May Contain: rampant absurdity. We used to call it crack fic, I don't know if that's still a thing.

Definitely Contains: The Final Tale for Hauntober 2020, one year late. I wanted to do something special. This is a companion fic to my story, Tripping, picking up right in the middle of the action — so read that one first. Or not. Somebody asked for this version of events years ago, and I actually wrote it, years ago, lost it in a hard drive crash, and then had to write it again from memory for the prompt Fall. Set after the short story Love Hurts.

In case you didn't know, a forty-four magnum is a big fucking gun. The one in my hands was an old-school chunk of steel and gears — a pawn shop Ruger Redhawk with the serial numbers filed off. Basic and reliable, supremely illegal. Not my usual weapon of choice, but intimidating as hell, though definitely more so in the hands of its owner. The round itself is powerful, a standard jacketed hollowpoint leaving the barrel at better than twelve hundred feet per second, with more than eight hundred foot-pounds of energy behind it. Perfect for big game — or any unlucky punk trying to make your day — if you aren't afraid of getting close.

I glanced down at the pattern of blood spatter on the gravel path of the bizarre hedge maze and felt like I was getting pretty damn close. I had already winged the son of a bitch. Warden Ramirez was somewhere ahead of me, I was following his trail of destruction. Dresden, who I had left several turns behind, was alone, unarmed and probably unconscious by now. Whatever was in the darts the warlock had shot at us worked fast enough to turn a Harry-sized guy into a sidelined mess in about thirty seconds. I hitched up the skirt of my stupid Medieval Times costume and crept down a shadowy stretch of labyrinth, of the firm opinion that mazes are bullshit. No cover or concealment, and every turn was a choke point waiting to be used against you.

… And I was pretty sure the Goblin King was about to leap around the corner at me, codpiece first. The Jim Henson Goblin King, not the one that Dresden told me about, though for all I know, they could be the same guy and Bowie's not dead, he just went home.

I followed scuffling sounds until I found an archway, and through it a little courtyard of overgrown, grassy paths scattered with autumn leaves between Grecian-style plaster pillars and topiaries in huge clay pots. A Nike of Samothrace replica stood on a platform at the center. I stepped through the arch and immediately had to dodge out of the way. Ramirez soared past me into one tall green wall, groaning on impact and leaving a distinctly knight-shaped impression in the hedge about six feet off the ground, which he hit not soon after. I caught a fleeting glimpse of Warlock Whoever-the-Hell as he disappeared with an iridescent ripple of light.

"Oof." The Warden stood, pained. His right arm dangled loosely from the shoulder, and he glanced back at the hedge. "There were bricks in there."

The Looney Tunes just never end. "You okay?"

"I'll live." He went pale and swayed. "You're just in time for the party. Where's Dresden?"

"Out. Can you still fight?" I asked, backing toward him, watching for movement and seeing zero trace of the warlock, aside from the blood on the ground. The trail had ended at the archway, sort of. It wasn't really a trail anymore, it was kind of… everywhere.

Ramirez picked up his silver sword with his left hand and gave it a flick, grimacing. "I'll do what I can."

"He veiled himself," I whispered, ducking under his uninjured arm to steady him. "But he's still here. Can you find him?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so." If it was possible, Ramirez went even paler, his eyes slipped out of focus. He stared oddly at me for a second, then glanced around. He feigned a stumble as he leaned down to whisper. "Just right of that Dr. Seuss plant. Getting ready to bolt."

We started toward the exit. I held the revolver down at my side. From the corner of my eye, I saw it, right where Carlos had said. There was an unnatural shimmer in the air, the little spiral topiary trembled like someone nearby was breathing hard. A drop of blood landed on the clay pot it was planted in and dripped down the side.

Gotcha.

I snapped the gun up and aimed for what I thought was center mass, hard to tell. Holding it one-handed, the recoil hit like a sledgehammer. The first round made him drop his veil, he hadn't bothered to shield himself, or didn't know how. The shot had been too low, his left knee was a bloody mess, but he staggered towards me, enraged. He raised a hand and I shot again. The second round hit one of the tall white pillars behind him with a crack and a puff of disintegrated plaster. He kept coming, dragging his injured leg, closing the distance with shocking speed for someone with a blown knee. He couldn't feel it.

