The Future Falls Read Online Free PDF

she were going to change it, she already had. If Katie had called and told her to go home to the moment right after she’d hung up, and nothing more, Charlie would have been able to follow the
oom pah pah
of Allie’s reaction out of the Wood. Later, Katie would have told her to do something she’d already done and, for approximately four hours, Charlie would have been in both Calgary and Baltimore.
    Once Charlie knew she hadn’t been with Allie while she was also at O’Connell’s, she couldn’t go and
be
with Allie.
    Being able to exit the Wood at different times had seemed like a kick-ass travel option until it became obvious that fulfilling the parameters was an absolute bitch. Once she’d realized that, Charlie’d let the family know she’d be happy to help with any do-overs, but the person making the request had to work out the details. So far, no one had taken her up on her offer although Auntie Gwen had spent the last three years working on an elaborate plan involving Joss Whedon and a shot-but-never-shown, second season of
Firefly
.
    Having passed the church, Charlie rocked to a stop, stared into the shadows under the trees, and sighed. “It’s not a park, it’s a cemetery.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI need to concentrate now, Katie.”
    â€œStraight home, Charlie. No detours. She refuses to talk about it until you’re here.”
    â€œTalk about what?”
    â€œI don’t know, do I? You decided to go bar hopping.”
    â€œOne bar,” Charlie began, but Katie’d hung up.
    One bar was not bar hopping. Charlie shoved her phone into her pocket. It was
hop
, at best.
    The cemetery was old. Historic even. Shadowed by the church and the office building across from it, the graveyard was distinctly darker than the sidewalk she’d left. Sycamore trees whispered overhead. The storm seemed more imminent here.
    Modern cemeteries weren’t so much cities of the dead as parks filled with inconvenient stone slabs and they usually attracted nothing more dangerous than joggers and dog walkers. The possibility of witnesses—mourners, caretakers, the recently dead—tended to keep thrill seekers and the terminally stupid away. Historic cemeteries, however, with their gnarled trees and high iron fences, time-darkened crypts and worn tombstones, attracted the sort of person who thought burning a few candles and scribbling chalk notations found in musty books bought at library yard sales would have no unforeseen consequences.
    It was possible that this particular historic cemetery, enclosed, private, and urban, had, over the long years of its existence, escaped being visited by those sorts of people. Anything was possible; Charlie knew that better than most people. It was possible that the shadows wrapped around the worn stones were the result of a solid object blocking both starlight and streetlights. It was possible. But it wasn’t very likely.
    She actually didn’t need to go into the cemetery to get home. If she didn’t want to return to the planter—and she didn’t—Baltimore had plenty of other ways into the Wood. Not so long ago, she’d have sketched a charm on the gate to keep people out and figured she’d done her bit to keep the accumulated malevolence from screwing up too many lives. Those who avoided the gates, clambering up and over the wrought iron, would have been looking for trouble so, hey, not her problem if they found it. Making them even less her problem, they wouldn’t have been family. Or a threat to her family.
    Not so long ago, that would’ve been enough. But not-so-long-ago was back before a troll had helped her discover that being a Wild Power in the Gale family meant more than charming strangers and collecting metaphysical frequent flyer miles by taking shortcuts through the Wood. Where
helped
meant
holy fucking shit that hurts.
    As the shadows shifted beyond the gate, Auntie