“Tell him about your friend, Skeeve.”
“That’s right. Here I’ve been rattling on and we haven’t even started to address your problem,” the financier nodded, shifting forward on his chair. “Edvik said you were trying to locate someone who might have been active in our financial circles.”
“I’m not sure you’ll be able to help,” I began, grateful for not having to raise the subject myself. “He’s been off dimension for several years now. His name is Aahz.”
The Butterfly pursed his lips thoughtfully. “The name doesn’t ring any bells. Of course, in these days of nesting corporations and holding companies, names don’t really mean much. Can you tell me anything about his style?”
“His style?”
“How would you describe his approach to money? Is he a plunger? A dabbler?”
I had to laugh at that.
“Well, the words ‘tight-fisted’ and ‘penny-pinching’ are the first that come to mind.”
“There’s ‘tight-fisted’ and there’s ‘cautious,’ “ the Butterfly smiled. “Perhaps you’d better tell me a little about him, and let me try to extract and analyze the pertinent parts.”
So I told him. Once I had gotten started, the words seemed to come rushing out in a torrent.
I told him about meeting Aahz when he got stranded on my home dimension of Klah after a practical joke gone awry robbed him of his magikal powers, and how he took me on as an apprentice after we stymied Isstvan’s plan to take over the dimensions. I told him about how Aahz had convinced me to try out for the position of Court Magician for the kingdom of Possiltum, and how that had led to our confrontation with Big Julie’s army as well as introducing me to the joys of bureaucratic in-fighting. He clucked sympathetically when I told him about how Tananda and I had tried to steal the trophy from the Big Game as a birthday present for Aahz. and how we had had to put together a team to challenge the two existing teams after Tananda got caught. He was amused by my rendition of how I got stuck masquerading as Roderick, the king, and how I got Massha as an apprentice, though he seemed most interested in the part about how we broke up the Mob’s efforts to move into the Bazaar at Deva and ended up working for both sides of the same brawl. I even told him about our brief sortie into Limbo when Aahz got framed for murdering a vampire, and my even briefer career into the arena of professional Dragon Poker which pitted my friends and me against the Sen-Sen Ante Kid and the Ax. Finally, I tried to explain how we expanded our operation into a corporation, ending with how Aahz had walked out, leaving a note behind stating that, without his powers, he felt he was needless baggage to the group.