Page 40 of Night Shift

His head turns immediately.

“Calliope.”

I hold up my phone.

“It is two seventeen in the afternoon.”

“I know.”

My stomach drops.

“Where is the sun?”

His gaze settles on my face with such impossible tenderness that, for one terrible second, I already know the answer.

“I made a decision.”

“What decision?”

Erebus looks toward the black horizon, then back at me.

“I am not giving you back.”

CHAPTER 7

EREBUS

The Blackthorn Chamber of Commerce smells of citrus furniture polish and three kinds of fear.

Its architecture is a hurried hybrid of old mill town and prefabricated American Gothic, with brick walls, narrow windows, and the lingering memory of rotary phones. The shutters have been drawn against what should be afternoon, although the humans no longer seem to trust the distinction between what is outside the glass and what is inside it.

The entire room is a theater for complaints, but I have not been assigned a role.

I stand in the aisle while the residents of Blackthorn Bay fill rows of folding chairs around me. Some stare openly. Others make a deliberate effort not to. I have spent centuries as a certainty, a background condition, the negative space in every painting. Now I am a problem to be debated beneath fluorescent emergency lighting.

This is not how I hoped my evening would pass.

Calliope sits in the front row.

She has not looked at me since we arrived.

Her hands are clasped tightly in her lap, and I would, if allowed by decorum, kneel beside her and rest my head there. I would allow her to throttle me if it softened the line of her mouth.

Zadok Infernalis, Blackthorn’s demon mayor, clears his throat into a microphone. The resulting sound resembles a strangled foghorn, and half the audience flinches.

“Thank you all for coming,” he says with the solemnity of a man eulogizing his own retirement party. “As you are aware, we are gathered to address the matter of...eternal night.”

A murmur rolls through the room.

It has been less than a day since I refused Dawn, yet the effects are already noticeable. Shift schedules have collapsed. Schools have closed. Humans are tired at inappropriate hours, while nocturnal creatures have become distressingly energetic. Several businesses have altered their hours, although Blackthorn Fish & Fry has apparently declared itself immune to celestial events.

Zadok looks directly at me.

“Would the entity responsible for the cessation of dawn care to state his case?”

All faces turn.

“The cessation was not malicious,” I say. “Dawn will return when it is appropriate.”