2. Calliope
CALLIOPE
I’m not sure why I expect him—though maybe expect is misleading. It’s more that I accept his return as a kind of inevitability, the way the dying light slouches down the window glass each twilight, or how mildew resumes its symphonic takeover the second you let up on scrubbing the grout.
The point is, by the time the tall man with the star-blind eyes glides into Ghoulish Grinds just after ten-thirty Tuesday night, I’ve already set a cup on the bar and started the espresso machine.
He’s in the same outfit, which is less I don’t care and more I haven’t bought new clothes since the Congress of Vienna.
Even with the coat and too-pale skin, he looks less out of place than most of the regulars.
Blackthorn Bay’s goths have always overextended themselves, but this guy manages to blend in by not trying at all.
His name still hasn’t been provided, and I’m not about to break the unofficial law that says you don’t ask a supernatural customer’s name until they offer it. I’m not sure who started the law, but all the old-timers know it, and the ones who ignore it don’t last long on bar.
I learned the hard way. A former regular I secretly named Celery insisted on being called nothing at all, and I made the mistake of asking once. She left a dead crow in the tip jar and never came back.
Tonight’s variable is the crease of purpose on his brow, a tiny furrow that makes him look as though he’s memorized what he means to say and only needs a prompt to deploy it.
His hands rest on the counter, long fingers steepled with mathematical precision, while his eyes move briefly toward the cup waiting beside the espresso machine.
“Mocha?” I ask.
He nods, grave as a grave.
While I grind the beans, I slant a look at him. “You know, we do offer a loyalty card. Nine drinks and you get the tenth free. Although I have a feeling you’d be gifting the whole punch card to a stranger before you ever finished it.”
He takes this in like a puzzle he needs to solve. “It would be impolite to refuse your custom, but I do not anticipate needing ten mochas.”
“Let me guess. You’re going to move on. Drift through, sample a little of the local misery, then head out for greener pastures?”
I’m not sure why I prod him, only that his unflappability tempts me to break it. Maybe that’s the real barista game—not prepping drinks, but finding the chink in every customer’s armor.
He’s silent for a moment, watching the espresso drip. “I find myself uncertain.”
“About the greener pastures?”
“About leaving.” His gaze lifts to mine. “That is new for me.”
I’m unnerved by the way he says it, less for the content than the delivery. If he’s making a joke, it’s at a register not designed for human hearing. If he isn’t, there’s something strangely vulnerable about the admission that doesn’t fit the imposing package standing across from me.
I finish the mocha, add the perfect filigree of foam, and slide it across.
“I remember your warning,” he says as he lifts the cup. “I should not drink it too quickly. It is a hardship, but I will persevere.”
“It’s what separates us from the animals—the ability to wait until the beverage is below a thousand Kelvin.”
He looks at the cup and then at me, a glint in his shadow-drowned eyes. “And what separates you from me?”
The question lands like a stone in still water, and for a second I’m not sure whether he’s flirting with me or conducting some kind of existential survey.
“If I had to guess, the fact that you don’t blink unless you think nobody’s looking. That, and you’re the only person who’s ever compared my coffee to a minor earthquake.”
He blinks slowly, deliberately, and I laugh.
“Oh, now you’re just showing off.”
“It was not meant as an insult.”
“Wasn’t taken as one.” I busy myself wiping a perfectly clean section of counter before glancing at him again. “Since you’ve come back, I think you’ve officially earned the right to tell me your name.”
His expression doesn’t change, but something about him seems to settle, as though he has been waiting for me to ask.
“Erebus.”
I wait for the rest.
When none comes, I lift an eyebrow. “Just Erebus?”
“Yes.”
There’s something familiar about it, though I can’t immediately place why. Then again, this is Blackthorn Bay. I went to high school with twin brothers named Hades and Apollo Kowalski, and their father sold insurance.
“Calliope,” I say, tapping my name tag.
“I know.”
“Right. Advantage Erebus.”
“Calliope Craven.”
I pause. “Okay. How do you know my last name?”
His gaze shifts past my shoulder. “It is printed on the schedule behind you.”
I turn and find my name exactly where he said it would be.
“Good. For a second there, you got creepy.”
His brow furrows. “I would prefer not to be creepy.”
The sincerity in his voice makes me smile. “You’re doing fine.”
He takes another careful sip of his mocha while I lean against the counter, curiosity finally getting the better of me.
“So what do you do, Mr. Nowhere?”
He thinks about it, which is never reassuring when you ask someone how they make a living.
“I have done many things, but in recent times, I mostly observe. I try to understand whether the world is, as you might say, improving.”
“And?”
He sets his cup down. “There is less violence, but the flavor is blander.”
I crack a smile. “You want excitement? Might I suggest karaoke night at the Monger’s Den. The flavor will not disappoint.”
He considers this with far more seriousness than the suggestion deserves. “I will take your recommendation under advisement.”
“That’s all I ask.”
The late crowd never really materializes, which is typical for a Tuesday.
A few third-shifters with haunted faces drift through, along with two students who buy a single coffee and occupy a table for an hour pretending to do homework.
The lizardy customer from last night returns to his beanbag chair and falls asleep before I finish making his drink.
Through it all, Erebus keeps his place at the bar, nursing the mocha as though time is syrup and he’s parched for it.
He doesn’t touch a phone, doesn’t read, and rarely speaks unless I start the conversation.