I gave Ramirez a little push out of the way as the warlock rushed us. I caught the man's wrist, stepped with him and turned, taking him to the ground. I felt the bones in his hand dislocate, but he was on the hem of my stupid dress and I couldn't get out of the way when he rolled me. The revolver skittered across the gravel one way, we went the other. I tried to pull away, fabric tore, but he still had me pinned. I had sparred in hakama lots of times before, but this was just ridiculous. I socked him in the throat with the heel of my hand, which only seemed to make him angrier. He grabbed my arm, sunk his teeth into my wrist. I drove my knee into his crotch and he let go, screeching like a demon. With my free hand, I reached vainly for the revolver.

"Heads-up!" Carlos kicked it toward me like a soccer pass. I grabbed the still-warm barrel as it flew toward me and clocked the warlock in the temple with the revolver's wooden grip as hard as I could. The guy dropped like a ton of sweaty, smelly bricks, right on top of me. I shoved him away and lay in the gravel for a moment, trying to catch my breath. "Nicely done." Ramirez put away his sword and pulled me to my feet with his good arm.

"Dr. Seuss plant?" I tucked the revolver into the back of my annoying corset-y belt, beneath the long vest that covered my shoulder holster. Anyone who looked close enough would be able to tell what it was, though the blood splattered over the front of the dress was distracting enough to keep that from happening.

"You knew what I meant, though, right?" The Warden dug in a pocket for a moment. He handed a pair of strange-looking metal handcuffs. "Want to do the honors?"

"Ugh." I clumsily cuffed the warlock. My wrist was scraped and bleeding, an angry red crescent. The bite managed to break the skin but nothing important, and blisters were starting to form from the melted pistol I had ditched back in the maze. My hands didn't want to cooperate, but they didn't hurt yet, and adrenaline made them tremble. "Gross. I haven't been bit by a perp since I was a beat cop."

"I think he was dipping into his own supply, if you know what I mean." The Warden leaned down to check the man's pulse. "Or he spent too much time using the Sight."

"That's what you did just then, right?" I checked the man's wounds. His shoulder was bleeding at a slow trickle, his knee was through-and-through, full of dirt from our scuffle, but he'd live — at least until the Council got their hands on him. "How you saw him?"

"Yeah," he said, producing a red paisley handkerchief from another pocket.

"I've heard it's not always a picnic." I wrapped the bandana around my wrist and tightened the knot with my teeth. "Thanks for that."

"No problema." He prodded the unconscious warlock with the toe of one boot. "So now the question is, who's taking him to the dance?"

We glanced at each other. He held up a hand, deferring to me. "This is your turf."

"Technically, no. We're outside CPD's jurisdiction. And this is Dresden's case, not mine, but last I checked, he's in no shape to handle this, and you can't take him in on your own with your arm like that." Even a few years ago it would have been difficult for me to step aside and let someone else take over, to relinquish any sort of control at all. I got my phone out of the case on the inside of my shoulder holster, behind my spare magazines; the newer phones seemed to last longer with a fair bit of lead between them and magic. I handed it to Ramirez. "Call your people. Don't blow up my phone. I'll be right back."

He took it, warily. I turned and walked as quickly as I could back to the archway leading to the maze, where I hitched up my stupid skirt again and broke into a run, like a character from a Jane Austen movie adaptation. I backtracked to the intersection where we'd been jumped. I found the Monty Python helmet, the melted remains of one polymer-frame pistol, one nine millimeter casing, a few feathered darts. There was no gangly wizard passed out in the gravel, though, and no telling where he'd gone.

"For fuck's sake," I growled, which was not very Austen of me. I scooped the ruined gun, darts and casing into the helmet and sprinted back to Ramirez.

"Wardens will be here in fifteen minutes," he said, hanging up the phone as I entered the courtyard. "They'll haul this one back to Edinburgh. It would probably be best if you weren't here? No offense—"

"No, I get it. I'd rather not get tangled up in all that, and besides—"

"Dresden still out?"

"No, he's kind of…" I chewed on my lip, trying to keep the worry out of my voice. "Well, he's gone."

Carlos stared skyward, muttering darkly in Spanish for a moment, none of it good from what little I understood. "Okay. I'll tell them he's hashing it out with the local LEOs while you go track him down. His report said that this potion or whatever turns people into puppets. I have no idea what it does without someone holding the strings."

