His eyes, lowered before, snapped up at these words, and suddenly he was staring out into the darkness, which was nearly complete, and finding in the space directly outside their makeshift shelter a pair of huge yellow eyes staring back.

It required massive willpower not to jerk away and leap up and instead to remain as still as she was, but somehow he managed it. The eyes were bright and their gaze intense, reflecting the glow of distant stars that peeked through the heavy clouds and filtered through the trees. Steady and unblinking, they seemed to float in the darkness like giant orbs.

“Phryne,” he said softly.

“What?”

“I want you to do something for me. I want you to lift your head just a little and look outside the shelter. But don’t say or do anything else. Don’t make any other movement at all. Don’t be frightened.”

She did what he asked, raising her head and staring out, and he felt the shiver that ran through her when she saw the eyes. But she kept herself from moving or speaking; she kept from panicking.

After a few long moments, she said, her voice very small, “What is it?”

As she said it, the eyes suddenly shifted, sliding to the right, and suddenly the body they occupied became partially visible, bits and pieces of it revealed by the ambient light. It was a massive cat, bigger than anything Pan had ever heard of and certainly bigger than anything he had ever seen. Its coat was a mottled gray and black, its head broad and flat with small ears, and its neck encircled by a thick ruff. When it shifted again, all the time studying them, he could see the muscles of its long, sleek body clearly defined beneath the sheen of its hide.

A massive paw lifted and pulled experimentally at the branches, which gave way easily to the immense pressure. Pan heard Phryne gasp and felt his own heart begin to race in fear of what might be coming.

But then the cat lowered its paw and circled away, gone as quickly as wind-blown smoke. Phryne clung to Pan, as if somehow she could find protection by doing so. He couldn’t imagine what he would do against something that huge. He had the staff and its magic to protect them, but he wondered how useful they would be. It was one thing to stand against something as bulky and slow as an agenahl, but something else again to face a creature like this.