Page 13 of Night Shift

She says it lightly, but it is the kind of lightness searching for something firm enough to land on.

I consider her.

"Resolved."

Calliope's steps slow.

"Is that supposed to be some cosmic insight?"

"Perhaps. Or only observation." I allow the tiniest shrug. "You lack peace, but you are not at war. The boundary is difficult."

For once, she has no immediate answer.

"Well, damn," she says eventually. "That's annoyingly accurate."

"I apologize."

"No, you don't."

"No."

She laughs and bumps her shoulder against my arm.

The contact is brief and probably accidental.

I feel it for the rest of the walk.

At her building, Calliope climbs the first step before turning back toward me. The porch light has burned out again, and she complains about her landlady while searching through her bag for her keys.

"I swear she won't fix anything unless the building is actively on fire, and even then she'd probably ask whether we tried opening a window first."

Her keys slip from her fingers and strike the step.

"Sorry. Cold hands."

She bends, but I reach them first.

When I straighten, I take her wrist without thinking.

Her pulse jumps beneath my fingers.

I have touched countless living things. I have felt the last breaths of kings beneath moonless skies and held darkness around frightened children until morning came. I know the rhythm of sleeping cities and the slow heartbeat of oceans.

Yet this is different.

Calliope looks down at my hand around her wrist, then up at me.

For a second, the world seems to contract around the point where our skin meets.

Rain taps against the railing. Somewhere beyond the buildings, an ambulance whines toward the hospital. Her heart beats beneath my fingertips, quick and warm and impossibly temporary.

I release her.

She opens her palm.

I place the keys in it.

Instead of pulling away, her fingers close around mine.