Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Family would only make it worse. He would have to make an appearance tomorrow, and he would need to look upbeat and unbothered, because if he let what he was feeling show on his face, they would smother him trying to make him feel better. He didn’t want the attention. He didn’t want to think about it or talk about it. No, he had to look like he had his shit together, and that meant taking care of himself now and covering his bases. He’d build a fire to get warm, make some coffee, eat some good food, and sink into a book to live in someone else’s head for a change. He still had eggnog in the fridge and the cookies he’d baked two nights ago.
Gods, eggnog sounded good right now.
Roman shoved his feet into the Eeyore slippers his eldest sister had bought him last year and headed into the living room. He’d gone to sleep with a well-stocked fire that should’ve lasted until morning. Instead, a pile of ashes greeted him. If he were lucky, there would be some coals under all that.
Had he been born several decades ago, he would’ve just turned on the central heating. He’d have lived in a subdivision, his lawn ornaments would have been ceramic gnomes or cute animals, and he’d have had a comfortable, prosaic job, something like an insurance adjuster. But the world had suffered a magic apocalypse. Now magic waves battered the planet, coming and going as they pleased, leaving the skyscrapers in ruins, and continuing his family business meant a lifetime of servitude as the priest of a dark god…
He caught himself. That way lay dragons, and not the fun kind. He needed eggnog. Eggnog would make everything better.
Roman went into the kitchen. The long window above the sink presented him with a dreary view: a chunk of gray sky above a stretch of lawn, dusted with snow and edged by dark woods. His kingdom in all of its glory.
There would be more snow before spring. The magic waves had been getting stronger lately, and this year they brought unseasonable cold. The temperature had dropped into the mid-twenties last week and stayed there. Even during the mildest Atlanta winters, his house always got a little snow—it came with the territory. But now, with the frigid temperatures, a snowpocalypse was almost guaranteed. He had no doubt about it.
Eggnog and cookies, and then he would brave the outside and bring more wood in.
Roman swung the fridge door open. An empty jug of eggnog greeted him. He was sure it had been half-full yesterday. Did he drink it all and forget? He stared at it for a hot minute, but the jug refused to refill itself.
Fine. He would have coffee with his cookies.
He shut the fridge and turned to the island. Last night he’d left a plate of cookies on it under a glass hood. The hood was still there. So was the plate. The cookies were gone. Only crumbs remained.
“What the actual fuck?”
The house didn’t answer.
He lifted the hood and stared at the crumbs. A little sparkle caught his eye. He leaned closer.
Glitter. A little smudge of silver glitter on the rim of the plate.
Magic gave thoughts power. Faith was a form of thought, so if a group of people believed in a specific being with all their heart, it could manifest into existence. The more believers there were, the higher the chances of manifestation, and the more power the being would have. Faith endowed the Pope with his miraculous healing powers and spawned region-specific monsters based on urban legends and folklore.
However, sometimes the very nature of the imagined being precluded the manifestation from occurring because fulfilling it would require infinite power. For example, it didn’t matter how many people believed that a white-bearded man in a jolly red suit delivered presents on Christmas. For that manifestation to occur, a single being would have to be aware of every single child, assess their conduct throughout an entire year, create a toy out of thin air, and then deliver it simultaneously to every household with a child. The scale was too large, and the very faith that kept the legend alive ensured it would never become reality.
This was his bread and butter. His father and uncle, in a rare feat of cooperation, had literally written a book on it and called it The Santa Claus Paradox.
The chance that Santa Claus had manifested in his kitchen and stolen his cookies was absolutely zero. Besides, it wasn’t even Christmas Eve.
Roman tilted his head to the side. A second sprinkling of glitter sparkled at him from the edge of the island. This one had a dark brown smudge near it.
He skirted the island and studied the smudge. Blood. Roman passed his hand over it. Magic nipped at his skin. Human.