"We-eel ..." Aahz was letting himself be persuaded. "Maybe I won't tell the Pharaoh what kind of scam you're pulling. ..."
"The local beer's very good. I'll make sure you have your own barrel."
"I don't know," Aahz said. "I don't want to break any local laws. I bet if I read through the regulations in that tomb— what was its name, Skeeve?"
"Waycross."
"I bet there'll be dozens of rules we're violating."
"Daily barrels of beer?" Samwise offered, looking increasingly desperate.
"Two," Aahz said. "It's a hot climate. You don't want me dehydrating on you. I might start to lose my equilibrium, and you know what happens when a master magician loses his equilibrium. What do you think, kid?"
"Catastrophic," I agreed. "Better make it three barrels."
Samwise gulped. "W-w-why not? I'm sure you'll help me save more than you're costing me. I hope."
"Double, at least," Aahz said, with a casual wave.
"Well, then," Samwise said, pulling two more papyri out of his pocket, "let's formalize our agreement." The first one was between M.Y.T.H., Inc., and And Company. The second, which Aahz read over twice as carefully, was a personal contract for Aahz. I noticed that the terms had been written in exactly as discussed. It puzzled me, until I saw the Pyxie peering out of the Imp's pocket. It looked exhausted. Those miniature beings were the fastest scribes in all the dimensions. Samwise probably figured he couldn't lose a minute when signing a prospect. He flicked a talon at a series of dotted lines. "Sign there, there, there, and there."
That was when I stepped in. "We'll take that first one back with us tonight and bring it back tomorrow," I said, taking it from Samwise. "Aahz will want to read it over first."
Meaning it had to go up before the partners to agree if we took it. Bunny had made us start checking to be sure that we didn't have conflicts of interest after Guido and Chumley had ended up on opposite sides of what had sounded like a pretty good deal. Aahz shrugged.
"No problem, no problem!" Samwise said. "Do you want to take the second one home with you, too? The only way to make sure that everything is the way you like it is to sign right now. Because I warn you, the terms will go up every few hours. Standard Deveel contracts."
I opened my mouth to suggest that Aahz do just that, but he was too impatient. He grabbed the second document and put his name on the dotted line.
"Thank you," Samwise said. He snatched it away as if he was afraid that Aahz might change his mind and tear it up on the spot.
I heard a loud rip.
"Ow!" Aahz bellowed. "What did you just do to me? I wasn't going to sign it in blood!"
I looked at his finger. A narrow slit had opened up in the pad just under the talon. Yellow-green blood welled up.
"That's strange," I said. I didn't know Pervects could get paper cuts. Their scaly skin was too thick and tough. I'd known Aahz to squeeze handfuls of broken glass without cutting himself.
"Just bad luck," Samwise said and then looked guilty.
Chapter 7
"Well, you don't know everything about me."
Once out of the Imp's sight, I popped us back to Deva. We appeared in the president's office in M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s headquarters in the Bazaar with an explosion of displaced air. Everyone looked up.
"Hi, everyone!" I said. At her desk, Bunny was poring over a sheaf of papers, looking concerned. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing much," Bunny said. She smiled up at us. She wore her thick red hair cut very short at the nape of her neck, like a Pyxie. The hairdo and her large blue eyes made her look cute and vulnerable. The former was true, the latter absolutely not. She was no more unprepared than my dragon, whose big blue eyes also misled people as to the brains behind the stare. No one made the mistake of crossing either one twice. "My Uncle Bruce just sent over some paperwork. I didn't really expect it . . . but, hey, forget it. Let's start the meeting. I'm going home to visit my mother tonight, and she'll skin me if I'm late for dinner."
"No problem," Aahz said, settling back in the armchair in the corner of the president's office. "There's not much to report on our end."
It was Bunny's new custom to have a group meeting once a week in the M.Y.T.H., Inc., headquarters. Partners and associates working on projects—if it was possible to get away from them—to compare notes and give everyone else a run-down on their progress. Guido and Nunzio, a pair of Mob enforcers who had been sent to me by Don Bruce, had also initially protested the idea of a weekly confab, but only out of loyalty to me and the way I used to run things. I thought it was an intelligent idea and had said so.
Apart from that, I hadn't seen any real moments when the others showed difficulty accepting Bunny as the president. She was, after all, the niece of their former employer. Still, she didn't take their respect for granted, any more than I had. But some of our clients had to adjust their expectations, being shown in to the knockout redhead whom other firms might have had taking appointments behind the front desk. She had only acted as my public interface while I was attempting to be a sole practitioner, and even now I feel foolish having given such a menial job to such a talented person. Bunny had a degree in accounting, a knack for figuring out how things worked, and an eye for style. I appreciated that she didn't hold it against me, and hadn't made me take on a subordinate role once she took charge. I owed her, as I owed all of my friends and partners.
I settled back in the chair that she had picked out for me and tried not to feel jealous as she sat down behind the desk that had been mine for so long. Bunny gave me a look of understanding but without apology. However, I hated her new chair. The back was made of thin wire woven into a big oval and molded so that it stuck forward into the sitter's lower spine. The seat cradled the rear end like a basket. We'd all tried it when the Deveel salesman brought a sample buy. I liked to sit with my legs comfortably
splayed. This chair was made to keep a lady's knees together. Bunny claimed she was very comfortable.
The rest of her—formerly my—office had been redecorated to suit her tastes, sleek and subtle. I admit that my style is more the 'finding it out on the curb' chic, or 'it felt good to sit on.' The walls were a pale shade between tan and pink, with white trim like whipped cream sprayed into curlicues. An oval mirror on a stand opened through extradimensional space Bunny's personal wardrobe, which was extensive, to say the least. It meant she could change into something more formidable if an upcoming meeting demanded it. Objets d'art hung on the walls or stood on plain little pedestals that were elegant in themselves. Her files occupied a tiny box on top of the pristine, pale wood desktop. Usually she kept it cleared of everything but the box, her coffee cup, and Bytina, her PDA, or Perfectly Darling Assistant, a flat roundel of red metal about the size of her palm that kept her notes and sent letters for her.
Across from the desk were a sleek couch and a carved bloodwood chair with needlepoint cushions on the seat and back. Neither piece of furniture invited a long stay, to get clients to come to the point of their visit as swiftly as possible. Her partners weren't expected to use those. On meeting day, Bunny opened yet another hidden closet that she concealed our personal furniture, each item chosen especially by her for us. My chair, as comfortable as a hammock, was covered in a loosely woven cocoa-colored fabric that looked like old sacks but felt soft to the touch. Guido favored a seat that kept him upright, in case he had to spring into action. His chair, made of heavy wood, would have been a great weapon in a fight. It rolled on puffs of magik that allowed it to scoot across the floor. Nunzio liked shiny leather padding. His upholstered chair was the color of oxblood and smelled like money. Tananda's, like Tananda herself, was silken to the touch and tougher than it looked. She sat cradled in its gleaming, golden depths, like an emerald in a ring. I glanced around for the heavy, steel-framed seat with the shaggy brown cover favored by her brother, the Troll. It wasn't against the wall where it usually stood during meetings. "Where's Chumley?" I asked.