robert asprin - myth-taken identity

"Ha ha ha ha HA!" the phony cackled, derisively.

He jumped up on top of a freestanding stall and stuck his thumbs in his ears. Then he disappeared down behind the stall. By the time I got there, he was gone.

I stomped my way back to the storefront.

Chloridia, with her usual aplomb, severed the strands of the net binding her with one hand while signing autographs and shaking hands with the other three. Massha alit forlornly beside me.

"He got away from me," I told Parvattani, who rushed over when he saw us.

The captain shook his head vigorously. "There is another-a sighting, very close to here in Atrium G. We must get there at once!" He set off at a clip. His men fell in behind him. We waited until Chloridia had paused for a few shutterbug portraits with her admirers and floated over to join us.

"I'm so sorry, Aahz," Massha apologized, her face red. "I don't know what's the matter with me. My gadgets are misfiring all over the place. Maybe I'm just too involved in this stupid case because it's all about the Boss."

"I doubt it," I replied, maybe more tersely than I intended. "You're good at what you do. You know it, and I know it."

"But I just blew a capture for the second time! Those ... creatures have really got me rattled."

Chloridia sailed closer and peered critically at Massha.

"It's not you, darling," Chloridia told her. "You're running some kind of overload. Are you taking some kind of new supplement, or something? An alternative-witchdoctor potion? Pep pills?"

"No," Massha fretted. "It's the same old me. I'm not eating or drinking anything different. It couldn't be these pants, could it?"

I glanced at the upturned seat of the rose-colored jeans with the gold pocket on the back. "Not a chance. No Djinn would waste a spell on something he was going to sell to Klahds."

"Thanks!" Massha sputtered.

I scowled. "You know what I mean. They're mass-produced."

"So are half the joke items on Deva!"

"True," I admitted. "But would you trust a magik item in the hands of a Klahd?" "Well, not just any Klahd—"

"That is new," Eskina interrupted, pointing to one of the dozen or so bracelets on Massha's meaty arm.

"Yes, it is. I bought it yesterday. You certainly are observant," Massha praised her.

Eskina shrugged off the compliment. "It is my job. Is it new enough that the problems started after you bought it?"

"I—yes," Massha exclaimed, and enlightenment dawned on her face. "That's right, I never found out from the shop what it did. That's not like me."

"It might be making you misfire, darling," Chloridia pointed out.

Massha's face reddened. "I think one of the shapechangers waited on me. The store owner said she didn't work there. It's probably a magikal booby trap of some kind." She took off the bracelet and handed it to the first person she saw going the other way, a blue Dragonet female laden with bags and packages.

"Here! It'll look beautiful with your scales," Massha asserted.

The pyrosaurian didn't know what to say. "Er, thanks!" she threw back as she was swept away in the stream of fellow shoppers.

"There," Massha announced, dusting her hands together. "Now I'm ready to kick some shape-changing tail."

"Everybody was kung fu fighting—hyah!"

The skinny figure under the spotlights executed a few side kicks as he pranced about the small round platform over the heads of the crowd.

"Retuuuuuurrrrn to me, and always be my meeee-lody of looooovve!"

I winced. I had always suspected the Imps of inventing karaoke: It had a way of taking innocuous music and rendering it so tasteless and painful that it induced hopelessness, even suicidal tendencies, in its listeners.

The gadget could be set to hover almost anywhere, providing a slate showing lyrics, backup music, and, naturally, a mirror ball for atmosphere. Not surprisingly, Klahds were another big market for the gadgets, so no one thought twice about the fact one was making a fool of himself by singing in public there at The Mall.

"At the Copa! Copacabana!"

Chloridia's face wore a more aghast expression than mine. "Is that your friend?" she asked. "I'd advise him not to quit his day job."

"He did," I retorted, "but not to sing."

The impostor on the stage hit a sour note.

"I can't stand that anymore," Chloridia insisted.

She raised her hand, and a lightning bolt exploded from her joined fingertips. The mirror ball over the phony's head exploded in a burst of shards. The music halted, and the lights died away.

"Thanks," I growled.

I appreciated it, but time was when I didn't need that kind of help. At least Chloridia wasn't inclined to rub it in.

"Glad to oblige."

The security force mustered from several sides, pikes at the ready. Parvattani was among the group to my left. He looked tired. He must have been chasing Skeeve sightings since morning, same as we had.

To my surprise, the impostor didn't flee when his magikal music box blew up.

"Any requests?" he shouted.

The crowd, as usual, loved a spectacle. They didn't want the show to end either, and began to yell out the names of songs. The impostor got them clapping in rhythm and burst into song again.

"Oh, I wish I was in Dixie! Hooray! Hooray! In Dixie Land I'll take my stand—Come on, everybody sing!"

I understood what he was doing. If the crowd dispersed, he had no cover. I had to raise my assessment of the intelligence of Rattila's shapeshifters, or at least this one up one notch.

Massha, now confident that her gadgets were going to behave normally, launched a burst of blue light toward the figure on the stage. It enveloped him in a beam of light that pierced right to the back of one's eyeballs. Whether they wanted the show to go on or not, the audience had to stop looking at him. I thought it was a pretty clever move on Massha's part. The people started to drift away, leaving only a few standing and staring. "Wait, everyone!" the impostor cried. "Look!" He held up his hands, and began to make fire-shapes on the ceiling. "Look! A duck! A horse! A rabbit!"

Chloridia threw a whammy of her own, and the phony froze in place, his hands making a birdie.

I grinned ferally. He had nowhere to go and no way to get there.

Now we had him. All around us were Parvattani's guards, halberds at the ready. I gestured to them to follow me in case the impostor suddenly figured out he didn't need a voice or hand gestures to defend himself magikally, using Skeeve's talent. We couldn't be too cautious.

We closed in on the fake. I took the time to decide what I was going to do to him first. Punch him out? Pull out his fingernails? Make him invoke each of his cards one at a time and snap them while he was still wearing the faces? For a change I didn't have the visceral reaction, thanks to Massha's blue fire spell hiding Skeeve's stolen face.

The nearby bards had stopped playing. It was so eerily quiet that I could hear the sound of my own breath, that of my companions, and the sound of exhalations coming from just behind my shoulder.

I spun.

Hundreds of faces surrounded us, all with red-rimmed eyes, pale complexions, and gaping mouths.

"Who are you?" I asked.

The zombie faces didn't respond. I shrugged, headed for the burning figure on the platform. The closer I got, the closer they got. The nearest one was a Troll with long, pale gray-blue fur that smelled like an old sofa.

"Bathe much?" I inquired. It didn't answer.

Massha waved a hand in front of their faces. "Aahz, I don't like this. They're not conscious."

"So what?" I asked. "Describes most talk-show audiences. What matters is what they do."

The impostor was still burning like a Roman candle. I kind of hoped that the spell hurt. I reached for him. Before my hands could touch the sparkling flames, two big, hairy hands reached around and grabbed me.