Page 35 of Night Shift

“You were sleeping.”

“That is not a defense.”

“You seemed peaceful.”

I turn too quickly and walk directly into the stone balustrade, catching my hip hard enough to make me swear.

Erebus reaches for me.

I wave him off and grab my scarf from the bench.

“Is this going to become a regular thing now? Every time I have a bad day, you smother Blackthorn in darkness so I can have a lie-in?”

“I do not wish to upset the balance.”

“I believe you. That’s what makes this so weird.”

His hand drops.

I think about everybody waking beneath the wrong sky. Parents trying to convince children that yes, school still exists even though Orion has been hanging over the supermarket since breakfast. Night-shift workers wondering whether they’re supposed to go home. Petra trying to salute a sun that has apparently stopped accepting appointments.

“I was being dramatic last night,” I tell him. “Metaphorical.”

Erebus studies my face with unsettling sincerity.

“Would you like me to bring Dawn now?”

I stare at him.

“Yes, Erebus. I would very much like morning to happen.”

He nods once.

Somewhere far beyond what I can see, something changes.

The dark does not disappear immediately, but the eastern horizon begins to thin, black softening reluctantly toward gray.

I exhale.

“Come on. I’m already late for work, and Petra is probably developing a stress fracture just thinking about us.”

Blackthorn Bay at almost ten in the morning looks like somebody forgot to switch sets between scenes.

The houses are awake with every light burning. Deer stand in front yards eating roses as though they’ve been granted diplomatic immunity, and three crows line a power wire, fat and judgmental, like they’ve convened their own emergency council.

By the time Erebus and I reach Main Street, morning is beginning to force its way over the rooftops, but the town is still operating under the assumption that civilization may have ended.

The goblin postal carrier is delivering mail wearing a headlamp.

“Neither snow nor rain nor cosmic nonsense!” he shouts at nobody in particular.

Traffic snarls around a bakery van because half the nocturnal population hasn’t gone home yet and half the daytime population has come out to stare at the sky.

Someone has already hung a handwritten sign outside the souvenir shop:

I SURVIVED THE LONG NIGHT

Blackthorn may collapse, but capitalism will apparently endure.