Free The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff

about a hundred meters from a red-roofed building in the middle of an acre or so of mowed lawn. She could smell the ocean, but given that Cape Breton had more coastline than the interior geography could account for, that didn’t give her much of a clue. Recent rain had stopped, but the cloud cover was still too thick for her to even pick up a direction from the sun.
    “Guess we’ll do it the easy way then.” Guitar stowed safely back in the bag, she crossed the wet grass to the sign.
    “Celtic Music Interpretive Center. Wednesday Ceilidhs 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM, five dollar admission. July 27th starts the Samhradh Ceol Feill.” Charlie traced a charm over the sign and the letters rearranged. “Ah, Summer Music Festival. Makes sense. And as today is July 27th, the only question remaining is, where’s . . .”
    “Chuck! Where the hell did you arrive from? If you hitched over from the airport, I’m going to slap you silly. It’s not the summer of love, baby. Well, not officially anyhow.”
    Charlie turned to watch Mark charge down the path toward her, wearing a CIJK-FM T-shirt over a black utility kilt barely held within the bounds of decency by his blue fake fur sporran. He had a set of drumsticks shoved through his hair just above the elastic that held his ponytail.
    As soon as he was close enough, he pulled her into an enthusiastic hug, then pushed her back to arm’s length and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve learned to play the fiddle since we talked?”

     
    “Another two waiting for you in the Sydney office? Good news. I haven’t seen much in the way of support from them yet, but this should certainly encourage more active participation in the process.” Leaning back against the butter-soft leather, Amelia glanced down at the papers spread out on the seat beside her. “I’ll be done at the studio by seven, but I expect there’ll be a bit of necessary socializing with the producer to keep his opinion sweet, so there’s no point in me leaving Halifax tonight. I’ll head out in the morning and meet you at the office at eleven. That’ll give you plenty of time to find off-site storage unconnected to the company in case they get desperate enough to try something. Better to be safe than sorry,” she continued before Paul could speak. “I leave the details in your hands.”
    She switched her attention to her notes as she hit the disconnect. The moment Two Seventy-five N had taken them public, Paul had done his usual excellent job and put together an inarguable list of facts that supported their position as well as a number of anecdotes that sounded inarguable but had no factual support at all. All she had to do tonight was hit the emotional beats and start swaying the voting public onto their side. Sway the voting public, sway the politicians they voted for.
    In a just world, the honorable minister would have gotten his shit together and issued the permits before the application for the well had been thrust into the public eye by a group of environmental extremists. Amelia, well aware the world was far from just, believed in contingency plans.
    “Ms. Carlson.” Her driver flicked open the communication hatch. “We’re five minutes out.”
    “Thank you, Val.”
    The papers, edges parallel, went into her briefcase; she wouldn’t be referring to them again. Paul had provided a printout of the facts, not only clear, concise, and bulleted but available for the station to copy and give to their researchers.
    Well, researcher , the CBC budget being what it was.
    She slid her phone into her Italian leather bag. It was starting to look genteelly worn, but then she’d had it made to her specifications right after she’d gone to work for her father and it had rarely left her side since. The craftsman had included enough interior sections and outside pockets that she’d never be caught rummaging about like a north shore granny looking for a lozenge.
    Yes, I have an assistant who could handle my minutiae, but I