"Everything? Did you say everything?"

"Everything.. including your sweet adorable self."

"I don't understand, lady. Are you saying you want to buy my store?"

"Not the store, just what's in it. I'm thinkin' this place could do better in a new location. Truthfully now, how has business been going for you lately?"

The owner tossed his pad and pencil back onto the counter.

"Honestly? Not so hot. My main supplier for this junk just raised his prices . . . something about a new union in his factory. I either gotta raise my prices, which won't help, since this stuff is hard enough to move as it is, or go out of business, which I've seriously been considering."

I thought it would be best not to comment on the union he'd mentioned.

"You don't think a new location would help?"

"New location ... big deal! This is the Bazaar at Deva, lady. One row of shops is like any other for pedestrian traffic. On any one of those rows you can find better stuff than I got to sell."

This was turnin' out ta be even better than I had hoped.

"Just suppose," I said, "just suppose the new location was in a hotel, and suppose that hotel had a casino and disco. That would give you a captive clientele, since n.o.body wants ta leave the building and wander around to find somethin' they can buy right where they are."

"A hotel and casino, eh? I dunno, though. Junk is still junk."

"Not if you had an exclusive to print the name of the place on everythin' you sell. Junk with a name on it is souvenirs, and folks expect ta pay more for them. Right?"

The proprietor was startin' ta get excited.

"That's right! You got a place like this, lady? How much ya asking for rent?"

"Minimal, with a piece of the action goin' ta the house. How does that sound?"

"How much floor s.p.a.ce do you have available? If I can expand, I can get a volume discount from my supplier and still raise my prices. Say, do you have a printer lined up yet?"

"Hadn't really thought about it."

"Good. I got a brother-in-law who does good work cheap . . . fast, too. How about a restaurant? All those folks gotta eat."

Now that was one that had slipped by both Vic and me.

"A restaurant?"

". . .'Cause if you don't, I know a guy who's been looking to move his deli since they raised the rent on the place he's got."

I had a feelin' my problems with the storefronts was solved.

"This is the pits, you know?"

"How about that? The Pitts?"

"No. How about the Funny Farm?"

"Uh-uh. The Snake Pit?"

"Will you get off pits?"

"Well, then, how about ..."

What we finally settled on was The Fun House. Our judgment was influenced a bit by the fact that I managed to locate a down-at-the-heels carnival. We let 'em set up on our grounds, and they gave us our pick of their displays for decorations.

The best of the lot was the outsized figures they had on top of their rides . . . and particularly The Fun House. These figures were of bein's from all over the dimensions and were animated to move their arms and heads while hidden speakers went "Ho Ho Ho" at pa.s.sersby. I thought they were terrific and had them installed all over the outside of the hotel. . . except for the Fat Lady. Her I had installed in the men's John off the lobby.

Once we had that, the rest of the decorations fell into place. There wasn't much we could do to make the shape of the building excitin', so I had it painted with wide stripes ... like a circus tent, only with more colors.

Vic did the disco, and it was a beaut. He did the whole place in black: floors, walls, ceiling, furniture, everything. He also attached chairs and tables to the walls and ceiling at different angles with life-sized dummies in evening attire. The overall effect was one of disorientation, so that when the band was goin' and the lights flashin', you weren't really sure which way was up. To add to the effect, the dance floor was slanted a bit and rotated slowly. It was like bein' suspended in s.p.a.ce and bein' buffeted by cosmic winds and gravity at the same time. He even named the club "The Pit" in appreciation of me and to apologize for comin' down so hard on the name when I suggested it for the hotel.

The casino was all mine, and I decided ta go for broke. I found a painter with a sense of humor, and we did the place in camouflage . . . except instead of usin' greens and browns, we leaned heavy on the basic colors in day-glo shades. For a crownin' touch, we s.p.a.ced mirrors all around the place, but we used the distortion mirrors from the carnival Fun House. This not only gave the place the illusion of bein' larger, but when the customers glanced at themselves in the mirrors, they had the same kind of meltin' lines as the decor. It definitely raised questions in the mind as to exactly which reality we were operatin' in.

Vic was afraid the impact of the whole operation was a bit bright, but I argued that the whole idea was ta stand out from the crowd and let people know we were there. I did, however, unbend enough to agree that we should have Skeeve on hand for our meetin' with Hysterium the night before our opening. I mean, negotiatin' never was my strong suit, and I had no idea how the client was going to react to our rather innovative ideas.

