We left the coffee shop only when they turned the lights up at closing time. Catherine giggled as she shakily stood up. "Whoa..." she said, "I've been sitting a long time!" She tucked the umbrella from her smoothie into her hair with a grin and we wandered back into the night.

The parking garage made me nervous. I've never heard myself of anyone getting mugged there, but countless people have said to me in low tones, "I've heard stories..." The part of me that never listens to logic expected dark figures lurking behind columns, and when the elevator doors slid open I stood back, car keys in hand as a meager defense - though I don't know how much damage I really could do with them.

She dropped me off where I'd left my car and waited to make sure I got into it all right, then a grin and a wave and taillights growing smaller in the distance, and I was alone.

It was past midnight now, and after fumbling with the radio to silence it I realized I was not headed the way I'd come. I was not sure where I was, and signs of life were few and far between. Beneath the railroad tracks a man walked a large and toothy dog; a few blocks later someone loaded something into a truck by the dim glow of a warehouse light. I didn't even know the name of the street I was on.

I've lived in this city my entire life, though, and felt calm. I don't know where I am, I fretted for a moment, but a quiet confidence within me said, No, but soon you'll arrive somewhere where you will. So I drove, sharing the road with almost no other cars, the silence of the night cool about me. Dark buildings loomed above me, windows like empty eyes looking blindly at the patchy shadows through which I slipped effortlessly.

And suddenly, though I still didn't know where I was, I knew I was heading east. Right above the horizon, at the end of an endless stretch of empty road, hung the rising moon. Rust it was, the color of old blood. Blood moon. Voices from storybooks blossomed in my head like mushrooms under wet leaves. "This is a bad night to be abroad, son," whispered the old man, raising a gnarled finger in warning. The boy pulled his cloak tighter about him, for though the breeze was mild he felt a sudden chill. I smiled. The masculine archetypes in my head didn't know any better, but I did. It was a good night to be abroad, for me, with that blood moon too heavy even to rise above the old buildings, instead lurking between them.