Demon Night

likely have them gone by the time she returned—or at least moved to a table in the restaurant.
    She grabbed her navy peacoat from the hook inside the break room, slid it on, and dug her knitted cap from the pocket before slipping out through the kitchens. The heavy length of her hair against her back annoyed her, but she didn’t untuck it from beneath her collar. Trapped as it was between the coat and the wool hat, it’d be as flat as a one-dollar beer by the end of her break.
    But flat could be fluffed; drowned rat could not.
    Rain misted over her face and sparkled beneath the halogen security light. Cardboard wilted in the recycler to her left. The lid on the brown Dumpster was up. She grimaced, imagining the sodden garbage, and tipped it closed. The clang shot through the alley, disturbing a yellow-striped cat and echoing in her ears until she reached the gated stairwell to the roof.
    The gate was wrought iron, with a metal screen to prevent anyone reaching through the bars to the interior knob. As a safety measure, only the outside knob locked—if someone dropped the key over the side of the roof, they could still open the gate from the inside.
    Every Cole’s employee had access to the key, but Charlie was one of the few who used it, even when—as now—the air was cool enough to nip at her face, but not enough to make her shiver. Luckily, in Seattle, extremely cold days were as rare as a perceptive drunk.
    The top of the stairwell was dark, but the light above the bar’s kitchen door shined through the gate, casting shadowy diamonds against the rough brick wall. Charlie ran lightly up the stairs, her feet slapping tinny chimes from the aluminum treads.
    In the middle of the roof, a few potted plants edged an Astroturf carpet and surrounded a porch swing better suited to a verandah in Savannah than atop a bar in the trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood. Small firs from a Christmas tree farm flanked the swing’s support posts. A white string of lights spiraled around the evergreen branches, though the holidays had passed four months earlier. Steam floated from the ventilation hoods over the kitchen and caught the streetlights in front of Cole’s, then dissipated as it rose. The scent of grease and fried potatoes it carried did not fade as easily.
    Old Matthew called the roof garden his little piece of Heaven; when Charlie had utilized the sand-filled planter that doubled as an ashtray at the end of the swing, it had been hers. Still was.
    She’d kicked the habit, but the scene was too good not to revisit. Though the old movie theater across the street obscured most of the downtown skyline, there was just enough glitter to offer a lovely view.
    The chill from the seat soaked through her black cotton pants, but the canvas awning had kept it dry. A push of her foot sent it swinging, and she fished her cell phone from her coat. For the space of a few seconds, the rocking tempo perfectly matched the ring of the phone.
    Jane answered on an upswing. “ Char -lie.”
    Charlie’s brows rose. She’d heard a couple of men say her name like that, but never her older sister. “I’m just checking to make sure you haven’t forgotten about lunch tomorrow.”
    “Nuh-uh. I wrote it on a sticky. It’s stuck on the fridge at home.”
    “Fridge” was kind of a moan, too. Charlie unwrapped a piece of gum—not the square kind anymore—and folded it over her tongue before she said, “Actually, I wrote it. You just stuck it.” At home? “Are you still at the lab?”
    “Yeah.”
    Charlie rolled her eyes. “Did you remember to eat today?”
    “Uh-huh. We ordered in. Sushi. And wine.” A giggle came through the earpiece. Jane didn’t giggle.
    “You’re with Dylan,” Charlie guessed. “Isn’t this why you moved in with him? It still shocks me that Legion doesn’t dock you both for…what’s the word? It starts with F .”
    “Fraternization?”
    “That’s good enough. With the regional head, while you’re at work. Isn’t there a policy against that kind of thing?” It seemed like there should be, but Charlie couldn’t be sure; both the corporate and academic research worlds were mysteries to her. Jane’s descriptions of internal politics, red tape, and the hoops she had to jump through at Legion Laboratories could have been set in another universe.
    “Nuh-uh.” Breathily. And her ridiculously articulate—if absentminded—sister was spouting two-syllable nonwords.
    “Oh, Jesus,” Charlie realized.