Hit or Myth by Robert Asprin

The spokesman gave one of his tight-lipped smiles.

“No need to wait,” he said. “My immediate superior is on call specifically for emergencies such as this.”

Before I could frame a reply, he opened the front of his belt-buckle and began rubbing it, all the while mumbling under his breath.

There was a quick flash of light, and an old, hairyjowled man appeared in the room. Looking round, he spied the two bodyguards sprawled on the floor and gripped the sides of his face with his open hands in an exaggerated expression of horror.

“Mercy!” he wheezed in a voice so hoarse I could barely understand him. “Shai-ster, you bad boy. If there was trouble, you should have called me sooner. Oh, those poor, poor boys.”

The Mob spokesman’s face was once again blank and impassive as he addressed me.

“Skeeve, Lord Magician of Possiltum, let me introduce Don Bruce, the Mob’s fairy godfather.”

Chapter Eleven:

“Tell you what. Let me sweeten the deal a bit for you….”

– BEELZEBUB

“OH! This is simply war-velous! Who would have ever thought… another dimension, you say?”

“That’s right,” I said off-handedly. “It’s called Deva.”

Of course, I was quite in agreement with Don Bruce. The Bazaar on Deva was really something, and every time I visited it, I was impressed anew. It was an incredible tangle of tents and displays stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction, crammed full of enough magikal devices and beings to defy anyone’s imagination and sanity. It was the main crossroads of trade for the dimensions. Anything worth trading money or credits for was here.