Free Trio of Sorcery by Mercedes Lackey

that help themselves.’ You know? And even when it’s done with good intentions, how ethical is it to toy with peoples’ feelings about the ones they’ve lost? How ethical is it to give them false contact? I think it’s immoral, personally. Even Houdini said that he had to stop proving to people that mediums were phony by working the same tricks, then revealing he wasn’t a medium and showing them the trick. He saw that they’d have such hope, such happiness to think they were in contact with a loved one before he pulled the reveal. And even though they learned not to get tricked by mediums again, fooling with their feelings like that was a crime.”
    â€œSo what about the bad mediums?” Em asked the question that Di wanted to, and Di silently blessed her for it. “I mean, what is it that they do that has you so riled up? If someone wants to waste money getting their palm read, is that so bad?”
    Marshal’s homely face darkened. “I’d like to string them up by their thumbs,” he growled. “They’re parasites. They’re worse than—than—Nixon! Worse than the Mafia. They give people hope, and rob them blind, and it’s all a lie.” He leaned forward earnestly. “Look, there’s all kinds of scams. Some mediums, they research you, or get someone to do it for them, and then they use stage magic to make you think that they’re actually bringing in ghosts. These days, they’ll have microphone pickups in the waitingrooms, have a stooge in there pretending to be another client who’s there to dig for information. Sometimes they’ll make you leave everything in the waiting room and the stooge will go through purses and coat pockets. Then, wow, you get in the dark room, and there’s stuff floating around, there’s noises, you might even see the dead person! But what you’re seeing is a projection of a photocopy of the photo they got out of your wallet. And the rest, that’s all sleight of hand, escape tricks, even some of the kinds of special effects you see in stage shows.”
    He spent a lot of time explaining how some of that stage magic worked—levitation, misdirection, table tapping and tilting, the “medium” managing to get free of the restraints put on him. In theory, Di knew how these things worked, but not the mechanics, and it was fascinating. To be honest, it made her admire stage magicians even more. So far as she was concerned, knowing how something was done didn’t bother her—in fact, knowing how a trick was worked was only going to increase her appreciation of the skill involved in making it “invisible.”
    â€œHoudini spent a big chunk of his time showing these crooks up for what they were and you’d think by now no one would believe in them, but they’re worse than ever. Like cockroaches. You stomp on one, but there’s a zillion under the cabinets.”
    He finished his beer with a frown. Di prompted him into describing some of the ways that Houdini and others had caught the phonies, and took a lot of mental notes.
    â€œThose are the old-style mediums. A lot of times these days the mediums and psychics do away with the stage magic—hell, most of ’em don’t have the skills to pull it off anyway—and just concentrate on hot readings.”
    â€œWhat’s a hot reading?” Zaak asked.
    â€œWhat I told you about earlier. They get their information way in advance. Most of these people talk to each other, okay? They swap files. It’s to their advantage to cooperate with each other. So you get tired of going to Madame Zuzu, and decide you want to visit Psychic Clarabell instead, well, Clarabell is going to call up Zuzu, offer to split the take, and get Zuzu’s file on you, and when you walk in thinking she knows nothing about you, bingo! What amazing revelations! How could she know these things?” He snorted.