Julian Outis grimaced as he raised his head and squinted at the large spider sitting on the rumpled sheet bunched over his hip. “I know this nightmare. I fall asleep after too much alcohol and lobster; I wake up to a bonehead and a furry tongue. And in between, this.” He frowned and looked around the room curiously with sharper eyes. “But usually there are more of you.”

“Today is the day you are going to kill Miranda,” the Trickster continued, unmoved. “I thought I’d come with you, see what you’re thinking, what your motive is, that kind of thing.”

Wincing, Julian put his head down again. “You’re crass. Talking about murder like breakfast. Have a little sense of the occasion, please.”

“What an interesting creature you are,” the Trickster said cheerfully. “You almost remind me of me . . . if I were more obnoxious. Now get up and get ready. You can tell me your plans along the way.”

Slowly Julian sat up; slowly he shrugged with the indifference of a man accustomed to strange dreams and even stranger happenings. “Could I even stop you? I suppose you’re some strange psychological manifestation of my conscience. Poor thing hasn’t had a lot to do recently. I shouldn’t be surprised it decided to act out in some other way.”

The man was changed. The famous paunch was vastly decreased, taking with it enough body fat that the scaffolding of his face was revealed as surprisingly angular, even under the sag of skin that was wrinkled with worry and more. The Trickster examined him, wondering for a brief, mad moment whether to feel any sympathy. Julian spoke calmly, but his eyes were sunken, the skin around them was shadowed gray, and there was a tremor in his fingers as he pulled aside the bed linens, evidence of more than one night of drunken oblivion. The Trickster laughed. No, there was no need for sympathy here. It would be easy to push him to the point of breaking, and it would be so satisfying to be able to make sport of someone who was so very deserving of it.

Julian got out of bed slowly, holding his torso carefully still and upright as if afraid his head would fall off otherwise, and went into the bathroom. The Trickster unfolded into his human form and lay back on the rumpled sheets. He heard the sound of water running, a few sulky groans that suggested Julian had moved his head too quickly, and the noisier splashing of half-hearted, half-asleep bathing. Finally there was a short silence, then water gurgled down a drain, a long musical sound that so lulled the Trickster that Julian’s sudden yell shocked him wide-eyed.

“What the hell?” Julian sputtered, clutching the waistband of his unfastened trousers with one hand and the open neck of his tunic with the other. “Who are you? Get the hell out of my room!”