There was a long drink of water who maybe used to be a pigeon, your basic roof rat, leaning on his mop. There were the three characters I had met already, all looking bigger and uglier than ever. Those guys could get work as gargoyles at any of the major cathedrals. Then there were three females. None was my redhead. The closest to her was a brunette with a paler skin and eyes that were smouldering pits of promise and curves that had been drawn by a dreaming celestial geometrician. Her lips made me want to bounce up and run over there. Presumably she owned the sexy voice.

Next to her was a gal with the biggest hair I have ever seen. What looked like snakes seemed to peek out. Her skin was a sort of pale pus-green color. Her lips were gorgeously tasty but dark green. When she smiled she showed you sharp vampire teeth. Not to mention that she sported two extra arms, the better to whatever you with. I decided I would put off asking her out.

She stared at me with a heat—or a hunger—that set those old frozen-toed mice to rambling along my spine.

The third woman was a giant of a blonde, maybe ten feet tall and at least that many years past her prime. She had put on weight where women generally do not need much, and overall she projected a sort of middle-class goodwifely dowdiness—with a suggestion of all the hidden bitterness that so often goes with that.

A guy I took to be her old man sprawled on some sort of stone throne that was so chipped and crumbly it looked like it could collapse under his weight. He was a couple of feet taller than the blonde. He wasn't wearing much but a stripey leather loincloth that looked like it had been ripped off a saber-toothed tiger on the fly and nobody bothered to cure it. He was built like a muscle freak who had gone to seed. He could have lugged minotaurs on those shoulders in his prime.

His eyes were a blazing blue, almost as gorgeous as mine. His hair was white and there was a lot of it, flying out all around his head in tangles and spikes. His beard was white, too, and had not been trimmed in decades. Despite his lovely eyes he seemed to be bored or almost asleep.