4. Calliope
CALLIOPE
Istill haven’t worked out what, exactly, is supposed to happen next in a situation like this, when you and a guy are regularly sharing segments of sidewalk and scones and far too much personal space for something that’s not a date, but also not not a date.
We never talk about it. After enough time spent with me, most men either want to escalate to a full-blown thing or they’re already bored, gone before I notice the vacancy. Erebus—who, in the paperwork of my head, is still sometimes The Night Guy—does neither, which feels both promising and ominous.
It’s full dark on Saturday, a Blackthorn kind of dark, wet and thick, with streetlamps painting little cones of sodium orange and everything outside them dissolving into ink. I’m at the espresso machine, steaming milk, when in walks my favorite regular who won’t admit he’s a regular.
This time, he looks almost rattled, his normally undisturbed hair askew as if he’s been running his hands through it all night. He takes his usual seat while I finish the drink in progress, peeking up through his lashes when I call over, “The usual?”
He nods. He never specifies. I make him an Americano, extra hot, with a scone because we have them. When I bring the mug and plate over, he thanks me but doesn’t say more, staring at the swirl on the surface the way people stare at fires they want to confess something to.
I lean on the counter, elbows propped in a way my old manager threatened to fine me for. “Long night?”
He looks up, blinking as if he’s come back from somewhere far away. “Not especially.”
I squint at him. “You’re not a morning person, are you?”
He almost smiles. “I am only myself at night.”
I want to say, Well, aren’t we all, but it feels too easy. Instead, I cut him a little slack because something about him tonight is sharper than before. Haunted, maybe, in the way the word used to mean before it got kitsched up by Halloween décor.
The bell over the door chimes. Before I can turn, Petra’s surly voice carries across the café.
“Hey, Calliope, can I get a dirty chai and—oh my God.”
I glance over.
Normally, Petra is unflappable, partly because she’s lived in Blackthorn Bay long enough to consider most supernatural catastrophes a nuisance and partly because when you are literally made of rock, it takes a lot to rattle you.
Tonight, though, she’s bug-eyed and frozen a step past the threshold, her gaze fixed on Erebus, who has now realized he’s being watched.
I set down the steaming pitcher. “Uh, Petra, can I get you started with—”
She sidesteps toward the counter, putting a deliberate amount of distance between herself and Erebus, as if he were a statue whose pedestal has been freshly roped off. She does not whisper. Petra has never possessed that particular skill.
“Is that him? Are you—is he—” She cuts herself off, recalibrating.
Erebus tilts his head, assessing Petra the way a curator might regard an unexpectedly relevant artifact. “I do not believe we have met.”
Petra’s expression doesn’t waver. “You’re Erebus.”
It isn’t a question.
Erebus doesn’t flinch. “That is one of my names.”
He says it with the resignation of someone who has been through this more times than it’s worth counting.
Petra turns to me, her gaze steady. “The real one. You know what that means.”
I’m tired, which makes me reckless. “Yeah, Petra, it means he’s named after a Greek god. Maybe his parents had a thing for the classics.” I glance at Erebus to see if he gets the joke, but if he does, he’s hiding it beneath two inches of deadpan. “What did your parents name you after, Petra?”
Her eyes narrow. “Calliope. He is the Greek god. The primordial—” She flicks a look at Erebus, not wincing, but measuring. “He’s Night. There are online forums about this.”
Erebus remains perfectly still. “It is considered impolite to talk about someone as if they are not present.”
Petra gives a single, slow nod. “Understood.”
She pulls out her phone, her movements suddenly economical. “I’ll take a dirty chai. To go.”
I make the drink with hands that are only shaking a little. I don’t know if I’m more thrown by Petra’s conviction or Erebus’s complete lack of correction. As I steam the milk, I try to remember what I learned from my very expensive, very incomplete college education.
Erebus. Ancient Greek. Darkness itself. Older than most of Olympus. Father of the Fates, if the stories have it right.
I look at him in the corner, hands wrapped around his mug, his expression unreadable.
“Are you going to tell me you’re actually an ancient god, too?”
He considers the question and, for the first time since I’ve known him, looks almost bashful.
“I have been called that.”
By now, I’m grinning. “And I suppose the town’s full of immortals? I mean, the minotaur makes sense, but what about the vegan bakery guy? Is he something eldritch, too?”
Erebus shakes his head, dark hair moving just enough to make me want to reach over and fix it. “The bakery man is only a man, though he is a decent one.”
