"We'll just be going," the woman said weakly. The two of them, apologizing hastily, sprang back onto their cart. The man whipped up their horse, who lurched into a trot. I waited until they were out of sight, and had a good laugh.
"Thanks, Gleep," I praised my dragon, patting him on the head. His tongue lolled. I let the disguise drop, restoring his large, round eyes to their normal baby blue. The tongue snapped up and slimed me across the face. I gagged. He romped away a few paces, then thundered back to me, making the floor wobble under his weight. He looked hopeful.
"Skeeve ... play?"
"Not now. I'll play with you later," I promised. "I've got to keep working. Why don't you find Buttercup?"
"Gleep!" He thundered off, his passage shaking dust down from the rafters.
I turned away from the door. Bunny emerged from the shadows. The beautiful woman with luxurious red hair had a figure that made it hard for men to remember to look up at her face ... which, by the way, was well worth the effort. She resembled a wood nymph appearing suddenly from a copse of trees. I let the illusion fade away, to be replaced by the ordinary walls and furniture.
"Thanks," she sighed. "I just knew when I saw those tourists pulling up they weren't going to take no for an answer from me."
"No problem," I assured her. If we'd been back in the Bazaar at Deva there was not a soul who'd give trouble to the niece of Don Bruce, the Fairy Godfather, or to a member of M.Y.T.H. Inc, for that matter, but Klahds, denizens of my own dimension, were notoriously unable to appreciate subtleties. It took a good scare to send them off.
I was a Klahd, too, but I knew I'd changed in the years I'd associated with my