FizzZAP!!

A lightning bolt snaked through a crack in the door, barely missing my head. Little lower, and I would have been fried. Even the tough, green-scaled hide that every Pervect is born with wasn't enough to make me immune to fire.

This was starting to get serious! I thought they would give up when the two blue plug-uglies realized they couldn't simply break the door of our tent down, but now they were turning to magik. Who would have guessed the scrawny management type with them was a magician!

I smelled smoke and realized the lightning bolt had set fire to my favorite armchair. Trying to control my temper, I reviewed my options. I could wait them out and let them waste their firepower until they got bored, or I could open the door and tear the three of them into little quivering scraps.

At the moment, I was favoring the second choice. I had really liked that armchair.

Bill collectors! I never thought one would come here, to M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s old headquarters in the Bazaar at Deva. Not one of my erstwhile companions was profligate with money; we're all too smart to stiff a creditor and had plenty of cash to pay their bills anyhow. Of all people, the least likely to attract unwanted attention over money was my ex-partner Skeeve. Yet the trio on the other side of the flap insisted he'd run up bills and stiffed the vendors.

"I say, Aahz," a deep voice beside me intoned.

"Chumley!" I said, spinning around. "You scared me out of a century's growth."

"So sorry! Doing a spot of interior decorating?" Chumley asked, nodding toward the burning recliner.

Purple-furred and possessed of a pair of moon-colored eyes of odd sizes, the Troll stood head, shoulders, and half a chest higher than I did.

"That smoke is bad for the paintings on the walls, what?"

"Don't tell me," I growled. "Tell the three bill collectors outside."

"Bill collectors?"

The Troll's shaggy brows drew down slightly. His brutish appearance was at odds with his natural flair for intellectual discourse, a typical misconception about the male denizens of the dimension of Trollia from which he hailed. Trolls deliberately concealed their intelligence, so as not to overwhelm beings in other dimensions who couldn't handle facing both mental and physical superiority at the same time. Chumley did good business as freelance hired muscle under the nom de guerre of Big Crunch.

"An error, surely?"

"Sure must be," I agreed. "They come from a place they call The Mall, on Flibber. They're looking for Skeeve. They say he skipped out on a big fat bill."

"Never!" Chumley said, flatly. "Skeeve's honesty and sense of fair play would never allow him to do such a thing. I've seen them demonstrated in many an instance when he had a choice to make between profit and the right thing, and he has inevitably chosen to do the right thing."

I scowled. Skeeve had let plenty of profit go by the wayside for some pretty outlandish reasons, not all of which I understood, though I had supported him.

"That's what I thought. Ever heard of this Mall?"

"Not I. Shopping is little sister's purview, what?"

The door behind me shook. They weren't going to get through that door with anything less than antiballistic missiles, and I hoped that the Merchants Association that ran the Bazaar would notice before they rolled up a launcher. Chumley threw his not-inconsiderable weight against the flap with mine, and it stopped quivering.

You may ask how a mere tent could withstand magikal attacks. To start with, most of the tents in the Bazaar were built to hold out against a certain amount of magik, but our place was special even here. It might look like a humble and narrow marquee on the outside, but behind the entrance was a spacious luxury villa occupying a large wad of extradimensional space. In other words, as a guy I used to know put it, it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. My unwanted guests couldn't burn the place down or blow it up. For a spell to cross that dimensional barrier would take a lot more firepower than these guys could ever be capable of summoning up, but the interface that allowed us to walk out of the door that bridged the gap had to remain fairly permeable, hence my current problem. Except for back door into the host dimension, Blut, home of vampires and werewolves—a dimension, by the way, that had once tried to have me executed on trumped-up charges—the only way to walk out was obstructed.

"They're looking for 150,000 gold pieces," I said, with some irritation.

"A princely sum! You are certain that Skeeve couldn't have incurred the debt?"

"Pretty positive," I said carefully.

I hadn't been hanging around with him myself for some months. It was a painful subject, but Chumley knew that.

"Tananda's been with him for the last several weeks, on Wuh. She popped out of here a minute ago, headed for Trollia. You just missed her."

"Oh, blast," Chumley said. The door flap responded with an inward thump, and we shoved ourselves against it again. "I came here looking for her, don't you know. Mums sent me here to get her. The redecoration of the home hearth has reached a stage where our dear mater wishes another female's point of view on choices of color and texture. Still, there is a silver lining to the cloud: I shall be glad to miss the resulting arguments."

"Go back when the shooting stops, huh?" I deduced.

"Quite right," the Troll agreed. "By the way, if it began as a mere fact-finding enterprise on the part of our adversaries outside, how did this situation escalate to our present state of hostilities?" He nodded toward the door.

"I have no idea," I said, innocently. "They asked me where Skeeve is, and I flat out refused to tell them. Then they got upset. They threatened to ruin his reputation as a deadbeat, and I offered what I thought were polite and well-thought-out reasons why they shouldn't."

"I see."

Chumley must have run through the scenario in his head. If he imagined a terse argument that got progressively louder and ended up with the two toughs who flanked the shrimp with the clipboard reaching into their bulging tunics in a sort of weapon-drawing way, he would have pretty much captured the sequence of events. We've known each other for a long time, and he was more than familiar with my temper.

"They are mistaken, of course?"

"Positive. Besides, this ain't his style. They read me a list of things Skeeve's supposed to have bought, like Trag-fur coats, a skeet-shooting outfit, a twelve-string guitar that was supposed to have been owned by some famous bard, and just about everything that'd be behind Door #3."

I paused and shook my head.

"It's not what Skeeve would splash out on. A home for destitute cats, yes. Fifty percent of a casino, yes. A bucket of luxury goods adding up to a small kingdom's entire GNP? I don't think so. And besides, Skeeve never spends money he doesn't have. It's not like him. The signature they produced on some bills looks like his, but I am sure it's a fake. For one thing, it said 'Skeeve the Magnificent.' Even when the kid got a big head he usually saved the fancy titles to impress kingdom officials. I mean, he's surprised me a bunch of times in the last few months, but there's too many inconsistencies in this even for a Klahd."

"Then it behooves us, don't you think," Chumley said, "to find out who has run up this bill in his name?"

I glimpsed the D-hopper on the table where I'd set it down. It had been a gift from Skeeve, sent via Tanda, completely unexpected but totally within the character of the kid's sometimes foolishly generous nature.

"You bet it does!" I announced fiercely. "Nobody messes with my pa—ex-partner without having me to answer to. His reputation is worth more than any little bill, or any honking big bill, either. What are you doing this afternoon? I could use some backup."