sudden ferocity. “Things wouldn’t be the same without
you.”
There was a soft pop in the air, and she was gone. I was
alone in Perv, the nastiest of the known dimensions.
Chapter Two:
“They don’t make ’em like they used to!”
—H. FORD
ACTUALLY, I WASN’T as worried as you might think I’d
be from the situation. Like I’d told Massha, I had an ace
up my sleeve . . . and it was a beaut!
A while back, I was part . . . heck, I was the instigator
of a plan to force the Mob out of the Bazaar at Deva. I felt
it was only fair, since I was the one who had given them
access to the Bazaar in the first place, and besides, the
Devan Merchants’ Association had paid me well to get the
Mob off their backs. Of course that was before the Mob
hired me to run their interests at the Bazaar, and the Bazaar
agreed to give me a house and pay me a percentage of the
profits to keep the Mob at bay. Sound confusing? It was . . .
a little. Fortunately, Aahz had shown me how the two assign-
ments weren’t mutually exclusive and that it was ethically
possible to collect money from both sides . .. well, possible,
anyway. Is it any wonder that I prize his counsel so highly?
However, I digress.
During the initial skirmishes of that campaign, I had ac-
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12
Robert Asprin
quired a litle souvenir that I had almost forgotten about until
I was getting ready for this quest. It wasn’t much to look
at, just a small vial with its stopper held in place by a wax
seal, but I figured it just might mean the difference between
success and failure.
I probably could have mentioned it to Massha, but frankly