Robert Asprin - Sween Myth-tery of Life

"Not bloody likely," he snorted. "Chumley said he saw you and your date when you rolled back into the castle and, as you know, if anything, he's prone to understatement."

I nodded mutely. When he wasn't in his working persona of Big Crunch, the troll was remarkably accurate in his reports and observations.

"Whatever," Aahz waved. "Like I say, you seem to have survived pretty well."

I managed a weak smile.

"How about a Hair of the dog? A quick drink to perk you up," he suggested. "Com'on partner. My treat. We'll duck into town for a change of pace."

A moment's reflection was all it took to realize that a stroll through the town around the castle sounded good. Real good if Bunny was on the warpath.

"Okay, Aahz. You're on," I said. "But as to the hair of the dog ... I'll stick to regular stuff if you don't mind. I had enough of strange drinks last night."

He gave off one of those choking noises he used to make during my days as an apprentice when I said something really dumb, but when I glanced at him, there wasn't a trace of a smile.

"Aren't you forgetting something, partner?" he said without looking at me.

"What?"

"If we're heading out among the common folk, a disguise spell would be nice."

He was right of course. Even though I was used to seeing him as he actually was, a Pervect with green scales and yellow eyes, the average citizen of Possiltum still tended to react to his appearance with horror and fear ... which is to say much the same way I reacted when I first met him.

"Sorry, Aahz."

Closing my eyes, I quickly made the necessary adjustments. Manipulating his image with my mind, I made him look like an ordinary castle guard. If anything, I made him a bit more scrawny and undernourished than average. I mean, the idea was not to intimidate people, wasn't it?

Aahz didn't even bother checking his reflection in any of the windows we passed. He seemed much more interested in prying details of my date out of me.

"Where did you find to go on this backwater dimension, anyway?" he said.

"Oh, we didn't stick around here," I said loftily. "We ducked over to Limbo. Cassandra knew a couple clubs there and we ..."

I suddenly noticed Aahz was no longer walking beside me. Looking back, I realized he had stopped in his tracks. His mouth was working, but no sound came out.

"Limbo?" he managed at last. "You went bar crawling on Limbo? Excuse me, partner, but I was under the impression we were persona non grata in that neck of the woods."

"I was a little worried at first," I admitted casually, which was only a little lie. As you'll recall, I had been a LOT worried. "Cassandra said she could blip us back out fast if there was any trouble, though, so I figured what the heck. As it turned out, nobody seems to be holding a grudge there. In fact, it seems I'm ... I mean, we're ... minor celebrities over there. That's partly why the evening ran as long as it did. Half the people we ran into wanted to buy me a drink for putting one over on the local council."

"Is that a fact?" Aahz said darkly, starting to move again. "Just who is this Cassandra person, anyway? She doesn't exactly sound like a local."

"She's not," I confirmed. "Vie set me up with her. She's a friend of his."

"Nice to know he didn't set you up with an enemy," my partner quipped. Still in all, it seems to me . , ."

He broke off and did another double take.

"Wait a minute. Vie? The same vampire Vie that you hang around with over at the Bazaar? You mean this Cassandra babe is ..."

"A vampire," I said with a careless shrug. The truth was, I was starting to get a bit of a kick out of shocking Aahz. "Oh, she's okay. No one you'd want to take home to mother, but ... what's wrong?"

He was craning his head around to peer at my neck from different angles.

"Just checking for bite marks," he said.

"Com'on, Aahz. There wasn't any danger of that. She was drinking her blood out of a glass last night."

"Those weren't the kind of bite marks I was checking for," he grinned. "Vamps have a rep of being pretty wild women."

"Um ... speaking of destinations," I said eager to change the subject, "where are we going?"

"No place special," my partner said. "These local bars and inns are pretty much all the same. This one should do us fine."

With that, he veered through the door of the place we were passing, leaving me to follow along behind.

The inn was refreshingly ordinary compared to what I could remember of the surreal clubs I had been to on Limbo. Ordinary, and more than a little dull.

Dark wooden tables and chairs were the main feature of the decor, with occasional candles scattered here and there to supplement the light which streamed in through windows and the open door.

"What'll you have, Skeeve?" Aahz called, heading for the bar.

I started to say 'Wine/ but changed my mind. Whether or not Bunny was right about my drinking getting out of hand, it wouldn't hurt to ease up a bit. Besides, Nunzio's comment about blacking out had me more than a little uneasy.

"Just some fruit juice for me," I waved.

Aahz paused, cocking his head at me.

"Are you sure you're all right, partner?" he said.

"Sure. Why do you ask?"

"A while back you were talking about looking forward to having your usual, and now you're switching drinks."

"All right. Have it your way," I grimaced. "A goblet of wine, then. No need to make a big thing of it."

I leaned back and looked around the room, though it was mostly to break eye contact with Aahz before he realized I was upset. It was funny, but I found myself somehow reluctant to tell my partner my worries about my drinking. Still, it was difficult to change my drinking patterns around him without raising questions that would require an explanation. I figured that, for the moment, the easiest thing to do would be to go on as before ... at least, while I was around Aahz. Later, more privately, I'd start tapering off.

One thing I noticed about the inn was that there seemed to be a lot of young people hanging around. Well, to be honest, they were about my age, but I spend so much time with the team, I tend to think of myself as older.

One table of girls in particular caught my attention, mostly because they seemed to be talking about me. At least, that was my guess, as they kept glancing my way, then putting their heads together and giggling, then glancing over again.

Not long ago, this would have made me nervous. My recent excursion to Limbo, however, had gotten me a bit more used to notoriety.

The next time they glanced over, I looked directly back at them, then gave a brief, polite nod of acknowledgment with my head. This, of course, caused another hurried huddle and burst of giggles.

Ah, fame.

"What are you smiling at?" Aahz said as he set my wine in front of me and slid onto the bench across the table, cradling his own outsized drink.

"Oh, nothing," I smiled. "I was just watching that table of girls over there."

I indicated the direction with a tilt of my head, and he leaned sideways to scope them out himself.

"Kind of young for you, aren't they, partner?"

"They're not that much younger than I am," I protested, taking a long swallow of wine.

"Don't you have enough problems already?" Aahz said, settling back. "Last time I checked, you were suffering from an overabundance of women ... not a shortage."

"Oh, relax," I laughed. "I wasn't figuring to do anything with them. Just having a little fun, is all. They were looking at me, so I let them see me looking back."

"Well don't look now," he grinned back, "but at least one of them is doing more than looking."

Needless to say, I looked.

One of the girls had stood up and was approaching our table. When she saw me looking in her direction, she seemed to gather her courage and closed the distance in a rush.