I laugh despite myself. “Are you serious right now?”
He fixes me with a look that says yes without needing to say anything, then asks quietly, “You are not afraid?”
I hand Petra her drink and watch her slingshot out of the shop.
“Dude, Blackthorn Bay has a cryptid convention every summer. If anyone’s going to take it in stride, it’s me.”
This gets a sound close to a laugh from him. Not a full one, but cracks appear in the facade.
“You are remarkable,” he says.
I want to ask a thousand things—how old he is, what his powers are, whether he only eats at night, and if this is why his blood sugar seems calibrated to lunar cycles—but I decide it’s better to let the revelation float and see what else he offers.
In a gesture of good faith, I splay my hands on the counter in front of him. “If I’m being perfectly honest, Erebus, I’m more afraid of my student loan provider than eternal darkness.”
He nods as if this is the only reasonable response.
“They are relentless,” he concedes.
We spend the rest of the night in easy conversation, and with the air cleared, there’s a new electricity in the way he watches me move, tracing the pattern of my hands as I wipe down counters or steady a cup beneath the espresso spout.
I catch him smiling more, never big, but real, like he’s finally allowing himself to appreciate something he’s been trying very hard not to want.
As closing time drapes in, I pull down the neon sign and circle the shop, popping chairs onto tables. Erebus lingers over the last of his coffee, and I realize I’m hoping he’ll walk me home again, which feels unreasonably middle-school, but I don’t care.
When I shrug into my jacket, he meets me by the door without being asked.
Outside, the fog is denser than before, clinging close and leaving stripes of condensation across my cheeks and hair.
We walk side by side into the gloom, close enough that I can hear the quiet friction of his coat against mine.
There’s so much I want to ask, so much I should probably want explained, but for once it feels good not to fill the silence.
When we reach the steps of my building, Erebus stops and looks at me for a long moment.
“You really are not afraid.”
I want to say, Not of you.
I almost ask if he’s afraid of me.
Instead, I pull my scarf tighter. “You drink coffee. You listen more than most people. You’re less terrifying than my last boss at Applebee’s. The bar is so, so low.”
He lifts a hand and hesitates, as if expecting something to happen if he touches me, before brushing a stray piece of hair from my cheek. The gesture is careful and studied, like he learned it from a museum plaque and is afraid he’ll get it wrong.
It doesn’t feel wrong.
“You should go inside,” he says, regret softening the words. “It will be cold soon.”
I make myself say it before I can reconsider.
“You could come up for a minute.”
My voice is more hopeful than I mean to let on.
His eyes narrow, the dark blue turning nearly black.
“It is not safe for me,” he says softly, “to become too comfortable.”
I want to ask what happens if he does become too comfortable, but in a way, I already know. Patterns, he’d said. Catastrophe is a pattern, too.
“Well,” I say, “if you ever feel like living dangerously, I make a mean hot cocoa.”
I dig out my keys, flash him one last smile, and close the door behind me.
Sleep is impossible. I lie in bed staring at the endless cracks in my ceiling, replaying every word until I’m certain I must be making half of it up. When I finally drift off, it’s with the peculiar feeling that something is watching over me—a comfort, not a curse.
The weirdest thing about the day shift isn’t the lack of goth kids or the way sunlight makes the shop’s once-cozy gloom look like a crime scene photo. It’s the profound sense of wrongness.
Day is not for secrets. All the tiny supernatural off-gassing that keeps nights alive here evaporates with the dawn. The syrups look brighter, the pastries drier, and the regulars want their coffee so ordinary it practically arrives pre-digested.
Before my shift starts, I check my phone and find a dozen missed texts from Petra, mostly GIFs of people screaming interspersed with links about the supernatural presence currently hanging around Blackthorn Bay.
Apparently, news travels at warp speed when you’re the only barista in town dating a minor deity.
Not that we’re dating.
I reply with a thumbs-up and a GIF of a cat sidling away from a cucumber.
Rumors are already at critical mass by noon. Daisy from the bakery leans over the pickup counter and whispers, “Is it true you’re seeing The Night Guy?”
“He drinks coffee here.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“It’s all I’m admitting.”
By three, a feisty gang of goblin high schoolers are ordering “mochas as black as the void” with straight faces, then cackling when I serve them. The first time someone calls me the Queen of Darkness, I ask them to bring me a crown next time.