"Jesus."

He sighed as if there was worse yet to come, and of course there was. "Find him, keep him occupied. The Council instituted a ton of new protocol, if there's a case involving mental manipulation and a Warden is even suspected of being compromised, they get detained and debriefed. For several weeks."

I winced. Something bad had gone down in Edinburgh. Harry wouldn't tell me. He had come back sliced to ribbons, minus one girlfriend and angry; the kind of quiet fury that you could feel from half a mile away.

"Sergeant," Ramirez shook me out of my own thoughts with a hand on my shoulder. "I've got this if you want to go look for him." The Warden traded my phone for the helmet full of melted gun parts. He nodded at my burned fingers. "Maybe find the first aid tent, too. I'll come and help as soon as I can."

I took my phone and headed back through the maze, forcing myself to walk slowly. There were no tracks to follow here, except for our own, and the walls of the maze were ten feet tall. I checked all the dead ends and corners, just to be sure, and it felt like it took forever to make it back to the entrance. I opened the recent contacts list on my phone as I walked. Dresden was the person I usually called when shit hit the fan, at work or otherwise, and it happened so often that his name was at the top of the list. I scrolled past the officers at Special Investigations, no need to involve them. Thomas would have been helpful, but I hadn't heard a peep from him in weeks — our text thread of stupid internet memes had gone sadly silent.

The row of unanswered outgoing calls at the bottom of the list glared red. I hadn't heard from Jared in more than a month. It felt like the expiration date on that one was approaching. I had always known he only had room in the cobwebby place where his heart was supposed to be for one short blonde.

So it goes.

I tapped a name. It rang twice and a cheerful voice answered. "Sergeant Murphy, so nice to hear from you. What's up?"

"Hey, Butters." I cringed, steeling myself. He was one of the good ones, and I took no joy in ruining his weekend. "You busy?"

"A little. I take it you are, as well?"

"You could say that." I updated him on the case, gave him a basic outline of the day's events, and told him where I was. "Would you mind coming out to lend a hand, if you can?"

"Lucky for you I'm already there. Here? At the faire, I mean. I'm volunteering at the first aid tent—"

Of course he was. I had never been to a Renaissance Faire before today (and hopefully would never need to again) but if I was going to run into anyone familiar, it would be Waldo Butters.

"Or I'm trying to, anyway. It's just an alcohol wipe. It's not gonna kill you," he told someone on the other end, kindly but impatiently.

"Great," I said. "I'll meet you there."

I found the first aid tent half the fair away, with no sightings of Dresden on the way. It should have been easy to find someone who towered over nearly everybody. I couldn't see any smoke or hear screaming, either, which should have made me feel better, but didn't. Maybe he'd found a nice, quiet spot to take a nap, but that was probably hoping for too much. A young man in scarlet plate armor hurtled out the doorway of the tent. He had a busted lip and an emo haircut, cradling a splinted left arm and a dented helmet. He gave me and my bloody dress a startled look as he fled. I stepped inside to see my friend and colleague, the medical examiner, dressed head to toe in a court jester's red-and-black motley: tights and bells and curly shoes, everything.

"Sergeant! I love the Lagertha cosplay," he grinned widely. "You nailed it."

"... Who?" I asked, still shellshocked from the tights.

"You know. On The History Channel—" Butters stepped closer, jingling merrily as he looked me over, but his smile faded quickly. "Oh, wait, that blood is real."

I held up my injured wrist. "Think you can help a girl out?"

"Yikes." He sent one of the other volunteers for supplies and sat me down at a card table with some gauze and disinfectant, and went to work, speaking quietly. "Okay, so tell me again, how exactly did you manage to lose the NBA-sized wizard?"

"There was a bad guy," I said lamely, and gritted my teeth as he swabbed at my wrist with iodine. I explained it all from the beginning up until I had called him, and Butters let me talk, nodding thoughtfully before he finally spoke:

"You know Harry requires constant supervision when he's not tripping, right?"

"He'll be okay for a minute." I believed it. He may have phenomenal cosmic powers, but deep down, Dresden is just an introverted, lovable dork who's good with kids, who rescues abandoned animals and shovels snow for his landlady in the winter—

"Murphy," said Butters, carefully. "He can set things on fire with his brain."

Well, and also that. "He'll be fine."

