“Yes, I know,” she said, with a wide smile. “You are Skeeve the Magnificent. We are so pleased to have you at our resort!”
We all looked at one another.
“I told you this smelled fishy,” Aahz said. “Didn’t Servis tell us that the cup got onto the list by accident? And suddenly there are five other cups just like it floating around for just anyone to find?”
“Yeah,” Markie said, her eyes narrowing. “He must be working with that girl.”
“Not necessarily,” I said, automatically. I realized what I had said, and clamped my mouth shut for a moment to think. “Yes, you’re probably right. It makes sense that they are working together. Unless . . .”
“Unless what?” Bunny asked.
“Unless both of them are working separately for Looie. She might have more magik at her command, but he can get the whole population of the resort to work for him just by making a game out of it.”
“And we fell for it,” Tananda said. “Good thinking, tiger!”
Bunny moaned.
“The cup was here all the time,” I pointed out. “Why couldn’t he take it out of the Rusty Hinge by himself?”
“Perhaps he didn’t know where it was,” Chumley suggested.
“With their magik and resources?” Aahz scoffed. “That seems a stretch.”
“What about it?” I asked Grays and Fayva. “If one of you wanted to, er, borrow something that was on display in an inn, wouldn’t you just go get it?”
Both females looked at me aghast.
“No, sir! Employees are not permitted to take any items from one venue to another,” Fayva explained.
“It gets too confusing when we have to sort it all out,” added Grays.
“What about guests?” I asked.
“Oh, they can move anything they wish,” Fayva assured us. “Winslow is a place to enjoy yourself! If you really want to take all the mugs out of the Rusty Hinge, please go ahead!”
“So he was waiting for us to bring it here so he could steal it,” Aahz said. “I like the way this guy thinks.”
“That still doesn’t give us a cup to bring to Looie,” Bunny pointed out. “How do we get it back?”
The two girls looked at one another.
“We don’t know where he went,” they said. “You should put in a special request at the Central Help Desk.”
“We already did that!” I yelped.
“Come on, kid,” Aahz said, hooking me by the collar. “Let’s go rattle some cages.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“It’s all about motivation.”
—D. CARNEGIE
“I can’t believe we had the Loving Cup in our hands and let it get away!” Bunny exclaimed.
I kept my gaze fixed on the path in front of me. I didn’t want to say out loud that it was Bunny’s determination to win the extra hundred gold pieces that had given Servis the opportunity to take it from us. I knew she was thinking that anyhow. All of us were.
Turista was on night duty when we reached the round building in the middle of town. No one was in line, so we went right up to the desk. She put her task aside and waited for us with a pleased smile.
“How nice to see you and congratulations on your win, Mr. Skeeve, Miss Bunny, Mr. . . . !”
“Can the roll call,” Aahz said, sharply. Turista nodded.
“What can I do for you?”
“You already know we won the Scavenger Hunt,” I said. “So you probably also know that the Loving Cup was part of the hunt. We found it, but it vanished along with the other items. We want it back now.”
“Of course, sir!” she said. “I will send a request to the Activities Department right away.” She pulled a blank scroll from the air and wrote on it with her blue pen. It vanished out of her hands. A moment later, a parchment appeared above the desk. It dropped into her waiting palms. She unrolled it and read. A tiny wrinkle appeared between her brows. “Oh, dear. This is most unprecedented.”
“What is?” Bunny asked.
Turista turned a woeful face to us.
“All of the items have disappeared! The judges looked them over, as they always do, but when they returned from giving the prizes, the collections were gone!”
“Servis stole them,” I said. Turista looked shocked.
“Servis? That’s not possible! He’s one of our most reliable and willing employees. Everyone trusts him!”
Aahz looked grim.
“Sounds like the perfect setup for an inside job,” he said. “So what are you going to do about it?”
Turista pulled her shoulders back.
“We will do our utmost for you, sir,” she said. “We will search night and day! We will find the cup and get it to you as soon as we possibly can!”
“Where’s Servis now?” I asked. “Can you find him for us?”
She reached into the air for a small golden crystal ball.
“He’s not on duty at the moment.”
Aahz was quick to jump on her phrase.
“Was he on duty during the award ceremony?”
“Well, no . . .”
“Where is he?”
Turista gave him a bland but pleasant smile.
“I’m not at liberty to give you that information, Mr. Aahz. But I promise you inquiries will be made.”
We left the round building. As soon as we were out of range of its satisfaction spell, my mood fell.
“We can’t do anything else tonight,” I said. “Let’s go back to the suite.”
Bunny protested. “Maybe we ought to check out and pop back to the tent in Deva,” she said. “Is there any sense in running up the bill by staying extra nights here?”
“If we leave they might stop looking for the cup,” Aahz said. “At least one of us has to stay here. Customer service only holds good as long as we’re customers.”
Bunny’s eyes flew wide.
“Oh! I didn’t think of that. One of you stay. I’ll go back to Deva. Or should I be the one to remain here?”
