The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(11)

Fogg seemed nonplussed by his reaction, almost disappointed, as if he were hoping to get a little more drama out of it. Quentin would have given him drama if he knew how, but it wouldn’t come. He didn’t sob or tear his hair or curse the Norns who had snipped his father’s thread too soon. He wanted to but he couldn’t, and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t. The feelings were missing; it was like they’d been lost in transit from whatever country feelings come from. Only after Fogg had offered him a week of compassionate leave and then tactfully withdrawn did Quentin begin to thaw out and feel something besides shock and confusion, and when he did what he felt wasn’t grief, it was anger.

That made even less sense. He didn’t even know who he was angry at or why. What, was he angry at his dad for being dead? At Fogg for telling him? At himself for not grieving like he should?

When he thought about it Quentin couldn’t remember ever having felt very close to his father, even as a little kid. He’d seen photographs from his childhood that showed boy-Quentin in scenes of ordinary family happiness with his parents, that could have been convincingly presented in family court as evidence that the Coldwater home was a warm and loving one. But Quentin didn’t recognize the child who looked back at him out of those snapshots. He couldn’t remember ever having been that person. He felt like a changeling.

Quentin took Fogg up on that week of compassionate leave, not so much because he felt like he needed it but because he thought that his mom might need the help. As he packed for the trip to Chesterton, Quentin realized he was gritting his teeth against actual panic. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to feel the emotions people wanted him to feel. He made himself a promise that whatever happened, whatever anybody asked of him, he wouldn’t pretend to feel anything he didn’t really feel. If he could stick to that things couldn’t get too bad.

And as soon as he saw her Quentin remembered that even if he and his mom weren’t especially close they got along fine. He found her standing by the kitchen island, one hand on the granite countertop, a ballpoint pen next to it—she looked like her mind had wandered off in the middle of making a list. She’d been crying, but her eyes were dry now.

He put his bag down and they embraced. She’d put on weight; she made a significant armful now. Quentin had the sense that she hadn’t talked to very many people since it happened. He sat down next to her on a stool.

“The tennis girls will be here in a minute,” she said.

“That’s good. Good to see them.”

The tennis girls—Kitsy, Mollie, Roslyn—were his mother’s best friends. It had been a long time since any of them had played tennis, if they ever had, but Quentin knew his mom could count on them.

“I wasn’t done with the wall treatment in the bathroom.” She sighed. A heavy chunk of ice like a giant tooth hung from the eave outside the kitchen window—it was January in the real world. “I knew he was going to hate it. I keep thinking that if he hadn’t died the wall would have killed him.”

“Mom. The wall would not have killed him.”

“I was doing mini–palm trees. I hid it behind that old Japanese screen. I didn’t want him to see till it was too late to do anything about it.” She took off her oversized glasses and rubbed her face with both hands, like a diver taking off her mask after a deep descent. “And now it’s all too late! I don’t know any of his passwords. Can you believe it? I can’t even find his keys! I can’t even get into the basement!”

He made a mental note to locate those keys later with a spell. He might even be able to come up with the passwords too, though that would be trickier.

Part of the trouble between Quentin and his parents, he knew, was that they had no idea who he really was, which wasn’t their fault because he’d never told them. Quentin’s mom thought her son was a comfortably but not spectacularly successful investment banker specializing in real estate transactions. She didn’t know that magic was real. Quentin’s father hadn’t known either.

Quentin could have told them—the information was tightly controlled by magicians, and transgressions were punished sharply, but exceptions could be obtained for parents and spouses (and children over fourteen). But he never had, because it seemed like such a terrible idea. He couldn’t imagine the two worlds touching: his parents’ sedate, orderly marital idyll and the wild, messy, arcane world of magic. It was impossible. They would explode on contact, like matter and antimatter.

Or he always assumed they would. Now he wondered if that secret, the absence of that confidence, was what had come between them. Maybe he’d underestimated them.

Quentin and his mother spent his week of leave rattling around the Chesterton McMansion like two dice in a plastic cup—it was a huge house for a middling-successful painter and a textbook editor, bought with money from a Brooklyn brownstone they’d cashed out of at just the right time. There was a lot to do. Death was an existential catastrophe, a rip in the soft upholstery with which humanity padded over a hard uncaring universe, but it turned out there were an amazing number of people whose job it was to deal with it for you, and all they asked in return were huge quantities of time and money.

Quentin spent a whole day on the phone with his mother’s credit cards fanned out on the cold kitchen counter in front of him. She watched him with wary surprise. They’d seen so little of each other these past few years that she still thought of him as the shoe-gazing teenager he’d been when he left for Brakebills. She was baffled by this tall, firm, no-longer-teenaged man who presented her with lists of urns to choose from, menus of hors d’oeuvres for the reception, times when town cars would pick her up and drop her off.