Page 33 of Night Shift

Then her mouth curves.

“It was kind of sweet.”

I look at her.

“Do not let that encourage you.”

“I would never.”

She laughs, and for several hours, I believe keeping my promise will be simple.

The following night, Calliope meets me at the bench overlooking the bay.

There is a folded square of paper in my coat pocket containing several lines of what might generously be called poetry. I have no intention of showing them to her, although I have carried them with me for six hours.

She sits close enough that our shoulders touch, and we talk until I lose track of how long we have been there. Calliope tells me about a customer who attempted to tip her with cryptocurrency, and I tell her this is one of the more disturbing developments I have witnessed in recent centuries. She laughs, takes my hand, and eventually settles her head against my shoulder.

I become very still.

“You can breathe,” she murmurs.

“I am breathing.”

“Debatable.”

I allow myself to relax, and the sea moves below us, black and silver beneath the moon. There is nothing remarkable about the night itself. I have presided over countless nights more beautiful than this one, beneath clearer skies and brighter stars, on shores untouched by cities or human hands.

Yet I have never wanted one to remain.

Calliope shifts closer, her fingers threaded through mine.

For the first time in my existence, I understand why mortals fear endings. They have so little time that every good thing arrives already carrying the certainty of its loss.

“I wish we could do this forever,” she says softly.

I know what she means. Humans say such things casually, with no expectation that eternity will hear them, but the words settle somewhere inside me all the same.

When I feel Dawn approaching at the edge of the world, I remember the promise I made to Calliope and fully intend to keep it.

Then she settles more comfortably against my shoulder, her fingers still threaded through mine, and I tell myself five minutes will make no difference. I have already stolen forty-three and the world survived. Surely five more, given freely to a woman who has spent her life measuring happiness in coffee breaks and walks home after midnight, cannot possibly matter.

Five minutes becomes twenty before I bother to count them, and by then Calliope is dozing against me, warm and trusting, while Dawn waits impatiently beyond the horizon. I should wake her and take her home. I should relinquish the sky and honor the promise I made only hours ago, but for the first time in my existence, should feels like a remarkably poor reason to surrender something I want.

So I don’t.

By the time I finally allow the first gray light to spill across the bay, three hours have passed. Calliope stirs against my shoulder, unaware that Blackthorn Bay has spent half its morning beneath a darkness that should not exist, and I look toward the horizon with the uncomfortable certainty that I know exactly what I have done.

Worse, I know I would do it again.

CHAPTER 6

CALLIOPE

There’s a theory I’ve always believed about time: that it stumbles sometimes, a little drunk, and nobody notices. Leap seconds, daylight savings, Mondays. We reset the clocks, blame our phones, chalk it up to human error and move on because the alternative—that time is a living thing and sometimes it simply misbehaves—would drive us all mad.

I wake with a dry tongue and a knot in my shoulder, and for one blessed moment, I think, Well, there goes another night.

There’s a weight draped over my waist, not a blanket but an arm, and somehow that’s more terrifying than waking up alone. The air tastes of salt and scorched coffee grounds. My scarf is bunched beneath my head, my boots are still on, and if I don’t move, maybe the world will hold its breath for me.