“Skeeve made the request, so he’s probably the one the management will monitor. But I don’t like having him stay here alone. Miss Fast-Wand might decide to toss him a dozen dimensions away if she spots him. We don’t know what form the next attack will take. We’ve all got a stake in keeping Skeeve safe. So we might as well all stay.”
I could see Bunny making calculations in her head.
“Come on,” I said, taking her hand. “I bet your new room is a dozen times nicer than the one you had before. Let’s go see.” I started to walk. Bunny followed me reluctantly.
“Well, all right,” she said.
Her hand felt tense in mine. Her preoccupation with money had been preying on my mind for some time. I could tell most of the others felt the same way. A series of glances went back and forth between us as we walked along the torchlit path. At the end of the corridor in the round building, Bunny put her hand on the knob of her new room.
“We’ll get a fresh start in the morning,” she said. “I am so tired. Good night!”
“Not just yet,” Tananda said, smoothly moving in and putting an arm around her. “Come and have a drink with us. There are plenty of seats in our room, and a fully stocked liquor shelf.”
“But . . .” Bunny protested.
Gleep interposed himself between her and the door.
“Gleep!” he exclaimed. He licked her on the cheek, making her close her eyes. While she was wiping her face, Tananda towed her up the hallway and into the rooms she shared with her brother.
Open doors led to the two opulent bedrooms to either side of a luxurious common area. I could tell that this suite had been especially designed for visitors from Trollia. The lighting was soft, almost seductive. All the surfaces were comfortably padded, including the floor. The green carpet, beneath thick, velvety pile,
was like walking on spongy forest moss. Most of the heavily upholstered furniture was in a mix of purple and green shades. Tananda all but pushed Bunny into a deep violet chair. The padding exhaled as she sank into it. Bunny struggled for a moment to get free of its enveloping embrace, then collapsed, defeated. I perched on a soft-topped footstool next to her. The others sat down close to us.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
“Talk about what?” Bunny asked, her tone so bright it was brittle. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
I raised my hands and let them fall.
“All right, then. If you won’t, I will. The rest of us have been worried about you. We’ve been losing out on little jobs to other businesses who’ve been undercutting us. That’s no big deal. I haven’t been around that long, but long enough to know that the pendulum eventually swings back. Once customers see that you really do get what you pay for, we’ll get all the work we can handle, and more, just like we always did. We may even end up outsourcing to some of the people who underbid us. But not for the important stuff. Those, no one can do as well as we can. Looie’s job looked pretty easy from the outset, and it should have been. It was a straightforward task to locate one magikal cup and bring it back to him. He was paying outrageous coin to get it. If I’d made the deal instead of Aahz, I might have charged him less.”
“Up until you met him, what?” Chumley asked. “Unpleasant little wart.”
Aahz smiled. So did I.
“Aahz was right, of course. But we took the job, which meant we had an obligation to complete it.”
“We still will,” Bunny said. She looked as if she wanted to run away, but she couldn’t get out of that chair without help or magik.
“And we could have, this afternoon, even before dinner, if we hadn’t gotten sidetracked by the Scavenger Hunt. We would never have fallen for a simple trick like that if your eyes weren’t fixed on the bottom line instead of the outcome. You’ve been grabbing for big income instead of jobs that no one else could do. This one has been a waste of our talents. It would have been great to visit this place on a real vacation instead of all of us hanging out here waiting for someone else to do the work.”
“That’s not true!” Bunny said. “If all it took to get the cup was to ask the Central Help Desk for it, then Looie wouldn’t have hired a plethora of treasure hunters.”
“Looie didn’t know about that service or he would have used it himself,” I pointed out. “He’s cheap, but he’s busy with the negotiations at home. He doesn’t have time to get into the small details, or stay pending a thorough search. That’s why he hired us.”
“But we failed!” Bunny cried.
“So far,” Haroon said.
“Not really,” Aahz said. “Not until you decided we had to get the prize money on top of our fee. Two hundred gold pieces would set up a Klahdish family for more than a year. Yeah, we deal in big numbers. We have a lot of overhead. We live well, better than some kings I’ve known. But you sacrificed the catch. Once Skeeve came back with the cup, why didn’t we just go back to Mishpaka and cash in?”
Bunny looked at her knees. Tananda rose like a butterfly and glided to the polished maroon wood cabinet against the wall. She returned with a glass and a bottle of clear liquor and poured a generous tot for Bunny.
“Drink it,” she said. “I insist. We’ve all had a hard day.”
We waited until Bunny took several sips. She began to relax.
“You going to tell us, or let Skeeve keep speculating about it?” Aahz asked.
“About what, Aahz?” Bunny asked, wearing her sweetest smile.
“About why you let us keep working for Looie. He’s a small-timer. It’d be a good paycheck, sure, but we’ve had better. We also like taking on missions for good people, but I doubt that he ought to keep his job, when he’s relying on one piece of hardware to do all the work for him. He proved he’s no diplomat. He ran through a good hunk of the treasury to get back an item that if he was good at negotiation he might have gotten for a fraction of what we charged him—and if he was good at negotiation, he wouldn’t need a powerful item like the Loving Cup. So, what’s really on your mind?”
“Nothing,” Bunny said. “I don’t know why you keep asking me.”