"You've ruined me! That's what you've done! Ruined me!"

That was our client speakin'. You may guess from the sound of it that he was less than pleased with our work. When you realize that that was how he was soundin' after we had spent an hour calmin' him down, you've got an idea of exactly how unhappy he was.

"I'm not sure I understand what your problem is, Mr. Hysterium," Vic said. "If you have a complaint . . ."

"A complaint?" the Deveel shrieked. "I wouldn't know where to start! What did you people think you were doing, anyway?"

"We were tumin' your dump into a profit-makin' hotel. That's what we were supposed to do."

I was tryin' to stay out of this 'cause a my temper, but I had to get a word or two in here somewhere.

"A hotel? A hotel? This isn't a hotel! What I left you with was a hotel! What I came back to is a sideshow! And what do you mean by profitable? All the rooms on the first floor are gone! That cuts my rental earnings by twenty percent!"

"Twenty percent of an empty hotel is still nothing!" I shot back.

"Ma.s.sha's right," Vic said, stepping between us. "We needed that s.p.a.ce for attractions to draw in some customers. Besides, everything we put in there generates revenues for the hotel."

"Not if they don't sell anything!" Hysterium argued. "Have you been in any of those places? Have you seen the junk they're selling? And the prices . . . they're charging more for a cup of coffee in that club you put in than I'm used to paying for a whole meal!"

"Not everybody eats as cheap as you do," I muttered under my breath.

"What?"

"I said you stand ta clear a heap when they do ... sell stuff to the customers, that is."

"But there aren't going to be any . . . Ohhh! I'm ruined!"

The Deveel sank into a chair and hid his face in his hands.

"Of course, if you had wanted design approval, you should have stayed around. As it was, Ma.s.sha and Vic had no recourse but to use their own judgment." That was Skeeve speakin' from his chair in the comer. So far, he hadn't done much more than listen to the rantings.

"Stayed around?" Hysterium's head came up with a snap. "They made me go! They said I'd have to trust them if I wanted to use your outfit's services."

"Precisely," Skeeve nodded, changin' tactics without batting an eye. "You wanted our services, you trusted us, and we serviced you. I don't see what the complaint is."

"What the complaint is, is that you charged me an arm and a leg ... in advance ... to put me out of business! If I had lost money on a regular hotel it would have been bad enough, but to lose money and be made a laughing-stock to boot. . . ." There were tears formin' in the developer's eyes. "That was my wife's family money I invested. I could turn a profit if I only had the capital, I told them. Now ..."

His voice broke and his head sank again.

"If that's the only problem, maybe we can work something out."

"Forget it! Cutting your fee wouldn't help. I need to make money, not lose less."

"Actually, I was thinking more of taking the hotel off your hands. Buying it outright."

I shot a glance at Skeeve. He was leanin' back in his chair studyin' the ceiling.

"Are you serious?" the Deveel said hopefully.

"Why not? That way you turn a profit of ... say, fifteen percent over cost? ... for the building and land, and making the place work, much less dealing with its reputation, will be our problem. That's what we agreed to do in the first place . . . sort of."

Hysterium was on his feet pumpin' Skeeve's hand almost before the Prez had stopped talkin'.

"I'll tell you, Skeeve . . . Mr. Skeeve . . . you're, a real gent. This is terrific! Just when I thought... I can't tell you how much I appreciate ..."

"Don't mention it," Skeeve said, retrievin' his hand. "Why don't you go on over to my office right now? My secretary is still there. Just explain everything to her, and she'll start drawing up the papers. I want to have a few words with my agents, then I'll be along to sign off on the deal."

"On my way," the Deveel waved. "Gee. I can't get over ..."

"Now, you realize, of course, we don't have that kind of cash on hand. We'll have to give a down payment and arrange some kind of payment schedule."

"Fine. Fine. As long we get a contract guaranteeing my profit."

Then he was gone, leavin' us ta stare at each other in silence. Finally, Skeeve gathered us up with his eyes.

"The placed is booked solid?" he said, confirmin' what we had told him in our debriefing.

"... For three weeks, with a waiting list for cancellations," Vic confirmed. "We're taking reservations for as much as a year and a half in advance."

"... And Hysterium doesn't know?"

"He never asked, and we never got the chance to tell him," I shrugged. "You saw how he was."

