Flamboyant had been an understatement. Stitz looked more like a character from a play than anyone who wore a padded doublet made of maroon and green velvet and embroidered with gold thread. He was short, perhaps five feet, five inches, with a long, equine face. His hair was short and completely white, and Chuck realized he was wearing a wig.

Meg had Scorpion pointed at the newcomer in less time than it took Chuck to blink. "Don't you dare move," she said.

"I wouldn't dream of it, darling." Stitz's eyes darted toward the bathrooms on his right. Thwack! A bolt jutted from the doorframe, not three inches from Stitz's right ear.

"Next one finds your eye."

Slowly, Stitz raised his hands, though his face contorted in anger as he spoke. "You don't know who you're messing with," he hissed. His narrowed eyes moved to Chuck. "Who are you, boyo? You let her rope you into this?"

Before Chuck could answer, Meg waved Scorpion. "We're going to have a little chat. Perhaps you'd like to escort us to the back room?"

Stitz was silent, and Chuck saw Meg's finger tense on Scorpion's trigger as she readied another shot. "Fine! Your funeral. We'll go in the back." He nodded to John. "I still want those pierogis. You can bring them back when they're ready. See that we're not disturbed."

He turned and headed to the backroom, and Meg followed. Before Chuck trailed after her, he took a small camera from his pocket and set it on one of the tables. From his other pocket, he removed a foldable screen.

"Stay in sight of this camera," he said. "You leave the frame or try anything funny, I'll know about it." He waved the screen, which now showed a video feed of the bar.

John didn't say anything one way or the other, but Chuck had spoken his piece, so he followed Meg and Stitz to the back room, one eye on the screen.

The back room at Gooski's had a stage on one side with speakers and a drum kit. In the middle of the room was a scuffed pool table with several metal folding chairs around it. The felt that covered the table was more chipped and pocked than the green at a low-budget golf course. A metal door at the back of the room led to an alley behind the bar.

With a sigh, Stitz collapsed into one of the metal folding chairs. "You're here about the pills, aren't you? I assume you took one. You wouldn't have been able to make a shot like that by yourself."

Chuck found it nice to dispense with pretense. Strangely enough, he found himself liking Stitz.

Meg stood near one corner of the room where she could cover both doors with Scorpion. "Give the man a prize!" she said. "When we first met, I thought you were part of the Chef's gang. I broke into that house looking for his operations. But then I found... well, you know what we found."

Stitz snorted. "You're talking about Lavrian? We couldn't be more different. I'm a satyr. He's a gargoyle. I'm quiet and stay under the radar. He's loud and seemingly insistent on bringing us unwanted attention." He shook his head in disbelief. "I thought you were part of the Council. You're not, are you?"

Chuck, who'd been quiet until this point, couldn't stop himself from speaking. "You're a what?"

Slowly, he took off his wig. "No, you're not with the Council," he said, more to himself than Chuck or Meg. "You're just children. No one is going to believe anything you say." Beneath the wig, Chuck saw an unruly mop of brown hair and... donkey ears. The wig had kept them down, but now they sprang straight up, twitching as if to ward off an annoying fly. "I've got hooves beneath my pants if you want to see them." He reached into his mouth and removed a set of false teeth. Beneath them, his real teeth were squat and square like a horse's. "I won't even make you pay."

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"Uh, Meg?" Chuck said. He felt faint. A talking dog was one thing, but this... There were only so many strange things he could handle in a day.

Meg looked curiously at Stitz. "I thought there was something strange about you," she said. "Did you take one of the pills, too? Get yourself cursed?"

Stitz looked pained. "Ugh. Count on humans to show their bad breeding. Every time! But I suppose you can't be blamed." Before they could ask him what he was talking about, he waved a dismissive hand and said, "Let me put it this way. There's a whole world you don't know about beneath your feet. It's home to all kinds of creatures from your storybooks--satyrs included. Some humans know about it, but most don't, and we like to keep it that way. We're bound by law to keep it that way. We stay down there, humans stay up here, and everyone is happy. There's a lot of money to be made in running goods from one world to the other, so some... enterprising individuals choose to ignore the law. We call ourselves the Right People."

