Myth-Nomers & Im-Pervections by Robert Asprin

Chapter Twenty:

“Were you looking for me?”

—DR. LIVINGSTONE

I WAS SURPRISED to find Pookie waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. The police had been nice enough to wait until I had given her her check before hauling me off, so I had thought I’d never see her again.

“Hello, Pookie. What brings you here?”

“I wanted to talk a little business with you,” she said. “It didn’t seem the right time before, so I waited.”

“I see.”

After my last experience, I wasn’t wild about the idea of doing business with Pervects . . . especially ones who didn’t want to talk in front of the police. Still, Pookie had given me no reason to distrust her.

“Okay. Come on upstairs and say what’s on your mind. It seems I’m leaving . . . on request.”

If my statement seemed at all strange to her, she never let on. Instead, she fell in step with me as I entered the hotel. “Actually, what I have to say shouldn’t take too long. If I understand correctly, you’re on your way off-dimension to rejoin your regular crew in a campaign against someone named Queen Hemlock. Right?”

“That’s a fair summation,” I nodded. “Why?”

“I thought I’d offer my services to you for the upcoming brawl. I can give you a special discount for work away from Perv because off-dimension prices are lower. That keeps my overhead down.”

She flashed me a smile that was gone almost as soon as it appeared.

For some reason, it had never occurred to me to hire her for the Hemlock campaign. Still, the idea had merit. “I don’t know, Pookie,” I said, trying to weigh the pluses and minuses without taking too much time. “I’ve already got a couple of bodyguards waiting for me.”