Kat Richardson: Downpour

“No!”

The room seemed frozen, teetering on a fulcrum.

I turned to Ridenour, surprised it was he. Or was I? I raised an eyebrow, but I kept Shea in sight at the same time. “Are you confessing to it yourself or do you disbelieve me?”

Ridenour looked dizzy, and his eyes didn’t quite focus on me, but he was on his feet, clasping his hands together so tightly, the knuckles were white. A thin violet thread winked over his shoulder, twisting back to Darin Shea—he’d picked up a lot from his mentor.

“Why are you accusing Shea?” the ranger mumbled. “You don’t have evidence, or cause. . . .”

“I’m quite sure there’s more than enough evidence in Shea’s truck. Such as a watch he couldn’t begin to afford and that never belonged to him, just like those cuff links you found today . . .”

Shea’s eyes widened behind Ridenour, but he didn’t move otherwise. And something new rippled across the Grey, two moving forces that collided near my feet, making the room shiver. I couldn’t look back yet. Let it be Soren Faith, even if he thought I was insane for what I was going to say, please let him listen to the rest....

Ridenour swayed. “You came here looking for something against him. . . .”

“Yes, I did,” I replied. “I came up here to interview Shea for a court case, but I never could find out anything about his background. He’s slippery as a fish and as hard to find as the invisible man—someone who could commit murder and never be noticed. But no matter how hard he tried to conceal it, he does have a past and some of you know it, if you just stop and think. He killed Steven Leung and he sank his car in the lake. He killed Alan Strother so no one would put the pieces together about where he went and when. He also sent your wife back to hell.”

“He’s—he’s not like that,” Ridenour objected. He looked mesmerized.

“Why not? Why are you defending him? Because he’s been around for twenty years? Because he’s cheap and friendly and always willing to help? Or because he spied on Willow and told you she was up at the greenhouse so you could ambush her? He played on your hate, but he’s the one who created it when he made you think it was Willow who drove May away. Who was he friends with?” I demanded. “Who did he do extra work for and spend extra time with?”

“Everyone!” Ridenour shouted. I could see Shea mouthing the word behind his back.

“Not everyone,” I snapped back. “Newman won’t have him around. One thing I’ve learned about the rich is that they stay that way by holding on to their money. So why wouldn’t the richest man in the area use the cheapest labor he could find? Because he knew he couldn’t trust him. Newman knew Shea was a thief, a liar, and a sorcerer.”

“A what?” The words came from in front and behind me at the same time. I’d shocked Faith, but he was listening. I kept my concentration on the men in front of me. They were the dangerous ones.

“You heard me! Don’t play stupid, Ridenour. You already know there’s something strange here, and you believe in it enough to have lived with a fox-demon as your common-law wife for years. You didn’t know she came by magic, but you knew magic sent her away, and you believed Willow had done it because you knew Willow wasn’t just a hell of a woodsman, as you told me. The woods literally love her; they do what she says, even the bears and the mysterious white ‘deer’ that came down to the ranger station. Did you really think they were just passing by that night they attacked the station at Hurricane Ridge? I was with you, and all you could think about was catching Willow Leung. You didn’t even worry about your man trapped in the station. Or me. You left me here to break the news about finding Steven Leung’s body in the lake. Me, a stranger you didn’t even question about how I’d found a vehicle that had been missing for five years. You didn’t care about anything but taking revenge. And that’s how he’s played all of you. By your weaknesses, by your greed, and vanity, and laziness.

“He was right in front of you all the time, taking away everything you really cared about. And you, none of you, saw what he was doing. You saw only what you wanted. Even the way he looks is a mirror of what you want to see. He played you!” I roared at them.

They all stared back and the floor shook, but it couldn’t knock me down. I could hear something in the Grey, something singing and whispering.

Then Faith brushed past me, striding toward Shea. He had his handcuffs in one hand and the license plate from Steven Leung’s Subaru in the other. Shea backpedaled toward the window. Faith threw the plate onto the piano and reached for Shea, saying, “You’re under arrest for the murders of Steven Leung and Alan Stroth—”

The song broke and something black shrieked past my ear toward Faith and Shea. I whipped back to see where it had come from and saw Willow at the edge of the room, her hands flung out and a fierce expression on her face. “What you took, you now will lose,” she spat. She twisted her hands as if tightening the lid on a jar.

Behind me, Shea screamed. I spun around to see the spiked, black torus of Willow’s curse spin and fall around his head and shoulders. His shriek shook the room and he wrenched one hand loose from Faith’s closing handcuffs. Then he threw himself back against the glass, howling words that made no sense.

The window exploded outward and Shea was propelled through with the force, into the lake, which heaved upward as if it meant to embrace him.

To the south, Beauty burst into screaming red light that turned the waters of Lake Crescent a bloody crimson. Light rushed up from the depths of the lake with a rage of noise; shafts of impossible color pierced the water and the sky like swords and batted the tumbling shape of Darin Shea sideways through the air. He skipped and tumbled over the surface for a moment, then dropped into the shallows where Jin had raised the wreck of Steven Leung’s car.

Illuminated by the howling lights from Beauty and the lake, the shoreline was as bright as day, and we all saw Shea stagger to his feet and vanish into the scrub. A crying laugh and the flicker of shadows followed him.

Behind me I felt the press of others as I leaned out to see the lake. Willow’s voice muttered in my ear, “I’m going to make sure he dies powerless and screaming. Like my father.”

“No, you’re not.”

Soren Faith put his hand on Willow’s shoulder as if he were keeping her in touch with the floor when she might have levitated out the broken window after Shea. He squeezed his eyes shut against the flaring lights off the lake for a moment and then blinked until he could see her more clearly. “I don’t know what’s going on here. In a year I’ll probably have convinced myself I never saw or heard any of this—or I hope to God I do—but right now we are going to pursue and apprehend a killer in the perfectly normal way.” He glared at Willow and then at me. “And you all are going to sit tight and wait until we do and not go running around in the dark . . . doing whatever you’re doing. And that means all of you,” he added, shouting at the rest.

Then he let go of Willow and grabbed onto Ridenour’s arm. “You and me, Ridenour. Now!”

The ranger trembled and resisted Faith’s tugging. “No, no . . . I can’t.” His face was streaked with tears and he hunched as if broken.

“You’re going to have to. This is your territory, Ridenour, and you’re the senior officer. You’re coming with me if I have to drag you. And besides, that bastard’s got my handcuffs.” Faith put his hand under Ridenour’s armpit and hoisted him to his feet, forcing the other man toward the door until his legs started to work on their own.