A/N: Hey, look, I wrote something that's not completely depressing. Tell me what you think.

Disclaimer: The Graveyard Book is the property of HarperCollins and assorted affiliates.

It was eleven o'clock and the start of a six hour shift that promised to be tedious, uneventful, and unstimulating, as usual. Geordie sighed and looked at the clock. Only five minutes had passed. Five hours and fifty-five minutes, then.

She punched the keys on the cash register idly, coming up with nonsense figures and then erasing them. Tedium. Two months on the job and it was starting to get to her. Long nights sitting on this hard plastic stool, waiting for the few customers that sometimes, and only sometimes, might come in in the middle of the night. How dreadfully boring.

Geordie thought about pulling out the romance novel tucked away in her purse, a cheap dime-store paperback with a wrinkled cover and twenty pages read, the plot already forgotten. She sighed again. Seven minutes.

It really hadn't been so bad at first. The pace might be slow but it was easy, and she couldn't deny that she saw some interesting people now and then. She already knew the regulars—the late-night waitress who got off her shift at 12:30 and came in every other day for a packet of cigarettes and occasionally a bottle of rum; a tired-looking old man who bought two magazines and a case of cat food every Tuesday (it was Friday); a harried husband who showed up several times a week for everything from canned pears in syrup to fistfuls of chocolate bars (he had a pregnant wife at home). Then there was that strange fellow.

Geordie hadn't seen him in a while. Two, almost three weeks, she thought. Not that she was keeping track, but Margaret, who'd switched over to the five-to-three shift, said he usually came in every week or so, sometimes more. Margaret had pointed out the fellow to her co-worker when she'd first started, giggling in a way that Geordie thought was a tad too juvenile for a woman of at least fifty.

Not that she denied the man was good-looking. If you liked that tall, dark, mysterious kind of thing. And facial structure that put the male model on the cover of her romance novel to shame. Not to mention those smoldering eyes, brimming with dark intensity and just a touch of danger—

"Excuse me."

Geordie jumped. She darted up from her stool automatically and found herself staring into those smoldering eyes like she'd conjured them up through sheer force of will. She gulped and hoped it wasn't audible.

"Right. Uh. Sorry."

Feeling herself go red in the face she kept her eyes down and began ringing up the man's purchases. What a moron, her brain said to itself. He must think you're a complete loon, and clearly he is correct, gawping at him like that, didn't even notice him standing there. You are a nut, Geordie, and you'd better get a hold on yourself!

She risked a glance and was relieved to see he didn't seem to have noticed. She straightened up a bit. As usual, the man was impeccably dressed, in black. Odd fashion choice, that. Still, if he could pull it off, why not? His suit had the indefinable but unmistakable look of designer label, although it was a touch dusty, and perhaps, a bit out of date. As usual, and very incongruously, he'd for some reason thrown a puffy, wrinkled parka in olive nylon over the expensive-looking suit. It clashed dreadfully. She could not imagine why he was wearing it, as it was neither cold nor inclement out tonight.

His purchases were the usual: boxes of pre-packaged convenience foods, all ready to eat out of the box and with no apparent regard for normal standards of balanced meals. There were sugary cereals, packages of crisps, sardines in tins, and piles of granola bars. To finish it off there was a large case of diet fizzy soda. She couldn't figure it out. He certainly didn't look like he lived off of junk food, and if he could afford such nice suits, what was he doing buying a week's worth of groceries in a highway gas station/convenience store?

He had a strange knack for standing still. Very still, almost too much, as if he wasn't even breathing. He was staring off at nothing in particular, looking like he wasn't breathing, a very serious expression on his face.

The food was rung up and Geordie was surprised to see that there were items of a different kind in the shopping basket on the counter. There was a set of children's clothes, a cheap gray jumper and a pair of blue jeans, basic items sold in the little store next to the toothpaste and shampoo. They looked like they would fit a child of about ten, and Geordie was quite surprised.