“I don’t buy that,” I said. “We’re your friends. We know you pretty well after all this time, I think. You’ve been worried about money for a while. If I had a hundredth as much money back on Klah as we sit on casually, I’d be a king. Even Hemlock doesn’t have the kind of disposable income we’ve got at our fingertips. Something else is bothering you, too. When your cousin Sylvia comes in, you get defensive and nervous. That’s not like you. You’ve handled worse situations.”
“It’s because she’s family,” Bunny said. “She’s always been a little difficult. But Uncle Bruce trusts her, so I have to put up with her little surprise visits. She reports back to him.”
“But you’re his favorite,” I said. Her expression changed just a little, and I felt enlightenment hit me like a bucket of cold water. “Oh, I see.”
“See what?” Tanda asked.
“Don Bruce,” I said. “Am I right, Bunny?”
She didn’t look at me.
“Yes.”
I turned to the others. “Don Bruce wants to groom Bunny to take over the Mob if he, well, retires. He’s been checking up on her a lot lately. He must be thinking about having her come home to stay.”
“But that would mean she would leave M.Y.T.H., Inc.!” Tananda said. Bunny nodded. “I thought he liked us. If you were doing a great job for us, he wouldn’t make you come home.”
“He does like us,” Aahz said. “And we’ll always come a distant sixteenth to his own interests.”
“That’s why she’s been pushing to up our income,” I said. I turned back to her. “You want the bottom line to look as big as possible. If you’re indispensable to our business, you can stay.”
“If I don’t, then he’ll recall me,” Bunny said, big tears standing in her blue eyes. “I didn’t really know what to expect when he sent me to you as a gift. I thought being your moll would be just like any other part of the Family, but it’s been different. You didn’t impose any expectations on me. With all of you I don’t have to fit a mold. I don’t have to wear tight clothes. I don’t have to pretend to be stupid. I can be . . .”
“. . . You,” I finished for her.
Tananda sat down on the arm of the chair and put her hand on Bunny’s shoulder.
“I don’t see what the problem is. You’re an adult. You’re free to do whatever you want to do.”
“I say, no, Little Sis, she’s not,” Chumley put in. “It’s a matter of culture. Don Bruce is a powerful man in many ways. He even made life a bit hot for us, what? We deal with him on a basis of mutual respect. It is not up to us to decide on whom he picks as an heir, or interfere directly in the workings of the Mob, any more than we would welcome his input on our way of doing business. The Family’s structure is as important to its survival as are its rapacious greed and disregard for the lives of others. Bunny is an impressive organizer. She has kept our disparate personalities functioning together like the proverbial well-oiled machine. She would be a truly great Don.”
“But I don’t want to be the Don!” Bunny said. “It doesn’t have to be me! Sylvia would love to take over from Uncle Bruce.”
I shuddered. “I would be afraid to work for her.”
“I bet most of the Mob feel the same way,” Aahz said. “And Don Bruce probably knows it. That’s why he wants you.”
“Can’t you tell him to choose someone else?” Tananda asked.
“Not really,” Bunny said. “Questioning his word makes him vulnerable in the eyes of his subordinates. I can’t do that to him. All I can do is look too valuable where I am. That’s why I wanted to show him substantial growth from quarter to quarter
.” She looked down into her cup. “I nudged the entries a little to make our income look higher last quarter, but there wasn’t enough wiggle room this time. We might even show a slight loss. That’s why when Aahz came to us with this job, I jumped at it. I had no idea that a simple retrieving job would throw everyone into danger. And I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. Easy money never is easy. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“All right,” I said, dashing my fist into my palm. “Then we’ll finish the job for Looie and collect. There’s no way I’m going to let Don Bruce take Bunny away from us.”
“Hear, hear!” Chumley said, bustling over to the liquor cabinet. “Drinks for the house! A toast to keeping our happy company together.”
I accepted a glass with alacrity.
“I will drink to that,” I said. I toasted Bunny. “You’re our president. I know we can keep it that way.”
Bunny beamed at us and raised her glass in turn. “I wouldn’t want Uncle Bruce to hear me say it, but you’re the Family I always wished I had.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“What could possibly go wrong . . . go wrong . . . go wrong . . . ?”
—THAT CRUISE LINE
The next day had me feeling more optimistic than I had the night before. We had had the cup in our hands once. We could find it again. I broached my plan over breakfast under the shade of a circle of palm trees near our suite building.
“Haroon can help us locate the Loving Cup,” I said. “We all touched it. He’d know the scent if he came across it again.”
“Sure would, young fellah,” the Canidian said. “Let me give you all a good ol’ smellin’ ’fore we set out, and I’ll have it fixed in my mind. Y’all come with me, and we’ll track that fancy goblet down before too long.”
“We need to find Servis before Looie comes back,” Bunny said. “I’ll look for him. If he still has the cup, I’m going to take it away from him.”
“We’ll help,” Tananda said, with a glance at her brother. “If you do find him, you don’t want him to give you the slip again. He must know we’re onto him.”
Robert Asprin's Myth-Fits Page 16
