Page 18 of Night Shift

Erebus. Ancient Greek. Darkness itself. Older than most of Olympus. Father of the Fates, if the stories have it right.

I look at him in the corner, hands wrapped around his mug, his expression unreadable.

“Are you going to tell me you’re actually an ancient god, too?”

He considers the question and, for the first time since I’ve known him, looks almost bashful.

“I have been called that.”

By now, I’m grinning. “And I suppose the town’s full of immortals? I mean, the minotaur makes sense, but what about the vegan bakery guy? Is he something eldritch, too?”

Erebus shakes his head, dark hair moving just enough to make me want to reach over and fix it. “The bakery man is only a man, though he is a decent one.”

I laugh despite myself. “Are you serious right now?”

He fixes me with a look that says yes without needing to say anything, then asks quietly, “You are not afraid?”

I hand Petra her drink and watch her slingshot out of the shop.

“Dude, Blackthorn Bay has a cryptid convention every summer. If anyone’s going to take it in stride, it’s me.”

This gets a sound close to a laugh from him. Not a full one, but cracks appear in the facade.

“You are remarkable,” he says.

I want to ask a thousand things—how old he is, what his powers are, whether he only eats at night, and if this is why his blood sugar seems calibrated to lunar cycles—but I decide it’s better to let the revelation float and see what else he offers.

In a gesture of good faith, I splay my hands on the counter in front of him. “If I’m being perfectly honest, Erebus, I’m more afraid of my student loan provider than eternal darkness.”

He nods as if this is the only reasonable response.

“They are relentless,” he concedes.

We spend the rest of the night in easy conversation, and with the air cleared, there’s a new electricity in the way he watches me move, tracing the pattern of my hands as I wipe down counters or steady a cup beneath the espresso spout. I catch him smiling more, never big, but real, like he’s finally allowing himself to appreciate something he’s been trying very hard not to want.

As closing time drapes in, I pull down the neon sign and circle the shop, popping chairs onto tables. Erebus lingers over the last of his coffee, and I realize I’m hoping he’ll walk me home again, which feels unreasonably middle-school, but I don’t care.

When I shrug into my jacket, he meets me by the door without being asked.

Outside, the fog is denser than before, clinging close and leaving stripes of condensation across my cheeks and hair. We walk side by side into the gloom, close enough that I can hear the quiet friction of his coat against mine. There’s so much I want to ask, so much I should probably want explained, but for once it feels good not to fill the silence.

When we reach the steps of my building, Erebus stops and looks at me for a long moment.

“You really are not afraid.”

I want to say, Not of you.

I almost ask if he’s afraid of me.

Instead, I pull my scarf tighter. “You drink coffee. You listen more than most people. You’re less terrifying than my last boss at Applebee’s. The bar is so, so low.”

He lifts a hand and hesitates, as if expecting something to happen if he touches me, before brushing a stray piece of hair from my cheek. The gesture is careful and studied, like he learned it from a museum plaque and is afraid he’ll get it wrong.

It doesn’t feel wrong.

“You should go inside,” he says, regret softening the words. “It will be cold soon.”

I make myself say it before I can reconsider.