"I can now," I told the old goat with relish. "Pheola told you she was a healer. Well, she healed me a ... a couple days ago!"

He went for the jugular: "Have you ever done anything like that before, Pheola?" he demanded.

"Mostly small ailin'," she said, squinting and backing away from his desk defensively. "Never nothin' as big as findin' the weak spot in Billy Joe's haid. But I told you I had the power of prophecy and the gift of healin'."

I suppose her degree of humility decided him. "She can stay," Maragon said. "Look into this healing thing, Lefty. But, for the love of Mike, don't waste time with her precognition."

Pheola moaned, then keened, and waved her hands in front of her face, as if to ward off a swarm of bees. "My healin' won't do you much good, you nasty old man!" she said in a shrill voice. "You'll git a pain, sich a pain," she insisted, pressing her hand to her heart. "It will like to kill you, and it nearly will!"

Maragon laughed at her again. "A young witch!" he proclaimed. "I'll bet you scared half of Posthole County into fits with dark remarks like that. Take her away, Lefty!"

Pheola didn't break her silence until I showed her into the apartment adjoining mine in the Chapter House. The Lodge Building is a hundred stories high, and most of it is devoted to offices that we rent out to doctors, lawyers and the like. We only use a part of the place—there just aren't that many Psis around—and save a few floors for apartments for members permanently assigned, as I am, to Lodge duties.

Pheola stood stiff and unseeing in the apartment, her fists clenched at her sides, plainly in no shape to appreciate her rooms. They were in the usual good taste I always associate with a Psi decorator.

"How could I let you down, Billy Joe!" she said to me, as soon as the door to the corridor had closed behind us.

"Oh, stop it!" I snapped, giving her a shake. "Weren't you ever wrong in a prophecy before?"

She squinted to see me better. "Does it make you hate me?" she asked. "Yes, I've been wrong lots of times," she admitted. "But not about marryin' you. How does he know I'm wrong?"

"He doesn't," I growled. "He just doesn't believe in precognition. What little we see of it in the Lodge is so erratic that you can't count it as a proven Psi power."

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