The ME made a face like he was going to say something, then thought better of it as the other volunteer returned with a roll of bandage material. He shook his head. "So what's the deal with you guys anyway?" Butters continued as he inspected my hands, reaching for the bandages. "Last couple of times we've met up for game night, every time someone mentions you, he gets all distracted and murderfaced." He frowned, then added, "More murderfaced than usual, I mean."

"The last case we worked got a little dark."

"That string of double suicides. Rough stuff." He finished wrapping my wrist and hands, and didn't say anything else until he was done. "Good to go, Sergeant. If you drop by the lab tomorrow morning, I'll get the regular bloodwork done for you. I'm sure you're fine, but bites are no joke." He followed me to the door of the tent, pausing. "Another thing, those magicky types have unfairly fast metabolisms, so who knows what effect that stuff had on him. And Dresden gets those terrible migraines anyway." Butters glanced at his watch. "I can clock out early and help you look for him."

"Hopefully he's just sleeping it off somewhere, and—" I saw a guy walk by with a deep-fried Twinkie on a stick and an honest-to-goodness horn of beer, and I knew exactly where he had gone. "If you can, find Ramirez. He was pretty beat up, too. I'll call you when I find Harry."

"Got it," said Butters, and we headed in opposite directions.

I followed the signs and smells back toward the main entrance until I found the food court; fifty or so picnic tables on a large, grassy lot, surrounded by bright, striped tents, a stage on the far end with live music. One side was bordered by a long, low wooden shack that looked like it was used most of the year for storing those big commercial lawnmowers, but now housed a dozen or more stands selling all sorts of snacks. I stopped to take stock, eyeing the different vendors, trying to decide which one he might have visited first. There were probably better than two hundred people milling around, most of them dressed in costumes, all talking and laughing and having an arguably better time at the fair than me.

None of them was the man I was looking for.

It would have been incredibly useful to be able to stick a tracking device in his coat pocket. I suspected he had done as much — my fingers found the thin chain at my throat, the little shield-shaped silver pendant that was always warm. He could track someone down with a strand of hair or a drop of blood, of course he could find me with something he made himself.

Just a shame it didn't work in reverse.

I stood there for a long, useless minute, contemplating whether or not to climb onto a table and start yelling, like my mother did the time I got lost at the Mall of America. It was then that I heard a few bars of music over the noisy crowd — upbeat, familiar, and definitely not the medieval lutes and flutes that had been playing when we arrived that morning.

"If I could, baby, I'd give you my world," the singer belted. "How can I when you won't take it from me?"

For no reason I could name, I pushed my way through the overcrowded tables towards the stage, where a young man dressed like Cary Elwes as Robin Hood was singing. He was backed up by a few more band members dressed, unsurprisingly, as the Merry Men.

Only the guitarist looked out of place. His Monty Python helmet had been replaced by a different hat made of pointy blue felt, covered in white stars. Every few seconds he would look up, his expression uncertain, like he wasn't quite sure how he had ended up there. He kept playing, joining in with the rest of the band on the chorus — you can go your own way. I made it to the edge of the stage, applauding with the audience as the song ended. He looked up again and waved when he saw me.

I held out my hands in a silent, helpless question.

Harry shrugged bewilderedly and Robin Hood shoved him closer to the front of the stage. The band started into an admittedly impressive cover of September, then Superstition, followed by Zeppelin; Houses of the Holy.

It only took a few songs for me to realize that every one was from the cassette of oldies Carmichael had gotten stuck in the tape deck of our crappy plainclothes cruiser, way back when. Time-Life Hits of the Sixties and Seventies, or something like that; the kind of music collections they used to sell on late-night infomercials. For all I knew, that tape was still in there, tormenting the rookies that undoubtedly inherited that rolling shitheap.

The band leader announced a ten minute break and Dresden handed the guitar and the silly hat off to somebody. I waved him over to a little alleyway between the band's striped tent and the wooden building housing the food vendors. He jumped down from the stage and started toward me, his expression intense.

"Hey," I protested as he grabbed my elbow and dragged me past a stack of crates. "Where are we g—"

Before I could finish the sentence, my feet were off the ground, my back against the wall, one arm pinned above my head, and even if I had been expecting it, I wouldn't have stopped him. The man kissed like it was a ranked competitive sport, like he was trying to medal in it at the Olympics. Even better today than last time we had tried it, better with every feverish, cinnamon-sugary second. The kind of kiss that made time seem to stop, the moment fractured into details; the warmth of the sun on his shoulders, the strength of the arms wrapped around me, the pleased sound he made when I pulled him closer.