Mostly, he watches me, the room, the street beyond the windows, as if by seeing everything he can somehow hold it steady.
After a while, I notice something else.
People seem calmer around him.
An EMT in bloodstained blues comes in wound tighter than piano wire, but by the time she leaves with her coffee, her shoulders have dropped and she’s smiling.
Valeria, an elderly witch who normally complains about everything from foam temperature to municipal taxes, sits two stools away from Erebus for nearly twenty minutes without finding fault with a single thing.
Even the café itself feels quieter, though the music is playing at the same volume and the espresso grinder still screams every time I use it.
There’s something about Erebus’s silence that doesn’t demand to be filled.
Naturally, I spend most of the night filling it anyway.
By eleven forty-five, the students have gone, and the lizard has finally slithered out, leaving behind a couple of scales and an issue of New Cryptid Magazine with teeth marks in the cover.
“Every damn week,” I mutter as I toss it into the recycling.
Erebus watches from the bar while I finish my closing tasks with my usual half-tired efficiency.
“You know, most customers come here because they want caffeine.”
“I have caffeine.”
“Most customers also eventually leave.”
“I have noticed.”
I look at him, and he looks back with such complete seriousness that I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
At midnight, I flip the sign to CLOSED.
“You don’t have to go home,” I tell him, “but you can’t stay here.”
Erebus stands slowly. “I have no home.”
The answer catches me off guard. “No home at all?”
“Not in the sense you mean.”
There’s clearly a story there, but something tells me Erebus could take six hundred years to tell it, and I have a load of laundry waiting upstairs that has already spent two days becoming part of the furniture.
I grab my bag and tuck the night’s tips into the inside pocket.
“Where are you going now?”
“I had not decided.”
He pauses before asking, “Do you require an escort?”
His tone is so grave I almost miss the fact that he’s asking to walk me home. I weigh it for a second, not out of any actual fear, but because accepting an escort from a man I’ve met exactly twice would normally rank high on the list of Ways Women Become Cautionary Podcasts.
Then again, this is Blackthorn Bay.
Besides, nothing about Erebus frightens me.
“Sure,” I say. “But only if you don’t make a big deal out of it.”
“I never make anything larger than it is,” he deadpans.
I let out a little bark of laughter before he holds the door open for me.
Outside, the fog has dropped in to settle like a used blanket over everything.
I feel the mist right through my coat, but nothing seems to land on him.
We walk side by side down Kingfisher Street, the silence between us not awkward so much as deliberate, like we’re holding our words for when they really matter.
He doesn’t ask about my life, so naturally, I volunteer it.
“I grew up here, you know. Same town, same house, same everything. Most people talk about leaving Blackthorn and coming back someday, but I never even got around to the leaving part.”
“Do you wish you had?”
“Sometimes,” I admit, surprised by how easily the truth comes out.
My parents died when I was young, Mom when I was seventeen and Dad a couple of years later, and by the time I might have considered going somewhere else, I had the house, the bills, and a freezer full of casseroles from every neighbor in town.
Life has a way of making decisions for you while you’re still trying to figure out what the choices are.
“I am sorry,” Erebus says.
“Don’t be. I survived.”
“You say that as though survival is a small accomplishment.”
I glance at him and find no pity in his expression, only that same unwavering attention he gives everything I say. Somehow, that makes it easier to keep talking.
“It doesn’t always feel like much of one.
I’d be lying if I said I love it here every second, but I like seeing the same faces every day, even the ones I can’t stand.
I like knowing which dog belongs to which person and which witch is feuding with which neighbor.
Blackthorn is just big enough to lose track of somebody for a while, but not so big you forget they exist.”
He considers that as we walk another block. “It must be a kind of peace.”
“Maybe it is.”
We reach my building, a dilapidated Victorian that is three months behind in paint and one hard spring away from collapse. I fish my keys from my bag, then hesitate with them in my hand.
“You want to come up for a drink?”
His eyebrows rise slightly, and I immediately hear what I’ve just said.
“I meant water. Or a La Croix. Not, you know...a drink drink.”
He surprises me by smiling. It changes his entire face, taking something ancient and severe and making him look, for one fleeting second, almost ordinary.
“I am, unfortunately, already over-caffeinated.”
“Still?”
“I suspect I will remain so for several days.”
I laugh again. “Maybe we stick with two shots tomorrow.”
His eyes settle on mine.
“Will you be there?”
The question is simple, but there’s something about the way he asks it that makes my fingers tighten around my keys.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be there. Try the pastries next time. They’re better on Wednesdays.”
He inclines his head, a gesture so formal it borders on ritual. “I look forward to it.”
I watch him walk away, his figure disappearing gradually into the mist until I can no longer tell where the man ends and the darkness begins.
A few windows glow in the buildings across the street, the town settling into another ordinary night, and I stand there longer than necessary before the cold finally drives me inside.
Upstairs, I wash my face, put on my ugliest pajamas, and collapse onto the lumpy futon while the sounds of the bay drift through the window.
I think about Erebus and the strange way he talks, the way his presence seems to quiet an entire room, and the absolute certainty in his voice when he told me survival mattered.
Mostly, though, I think about the way he asked if I would be there tomorrow.
I hope he comes back, and the thought, which should probably embarrass me, only makes me grin at the ceiling before I close my eyes.
Maybe some things are inevitable after all.