How very odd. He'd never bought anything like this before. Did he have children—or worse, was he married? She quickly glanced at his ring finger but saw no wedding band there. She did notice for the first time, however, how very pale his skin was, his hands almost glowing white under the fluorescent lights. She shivered without really knowing why.

Geordie had observed, and later confirmed from Margaret, that this man was not much of a talker. Unlike the husband with the demanding pregnant wife, he never talked about his personal life, or even stopped to chat about the weather. It was very unfortunate, because Geordie was fairly dieing to know something about this latest mystery. Not, of course, because he could have been the subject of his own romance novel cover and had dark, brooding eyes. It was a purely professional interest, since, after all, customer service was their highest priority.

"Your kids must love you," she said in an odd-hand kind of way.

He looked at her. "I beg your pardon."

"Since, er, you buy them all these sweets. Uh." She was slightly startled by his coldness and the intensity of his stare which, now that she paid attention, was really not so much smoldering as it was frightening.

"No, I'm afraid I don't have any children," he said, looking away now.

"Oh. I just thought—" she laughed awkwardly to herself—"what with the clothes and junk food—"

"You are mistaken. These are for a friend."

"You must be quite a nice friend," she said.

"I'd like to think so," he said pensively.

He paid in cash. The bills were rumpled as if they'd been stuffed in a coat pocket and sat on, and appeared in his hand without her noticing him reaching for them. He set them on the plastic counter partition and slid them towards her with deliberate, long fingers. Geordie reached for them, smoothed out one ten pound note and started on the other, when she noticed he was staring down at her with a funny look.

He leaned forward slightly, so that she had to lean back, away from that powerful gaze. "You don't like your job, do you?" he said, his voice very soft.

"What? Uh, well, it's all right," she stuttered.

"You don't have to lie to me," he said in an almost-whisper, and Geordie understood what it was like to forget to breath, felt the sensation of falling and drifting away in dark pools that were his eyes, rich and empty as the night sky and cold as iron. She made a little noise and could not move, could not think or feel anything except the blackness of his gaze and the gentle, whispering sounds he made.

"No…" she said, her voice sounding far away and unfamiliar. Still he leaned in closer, all pale skin too white in the harsh store lights and dark, iron eyes and Geordie felt she would do anything for him, anything in the world, even if he wanted her to run away from her life forever, without a backwards glance, or leap blindly off a cliff and into the ocean. Anything, anything….

Entirely of its own volition, it seemed, the cash register dinged loudly. Geordie sucked in a breath, blinked her eyes several times, and when she opened them again, the man was not leaning towards her as she'd thought but standing quite ordinarily on the other side of the plastic partition, looking somewhat annoyed.

"Sorry, did you just say something?" Geordie asked, hand still outreached for the other ten pound note.

The man turned to her, an eyebrow raised. "I? No, I did not," he said. And he looked just a little bit ashamed.

Geordie shook her head, feeling like there were cobwebs inside it and hoping to shake them off. She wondered if she'd just imagined the whole thing, and the more she thought about it, the more she tried to grasp onto the stupefied feeling that had so engulfed her, the farther away it felt, like a dream forgotten upon waking. She finished smoothing out the bills and entered the amount into the cash register, which dinged again, although this time by her doing.

"Paper or plastic?" she said without looking at him. Already she had forgotten her favorable appraisal of his appearance and curiosity with his personal life and wanted nothing more than for this man to leave as soon as possible.

"Plastic." She put the clothes and food in two bags, which he carried with one hand, the other holding the case of soda. "Pleasant evening," he said with a nod as he headed away. Geordie watched his retreating form until she shivered again, despite the warmth of the building. When she looked back, he was gone.

She just wasn't cut out for the night shift, she figured. It was the stress, and she remembered reading something in a magazine once about the lower light levels interfering with synaptic function in people who had to stay up at night. Or something. Anyway, maybe she would ask Margaret if they could switch back to their old schedule and hope that would fix it. And perhaps, in the meantime….

"Sorry, Lord of the Moonlight Moors," she said, and she reached under the counter and pulled out her romance novel. With a small sigh, she let it slide into the rubbage bin. A little romance could do funny things to a brain.