The kind of kiss I had been losing sleep over every night since that case in Indiana — laying awake, wondering what would have happened if we hadn't figured it out, how much of it had been due to outside influence and how much was real.

Apparently I wasn't the only one.

"Hi," he said, breathless, smiling like this was how we always greeted one another.

"Hi, yourself." It was impossible to keep from smiling too, still holding on to him like it was life or death. "What the hell was that about?"

"Looked like you needed it."

"... Thanks?"

"You're welcome."

"Harry, put me down."

"Okay." He dropped me. "Whoa. What's with all the blood? You look like a Red Wedding refugee."

"Yeah?" I stumbled backward and held on to the wall, winded and dizzy. "I heard the party kind of died after I left."

"Hell's bells, Murph. Can't take you anywhere," he snorted, shrugging out of his Warden's cloak. He settled it around my shoulders, heavy and warm. A full foot of it dragged the ground. "There, that's better. Except by the laws of Westeros, now we're married. Hope you don't mind."

There was absolutely no reason to blush like a schoolgirl, but I did. "I guess I've done worse."

"Won't know for sure until you try," Dresden suggested — a little too confidently.

I hadn't seen any of the warlock's victims while they were under the influence, so I wasn't sure what to expect. He wasn't anxious or fidgety, not even as anxious and fidgety as usual. The hand I held in both of mine was a little too warm, his pulse was a little too fast, even for what we had just been doing. I met his eyes for a moment, dark and restless, pupils blown — absolutely blitzed, completely unaware of it and having the time of his life.

"Come on," I pulled him toward some of the crates scattered around and sat down on one in the narrow patch of shady grass. He sat across from me, close enough that our knees bumped. "I've been looking for you all over the place."

"Really? Because I was looking for you—"

"Is that why you were up there, channeling Jimmy Page?"

"... He's still alive, though."

"Metaphorically, Harry."

"Oh."

"How on earth did you end up with the Men in Tights?" I asked, trying not to smile. I had no idea what to expect from him, either, though I was relieved that so far I had only been ambushed and schoolyard-married, which I preferred to calling the fire department and issuing formal apologies to fair-goers. "Were you roaming around the forest, looking for a fight?"

"Heh. Very funny. No, the guitarist broke his wrist while he was jousting, and they asked if anyone else knew how to play," he said, like it was a completely normal thing that could have happened to anyone. "So I volunteered."

"And before that," I prompted. "What happened?"

"Uh, before that I had a beer, and a churro, and another beer, and the lady with the ravens let me feed them some sunflower seeds. And before that—" Dresden leaned toward me, serious and concerned. "Why are we here, again? This isn't another pretend date, is it? Last one didn't go so well."

"You asked me to help you with a case," I tried not to sound as wounded as I felt. It hadn't gone so well, but it had been nice while it lasted. "You called me this morning."

"On your only fucking day off this week," he quoted, brow furrowed. "That's right. We were in some garden, right? You took my gun. I don't rememb—" he stopped mid-word as he saw a guy walk by the alley with a medieval-ly unauthentic yard-long margarita and a giant pretzel.

"Hey, pay attention," I pulled on the sleeve of his coat. "Look at me."

"Sure." He looked me over in a way that wasn't at all what I intended, with a grin that made the stupid dress and heavy cloak feel way too warm. "What were we talking about?"

"We were working a case with Warden Ramirez this morning, do you remember that?"

"I—I think so. Maybe." He frowned again and then he was on his feet in an instant, eyes wide in panic. "The warlock. Oh shit, the warlock—"

"Don't—" I caught his wrist as he turned to leave, neither of us knowing where he was headed. He broke away from me and stopped a step later, like he was shocked to be free.

"You're hurt." He took my hand again, looking at the bandages for the first time, panic replaced by fury. The last thing this dorkfest needed was Harry Dresden gone full MKUltra, pissed-off and running amok-amok-amok. "What happened?"

"It's fine. It's nothing."

"It's not nothing, Karrin," he said, louder and tense, earning us a judgmental look from a passerby. "What happened?"

