The ad had said Now Hiring: Overnight Server, No Experience Necessary, and Rowan Hale had called before she'd finished reading it twice. Three weeks behind on rent had a way of narrowing a person's options down to a single, obvious yes.

Marrow's sat on the kind of stretch of highway that existed mostly to get people somewhere else — a squat building with a buzzing sign, a gravel lot, and a reputation, according to the woman who'd interviewed her, for "the best pie in the county, hands down, don't argue with me about it." By daylight it looked exactly like what it was supposed to be: red vinyl booths gone soft with age, a coffee machine that had seen better decades, a bell over the door that jingled a half-second too late every time someone walked through it.

Rowan liked it immediately. It felt like the kind of place that couldn't hurt you.

She met her trainer at eleven that night. His name was Desmond, he was maybe sixty, and he had the unhurried calm of a man who had stopped being surprised by anything a long time ago. He walked her through the register, the ticket system, the fryer that needed babying. Normal things. Then he set down his coffee, looked at her with an expression she couldn't quite place — somewhere between apology and rehearsal — and said, "Now. The rules."

"Rules?"

"House rules. Overnight only. You won't need most of these during the day shift, which is why nobody bothers telling the day people." He recited them like a man reading off a grocery list, which was almost worse than if he'd looked serious about it.

"Don't unlock the rear door after midnight, for any reason, for anybody. If a customer asks you what day it is, you ask them what year they mean, and you write down the answer. Never take an item off the midnight menu, even if nobody orders it, even if you think it's a misprint. If the kitchen bell rings three times and there's no ticket to match it, you turn off the lights for sixty seconds. Count it yourself, don't guess."

He paused just long enough that Rowan almost laughed, waiting for the punchline.

"And you never serve Booth Nine."

She glanced toward the back corner of the dining room. An ordinary booth. Slightly newer vinyl than the others, she noticed now, like it had been reupholstered more recently — or more often.

"Is that a joke you do with everyone?"

"Every new hire asks that." Desmond picked his coffee back up. "Every new hire stops asking after their first night."