Page 27 of Night Shift

I kiss him again, shorter this time, softer, and somehow more intimate than the first.

When I pull away, I look toward the dark street and sigh. “I wish nights like this didn’t have to end.”

Erebus’s fingers tighten around mine.

I notice, but only enough to wonder what he’s thinking.

“Good night,” I whisper.

“Good night, Calliope.”

I go upstairs without looking back because if I do, there’s a very real possibility I’ll invite him inside, and apparently I’m trying to demonstrate at least one functioning survival instinct.

By the time I crawl into bed, I’m smiling like an idiot, and sleep takes me almost immediately.

I don’t know that Erebus remains outside.

I don’t know that somewhere beyond Blackthorn Bay, Dawn arrives at the edge of the world and finds the door closed.

And I certainly don’t know that this time, Night makes her wait.

Not for five minutes.

For forty-three.

CHAPTER 5

EREBUS

Ihave stood at the rim of the world with the storm in my veins and the universe unsleeping at my feet. I have measured centuries by the careful metronome of stars and carried darkness across the earth like an endless, silent tide. I have existed longer than there have been words for longing, and I have never missed a moment.

Tonight, I miss forty-three.

I did not expect it to feel so momentous.

Dawn is not forgiving. She paces the edge of her domain, a scatter of flame and spindrift in the greased indigo between night and day. Most mornings, she is patient; she waits for me to step aside, to slip into the places where her light cannot follow. She calls it the dance, but I have never danced. I endure her arrival. I abide.

This time, when she reaches for me—tired, loving sister, all cinnamon hair and lion’s-tooth smile—I resist. Only a little, only enough to linger at the edge of the world for forty-three minutes before finally relinquishing the sky.

She huffs, clearly insulted, but waits. She always does.

When I finally step aside, I feel the shift in the rhythm of things. The world’s pulse is slightly off-kilter. Small animals blink up at the light as though surprised to find it there, and buried things push harder against their cloaks of soil and stone.

I walk back through the waking town carrying the echo of Calliope’s heartbeat in my chest and, for the first time in countless millennia, I find I do not care about the indelible record of time.

I care only for Calliope Craven.

She is not at Ghoulish Grinds when I arrive.

Several scones and a tray of brownies cool on a rack near the register, and for reasons I cannot properly explain, I stop to study them. One scone is dotted with raspberries, another glossed with lemon curd. The brownies have a precise crosshatch of caramel, and I find myself wondering which she would choose.

The back door bangs open before I can determine an answer.

Petra enters in a cloud of irritation.

I have seen mountains collapse with less violence.

Her stone arms are dusted with gravel, one shoulder sits noticeably higher than the other, and her gait is so rigid that for several steps she appears to have misplaced the function of her left leg.