Little Myth Marker By Robert Asprin

“Well, uh . . . Bunny,” I said, “it looks like you’re going to be staying with us for a while.”

She reacted to my words as if I had hit her “on” switch.

“Eeoooh!” she squealed, as if I had just told her that she had won a beauty pageant. “Oh, I know I’m just goin’ to love workin’ under you, Skeevie.”

My stomach did a slow roll to the left.

“Shall I get her things, Boss?” Nunzio said. “She’s got about a mountain and a half of luggage outside.”

“Oh, you can leave all that,” Bunny cooed. “I just know my Skeevie is going to want to buy me a whole new wardrobe.”

“Hold it! Time out!” I ordered. “House rules time Bunny, some things are going to disappear from your vocabulary right now. First, forget ‘Skeevie.’ It’s Skeeve … just Skeeve, or if you must, the Great Skeeve in front of company. Not Skeevie.”

“Gotcha,” she winked.

“Next, you do not work under me. You’re .. . you’re my personal secretary. Got it?”

“Why sure, sugar. That’s what I’m always called.” Again with the wink.

“Now then, Nunzio. I want you to get her luggage and move it into … I don’t know, the pink bedroom.”

“You want I should give him a hand, Boss?” Guido asked.

“You stay put.” I smiled, baring all my teeth. “I’ve got a special job for you.”

“Now just a darn minute!” Bunny interrupted, her cutie-pie accent noticeably lacking. “What’s this with the ‘pink bedroom’? Somehow you don’t strike me as the kind that sleeps in a pink bedroom. Aren’t I moving into your bedroom?”

“I’m sleeping in my bedroom,” I said. “Now isn’t it easier for you to move into one of our spares than for me to relocate just so you can move into mine?”