Page 59 of Night Shift

Not the weak gray imitation that sometimes slips through Blackthorn’s fog, but full, unapologetic morning, pouring through the windows and painting everything gold. I have to squint against it. After seven days of condensed night, blackout curtains stapled to the horizon and every hour measured by the blue glow of clocks, the sun looks almost violent.

Yellow is not supposed to be this yellow.

The sky is not supposed to be this loud.

I sit up and stare.

He did it.

Erebus kept his promise.

Outside, every single atom of Blackthorn Bay is losing its mind.

In the old fisherman’s flats, my building flexes and stretches awake, a hundred windows yawning open. Some guy in the unit below yodels a string of Spanish so happy it bounces up three floors and through my barely-there walls. Kids shriek and clatter along the fire escape, their faces lit with the greedy certainty that this hour is an extra, a freebie, a whole bonus package of day.

I climb out of bed and go to the window.

The streets are packed.

Humans and human-adjacent entities spill from houses and apartment buildings in pajamas, bathrobes, slippers, and whatever else they happened to be wearing when the universe restarted. People hug strangers. Someone is ringing a cowbell. A goblin in boxer shorts stands in the middle of the intersection with both arms lifted toward the sky.

For seven days, everyone wanted morning.

Now that we have it, nobody seems quite sure what to do with it.

Except Petra.

Because, of course, there is sunrise yoga.

I take a shower and let it scald me back into my own skin. I try not to think too hard about Erebus, but he’s molecular by now, woven into my synapses and joints. His absence should worry me.

Instead, I understand it.

He said he would let morning come.

He did.

Now it’s my turn.

Downstairs, the hallway is a tidal surge of neighbors in pajamas, cats with bedhead and dogs dressed in sweaters. On the stoop, a girl is rolling a cigarette with surgical precision. When she sees me, she offers a fist bump.

“Happy New Year, babe.”

She’s only off by about three months.

At the intersection, Tibor the hotdog man is doing brisk business. I don’t know where he gets his supply—no one has ever seen a delivery truck—but Tibor has hotdogs and soda at all hours, as though his cart is a dimensional portal directly connected to a municipal baseball stadium in 1997.

He hands me a hotdog wrapped in foil.

“Victory Wiener. Free of charge. For the lady who brought back the sun.”

“I didn’t bring back the sun.”

“You know the guy.”

Apparently, proximity counts.

I accept the sausage of destiny with the grave reverence it deserves.