Dragons Deal (49 page)

"
Melinda?
Are you out of your mind? Griffen, stay where you are. I am getting on the next plane down." The phone went dead.

Griffen stared at it, then he pushed the autodial for Val's cell phone. It rang four times, then a perky female voice with a drawl answered.

"I am sorry, but the subscriber you are calling has left the area. Please try again later. Six-three-two." He tried again and again and got the same recording.

Griffen felt the blood drain from his body. Mai had warned him not to trust Melinda, and he had. She had kept her word to him, as far as that word went. But she was the last person he knew Val had been with, and now he couldn't reach her.

Where were they?

ROBERT (LYNN) ASPRIN
, born in 1946, is best known for the Myth Adventures and Phule series. He also edited the groundbreaking Thieves' World anthologies with Lynn Abbey. He died at his home in New Orleans in May 2008.

JODY LYNN NYE
lists her main career activity as "spoiling cats." She lives northwest of Chicago with two of the above and her husband, author and packager Bill Fawcett. She has published more than forty books, including six contemporary fantasies, four SF novels, four novels in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, such as
Crisis on Doona
and
Treaty at Doona
; edited a humorous anthology about mothers,
Don't Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear
; and written over a hundred short stories. Her latest books are
A Forthcoming Wizard
(TOR Books) and
Myth-Fortunes
(Wildside Press), her seventh collaboration with Robert Asprin in the Myth-Adventures series.