"We found the warlock, remember, in the hedge maze. He melted my gun," I did jazz hands with my bandages, "and you got hit with one of those trippy darts. You wandered off while Ramirez and I did all the heavy lifting."

"... I did?"

"You sure did," I reassured him, pulling him back to the crates.

"I did." He sat slowly, one hand on his neck where the dart had hit him. "Well, that explains it."

"Explains what?" I demanded. "You, trying to french me into the next dimension?"

"No," Harry started, with another silly, endearing grin. "I've wanted to do that all day—" He hesitated, as if he just realized he'd said it out loud, visibly processing it: a flicker of concern, one eyebrow raised in silent contemplation, a nod, as if in agreement with himself. "Yeah," he nodded again, more surely. "No, it explains a different, uh… different problem."

Oh, boy. "What kind of problem?"

"I can't, uh. Y'know. Can't, um—" he glanced around, sheepish and frustrated, almost kind of apologetic before confessing: "Can't."

"Can't... what?" I asked, at a complete and utter loss. Harry snapped his fingers and shrugged, giving me a pointed look. I blinked. "Oh? Oh. So you lost your mojo, huh?"

"It's not funny, Murph." He scowled at me, going an adorable shade of pink. "And I didn't lose it, it's—"

"Right where it's always been, dollface?"

"It's not funny," he insisted, genuinely troubled. "I tried to find you and I couldn't, I couldn't find you, so I came back here to wait for you to find me, and it's been hours—"

"You mean you tried to track me," I said. Dresden nodded, determined not to look at me, like he was worried I might be upset. There was a time I would have been. It felt nice to know he cared that much, though. If I dropped off the face of the earth, Jared wouldn't even notice, Rick would have a party and Greg would meet me at the gates of Hell just for the chance to throw one more dinner plate at me. "It's okay. I don't mind. And it's only been about forty-five minutes. An hour, tops."

"... Really?"

"Yes, really."

"So the warlock." He glanced at my bloodstained dress again. It wasn't a question — he trusted me that much, implicit and unconditional. Always had, even when the feeling wasn't mutual. "You got him."

"Yeah, well." I picked at a loose piece of tape on my bandaged wrist. "I knocked him out and Carlos called backup to take him in."

"Won't hurt anybody else where he's going."

"Edinburgh," I said.

"Oh, no. I mean, yeah." Harry was quiet for a second, grim as he continued in a dead-on Scottish accent; "But that's just where he boards the connecting flight."

I nodded, wide-eyed. He mirrored the gesture with a futile shrug.

"How are you feeling?" I changed the subject. Neither of us approves of the violently extrajudicial manner in which the White Council handles their business, the way they treat children who could hardly know better. I'm personally not a fan of the way they had persecuted Dresden for the majority of his life. Didn't like thinking about it. Didn't really appreciate having to assist them, but when Harry asked for help, of course I said yes.

"I'm okay. Hungry. Kind of, uh. Uncomfortably lucid?"

"You don't feel sick or anything? How's your head?"

"Never had any complaints."

Whatever else I had intended to say died on my lips; I stared at him in unblinking, open-mouthed silence.

"I stand by my answer," he added, with a self-satisfied smirk he must have borrowed from his brother.

"Oh, thank God," I breathed as my phone rang in its pocket inside my holster. "Waldo, where the hell are you?"

"Very funny," the medical examiner grumbled on the other end of the line as I answered.

"Hilarious," the wizard whispered. "Is he here, too?"

I nodded, speaking to Butters. "Did you find Ramirez?"

"Yeah, he's with me. Have you tracked Harry down yet?"

"Yeah, I—" we both turned toward the smell of burnt sugar on the breeze as someone walked by our hideout with a cloud of pink cotton candy the size of a small car. "Nope." I caught the sleeve of Dresden's coat again as he tried to slink away. "You sit down."

He huffed like a sullen teenager as he sat and leaned back against the wall, arms folded across his chest. The phone speaker crackled a little; the sound of an impending meltdown. He hadn't lost anything; just couldn't focus long enough to make magic work for him.

"So did you find him?" Butters asked again.

"Yeah, I found him, alright. We're at the food court, between a red tent and a — the, uh..."

"Pretzel stand," Harry supplied, surprisingly soft lips on a spot just below my ear and moving lower, on me before I could try to stop him, and for the life of me I couldn't think of a reason why I should.

