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Pan couldn’t hold back the snort of derision. “I doubt that. Whatever happened had nothing to do with the gods.”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“That’s not how they usually work,” Pan hurried on. “I met a couple of them back home.”

“Really?”

“Yes…it’s all blessings and granting wishes. Only a few enjoy punishing…” He doubted any god had the power to create a cataclysmic earthquake that shook two worlds.

“And Pan is one of the nice ones?”

“As far as I am aware.” He offered the woman his hands, and she placed her much larger hands in his.

Great, now he needed to pray to himself and thank himself, which was weird but not the weirdest occurrence today. And it had been a very long day. He really wanted the illusion of normality, if only for a moment.

“Thank you, Pan, for leading me to this woman and the food she provided. Please bless her, your humble servant…” Fuck, he needed a name. He dragged out one he often used when he wanted to walk around untroubled. “Silas.”

The woman gave a heartfelt, “Amen.”

Pan held his breath, waiting for a spark of magic.

Nothing.

One thousand poxes on this godforsaken world.

CHAPTER5

At some point, Noah had fallen asleep. He woke with the sunlight cutting through a crack in the curtains, and for a few seconds, he didn’t know where he was. He rolled over, a candle on the tallboy catching his attention, and everything fell into place.

This was his aunt’s house.

Where he’d been living for over a year and doing his best not to mooch. To prove that he wasn’t a burden on their family the way he was to his parents.

His mother didn’t approve of his collections. She didn’t go for any of that superstitious nonsense. She and Meredith couldn’t have been more different if they tried. Would the same have been true for him and his brother?

He ran his fingers through his hair and hissed at the pain in his hand. The cut. The not-earthquake.

“Fuck.” He flung back the covers, and as he did, his phone launched itself into the middle of the room.

Oh, he’d fallen asleep scrolling through social media again, watching videos of…he wasn’t sure what to call it. It wasn’t a fucking earthquake, that’s for sure. After the initial shake and arrival of buildings and beings, there’d been no more upheaval. Now the authorities were in recovery mode, pulling people out of buildings and blocking off roads and such. They asked people to stay indoors if they could. Listed were emergency numbers for water and electrical disruptions, another for food.

Anything to reduce the number of people out.

He swung his legs out of bed and retrieved his phone.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Somehow, the screen had cracked when it landed on the carpet…and the battery was only eleven percent.

“I should be bloody grateful. I’ve got a signal.” He plugged his phone in and opened the app to resume where he left off.

It had almost been twenty-four hours since the thing. Surely someone had answers.

Solutions.

Anything.

As much as he wanted to scroll through more videos, he didn’t because he’d seen too much, and it was all fear and destruction and freaking out about monsters and dragons. Instead, he found the newsfeed of a station he followed.

The first headline read: “Scientists are referring to the global event as the Collapse.”