Pema lingered at the door of the hotel room, mustered up a gentle smile for Gloria. The Woodbury Holiday Inn was intact, situated far enough from the previous day's blasts to maintain its structure, but the power was out and its rooms and halls were completely abandoned. All the regular din of life was absent, the AC units and cars and muffled conversations and running water, revealing a sickening, barely-audible sort of infrasound that hovered just at the edge of Gloria's ability to hear, making her slightly nauseous. Things felt deeply unreal.

  "I'll be back soon," Pema assured. "With others, if all goes well."

  "Hard to believe there even are any others out there," Gloria said, peeking out of the window in their suite. The streets outside were empty. Off in the West, the Minneapolis skyline was missing.

  "You'd be right, I'm sorry to say, if we were talking about the normal people you share- shared your city with." Pema wrung one hand absently. "I'm afraid the vast majority of them have fled by now, or died, or are dying. But those like us, those with Qi, there are quite a few of them still nearby, and I imagine most if not all, after what's happened, will be eager to stop the madness."

  Gloria shifted. She was sitting on one of the suite's queen mattresses, pants and shoes leaving soot marks on the white sheets. "And you're sure I can't come with you?"

  "I need to cover a lot of ground tonight. You're not yet quick enough to stay with me."

  Gloria's heart quickened, and she felt a tug of anxiety at the base of her throat. "You've carried me before. Maybe you could-"

  "There may be some violence. Emotions are heightened right now. I'd rather not put you in harm's way."

  Gloria drew her knees up to her chest, nestled back against the hotel bed's headboard. She felt a tweak in her hips at that–one of a million little constant reminders of her age she'd been bombarded with in the recent mayhem–but she held the pose. Anything to prevent the tears she felt coming. Her eyes wandered back outside. "Fine. Go. Leave me alone again."

  "You can cry," Pema said. "You should. It's good for the brain. The act releases several beneficial hormones that work rather beautifully in tandem to-"

  "I don't want to."

  "You've been through a horrific day. Nobody would fault you for being emotional."

  Gloria felt the tears start to squeeze unbidden from her eyes and cursed to herself. "So ridiculous. I feel so ridiculous."

  Pema swept over, placed a warm hand on her shoulder. "No, no, nothing could be further from-"

  "I'm ridiculous. I just saw- I just watched my hometown get blown to kingdom come by a real, a real nuclear missile, and all the buildings fall, and the people, oh God, oh, the people that we saw on the way, the- the dying-"

  "You've seen true horrors today." Pema was rubbing her back now, nodding solemnly.

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  "I saw all that, and that's not why I'm crying!" Gloria buried her head in her hand. "That's what's ridiculous."

  Pema cocked his head at her. "Then what-"

  "I'm crying because it occurred to me that even after everything, after finding out that magic is real and the end of the world kicking off, everything still leads me to sitting alone in a dark room."

  Pema frowned. His eyes unfocused a fraction and Gloria could almost feel him rooting around in her head, sifting through scores of memories of her dreading the smothering quiet of her own apartment, day after day.

  The knowledge that Pema was really looking at this now, that he was absorbing so much evidence of her own loneliness and failure, made Gloria feel all the worse. She fought the urge to bury her face in her hands.

  "Go ahead and look," Gloria said, turning back to look out the window. "Go ahead and pick away at my head, invade my privacy without asking, I don't care anymore. There's nothing to see there. You've probably done this with hundreds of people, and I bet I'm the saddest, flattest, dullest brain you've ever seen."

  She frowned bitterly at the wasteland outside. "I'm barley a person, Pema. It's not fair that I'm alive and they're all… That all these people with actual families are dead or gone and I'm the one who gets to keep going. Why give all this power to an old, confused woman? Why couldn't it have gone to someone with, I don't know, with some purpose, some vision? Why couldn't it have gone to someone who wasn't so god damned boring! I-"

  Pema pulled gently on Gloria's shoulder, swiveling her around to face him. Before she could finish her sentence, his lips were on hers.

  Gloria let loose a surprised little yelp, muffled by Pema. She didn't close her eyes. But she didn't pull away.

  The kiss lasted little more than four seconds. Pema pulled away and smiled down at her.

  "You're not boring," he said, tone gentle but insistent. "I'm something of an authority on people, wouldn't you agree? And I'll say: you're not boring. You cared for your parents well after it became a burden to you.You withstood great loneliness with grace. You never let your isolation sour you, turn you angry or resentful towards others. I find that endlessly interesting."

  Gloria, eyes wide, raised a hand to her mouth. "That… That was my first kiss."

  Pema laughed. "Would you believe me if I told you that it was mine as well?"

  Gloria goggled up at him. Pema flitted away, back toward the door.

  "Endure the loneliness just a little while longer. Soon, I'll be back with others, and there will be people in your life again. I promise you this, Gloria."

  Pema turned to leave, and Gloria found the focus to call out: "Wait!"

  Pema notched an eyebrow at her.

  "Whoever you bring back here," she continued, "you're going to tell them the truth. The whole truth."

  "I've been honest thus far," Pema said. "Too honest, sometimes, as you've taken to saying."

  "But not about the big things. These people, if they're anything like me, they're going to want to know why. Why did this happen? How? Who are you and these other, what did you call them, Demigods? How is it you're able to do what you do?" Gloria straightened in the bed, tried to quiet the tremor in her voice and sound firm. "You'll tell us the whole story, because we can't stay scared and ignorant for much longer without going nuts. Full transparency, from here on out."

  Pema's smile widened. "Done. Full transparency. See you soon."

  And with that, he was gone.