Downpour by Kat Richardson

while, but the house is all wintered up. Safe guess he ain’t around.” He stopped a few feet from me, nodding as if we were just meeting for the first time. “Nice place, yeah?”
    “Seems it,” I agreed, slightly put off by his slow-paced chattiness once again. “Do you do any work for the Leungs?” I asked.
    “Nah. His daughters and son-in-law watch out for the house.”
    “Do his daughters live nearby?”
    “Yup.”
    I’ve rarely wanted so much to brain someone with a heavy object. Plainly he didn’t feel like giving me the information yet. I tried a different tack. “Any idea when Leung left?”
    Shea shrugged again. “Nope.”
    “So . . . you’re staying on the lake?”
    “Yes and no. I’m house-sitting one of my projects.” He waved in the direction of the southeastern shore. “Down there a ways.”
    He had indicated south of the strange underwater lines, but not on them. I considered asking him about the clearing, but if he wasn’t volunteering information, I wasn’t sure I wanted to call his attention to either thing. I didn’t like the way Shea had just turned up, what with his weird aura and no visible way to have arrived here. I hadn’t heard an engine, or a door, and I didn’t see a boat at the dock or any footprints on the deck of the house behind him, though his boots had been muddy enough to leave some. There was also no boat in sight, and I didn’t think he’d walked on water or scrambled down from the tree line above without making a sound. With the oddness of the world-in-between around here, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d turned out to be a ghost. I wasn’t sure why it felt so strange to meet him here, but it just seemed . . . odd.
    “What business y’got with Mr. Leung?” he asked.
    “My own business.” Shea’s eyes went a little cold and flat as I said it, as if he were about to do something I wouldn’t like. I continued. “Just trying to find him; nothing sinister. But he’s not here, so . . . I guess I’ll ask his daughters.” I turned and stepped back onto the deck, away from Shea, starting toward the stairs to the upper story, then turned back in a rush, expecting to catch him moving. But he was just standing the same way, with his hands back in his pockets. “You couldn’t tell me where I could find them, could you?”
    He chuckled, dismissing whatever danger he’d thought I posed. “Don’t think you’re too likely to catch up to Willa. Might have more luck with the older one, Jewel. You might not want to dawdle getting to her—folks say she’s dying, though she’s been doing it a while now.” Shea didn’t look broken up, and I thought I saw the tiniest flick of a smile pull one corner of his mouth as he said it. “She and her husband’ve got a big house on Lake Crescent. Ask anybody—they’ll show you. I gotta get back ’fore the light goes.” But he didn’t turn to go. He held still and watched me go up the stairs and across the upper deck.
    I’d have to come back once he’d left. I wanted a look at that clearing without Shea or anyone else around, but I didn’t think he’d hang about long if he was seriously worried about getting home before dark; the shadows were already lengthening. I got back into the Rover and drove out to the highway, pulling in at the general store I’d passed when escaping the white monstrosities by the side of the road earlier. I checked on Chaos, who was still sleeping in her nest of sweatshirts, before turning the truck around and returning to Lake Sutherland Road. I left the Rover farther out this time, at the very edge of the scrubbed-clear space ahead of Leung’s home, and walked along the edges of the tree line to get back to the house on the lake. Twilight had dyed the overcast sky ink blue and leached the colors of the world to indigo and navy with odd patches of bone white where the rocky ground was naked of cover. The trees around me looked like charcoal smudges and I found the footing