"Not a chance, Sweetheart," Guido snarled. "I'm not goin' to let the Boss out of my sight with you around."
"… besides which, I've got a few things to tell you myself," Massha added, "like what I think of folks who think frames look better on people than on paintings."
The girl's eyes never left mine. For all her bravado, I thought I could detect in their depths an appeal for help.
"Please," she said softly.
I fought a brief skirmish in my mind, and, as usual, common sense lost.
"All right."
"WHAT! C'mon, Boss. You can't let her get you alone! If her pals are around…"
"Hot Stuff, if I have to sit on you. you aren't going to…"
"Look!" I said, wrenching my eyes away from the girl to confront my mutinous staff. "We'll only go a few steps down the road there, in plain sight. If anything happens you'll be able to pitch in before it gets serious."
"But…"
"… and you certainly can't think she's going to jump me. I mean, it's a cinch she isn't carrying any concealed weapons."
That was a fact. She had changed outfits since the last time I saw her, probably to fit in more with the exotic garb favored by the party-loving vampires. She was wearing what I've heard referred to as a "tank top" which left her midsection and navel delightfully exposed, and the open-sided skirt (if you can call two flaps of cloth that) showed her legs up past her hips. If she had a weapon with her, she had swallowed it. Either that, or…
I dragged my thoughts back to the argument.
"The fact of the matter is that she isn't going to talk in front of a crowd. Now, am I going to get a chance to hear another viewpoint about what's going on, or are we going to keep groping around for information with Aahz's life hanging in the balance?"
My staff fell silent and exchanged glances, each waiting for the other to risk the next blast.
"Well, okay," Massha agreed at last. "But watch yourself, Hot Stuff. Remember, poison can come in pretty bottles."
So, under the ever-watchful glares of my assistants, I retired a few steps down the road for my first words alone with…
"Say, what is your name, anyway?"
"Hmmm? Oh. I'm Luanna. Say, thanks for backing me up. That's a pretty mean-looking crew you hang around with. I had heard you had a following, but I hadn't realized how nasty they were."
"Oh, they're okay once you get to know them. If you worked with them on a day-to-day basis, you'd find out that they… heck, none of us are really as dangerous or effective as the publicity hype cuts us out to be."
I was suddenly aware of her eyes on me. Her expression was strange… sort of a bitter half-smile.
"I've always heard that really powerful people tended to understate what they can do, that they don't have to brag. I never really believed it until now."
I really didn't know what to say to that. I mean, my reputation had gotten big enough that I was starting to get used to being recognized and talked about at the Bazaar, but what she was displaying was neither fear nor envy. Among my own set of friends, admiration or praise was always carefully hidden within our own brand of rough humor or teasing. Faced with the undiluted form of the same thing, I was at a loss as to how to respond. "Ummm, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?"
Her expression fell and she dropped her eyes.
"This is so embarrassing. Please be patient with me, Skeeve… is it all right if I call you Skeeve? I haven't had much experience with saying 'I'm sorry'… heck, I haven't had much experience with people at all. Just partners and pigeons. Now that I'm here, I really don't know what to say."
"Why don't we start at the beginning?" I wanted to ease her discomfort. "Did you really swindle the Deveels back at the Bazaar?"
Luanna nodded slowly without raising her eyes.
"That's what we do. Matt and me. That and running, even though I think sometimes we're better at running than working scams. Maybe if we were better at conning people, we wouldn't get so much practice at running."
Her words thudded at me like a padded hammer. I had wanted very badly to hear that she was innocent and that it had all been a mistake. I mean, she was so pretty, so sweet, I would have bet my life that she was innocent, yet here she was openly admitting her guilt to me.
"But why?" I managed at last. "I mean, how did you get involved in swindling people to begin with?"
Her soft shoulders rose and fell in a helpless shrug.
"I don't know. It seemed like a good idea when Matt first explained it to me. I was dying to get away from the farm, but I didn't know how to do anything but farm work for a living… until Matt explained to me how easy it was to get money away from people by playing on their greed. 'Promise them something for nothing,' he said, 'or for so little that they think they're swindling you.' When he put it that way, it didn't seem so bad. It was more a matter of being smart enough to trick people who thought they were taking advantage of you."
"… by selling them magical items that weren't." I finished for her. "Tell me, why didn't you just go into the magic trade for real?"
Her head came up, and I caught a quick flash of fire in her sad blue eyes.
"We didn't know any magic, so we had to fake it. You probably can't understand that, since you're the real McCoy. I knew that the first time I saw you at Possletum. We were going to try to fake our way into the Court Magician spot until you showed up and flashed a bit of real magic at the crown. Even Matt had to admit that we were outclassed, and we kind of faded back before anyone asked us to show what we could do. I think it was then that I…"
She broke off, giving me a startled, guilty look as if she had been about to say something she shouldn't.
"Go on," I urged, my curiosity piqued.
"It's nothing, really," she said hastily. "Now it's your turn. Since I've told you my story, maybe you won't mind me asking how you got started as a magician."
That set me back a bit. Like her, I had been raised on a farm. I had run away, though, planning to seek my fortune as a master thief, and it was only my chance meeting with my old teacher Garkin and eventually Aahz that had diverted my career goals toward magic. In hindsight, my motives were not discernibly better than hers, but I didn't want to admit it just now. I kind of liked the way she looked at me while laboring under the illusion that I was someone noble and special.
"That's too long a tale to go into just now," I said brusquely. "There are still a few more answers I'd like from you. How come you used our place as a getaway route from Deva?"
"Oh, that was Vic's idea. We teamed up with him just before we started working our con at the Bazaar. When it looked like the scam was starting to turn sour, he said he knew a way-off dimension that no one would be watching. Matt and I didn't even know it was your place until your doorman asked if we were there to see you. Matt was so scared about having to tangle with you that he wanted to forget the whole thing and find another way out, but Vic showed us the door and it looked so easy we just went along with him."
"Of course, it never occurred to you that we'd get stuck with the job of trying to bring you back."
"You better believe it occurred to us. I mean, we didn't think you'd have to do it. We expected you'd be mad at us for getting you involved and come after us yourself. Vic kept saying that we shouldn't worry, that if you found us here in Limbo he could fix it so you wouldn't be able to take us back. I didn't know he was thinking about setting up a frame until he sprang it on your partner."
I tried to let this console me, but it didn't work.
"I notice that once you found out that Aahz was being framed, you still went along with it."
"Well… I didn't want to, but Vic kept saying that if you two were as good as everyone said, that your partner could get out of jail by himself. We figured that he'd escape before the execution, but with the whole dimension hunting him as a fugitive that he'd be too busy running for home to bother about catching us."