CALLIOPE
There’s a theory I’ve always believed about time: that it stumbles sometimes, a little drunk, and nobody notices.
Leap seconds, daylight savings, Mondays.
We reset the clocks, blame our phones, chalk it up to human error and move on because the alternative—that time is a living thing and sometimes it simply misbehaves—would drive us all mad.
I wake with a dry tongue and a knot in my shoulder, and for one blessed moment, I think, Well, there goes another night.
There’s a weight draped over my waist, not a blanket but an arm, and somehow that’s more terrifying than waking up alone. The air tastes of salt and scorched coffee grounds. My scarf is bunched beneath my head, my boots are still on, and if I don’t move, maybe the world will hold its breath for me.
Eventually, a voice—soft and much too close—breathes my name.
“Calliope?”
I open my eyes and see the sky first, triple-black and scattered with a hundred thousand stars. The sun hasn’t even made a cameo over Blackthorn’s edge. Fog sits heavy over the bay, carrying the sort of goosebump chill that says it’s hours before breakfast.
Beside me, Erebus is the negative space of a person, all midnight eyes and careful patience.
“You stayed,” I say, immediately regretting how pathetic it sounds.
He nods. “You asked me to.”
I’m not sure I actually did, or if I merely implied it by falling asleep on his chest, but it doesn’t matter. I wanted him to stay.
Worse, I want him to do it again.
That is a new and terrifying thing to want.
“I can’t believe I slept straight through. I figured I’d wake up being mugged by a pelican or pecked to death by frostbitten gulls.”
“You were safe.”
The certainty in his voice warms something low in my chest.
Then I stand.
I brush sand from my coat, stretch the kink out of my shoulder, and finally check my phone.
9:42 a.m.
I stare at the screen.
Then at the sky.
Then back at the screen.
“Erebus.”
He says nothing.
A bead of sweat forms at the back of my neck despite the cold.
“Did you do it again?”
His face answers before his mouth does.
“You said you wouldn’t.”
“I know.”
“How late?”
“Three hours,” he says, as if precision somehow makes it less insane.
I close my eyes.
Of course he knows exactly how late. He is Night. He probably knows what time it is in seventeen dimensions.
“Three hours.”
“You were sleeping.”
“That is not a defense.”
“You seemed peaceful.”
I turn too quickly and walk directly into the stone balustrade, catching my hip hard enough to make me swear.
Erebus reaches for me.
I wave him off and grab my scarf from the bench.
“Is this going to become a regular thing now? Every time I have a bad day, you smother Blackthorn in darkness so I can have a lie-in?”
“I do not wish to upset the balance.”
“I believe you. That’s what makes this so weird.”
His hand drops.
I think about everybody waking beneath the wrong sky.
Parents trying to convince children that yes, school still exists even though Orion has been hanging over the supermarket since breakfast. Night-shift workers wondering whether they’re supposed to go home.
Petra trying to salute a sun that has apparently stopped accepting appointments.
“I was being dramatic last night,” I tell him. “Metaphorical.”
Erebus studies my face with unsettling sincerity.
“Would you like me to bring Dawn now?”
I stare at him.
“Yes, Erebus. I would very much like morning to happen.”
He nods once.
Somewhere far beyond what I can see, something changes.
The dark does not disappear immediately, but the eastern horizon begins to thin, black softening reluctantly toward gray.
I exhale.
“Come on. I’m already late for work, and Petra is probably developing a stress fracture just thinking about us.”
Blackthorn Bay at almost ten in the morning looks like somebody forgot to switch sets between scenes.
The houses are awake with every light burning. Deer stand in front yards eating roses as though they’ve been granted diplomatic immunity, and three crows line a power wire, fat and judgmental, like they’ve convened their own emergency council.
By the time Erebus and I reach Main Street, morning is beginning to force its way over the rooftops, but the town is still operating under the assumption that civilization may have ended.
The goblin postal carrier is delivering mail wearing a headlamp.
“Neither snow nor rain nor cosmic nonsense!” he shouts at nobody in particular.
Traffic snarls around a bakery van because half the nocturnal population hasn’t gone home yet and half the daytime population has come out to stare at the sky.
Someone has already hung a handwritten sign outside the souvenir shop:
I SURVIVED THE LONG NIGHT
Blackthorn may collapse, but capitalism will apparently endure.
