“Skeeve!”
“Huh?” I asked, brought suddenly back to the present, as the curvaceous redhead waved a sheaf of small, colorful pasteboards in my face.
“Lookie, lookie!” Bunny squealed.
Skeeve, it said in gold across the middle of the shiny, wine-colored card, without title or other qualification. The Right Answer. By Appointment Only. And at the bottom, in small but unmistakable print: Fee schedule available upon request. That last had been Bunny's idea. As she had always had a much better grasp of business than I had, I acceded. The result was a pretty professional-looking card.
“I like it,” I said. Bunny's shoulders relaxed. “Why are you so surprised? I trust you.”
“I know, Skeeve,” she said, giving me a brilliant smile. “But it still surprises me when someone takes my word for something without hesitating. What do you think? I'm so excited!”
I had to admit I was, too. A new beginning, I hoped. One in which I would give myself the chance I had not before.
If we had decided upon the tent in haste, we more than made up for it in the time we took to work out what my new business was going to be. Every time I thought about the look on my friends' faces when I had said that I was back ... I had gone away for my own goodfor every-one's good, or so I convinced myself. My return had been a spectacular failure, through my own thoughtlessness. No, my lack of insight. I would not make that kind of mis-step again.
“Do you know what, Bunny?” I asked, looking up from the cards. “I've changed my mind. I don't think I want to do this. Let's just go back to the inn. I think I left some-thing on the stove.”
Bunny looked down at me. “After all that discussion after all our planning ...” She paused and looked at me. “You're kidding, aren't you? Thanks for giving me a heart attack. You can't possibly be thinking of backing out now. It's the best possible outlet for you. You know that, don't you?”
I did. The two of us had spent long nights talking it over. I was bored and lonely, and I knew she was, too. We needed to get back into the heart of things. I was never go-ing to be a great wizard, but that was never really how I'd made my name. I was a problem-solver. If I confined my-self to finding solutions to knotty questions for my clients, it wouldn't cut into my friends' business. I gave Bunny a sheepish grin.
“Well. I have to say that I admit to being a little ner-vous. What if I make a mistake out of this, too?” Bunny put an arm over my shoulders and squeezed. "You're not making a mistake. You're going to be
using your talents for the betterment of everyone, and that's what you are good at. How could that be a mistake?"
“Maybe all of you overestimate my talents,” I grum-bled. “We do not. We know what you are capable of and what you're not capable of,” she added.
Taking one of the cards, I looked at the lines again. “I hope I'm not setting myself up for a fall,” I said. “Offering to find exactly the right answer to a client's problem sounds pretty arrogant.”
“I wouldn't worry.” Bunny said brightly. “If the chal-lenge seems too tough, you'll figure out how to solve it eventually. / trust you”
I sighed. It was a heck of a way to come out of my self-imposed retirement.
The impetus had come from a conversation I had had a couple of months before with Big Julie1, who had once been my opponent on the battlefield though never my en-emy. He had come to be a trusted advisor and good friend.
He had asked me why I left M.Y.T.H., Inc., the highly successful and profitable business I had founded with my former mentor and partner, Aahz. I admitted I felt as though I wasn't living up to the hype surrounding me. I thought it would be better if I went away for a while. I felt that I had had to get out from my all-enveloping support
1. Big Julie's advice to Skeeve can be found in Myth-Told Tales, a not-to-be-missed collection of short adventures that any discerning reader must have.
structure and educate myself so I could live up to the hype that I had enjoyed as Skeeve the Magnificent, Magician to Kings and King of Magicians, Businessman and Problem-Solver Extraordinaire. The truth was not so glorious: at the time I had departed, I could do very little magik. Most of what I had accomplished, Big Julie pointed out to me, was by thinkingno, more by feelingout the correct solu-tion to the problem I had been set. He encouraged me to take that talent and run with it.
From the time I had returned to the inn, I had been on fire for the idea of establishing a new business, one in which I helped people, not necessarily with applications of big-time magik, for, as Big Julie pointed out to me, big-time magicians were a dozen to the silver coin, but with the ap-plication of the kind of attention that I had always given problems without really realizing it. It was a natural exten-sion of my instincts. I felt relieved, since I was never going to be a master
