When I shoved through the doorway of Morley's Joy House you'd have thought I was the old dude in black who lugs the sickle. The place went dead quiet. I stopped moving. I couldn't push uphill against the weight of all those stares. "Somebody sneak lemons into your salads?"

Quick check of the talent. It looked like somebody with an ugly stick had gone berserk. That or those guys spent a lot of time diving into walls and shaving themselves with hatchets. I saw enough scars and bent noses to open me a sideshow.

The Joy House boasts that kind of clientele.

"Aw, damn! It's Garrett." That was my pal Puddle, safe behind the bar. "Here we go again, troops." Puddle goes two-eighty, maybe more. His skin is the hue of somebody who's been dead awhile. You ask me, rigor mortis set in above the neck twenty years back.

Several dwarves, an ogre, miscellaneous elves, and a couple of guys of indeterminate ancestry chugged their sauerkraut cocktails and headed for the door. Guys I didn't even know. Guys who knew me did their damnedest to pretend they didn't. A murmur spread as the ones who didn't know me got clued in.

What a charge for the ego. Call me Typhoid Garrett.

"Hi, everybody," I chirped, going for cheerful. "Ain't it a grand night out?" It wasn't. It was raining cats and dogs and the critters were quarreling all the way to the ground. I had dents in my head from random volleys of hailstones, not being bright enough to wear a hat. On the plus side, flash floods might clear the garbage festering in the streets. Some of that was ready to get up and walk.

The city ratmen get lazier every day.

"Hey, Garrett! Come on over."

Well. A friendly face. "Saucerhead, old buddy, old pal." I steered for the shadowy corner table Tharpe shared with another guy. I hadn't spotted him because of the gloom back there. Even close up I couldn't make much of Tharpe's companion. The guy wore heavy black robes, like some species of priest, complete with cowl. He exuded gloom like a miasma. He wasn't the kind you'd have over to liven up a party.