Meg nodded. "You're smugglers."

"We prefer the term 'runners' in the business, but you've got the gist. Business is good. Or, was good--until the Chef showed up. He's an ugly, bloodthirsty type of monster called a gargoyle. Doesn't give a lick about business; he just wants flesh, the more, the better, and your world has that in abundance."

Chuck didn't want to take his eyes off the strange creature before him but quickly glanced at his screen. John stood behind it, making Stitz's pierogis.

"He's not trafficking women," Meg whispered as Chuck looked back at the satyr. "He's eating them."

Stitz shrugged. "Yeah, well, I don't like it either. The body that enforces the separation between your world and mine is called the Council, and that's who I thought you worked with the last time we met. But you're just human kids, which means the Council hasn't found the Chef yet. And I don't want to tell them, because it would blow my cover. See?"

"Yeah."

"A few humans know about my world," Stitz continued. "Most of them attend one of the big magical schools... uh, you've got them spread throughout your major cities if you didn't know. The human schools work with the Council to ensure laws are kept. A woman at one of those schools owed me a... favor, let's call it, and she was paying me back with those pills. Then you found them, yada yada, and here we are."

On the screen, John finished making the pierogis. He slid them onto a plate and started toward the back room.

"What about him?" Chuck asked, pointing to the screen. "Is he a satyr, too?"

Stitz glanced over at him. "John? No, baby, he's a thrall. Just a regular guy I've charmed to do my bidding. He won't remember a thing when I'm done with him. Though I might have to find a new thrall soon... with how John smokes, he'll die of lung cancer before the end of the year." Stitz shivered. "Nasty things, those firesticks. Ah, here's the angel himself."

John shuffled into the room, set the plate of pierogis and a fork in front of Stitz, and left the way he'd come. Stitz lifted the fork and dug in.

"A shame," he said around a mouthful of food. "The best cook I've ever enchanted." He swallowed and twirled the fork. "Oh my goodness--I'm being rude. Did you want anything?"

Meg shook her head. "We're good, thanks. Back to the story--what more can you tell us about the pills?"

Stitz took another bite. "Don't you want a bit of mystery? No? Fine. Well, if you'd gone to one of the magical schools, you'd have learned about the different types of magic that suffuse the world. The way I've heard it described that makes sense to your woefully inadequate human intellects is that magic is like a radio wave--it flows through the air around you, and you can tune into the right frequency. Different types of magic have different frequencies. For instance, if you want to shoot fire, tap the elemental. If you want to read minds, you tap the mental. I'm no scholar, and it's a curious fact of human biology that you need help opening your mana channels. The pills were a way to do that more quickly than the traditional training methods, which typically take a few years."

Chuck jumped in. "Do the effects wear off?"

Stitz snorted. "Honey! Once you're gone, you can never go back. You're magic now."

Magic. It was everything Chuck had ever wanted. Still, something wasn't sitting right with him. "Why are you telling us all this? Aren't you scared of that group you mentioned? The Council?"

Stitz grinned. "Bah. If I feared the Council, I wouldn't be in this line of work. When they catch me, I... roll over, and they leave me alone. Too many members owe me too many favors. No, it's not the Council I fear--it's the Chef. Gargoyles are territorial. Lavrian will want this whole region for himself, but I've spent the last decade setting up quite a network here. Satyrs live much longer than humans, though that's still an investment, and I can't abandon it. Which brings me to my point." He swallowed another pierogi. "Gargoyles are bad news. The worst news, other than a beli'ezel showing up, but they don't have the intellect for the journey. We each want Lavrian gone, but I can't kill him alone, especially not without blowing my cover. But you?" His eyes twinkled. "You can kill the Chef, and I can help."