Free Ecstasy by Beth Saulnier

before. Drugs are illegal.”
    “Look, Chief, I don’t mean to be disrespectful or anything, but I’ve been here for the past two days, and, well…A lot of this
     stuff seems to be going on pretty much out in the open, but hardly anybody ever gets busted for it.”
    “We arrested three people last year for possession with intent to sell.”
    “Right, but three out of how many?” He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Again, no disrespect, but it definitely seems
     like it’s not in the town’s best interest to bust people. Would you say that’s true?”
    “Now you’re putting words in my mouth,” he said, though he didn’t seem particularly annoyed.
    “I’m just trying to understand the situation.”
    “That makes two of us,” he said. “And that’s off the record.”
    The coroner showed up then, and Stilwell looked plenty relieved to see him. He excused himself and went back to the crime
     scene, and I stood there for a while wondering why he’d spent so much time talking to me in the first place.
    It was pretty obvious that any efforts he made to police Melting Rock were going to be hamstrung by the town, which (as I
     mentioned) is deeply in love with all the cash the festival generates. And though I didn’t know a damn thing about the guy,
     he struck me as one of those men-of-action types who didn’t take kindly to that sort of thing. Admittedly, my perceptions
     might have been colored by the vast hours I spend inside a movie theater. Stilwell, in fact, reminded me of a middle-aged
     Burt Reynolds, mustache and all.
    Once he left, I realized I was, well, starving. I was headed toward the coffee tent when I passed a pale young woman in a
     flowing purple gown, doing some sort of interpretive dance all by her lonesome. I probably should’ve kept walking, but she
     seemed vaguely familiar. I stood there and stared in a way that my mother would have told me was impolite. She had her eyes
     closed, but after a minute she opened them and stared back at me.
    “Wow,” she said. “It’s you.”
    Her voice had an oddly deadpan, distinctive singsong inflection, and I definitely recognized it—though from where, I still
     had no idea.
    “Um…Do I know you?”
    She smiled a sad sort of smile.
    “You know everybody, man. We all know everybody.”
    It was the “man” that jogged my memory. The first (and last) time I’d seen her was a year or so ago, when she and a bunch
     of other local psychics had tried to convince the Gabriel police to let them help in the search for a serial killer. The cops,
     as you can imagine, had been less than inviting.
    “Guinevere, right?” She nodded and kept dancing. I realized she was wearing exactly the same outfit as when we’d met before,
     a medieval robe that put her bosom front and center. “You come to Melting Rock a lot?”
    “Every year, man. Every year.”
    Shocking.
“You like it a lot, huh?”
    “I just live for the Rock, man. Just
live
for it.”
    “Um… Can I ask you something?”
    “Absolutely,” she said. “Knowledge is power.”
    “How come you’re dancing when the music hasn’t even started up again yet?”
    “I’m reading.” The word’s first syllable came out in a long note:
reeee
-ding.
    “Er… Reading what?”
    “The air,” she said, arms waving like snakes above her head. “The wind, the sky, the elements. It’s all there.”
    “What’s all there?”
    “Everything. You just need to know how to listen.”
    “Oh. And, uh, what’re you listening for?”
    She stopped undulating all of a sudden, dropping her arms and looking at me. The expression on her face was dead serious.
     “How many?”
    “Huh?”
    “That’s what I’m asking. How many?”
    “How many what?”
    “How many
boys.
How many will there be?”
    “You mean—”
    “We’ve lost enough already,” she said. “How many more will there be?”
    “Look, I know what happened to Shaun Kirtz is terrible. It’s a total tragedy. But what makes you