Ghoulish Grinds glows like a portal at the end of the block.
Inside, Rose is sprawled facedown across the counter, muttering into a muffin wrapper.
“Am I dead?” she asks when the bell jingles.
“In your heart, yes.”
She rolls over and blinks at me. “Calliope. Thank God. Or not God. Whatever. I thought you’d been eaten by a squid.”
“I was by the bay.”
“Worse.”
She pushes herself upright and spots Erebus lingering by the window.
Her eyes widen.
“Did you make the sun explode?”
“No,” I say quickly.
Erebus opens his mouth.
I point at him. “Do not help.”
Rose rubs both hands down her face. “School board already called a weather closure. Nobody’s supposed to drive until they figure out what’s happening, but the Fish Shack opened anyway.”
Of course it did.
The Four Horsemen could ride down Main Street and Blackthorn Fish & Fry would still be selling hush puppies through the apocalypse.
Rose peers toward the window. “You’re not worried?”
“I like the stars. Besides, if the world ends, I don’t have to pay rent.”
A crash sounds from the back.
Then Petra appears.
She barrels through the kitchen door in a damp jacket, wet hair scraped into a bun and fury radiating from every geological layer of her body.
She sees Erebus.
Stops.
For one perfect heartbeat, the café goes silent.
Then both of Petra’s hands slam onto the pastry case.
“THREE HOURS.”
Erebus lowers his head slightly. “I did not intend—”
“YES, YOU DID.”
I wince.
Petra advances.
“Another whole yoga class ruined. Do you know what it’s like to do Surya Namaskar in total darkness? I burned my entire ass on a heat lamp.”
“Again?” I ask.
She whips around. “Do not start.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
Her attention snaps back to Erebus.
“You are going to fix this.”
“I have.”
“Eventually. That is not the same thing.”
Erebus seems to consider this distinction.
Petra points at him. “No more delays. Zero. None. Sunrise happens when sunrise is supposed to happen.”
“I understand.”
“You understood yesterday.”
“That is true.”
“And yet here we are.”
She turns to me.
“And you, Craven, you need to keep him in line.”
I put both hands up. “Excuse me? He predates agriculture. I am not responsible for his choices.”
Petra stares at me.
“Well, he sure as hell isn’t listening to me.”
“That sounds like a him problem.”
“It becomes an us problem when the sun doesn’t come up.”
Fair.
She looks between us, then settles on Erebus again.
“If you can’t manage this, the Council is going to get involved.”
I blink. “There’s a Council?”
Petra gives me a disgusted look. “There’s always a Council. Grow up.”
Then she stalks toward the back door, muttering about fools, maniacs, and the fragility of her lumbar region.
Erebus watches her go.
“I believe she dislikes me.”
“She threatened you twice in twenty-four hours. In Blackthorn, that’s practically friendship.”
His gaze drops to the floor.
“I am sorry.”
Something about the way he says it strips away the comedy.
I think about how old he must be, how many mornings he has gotten exactly right, only to begin screwing them up now.
For me.
“I liked it,” I admit.
His head lifts.
“The extra time,” I clarify. “I liked waking up with you. I liked all of it.”
Hope flickers across his face.
I take his hand and lead him toward the back room, away from Rose and any other witnesses.
“But you can’t keep doing this. Not for me. Not for anybody.”
His brow furrows.
“But I want to.”
There it is.
The problem in six words.
I should probably give him a lecture about boundaries, responsibility, cosmic equilibrium and the fact that Petra’s ass has now suffered two separate heat-lamp incidents.
Instead, I grab his coat and kiss him.
This kiss is nothing like the first.
There’s no hesitation now, no careful waiting for instructions.
Erebus catches my waist and pulls me closer, kissing me with a hunger that makes my thoughts scatter.
I bury my hands in his hair and hold him there until I forget about rent, the missing morning, and the increasingly likely possibility that the town council is about to convene over my love life.
When we finally break apart, I’m breathless.
Erebus looks stunned.
“You don’t have to keep the night to keep me,” I say.
His hand rises to my cheek.
“You disappear every morning.”
Something in my chest aches.
“No. I go to sleep. There’s a difference.”
“For me, it does not feel different.”
I lean into his palm.
“Then you’re going to have to learn.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and I can almost see the weight of eternity moving behind his eyes.
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.”
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.”