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It’s after midnight, less than twenty degrees, and a full moon has turned the night silver when Beth sees Amy walk out of Lake Michigan. Water cascades off Amy in sheets, like she’s standing in a downpour. Cold Lake Michigan water, twenty-degree air, but Amy isn’t shivering. Even Beth can tell that, from a hundred yards away, hidden in shadows so Amy won’t see her.
Amy stops several steps up the shore and turns back toward the lake. After a long moment, like held breath, she shudders all over and lifts her arms, looking down at herself as if she can’t understand how she got so wet. A stiff breeze rises off the lake and lifts the limp hair along the back of Beth’s neck. Amy wraps her arms around herself as if she suddenly feels the cold and stumbles up the beach to the parking lot, where her lime-green Beetle is the only car.
I'd like to invite you to take a brief side trip from contemporary urban fantasy into contemporary rural fantasy, which often has a lot in common with urban fantasy, including a solid real-world setting and strong shout-outs to the horror and mystery genres, but isn't set in anything remotely resembling a city. Sometimes it's simply lumped in with urban fantasy, which—since I often do that sort of lumping myself—I don't consider necessarily a bad thing.
