"Now, let us think our way out of this perplexity. How can you kill me without my suffering any ill effects from the deed?"

““Good thinking,” the tall man agreed. “In this case it’s not true, but it is good thinking.”

“He could have assigned this part of the job to another, but it was not in his conception of his duties to do so. The shorter the chain, the less chance for a broken link.”

“I apologize for asking the obvious, but I have learned in matters magical to always state what I think is happening, because it so often is not what is actually the case at all.”

““Well, what that means is that it doesn’t happen very often. Now it’s happened to one small group of people—us—twice in a short time. That would seem to indicate that,” he ticked a finger, “something’s seriously out of whack in general, or,” he ticked the next finger, “someone’s out to get us in particular; which I feel is quite unlikely. At times in my paranoid past I would have assumed that the Universe is teaming up to get me, but now I’m more objective and I don’t believe that. I think it, but I don’t believe it.”

““My Lord, I am not a superstitious man,” Master Sean said. “Being a sorcerer leaves little room for superstition. A superstitious magician is unable to manipulate symbols properly, and symbolism is a large part of magic.”

“I don’t like eating in the dark. Dimly lit restaurants always make me think they’re trying to hide the food.”