Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls by Elliott James Page A

one of those restless people who always have to be doing something; the fact that I was the only person who could see him or hear him had been rough on both of us for the last couple of days.
    I restrained myself from wondering out loud if his hatred of reading was the result of being a dumbass or the cause of it. Unlike Isaac, I was good at waiting, and I knew that if I ignoredhim long enough, he would get bored and drift off to eavesdrop on other customers. And he did.
    Not too long after that, Sarah White came over to the table. She had been working around ovens all morning and was dressed lightly in a sleeveless lilac-colored top and a white muslin skirt. Her hair was done up in a ponytail and her skin was slightly flushed. She looked lovely.
    Sarah was alsowearing a cross around her neck, ankhs in her earlobes, and matching rings that had the Tree of Life worked in silver. I would be willing to bet that if she ever described herself on one of those dating sites, she would say “Spiritual but not religious.” Charms dangled from her bracelet, and probably not just decorative ones.
    “What have you brought into my home?” she demanded without preamble.
    I put down the book. “Someone who needs your help.”
    She pulled her own chair out and sat down. “You must be in some really big trouble to come in here pulling this quiet and respectful act. Are bad things going to follow you to my door, knight?”
    I looked around us. None of the people at the neighboring tables had even looked at her. “Can we talk privately?”
    Sarah waved her hand dismissively.“This is my place of power. No one is going to eavesdrop on us.”
    She wasn’t showing off—she was giving me a warning. Sarah had called me a knight because she thought I was one of the people who make a point of keeping beings like her in line, and I could see why she thought that. I move like a knight. I am in peak physical condition like a knight. More to the point, when she tried to seeme with her second sight, nobody was taking her calls on the psychic hotline. The same geas that compels knights to do their duty keeps any other kind of mind magic from getting a toehold. It is one of the reasons knights of my former order are feared by the shadow world: They cannot be possessed, charmed, warded, cursed, predicted, or beguiled.
    This fact was also where my family had gottenits unusual last name. I come from a long line of witch finders and enchantment breakers, and my name is Charming. John Charming.
    In any case, I had stopped being a knight when I became the same sort of creature I hunt. I didn’t see any point in telling Sarah White all of that, though. I was still geas driven, and the same magic that kept her from seeing me with her second sight also concealedthe wolf.
    “I’m not in trouble, Miss White,” I said, nodding at Isaac. The idiot was across the diner, scrunching up his nose and sticking his head through the middle of a table and making pig noises while a chunky man in a T-shirt and shorts shoveled some kind of pie in his mouth. “He is.”
    Sarah didn’t take her eyes off me. “You are the only knight who has ever called me Miss.”
    I sighed.“Look, if you need to call me a jackbooted thug or something, go ahead and get it out of your system. But I came here to ask for your help, not demand it.”
    “So if I tell you to leave, you’ll leave?” she asked skeptically.
    I gave her a lopsided smile. “Eventually.”
    She shook her head in disbelief. “Why would you be different?”
    Sarah was one of the cunning folk. She wasn’t going to stop askinguntil I gave her an honest answer, and maybe not then. “Failure and loss.”
    Sarah was still looking at my face. “I believe that.”
    “I also—” I began, but Isaac picked that moment to sit back down at the table.
    “You didn’t tell me she was hot,” he admonished me.
    It was the first time since we walked into the bakery that Sarah looked at Isaac as if doubting he was