The mercenary finished his coffee in a single gulp, It must have been piping hot, too. Boy, he was tough.

Believe me, I know all about bottle acoustics. I spent much of the sixth century in an old sesame oil jar, corked with wax, bobbing about in the Red Sea. No one heard my hollers. In the end an old fisherman set me free, by which time I was desperate enough to grant him several wishes. I erupted out in the form of a smoking giant, did a few lightning bolts, and bent to ask him his desire. Poor old boy had dropped dead of a heart attack. There should be a moral there, but for the life of me I can't see one.

The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized. the boy watched them disappear under the hanging white thatch of hair. There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment, before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight.

The column hung above the middle of the pentacle, bubbling ever upward against the ceiling like the cloud of an erupting volcanoe. There was a barely perceptible pause. Then two yellow staring eyes materialized in the heart of the smoke. Hey, it was his first time. I wanted to scare him. And it did, too.

When I was young, I kept a diary for about 10 years and I had to write in it every day. Even on days when nothing seemed to happen, I made myself think of something to put in it.

He was a worried man (I'm stretching the term a bit here, I know. By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When seen from behind. At a distance. On a very dark night).

That's usuаllу hоw thеу start, thе young оnеs. Meaningless waffle.