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began.
    â€œI’m not asking you to help with the case,” the cop said, and finally produced his badge and ID, flushing. “Well, not directly. This would be strictly off the books.” He handed her the badge and ID to look over, and shifted his weight to the other foot. “If you can, I’d like you to give me a hand with Chris, Melanie’s mother. Some creep of a so-called ‘psychic’ got to Chris Fitzhugh and now we can’t get anything out of her but ‘Tamara says’ this and ‘Tamara says’ that and ‘Did you look into Tamara’s leads yet?’”
    â€œHas she been asking for money?” Diana asked, cautiously examining the ID. Joe O’Brian. Well, it lookedgenuine, and his very being did shout “cop”; she handed it back and he shoved it in his pocket again. “The psychic, I mean. That’s what they usually want.”
    â€œNo, which is why we can’t get Bunko on it.” O’Brian looked incredibly frustrated. “You’d think she was one of God’s own saints, to hear Chris rave about her. I just…” He shook his head. “It’s making us crazy.”
    She refrained from commenting.
    â€œHer husband too. This Tamara is the only person that Chris is listening to, she’s not even talking to him anymore.” Joe ran his hand through his hair, disturbing it from its “regulation” comb. “If you can just prove she’s a phony, I mean prove it in a way that Chris can’t help but believe—”
    Di shook her head. “I don’t know. You’re talking about someone who is desperate, and this psychic is giving her answers of the sort she wants to hear. That’s like arguing with someone’s religion. I mean, using only empirical evidence I can prove that half the saints in the Catholic calendar either never existed or were nothing like the legends—”
    Joe flushed again. Ha. With a name like O’Brian, I figured he was Catholic.
    â€œBut that means nothing to what people believe, and belief is impossible to budge until people are ready, on their own, to hear the facts. Sometimes that never happens.” It certainly had never happened with Memaw’s bête noire .
    He grimaced. “Would you at least check this chick out? See what she’s all about? Find out if she’s working an angle so we can shove a stick in her spokes?”
    Clearly he was not going to go away until she said yes. He had the look of a man on a mission.
    Okay. What can it hurt? Maybe I can find out an angle that Bunko can get her on.
    â€œI’ll go have a look at her, but no promises,” Di replied. “And she had better be on a bus line, because I have no car. And it won’t be right away. I have classes.”
    It was quite clear that Joe wasn’t paying any attention to anything after yes. The tightness in his face eased, as if he had gotten some terrible burden off his back. “Here’s her card, Chris shoves these at us by the handful,” he said, sounding immensely relieved. “And here’s mine. And thank you—”
    â€œDon’t thank me until I come up with something,” she replied a little sourly. She let him babble on for a little more, until he finally got the hint and said goodbye. She closed the door feeling…odd.
    Very tingly, antsy, oh-crap-something-is-up sort of odd. Storm-about-to-break odd.
    Oh, hell. Guardian odd.
    She looked at the psychic’s card, but this time whispered the mage-sight spell and waited as her vision of the world settled into a new configuration.
    The card changed in mage-sight, and it was not a goodchange. It was haloed in a very, very nasty black aura with greenish edges.
    She looked at the other card O’Brian had given her.
    Oh, double hell. To mage-sight, the cop’s card was over-laid with a red crusader’s cross. It was a legitimate Call.
    â€œI do not need