I turned my attention back to the candle. The spell had become too easy for me. I'd stopped feeling the connection between will and power, the connection I'd fought to attain to master the energies that abounded in earth and sky.

The bell rang. I heard light footsteps on the stone floor, a pause, then more footsteps coming towards me.

"Can you handle this, Skeeve?" Bunny said, poking her head into my room. "It's much more up your alley than mine."

I rose from the table and the unlit candle, and hurried toward the door. A glance through the peephole revealed a couple of eager-faced Klahds with luggage. The inn had been abandoned for years, but I'd cleaned it up enough to make it habitable. Unfortunately, a rumor had gotten around that the hostelry was operating again, not what I had in mind. Normally Bunny would politely send them on their way, but I understood why she wanted me to do it. The eager-faced couple on the doorstep were the kind of tourists who didn't take a subtle hint.

The one magikal talent I had mastered without a doubt was illusion. Immediately I filled the hall with illusory spider webs and broken beams hanging crookedly over the gallery. I cast a disguise spell over myself to make me into an aged hunchback with matted hair crawling with vermin. I blotted Bunny out completely behind the image of a sarcophagus with skeletal hands crossed on the chest under a skull-like face. Then I opened the door.

"Ye-ees?" I croaked.

"Hello!" the man beamed. "Do you have a room for the night?" As he glanced over my humped shoulder at the ruin of the room his face changed. "I mean ... er... do you know of a nearby hotel where we could spend the night?"

"Come in, come in," I urged them, beckoning with a gnarled hand. The man backed away. Gleep chose that moment to stick his head around the door. I changed his