Page 19 of Night Shift

“You could come up for a minute.”

My voice is more hopeful than I mean to let on.

His eyes narrow, the dark blue turning nearly black.

“It is not safe for me,” he says softly, “to become too comfortable.”

I want to ask what happens if he does become too comfortable, but in a way, I already know. Patterns, he’d said. Catastrophe is a pattern, too.

“Well,” I say, “if you ever feel like living dangerously, I make a mean hot cocoa.”

I dig out my keys, flash him one last smile, and close the door behind me.

Sleep is impossible. I lie in bed staring at the endless cracks in my ceiling, replaying every word until I’m certain I must be making half of it up. When I finally drift off, it’s with the peculiar feeling that something is watching over me—a comfort, not a curse.

The weirdest thing about the day shift isn’t the lack of goth kids or the way sunlight makes the shop’s once-cozy gloom look like a crime scene photo. It’s the profound sense of wrongness.

Day is not for secrets. All the tiny supernatural off-gassing that keeps nights alive here evaporates with the dawn. The syrups look brighter, the pastries drier, and the regulars want their coffee so ordinary it practically arrives pre-digested.

Before my shift starts, I check my phone and find a dozen missed texts from Petra, mostly GIFs of people screaming interspersed with links about the supernatural presence currently hanging around Blackthorn Bay. Apparently, news travels at warp speed when you’re the only barista in town dating a minor deity.

Not that we’re dating.

I reply with a thumbs-up and a GIF of a cat sidling away from a cucumber.

Rumors are already at critical mass by noon. Daisy from the bakery leans over the pickup counter and whispers, “Is it true you’re seeing The Night Guy?”

“He drinks coffee here.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“It’s all I’m admitting.”

By three, a feisty gang of goblin high schoolers are ordering “mochas as black as the void” with straight faces, then cackling when I serve them. The first time someone calls me the Queen of Darkness, I ask them to bring me a crown next time.

It’s not until things slow down after four that I hear the first sign something might actually be strange.

Three regulars are sitting by the window, phones out, when one says, “Did you see sunrise was late this morning? Like five minutes late. My weather app freaked out.”

I snort as I wipe down the counter. “Maybe the sun had a hangover.”

“Or maybe your boyfriend held it hostage, goth style.”

I play it cool, but something in my chest bristles.

I glance outside. The day looks perfectly normal, the sun already retreating behind clouds, and five minutes is nothing. Weather apps glitch. People online panic because a squirrel sneezes somewhere in Nebraska.

Still, I think about Erebus.

Night comes, Night holds, Night yields.

Then I tell myself I’m being ridiculous and get back to work.

By the time my shift ends, I’ve almost forgotten about it.

Almost.

I stay late cleaning, letting the hum and clang of the machines substitute for company, when a soft tap sounds against the window.