I whisked a hand toward the tiny device. The crowd of declaiming actors vanished, and the room fell silent.

Mostly silent. My pet dragon, Gleep, had heard the rapping, and came hurtling into the room.

"Gleep!" he exclaimed.

"Shh!" I said.

I listened carefully. I could hear youthful-sounding female voices just outside the big main door.

"Girls," Bunny said. "I'll take care of it." She gestured at herself.

"See what you think of this illusion," I said. "I saw an illustration in a scroll, and I came up with a really scary variation."

Closing my eyes I superimposed the craggy, blue-tinged face of an ancient hag over Bunny's lovely features. She glanced in the mirror as she passed.

"Yuck."

I grinned, satisfied.

"Gleep!" my pet protested.

"You, too," I whispered. With another moment of concentration, Gleep became a terrible giant bug, a cross between a cockroach and a firefly. My pet gallumphed happily toward the door. I hope he wouldn't scare them too much. I would hate to be responsible for causing nightmares, when all I wanted was my privacy.

Then, the door swung open.

The last thing I had to worry about was that the three girls on the doorstep might be afraid of blue-skinned crones or flying cockroaches. They were Pervects.

They regarded Bunny with the disdain that natives of Perv had for most other races, completely unconcerned that live spiders swung from her lank tresses, or that her skin appeared to be peeling before their eyes. Aahz had once said that most Klahds looked alike to him.

The smallest one pointed a thumb over her shoulder. "They said in that little hovel down the road that the Great Skeeve lives here."

"Who wants to know?" Bunny shrilled in a voice like an elderly woman.

"We do," the tallest one replied. "This is Freezia and Pologne. I'm Jinetta. He knows my great-aunt, Vergetta. Can we see him?"