"However you want it," he said "That's all I can tell you, and more than I ought to."

I thought about pushing some more, but decided not to.

People back in D.C. are supposed to have good sources; they justify the fancy salaries that come out of your purse and mine by knowing what's going on all over the country and how to find out about it even if the people who are doing it don't want it found out. But I was still moderately graveled that somebody a continent away had picked up on something I hadn't heard the first thing about right in my own backyard "Get the warrant, Dave," Charlie said "We'll go from there, depending on what we learn."

"Right," I said, and hung up. Then I grabbed a sandwich and a cup of coffee at the little cafeteria in the building. They perfectly balanced virtue and vice: they were lousy but cheap. Lousy or not, my stomach stopped growling. I made another phone call.

The phone on the other end must have yammered for quite a while, because I listened to my imp drumming his fingers on the inside of the handset until at last I got an answer: "Hand-of-Glory Press, Judith Ather speaking."

"Hi, Judy - it's Dave."

"Oh, hi, Dave." I thought her voice went from businesslike to warm, but with two phone imps between us I had a hard time being sure. "Sorry I took so long to pick up there. I was in the middle of a tough passage, and I wanted to get to the end of a sentence so I could be sure I wouldn't miss even a single word when I went back to it."

"Don't apologize," I said. "Doing what you do, you have to be careful."

Hand-of-Glory Press, as you'd guess from the name, publishes grimoires of all sorts, from simple ones on carpet maintenance up to the special secret sort with olive-drab covers. Judy's their number one proofreader and copy editor.