girls are doing at three in the morning. Of course they usually take the call girls down in the sewer and take turns watching them scream.

I shuttered, thinking that monsters like that had been granted the gift of the arte. Three hours later the potion was complete and I went back down stairs. I poured it over a piece of parchment and the name and address of the fool appeared. I grabbed the phone and called my ride.

Honeyview Apartments had to be the most disgusting name you would have to give a place. It had my least favorite quality: it was full of happy people. Happy people that never mispronounced the name draperies, had five children that all happily sucked on their thumbs while their parents thought they were the most precious thing in the world. I had been the miracle baby, the baby that had been born when your parents are five years shy of going into the old folk's home. My parents had been old when they had been infected and they could run like they were in their thirties.

Trust me, I have the photo of them winning first place going around a track eleven times.

Another thing that I hate about apartments with cute names: they have damn cute dogs. My driver pulled up at the address and I got out, staff in my hands. I had carved it when I was staying with McCoy. When you're about to invade the home of the dumbest person that you've ever encountered you come for business. The apartment was on the first floor.

"Makes you wonder how they paid for it," the driver told me.

"I doubt that it's through legal means," I said to him.

"Be careful," he advised.

"That's the name of the game."

I decided to go around the back because my father told me that all morons go out the back door when their being chased. The sliding door was open, but I didn't go in. If you enter a house without being invited you leave half of your power behind. I'm not about to enter a place half ready.

"Hello," I called out.

Dead silence. I soon saw that 'dead' was the key word. Lying on the floor, covered in bugs, was the girl. From where I was standing I could tell that she had been dead for hours, but why were their so many bugs?

"Good luck with this one, mother," I told her.

I decided that leaving would be a good idea.

"HAY!" I heard yelling and I ran back around to where the driver was just in-time to see a man running away and sure enough I saw enough to tell me that I was right. He was holding a Hand of Glory.

"Looks like I'm right about how their getting into banks."

"We're alright right," my driver said. "So did you find her?"

"Oh I found her," I said. "She's having a lunch date with bugs."

He shuttered at that.

Ever know your parents enough to know when their waiting on you? Yeah, well you can pretty much tell what was waiting on us when my driver pulled up to drop me off.

"Pull alongside," I told the driver.

"Oh look, parental figures."

I had to grin at that and then I said, "You know, if you wanted coffee and donuts I could have gone out and got you both some."

"How do you know that we're watching you?" my father said.

"You have a sign that reads 'I'm watching someone's might be creepy neighbor.' Also you were at the bank, which I will tell you that I did get the check cashed. Come on in, I'm starving anyway."

"We're fine."

"How about those people across the street are going to call the police on both of you. You both just ooze I'm a stalker vibe. Anyway, any good detective meets the person that their watching, get to know who they are, and I'm starving."

"I could get you something," my driver said.

"No, I've got grub inside," I told him.

He pulled away and I walked past them and unlocked my door. Let them pass, I placed the wards on the door. No telling if the new owner of the Hand of Glory wasn't going to come around and try and pick me off.

"Honeyview Apartments," my mother said, showing me the note.

"Yes, I went there," I told her. "I left the note on the door so that McCoy would know where I was going. He's an old man, he worries about me."

"And why would you go there?"

"Well because the woman that was watching all of you just happens to live there. Of course, she did live there."

"Did?"

"She's dead," I told them. "Probably killed by that thing that she's been using. Tell me something, did you find the other half of the body inside a bank vault?"

"How did you know that?"

"How about it's a very good guess," I said. "And common sense. If half the body is outside then the other half is on the other side of the wall, in whatever section that they were trying to leave."

"You seem to know a lot."

"My mentor had a case like this one," I told them. "Decided to try something, thought it would be fun to get back at their fathers for how fucked up their lives had become. Didn't care that the owner plays for keeps. Maybe I'm trying to keep something like that from happening again. And, if I fail, at least I can say that I tried."

"So what do you think they used to break into those banks."

"I'll be right back," I said and I vanished within the depths of my apartment only to come back two minutes later with the book. "This, is what they used and this is what's killing them."

"The Hand of Glory," my mother said. "Great, someone else that believes in things that can't be proven with Science."

"The Hand of Glory is a nasty piece of work," I told them. "Made from the hand of a dead man that died on the gallows, it allows the person to pass through anything, including the walls of a bank. However, the little trinket comes with a price. It rots you from the inside, just like you are on the outside."

"What do you mean rots you from the inside."

"All your organs decay," I told him.

"Wait a minute, I opened that boy up and all his organs were decayed. But there's no way that something like this did this."

"Oh I'm afraid that it's true," I said. "And that's probably why little Miss Dead Girl was covered in bugs."

"No, I'm not believing this," she said. "You know things about the robbery that only those that knew about it would know."

Looks like I'm not getting that meal after all.

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A/N: I did love the Dresden Files TV show depiction of the Hand of Glory. The Necropants are actually a real thing. In the Icelandic Museum of Witchcraft, it's an actual pair of pants that is made from a dead man's legs. It was said to be the only thing that would enable a poor man to get ahead in life. The person who is using the pants have to get permission from the person giving the pants that they can be used upon their death.