Skeeve nodded thoughtfully.

"That means, if my calculations are correct, we'll be able to pay him off in full in less than three months . . . not including the take from the casino and the shops."

He rose and stretched, then gave us a wink.

"C'mon, you two," he said. "I think I'll invest an arm and a leg and buy you both a drink!"

Chapter Four:.

"If you're too busy to help your friends, you're too busy!"

-L. IACOCCA.

ACTUALLY, I WASN'T all that wild over The Fun House. I mean, it was making us money hand over fist, but I somehow never figured on owning a hotel/casino. In particular, I didn't think it was a good idea to set the precedent of buying out dissatisfied customers, no matter how profitable the deal turned out to be. As it was, Hysterium's relatives (on his wife's side) were trying to get the deal invalidated on the basis that he must have been out of his mind, or at least not in his right mind, to sell such a lucrative business at the price he did. I wasn't particularly worried, as this was still the Bazaar at Deva, and if everyone who signed off on a bad deal here was declared insane, the economy would collapse.

The part that really bothered me about the deal was that it meant a.s.sociating with the Geek again. In past dealings with him, he had consistently proven to be primarily concerned with lining his own pockets without much regard for anyone else, and I felt it was dangerous to place him in a position where he had such temptingly easy access to our money, or even a piece of it.

Still, I couldn't argue with Ma.s.sha's logic in including him in the scheme, and at the time she approached him she had no idea he was going to end up reporting to us. Bunny a.s.sured me that she was personally auditing the financial reports for the casino that the Geek turned in along with our share of the take, but I found that in spite of that I tended to spend inordinate amounts of time studying the spreadsheets myself, half expecting to find some indication that he was somehow skimming a little off the top for his personal accounts.

That's what I was doing this particular afternoon, setting aside the countless letters and ch.o.r.es that were pressing on my time to take one more pa.s.s at auditing the Geek's financial reports. Bunny had told me once that a hefty percentage of accountants and financial a.n.a.lysts operated more out of spite than from any instinctive or learned insight. That is, rather than detecting that there's anything wrong from the figures they study, they single out some 'department that's been giving them grief or a manager who made snide comments about them at the company party, then go over their reports very carefully. She maintains that anyone's reports will come up flawed or suspicious if reviewed closely enough.

That may well be, if one is a skilled numbers cruncher. All I discovered was that prolonged periods of time spent staring at rows of little numbers are a pain . . . literally and figuratively. Specifically, after a few hours hunched over the reports, I was feeling cramps and stabbing pain in my eyes, my neck, my back, and regions lower.

Leaning back to ease the strain and stretching a bit, my eye fell on the pencil I had tossed down on my desk from disgust and frustration. With a smirk, I reached out with my mind, grabbed it, and flipped it into the air. What do magicians do when they get bored or depressed? Tinker around with magik, natch!

Remember once upon a time when I used to sweat and groan to levitate a feather? Well, those days are long gone. Nothing like a few years of using the basics like levitation to save your skin to increase one's confidence . . . and, as Aahz always told me, confidence is the key to magik.

I took the pencil up to the ceiling, paused, then took it on a tour of the room, stopping cold at each corner to give it a right-angle turn. I realized I was humming a little tune under my breath as I put it through its paces, so I brought it down over the desk and started using it like a conductor's baton, cueing the drums and the horns as the tune built.

"Nice to see you're keeping your hand in."

I glanced over at the door, and discovered my old mentor leaning against the frame watching me work.

"Hi, Aahz," I said, keeping the pencil moving smoothly. "Well, things have been so busy I haven't had much time to practice, but I do still turn a spell now and then."

As offhand as I sounded, I was secretly very pleased that the pencil hadn't wavered when Aahz surprised me. Not breaking concentration on a spell, or, rather, maintaining a spell once concentration was broken, had been one of the harder lessons Aahz had taught me, and I thought I finally had it down pat. I only hoped he noticed.

"Got a few minutes for your old partner?"

"Sure, pull up a chair."

I decided it would be rude to keep playing with the pencil while I was talking to Aahz, so I brought it down to where I could pluck it smoothly from the air as I leaned forward. Aahz didn't seem to notice, though. He was craning his neck slightly to look at the papers scattered across my desk.

"What's all this?"

"Oh, just going over the financials from The Fun House. I still don't trust the Geek completely."

Aahz settled back in his chair and c.o.c.ked his head at me.