Quentin Bouvier, a magician and possibly a reincarnated Egyptian pharoah, has been hanged from the rafters. Stolen from his room was an extremely valuable antique tarot card. Clearly, someone at the convention was responsible for the murder and the theft. Giacamo Bernardi, a tarot reader, is under arrest, but his public defender hires Joshua Croft to prove his innocence. His investigation introduces Croft to a new side of Santa Suspects include astrologers and psychics, a young hermit immersed in and "Spiritual Alchemy, and " an aging movie star who acts as medium for an entity from Alpha Centauri, a Native American shaman who gets accountants in touch with the warrior within, and a ravishing, mysterious Asian woman whose equally mysterious brother displays a near-lethal familiarity with martial arts. Danger lurks beneath the placid surface of psychic serenity, and the closer Croft gets to a solution, the more he risks entering another dimension a little sooner than he planned.