"Yeah, the um. Pretzel stand. Thank you," I mumbled, lost between the hand that tangled into my hair and the one that slipped beneath the Warden's cloak to pull me closer, gently and then not-so-gently.

"You're welcome."

"How is he?" the medical examiner asked through the static. "Is he okay?"

"Well, he's here," I managed, as the man in question whispered a detailed suggestion of where we could go and what we could do, and I knew if I let him keep talking, I would agree to it. I pushed him away. I held the phone to my shoulder to mute the mic. "Hey, mister, if we're going anywhere, it's to get you some Adderall and a cold shower," I hissed, completely unable to put any sort of weight behind the threat.

"Sorry, sweetheart. I'm immune."

"... To both?" I heard myself ask, an octave too high. He just smiled as he leaned in close to me again, toying with the silver necklace he had given me. To get past the wards at his apartment, he said, to replace the necklace I made into bullets. There was no way in hell he couldn't feel my heart pounding beneath his fingertips. I raised the phone to my ear again. "Butters, I have to go."

"Is everything alright—"

"Everything's fine here. Situation normal," I said to empty static. The phone beeped at me as it fell into my lap. No service. Connection lost.

"Boring conversation anyway," said Dresden, as he hooked a finger into the laces up the front of my ridiculous dress and pulled. Nothing happened — I had tied those in a double knot immediately after changing. Nothing, except how I ended up on the very edge of the crate, sitting between his knees.

"You'd better knock it off," I warned, feeling a full-body blush start at my hair and work its way south.

"You're cute when you're mad, though." He booped me on the nose. "I bet you're just as cute when you—"

"Harry—"

"Do your taxes," he said, mock-offended. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Murph."

"Okay." I untangled his fingers from the laces. "Time for us to leave—"

"Because you want to go home and get out of that dress. Looks complicated. You might need help," he offered without a hint of innuendo, and a smile like he knew I'd let him tear it off me with his teeth.

"Because," I said, trying to think about something else. Anything else. I'm a professional. I'll be damned if I let a goofy, hopped-up wizard make me lose my cool. "Because I read the report Butters sent, and you got hit with enough of that spooky scopolamine shit to knock a normal person out for days—"

"I feel fine."

"Right now. That won't last. You're probably not going to remember any of this tomorrow, and even if you do, by then you'll remember what happened the last time someone messed with—"

"Nobody's making me do anything I don't want to do." He caught my chin, shutting my mouth as he tilted my face up, not gentle anymore, not laughing. We were too close for me to look him in the eye, not quite close enough to kiss, and he held me there, tracing my lower lip with his thumb while I tried not to dissolve like ink dropped in water. It really wasn't fair. I could deal with the shameless flirting, that had always been our thing, but he rarely took it further — every advance he ever made was half-joking, as if it would take the sting out when I turned him down. "You want it, too—" he pulled me closer, possessive and just the right amount of rough, ensuring that I wasn't getting out of this without a cold shower of my own. "If you didn't, you would have stopped me."

He was right. I shut him down every time things got too serious, pointing out all the logical reasons why it wouldn't work between us, as if it would hurt less if I never let either of us get our hopes up. Nobody had messed with me, though. No love spells, no behavior-altering potions and I still couldn't bring myself to turn him down again. Not after last time, knowing that what he felt for me was real — that he felt anything at all, that I was more to him than the latest in a very long line of soon-forgotten entertainment. Knowing that I felt the same way and couldn't do anything about it. Couldn't even admit it to myself, because every man I ever loved or thought I loved left me, and saying it out loud just seems to make it happen that much faster.

"Of course I do," I whispered, finally letting myself reach for him. "But I want it on our terms. Just you and me." I grabbed the collar of his coat and pulled until his forehead rested against mine. "No funny business."

I felt him smile, his shoulders shaking as he struggled not to laugh out loud. "So you're telling me there's a chance?"

"Less of a chance, if you keep quoting Dumb and Dumber while I'm trying to tell you how I—"

He didn't let me finish, still laughing as he closed the last fraction of an inch left between us in a fierce, fervent kiss that I returned, slow and lingering. We both knew we would be back at relationship status quo soon enough. Neither of us were very eager to return to it.

