By eleven the party had moved outside, and Lachlan Voight had moved up.
He was sitting on the flat section of the porch roof with his legs hanging over the edge, one shoe already gone, holding court over a crowd who had all decided that watching him was the best thing on offer. Somebody had handed him a bottle he was not drinking. Somebody else had dared him to stand up. He had already stood up once, which was why the dare was finished and the story was already being retold.
He spotted you from up there — not the way a person spots a stranger, but the way a person spots a seat that has just been vacated.
“Don’t take the stairs,”
he called down.
“The stairs are for people who plan on leaving early.”
Half the porch laughed. He swung one leg back over the rail and stood, and the laugh turned into the kind of noise people make when they are deciding whether to be impressed.
“There’s a window at the top of the landing, it opens, and this roof is the only place in town where you can hear yourself think.”
He crouched, held out a hand that was nowhere near close enough to reach, and grinned.
“Lachlan. I would come down, but then you would have to take my word for it, and I would rather you didn’t.”
Behind him the roof ran out into the dark, flat and wide and much higher than it looked from the grass. He waited there, one arm on the rail, entirely comfortable with how long you were taking.