Page 39 of Night Shift

Then he kisses me again.

Later, we end up tangled together on an old blanket I find in the storage room, surrounded by boxes of paper cups and enough flavored syrup to poison a small nation. It isn’t glamorous, but nothing about Erebus feels ordinary enough for glamour to matter.

He folds himself around me with careful reverence, his fingers moving through my hair as though he’s memorizing something fragile.

I press my face against his chest and listen to the strange static rhythm beneath it.

“Stay,” I whisper when sleep begins tugging at me. “Just this once. I want to wake up with you.”

His arms tighten around me.

“I will.”

And he does.

When I wake again, the first thing I notice is that Erebus is gone.

The second is the clock.

2:17 p.m.

The third is the window.

Black.

Not gray.

Not stormy.

Black as the inside of a closed fist.

I sit up so quickly the blanket slides into my lap.

My phone is a rage of notifications: forty-seven missed texts, three emergency alerts, two messages from Rose asking whether I’ve quit, and a voicemail from Petra helpfully titled:

CALLIOPE CRAVEN GET YOUR BOYFRIEND UNDER CONTROL.

“Oh, God.”

I drag on my jeans, shove my feet into my shoes, and run outside.

Blackthorn Bay is fully awake beneath a star-filled sky.

Kids in school hoodies wave glow sticks across front lawns. Cars crawl through intersections with headlights blazing. The Fish & Fry parking lot has turned into an impromptu gathering place, and every sidewalk is crowded with people staring upward, some frightened, some awed, and some filming the whole thing for social media.

Ahead, City Hall is surrounded.

Witches cluster on the steps. Someone from the council is shouting into a phone. Zadok stands near the entrance trying to calm a crowd that has absolutely no intention of being calmed.

And in the center of it all stands Erebus.

Perfectly still.

Perfectly calm.

I shove my way through.

“Erebus.”