He rubbed his chin again.

"One thing I WILL say is that I think you're drinkin' at the wrong time ... and I don't mean too early or late in the day. I mean at the wrong time in your life."

"I don't understand," I frowned.

"Ya see, Boss, drinkin' usually acts like a magnifyin' glass. It exaggerates everything. Some people drink trying' to change their mood, but they're kiddin' themselves. It don't work that way. It don't change what is, it emphasizes it. If you drink when you're happy, then you get REAL happy. Know what I mean? But if you drink when you're down, then you get REAL down, REAL fast."

He gave another heavy sigh.

"Now, you've been goin' through some rough times lately, and have some tough decisions to make. To me, that's not a real good time to be drinkin'. What you need right now is a clear head. What you DON'T need is somethin' to exaggerate any doubts you've got about yourself or your judgment."

It was my turn to rub my chin thoughtfully.

"That makes sense" I said. "Thanks, Nunzio."

"Hey. I just had an idea," he said brightly, apparently buoyed by his success. "There's a real easy way to tell if you're drinkin' too much. Just lay off the sauce for a while. Then see if there's any big change in your thinkin' or judgment. If there is, then you know it's time to back off. Of course, if you find out that quittin' is harder than you thought, then you'll have another signal that you've got trouble."

A part of me bristled at the thought of having to ease up on my drinking, but I fought it down ... along with my flash of fear at what that bristling might imply.

"Okay, Nunzio," I said. "I'll do it. Thanks again. I appreciate how hard that was for you."

"Don't mention it, Boss. Glad I could help you."

He reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder in a rare display of comradeship.

"Personally, I don't think you have that much to worry about. If you've got a drinkin' problem, it's marginal at best. I mean, it's not like you've been blackin' out or anything."

Chapter Twelve:

"Let's see the instant replay on that!"

H. COSSELL

"HEY PARTNER! How's it going?"

I had been heading back toward my room with the vague thought of getting a little more sleep. The hail from Aahz, however, reduced my odds of success noticeably.

"Hi Aahz" I said, turning toward him. That put the sun in my eyes, so I stepped back slightly to find some shade.

He drew up close to me and peered at me carefully. I, in turn, tried my best to look relaxed and puzzled.

Finally he nodded to himself.

"You look okay," he declared.

"Shouldn't I?" I said, innocently.

"I heard you had quite a time last night," he explained, shooting me another sidelong glance.

"Thought I'd better look you up and survey the damage. I'll admit you seem to have weathered the storm well enough. Resilience of youth, I guess."

"Maybe the reports were exaggerated," I suggested hopefully.

"Not bloody likely," he snorted. "Chumley said he saw you and your date when you rolled back into the castle and, as you know, if anything, he's prone to understatement."

I nodded mutely. When he wasn't in his working persona of Big Crunch, the troll was remarkably accurate in his reports and observations.

"Whatever," Aahz waved. "Like I say, you seem to have survived pretty well."

I managed a weak smile.

"How about a Hair of the dog? A quick drink to perk you up," he suggested. "Com'on partner. My treat. We'll duck into town for a change of pace."

A moment's reflection was all it took to realize that a stroll through the town around the castle sounded good. Real good if Bunny was on the warpath.

"Okay, Aahz. You're on," I said. "But as to the hair of the dog ... I'll stick to regular stuff if you don't mind. I had enough of strange drinks last night."

He gave off one of those choking noises he used to make during my days as an apprentice when I said something really dumb, but when I glanced at him, there wasn't a trace of a smile.

"Aren't you forgetting something, partner?" he said without looking at me.

"What?"

"If we're heading out among the common folk, a disguise spell would be nice."

He was right of course. Even though I was used to seeing him as he actually was, a Pervect with green scales and yellow eyes, the average citizen of Possiltum still tended to react to his appearance with horror and fear ... which is to say much the same way I reacted when I first met him.

"Sorry, Aahz."

Closing my eyes, I quickly made the necessary adjustments. Manipulating his image with my mind, I made him look like an ordinary castle guard. If anything, I made him a bit more scrawny and undernourished than average. I mean, the idea was not to intimidate people, wasn't it?

Aahz didn't even bother checking his reflection in any of the windows we passed. He seemed much more interested in prying details of my date out of me.

"Where did you find to go on this backwater dimension, anyway?" he said.

"Oh, we didn't stick around here," I said loftily. "We ducked over to Limbo. Cassandra knew a couple clubs there and we ..."

I suddenly noticed Aahz was no longer walking beside me. Looking back, I realized he had stopped in his tracks. His mouth was working, but no sound came out.

"Limbo?" he managed at last. "You went bar crawling on Limbo? Excuse me, partner, but I was under the impression we were persona non grata in that neck of the woods."

"I was a little worried at first," I admitted casually, which was only a little lie. As you'll recall, I had been a LOT worried. "Cassandra said she could blip us back out fast if there was any trouble, though, so I figured what the heck. As it turned out, nobody seems to be holding a grudge there. In fact, it seems I'm ... I mean, we're ... minor celebrities over there. That's partly why the evening ran as long as it did. Half the people we ran into wanted to buy me a drink for putting one over on the local council."

"Is that a fact?" Aahz said darkly, starting to move again. "Just who is this Cassandra person, anyway? She doesn't exactly sound like a local."

"She's not," I confirmed. "Vie set me up with her. She's a friend of his."

"Nice to know he didn't set you up with an enemy," my partner quipped. Still in all, it seems to me . , ."

He broke off and did another double take.

"Wait a minute. Vie? The same vampire Vie that you hang around with over at the Bazaar? You mean this Cassandra babe is ..."

"A vampire," I said with a careless shrug. The truth was, I was starting to get a bit of a kick out of shocking Aahz. "Oh, she's okay. No one you'd want to take home to mother, but ... what's wrong?"

He was craning his head around to peer at my neck from different angles.

"Just checking for bite marks," he said.

"Com'on, Aahz. There wasn't any danger of that. She was drinking her blood out of a glass last night."

"Those weren't the kind of bite marks I was checking for," he grinned. "Vamps have a rep of being pretty wild women."

"Um ... speaking of destinations," I said eager to change the subject, "where are we going?"

"No place special," my partner said. "These local bars and inns are pretty much all the same. This one should do us fine."

With that, he veered through the door of the place we were passing, leaving me to follow along behind.

The inn was refreshingly ordinary compared to what I could remember of the surreal clubs I had been to on Limbo. Ordinary, and more than a little dull.

Dark wooden tables and chairs were the main feature of the decor, with occasional candles scattered here and there to supplement the light which streamed in through windows and the open door.