Page 34 of Night Shift

Eventually, a voice—soft and much too close—breathes my name.

“Calliope?”

I open my eyes and see the sky first, triple-black and scattered with a hundred thousand stars. The sun hasn’t even made a cameo over Blackthorn’s edge. Fog sits heavy over the bay, carrying the sort of goosebump chill that says it’s hours before breakfast.

Beside me, Erebus is the negative space of a person, all midnight eyes and careful patience.

“You stayed,” I say, immediately regretting how pathetic it sounds.

He nods. “You asked me to.”

I’m not sure I actually did, or if I merely implied it by falling asleep on his chest, but it doesn’t matter. I wanted him to stay.

Worse, I want him to do it again.

That is a new and terrifying thing to want.

“I can’t believe I slept straight through. I figured I’d wake up being mugged by a pelican or pecked to death by frostbitten gulls.”

“You were safe.”

The certainty in his voice warms something low in my chest.

Then I stand.

I brush sand from my coat, stretch the kink out of my shoulder, and finally check my phone.

9:42 a.m.

I stare at the screen.

Then at the sky.

Then back at the screen.

“Erebus.”

He says nothing.

A bead of sweat forms at the back of my neck despite the cold.

“Did you do it again?”

His face answers before his mouth does.

“You said you wouldn’t.”

“I know.”

“How late?”

“Three hours,” he says, as if precision somehow makes it less insane.

I close my eyes.

Of course he knows exactly how late. He is Night. He probably knows what time it is in seventeen dimensions.

“Three hours.”