Sweet MYTH-tery of Life by Robert Asprin

“Then I’d say ‘Thank you, kind sir’. You aren’t so bad looking yourself.”

She smiled and made a small curtsey. I successfully resisted an impulse to bow back to her.

Mostly, I was trying to think of what we could talk about next, having exhausted the subject of beauty.

“So, how do you know Kalvin?” Daphnie said, solving the problem for me. “He made it sound like the two of you were old buddies.”

Now we were back on familiar footing.

“Actually, I bought him over at the Bazaar at Deva. Well, to be accurate, I bought his bottle. I only was entitled to one wish from him . . . but I don’t need to explain that to you. You probably know the drill better than I do. I didn’t get to know him until a couple years later when I got around to opening the bottle.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, frowning prettily. “Why did you buy his bottle if you weren’t going to use it for several years?”

“Why I bought it in the first place is a long story,” I said, rolling my eyes comically. “As to why I didn’t use it for so long, I’m part of a fairly impressive team of magik users . . . the head of it, actually. We do a pretty good job of handling most problems that come up on our own without calling on outside help.”

Okay. So I was blowing my own trumpet a bit. Even though I didn’t know if anything would ever develop between us, she was cute enough that I figured that it couldn’t hurt to impress her a little.

“So he was with you the whole time? From when you purchased his bottle until his discharged his duty on Perv? When was that, exactly?”