"Hey dude, are you gonna help us finish out the set or whoa—" said Robin Hood, backpedaling as soon as he rounded the corner and found us. "Sorry!"

I froze like a teenager caught in the backseat of a car.

"For fuck's sake," Harry mumbled against my lips. He let go of me and glared at the musician, who backed around the corner with his hands up in apology.

"It's time for us to go, anyway."

"Kind of promised I would help?" he said hesitantly, almost like he was asking for my permission.

"Okay." I sighed. "Go ahead. At least you haven't set anything on fire—"

"Yet," he said as he stood, taking my face in both hands to kiss me on the forehead before disappearing around the corner after the kid. I laughed until I cried, and kept crying for a few more minutes, sitting alone in the little alleyway while the fair went on around me. The band started up again as I dried my eyes on the hem of my borrowed cloak.

I found Ramirez and Butters at the edge of the food court.

"What's going on here?" the Warden gestured at the crowd. His dislocated shoulder had been reset and he was still wearing his scuffed, dented armor. "Where's Dresden?"

I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at the stage. Robin Hood had dragged Harry behind a microphone, where he was playing the wild folk-rock intro to Heart's Crazy On You. One of the fair coordinators had claimed the other microphone and was trying to calm the crowd, which was growing more unhinged with every note. The two men stopped in their tracks. Butters' mouth fell open and he stared.

"... Is he alright?" asked Carlos, stepping past me, numbly pointing.

"Oh, definitely not."

"Did you know he could do that?"

"I don't think he knows he can do that," I said, turning to follow the two of them through the crowd to the stage. I had to bundle up the hem of the long cloak and carry it to keep it from being stepped on.

"And you don't need to wonder, you're doing fine," Robin howled. "My love, the pleasure's mine—"

"For a second, I thought maybe we got hit with that shit, too," said the Warden, "but I feel like this is par for the course."

"There's usually more fire," said Butters.

"I knew something was missing. And not as many dinosaurs as we're used to, right Doc?" Ramirez laughed but the medical examiner cringed and shook his head. "I mean, what?"

The situation was quickly deteriorating, and all we could do was watch. The crowd was in a frenzy, more people joining every second as the band continued with Dancing in the Moonlight on bodhrán and bagpipe.

"Karrin," Butters frowned, gesturing at his neck. "You've got a bruise—"

"No," I said firmly, with a Jedi-like wave of my fingers. "I don't."

"No, you don't," he agreed, quickly looking away, wide-eyed behind his glasses as the song segued seamlessly into Blue Öyster Cult's The Reaper.

"More cowbell!" yelled Carlos, immensely amused. Harry flipped him off like Johnny Cash at San Quentin. The fair coordinator's microphone squeaked with feedback:

"Sir— sir you can't do that here, this is a family event—"

"We need to get the hell out of here," I said, but the knight was too busy air-guitaring along with the band, and the jester was glancing suspiciously between me and the wizard, and neither of them heard me over the bandleader.

"This next one goes out that little golden-haired shieldmaiden I saw wandering around, where'd she go—" Robin Hood was peering at the crowd, a hand shading his eyes. "No, not you, wench, the tiny one covered in the blood of her enemies. Heard she's a fan of the Goblin King—"

"Oh, Christ," I muttered into my hands, half-prayer, half-swear as the band picked up a Bowie riff. The crowd broke into raucous cheering, clapping to the beat and dancing — obviously we had all seen the same movie. Ramirez turned towards me, one dark eyebrow climbing so high I thought it might escape into his hair. Butters opened his mouth to say something and flinched when I grabbed each of them by the front of their respective costumes, dragging them down toward me.

"Not a word," I threatened with all the authority I could muster, unwilling to let myself be publicly embarrassed by a man in bright red tights. "Not a word from either of you to anyone, or your entrails will become your extrails. Capisce?"

As they stared at me in terror, some sort of lacy historical undergarment flew over our heads and landed on the stage. Robin picked it up and dangled it from the microphone stand.

"... What now?" asked Butters.

I did the only thing I could do, for the time being. I took a step away from the two of them, opened the camera on my phone and hit Record Video. Dresden might not remember this later, but I definitely would.

"Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel—"

"Next time," said the knight, clapping the jester on the shoulder as we watched the wizard play guitar, "we go to the stupid fair where I'm a rockstar."

Happy Halloween, kids. :D