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stomach.
    “You’re often worried about things,” I said carefully. Half of being a good psychic, I’ve learned, is not to freak people out by letting them know exactly how much you can see about them. “You can get very stressed.”
    “That’s true,” whispered Beth. She sounded close to tears. “But, Willow, what I really need to know about is —”
    “Don’t tell me,” I interrupted. “Let me find out for myself.” She fell silent. I did, too, waiting to see what images would follow.
    It was the last thing in the universe I ever would have expected.
    The Beth in my mind’s eye stopped beside a stream; it was a favorite spot. She sank onto her haunches and idly stirred the cool, clear water with one manicured finger.
It doesn’t matter about my GPA,
she tried to tell herself.
In fact, I’ve heard that some colleges like it if you don’t do perfectly, because it shows that you’re better rounded or something —
    Her thoughts broke off as the stream caught fire. Only it wasn’t fire at all; it was light: a bright, hot light that blazed suddenly across the water, dancing on the ripples. Beth looked up with a gasp  . . .  and saw an angel.
    I could feel my own shock rising, and I pushed it down, just letting the images come as they would. The angel stood on the opposite bank, a beautiful winged being of light.
Radiant.
That was the word that Beth kept thinking.
    It was gazing at her with an expression of great tenderness. “Don’t be afraid,” it said, and it came toward her, not even stirring the water with its robes.
    I opened my eyes in a daze. “You  . . .  saw an angel,” I said.
    “Yes!”
cried Beth, leaning forward. Her fingers clutched mine. “Oh, Willow, I really did. It was real — I know it! It came right up to me, and it put its hands on my head, and I felt such — such
peace
. I suddenly realized that none of it matters, not my grades or school or
anything
that I thought was so important before!”
    This all came out in a wild burst. Beth’s eyes were intense, fervent. I started to say something else and then stopped.
    The truth was I didn’t know what to say. Were angels real, then? I had never thought so, but then I’d never been very much into religion — probably because so many of the churches around here were the type that held revivals in giant tents and regarded psychics as spawns of Satan. My mind raced. Had Beth only imagined what she’d seen? Maybe she’d cracked under all the self-imposed strain, so that she needed to believe in an angel to make herself feel better.
    But that didn’t seem right somehow. Even if I was only experiencing all of this secondhand, through Beth, the angel in her memory had felt real.
    I swallowed. “OK, well  . . .  let me see what else I can get.” I closed my eyes again. Beth’s fingers were tense now, almost quivering with anticipation.
    The angel had cradled her head for a long time. A feeling of immense peace had come over her. Yet there was something else there, too. I frowned, trying to put my finger on it. A
draining
. The touch had felt wonderful, but had also left Beth so weak that when the angel finally departed, she could barely make it home again.
    Had her condition been physical or just emotional? I couldn’t really tell; she was trying not to remember that part. She had gone back to the stream every day since, hoping that the angel would return. And frequently, it had. The images became confused in places; sometimes I was seeing an angel and sometimes a man with the angel’s face. Through it all, I could sense Beth’s joy, her wonder  . . .  a swirling of energies as the angel touched her. Unease shivered through me. What
was
this thing, anyway?
    “You’ve seen the angel several times now,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “I’m also seeing a man with the angel’s face.”
    “Yes, that’s him,” said Beth. Her voice was soft, ardent, like a prayer. “Angels can do that — they