Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls Read Free

creature we were dealing with in a place where its magic was still strong, and I had seen the sense in this. “We were working here late because there was a craft festival coming to town in a few days, and it was raining outside.”
    “A heavy rain?” I asked. It was not a trivial detail.
    She hesitated. “Very. I felt something pressing against my wards. Something powerfuland cold and…hungry. I went to the window and looked out, but all I could see was an outline of someone across the street, just standing there in the middle of that downpour and not even seeming to notice.”
    “You guys are freaking me out,” Isaac said uneasily. He was pacing around the room.
    “I had three people working that night,” Sarah continued. “Courtney was one of them. I gave them somethingthat made them go to sleep and called their families and told them that we were pulling an all-nighter. My wards are strong, and I wasn’t letting anyone go out there. I thought there was a pretty good chance that whatever was waiting would go away before dawn.”
    “Did it?” I asked. Another important detail.
    “No,” she said. “But it went away when it stopped raining. I told myself that it wassomething that was just passing through. I wanted to believe it.”
    “Then you had another heavy rain?” I guessed.
    “Yes, but I was here alone that night and nothing happened.” Sarah drew in a deep breath and released it. “It never occurred to me that whatever was out there hadn’t been looking for me. Isn’t that arrogant? And like I said, I wanted to believe that everything was fine. But thenext day I found out that Courtney had disappeared.”
    “You’ve made a good life for yourself here,” I observed. “That’s an admirable thing. It’s not your fault if you’re not used to thinking like a hunter.”
    She batted the comment away like an annoying insect. “This thing’s music leaves some strange kind of psychic echo behind in time and space. I’ve been trying to work out a way to followthe song.”
    “You don’t have to. I already know where Courtney is,” I told her. “But I’m going to need Isaac to get something from the Bonaparte police station for me before we go after her. And you…do you have any naptha?”
    A lot of magical energy is generated from raw belief.  Cunning folk are descended from a long line of shamans, wise women, witch doctors, druids, houngan, and assortedshow-offs who used herb lore, alchemy, and trickery to make people believe in magic. That belief could then be harvested like a crop to make magic real. In other words, the cunning folk didn’t use make-believe miracles, they used make- belief miracles. And cunning folk are nothing if not keepers of lore. As well as canning vegetables, cunning folk extract glow juice from phosphorescent fish.As well as making soap and candles, they make exotic poisons, poultices, and hallucinogens. I’ve yet to meet one of the cunning folk who didn’t have a well-stocked supply of things that burn, dissolve, paralyze, harden, dye, lubricate, intoxicate, and infect.
    Sarah was looking at me warily. “Some rituals involve fire and have to be performed under an open sky at a specific time,and it doesn’t matter if it’s raining or not.”
    I took that as a yes. “Then I’d like to go get Courtney tomorrow morning.”
    “Where is she?” Isaac demanded.
    “Behind a waterfall,” I said.
    *  *  *
    Later that night, Sarah brought me a boxful of Bonaparte Bites. Isaac was off somewhere focusing on a large pie, and I was in the storeroom sketching a crude map on a piece of graph paper. I was basingthe drawing on multiple pictures that I had printed off Sarah’s computer, shots that showed Bonaparte Falls from different angles. I would have preferred to scout out the falls physically, but I knew that the thing we were hunting had senses that were somehow amplified by the presence of water, and I didn’t entirely understand how. The one thing I did know