Crossover: Dresden Files/Supernatural

Characters: Harry, Dean, Sam, Murphy, Bob, OC psychic

Summary: In which hearts are lost and clues recovered.

Disclaimer: anything you recognise is someone elses.

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The crime scene was pretty obvious when they got there: the police cars guarding building kind of a clue. Sam looked like he'd just been kicked by a metal boot, as they watched the body being rolled away in a black body-bag.

They made it all the way to outside the victim's rooms before they were stopped by yellow crime-scene tape. Dean started fishing about in his deep jacket pockets.

"So who are we today? Do you wanna be FBI or ATF?"

"Put those away." Harry grumbled, trying to hide his friend's felony from the hundreds of police that seemed to be swarming all over the place. "Will you let me handle this? Just stay here. Hey Murphy!"

"Dresden? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Heard it on the grapevine you might need a little consultancy," he replied giving his best you-know-you-love-my-cheeky-ways grin.

"That's a pretty fast grapevine," Murphy offered, unimpressed by his act. "We only got the call about 15 minutes ago."

"What can I say?"

"Nothing, now leave."

"Come on Murph, isn't there something a little odd about this case? Something you might need a consultant for?"

"Other than the fact that you must have known about it before it happened to get here so fast from your place?" She sighed. "Yeah, there's one other thing. Her heart was ripped out of her chest."

"Ripped out? Really?"

"That's the coroner's best guess on inspection in situ." Murphy obviously wasn't happy about that.

"Mind if I take a look around?"

She flapped her arms in exasperation. "Sure, why not!"

As Murphy turned away, Harry gestured for Sam and Dean to stay put. Hunters were never the most subtle of people and Murphy didn't look like she could be pushed much further today without snapping.

He scoped out the room: a fairly normal college dorm, two single beds, a bottle of tequila on the dresser, lacy underwear thrown in the corner and not a book in sight suggested a couple of ladies living the college dream. The pool of blood slowly congealing on the carpet really looked out of place.

Harry was careful not to touch anything as he moved about the room, studying the knick knacks and photos, waiting for a flash of inspiration or magical insight. Nothing. Everything seemed perfectly normal: the pair of attractive young women staring out of the photos with their friends, the stuffed animals, the bills and post from home peeking out from under the bed; nothing was giving out the slightest hint of magical involvement.

Finally he crouched down next to the blood stain.

"Find anything?" Murphy asked sharply and Harry stood quickly.

"Nothing I can see," he replied, beaming innocently willing it to sound like the truth and not like all those other times she had caught him in a lie.

She sighed, and Harry felt awful that her trust in him had been so shaken. She swiped her hand back through her hair, obviously more agitated than his routine lack of answers usually made her.

"Something up Murphy?" She glared at him, but he continued. "Want to talk about it?"

"If you can't help me you better get back behind the cordon."

"I'll get out of your hair." Harry backed off warily, like he would from a barking dog. He knew better than to get in Murphy's way when she was angry.

Still, it didn't mean he wasn't going to try and help anyway.

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"So…what now?" Dean asked as Harry opened the door to the lab for them.

Harry jogged down the few short steps moving quickly to light the candles and knocking gently on Bob's skull to wake him up.

"Now we use something from the killer to try and work out who they are and why they felt like ripping out that poor girl's heart."

Sam sidled up to the workbench in the centre of the room on the opposite side to Harry, looking at him quizzically. "And I'm guessing you have something like that?"

Harry grinned, fishing in his pocket and pulling out…

"A fingernail? Dude that's weak: you can't know that's the killer's." Dean turned his back on the bench and almost walked straight through Bob as he materialised in front of him.

"Hey Bob, how's it going?"

Bob snubbed Dean's remark and proceeded to walk right through him as if Dean were the insubstantial entity. Dean shuddered, and, though he tried to hide it, Sam smirked at him.

"Harry?" Bob asked, pointed ignoring the two hunters. "You wanted something?"

"There's a little bit of blood…" Harry said as he laid the fingernail down on the table, looking up at Bob eagerly. "It's got to be the killer's. There was a struggle, she scratched at him and got us just what we need to catch the son of a bitch."

Bob looked between his old pupil and the scrap of matter on the table. "You're not giving me much to go on."

Harry wasn't buying Bob's attitude, beckoning towards the fingernail as he spoke. "Come on Bob, you could do it with half the blood on there."

"Do what?" Sam asked curiously, resting his hands on the table top to peer more closely at the nail.

"Fine!" Bob acquiesced, touching his pinky to the tiny nail and immediately turning into a short blond girl with a button nose and softly grey eyes. It was one of the girls from the pictures in the dormitory.

"That's the killer," Sam asked incredulously, hiding his surprise at the ghost's sudden transformation under the surprise of learning that such a sweet girl could rip someone's heart out through their chest.

"I guess so." Harry said, though he was unsure of himself now. What if the blood had got on the fingernail some other way…?

"Are we done?" The girl said in Bob's irritated tones.

"Hm? Yeah sure." Harry murmured, preoccupied.

The girl rolled her eyes, and suddenly there stood Bob once more, looking thoroughly disdainful at all of them.

"Well, if you need me to play dress up again, or maybe even for some real magic if it happens to take your fancy, you know where to find me."

With that there was a sizzle the puff of yellow light that was Bob's spirit zipped back into the skull on the shelf.

Dean looked between Sam and Harry, waiting patiently for all of a few seconds.

"So?...What now? Was that the killer or wasn't it?"

Sam shook his head, clutching the bridge of his nose as he tried to remember. "I don't know! I saw it as if I was her, saw my hand reach out…" He mimed the action, but after a moment his arm flopped hopelessly back to his side. "It seemed like a girl's hand, but that's about all I can tell you."

"I think we should stick with the idea that this was the killer's blood." Harry offered. "It's just too unlikely to be anything else. What we really need now is to know why she killed her roommate and whether there's anyone else she might be gunning for personally. The way you talked about Max and Webber I'd say the demon doesn't want these kids until their lives have been cleaned out of everyone they were close to."

"Guess it's time to start talking to the neighbours."