The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(126)

Clumping footsteps coming up the stairs. The door opened.

“Alice.”

It was Quentin, of course. She didn’t turn her head. She heard the scrape of a stool as he pulled it over and sat down. She couldn’t stop him.

“Alice. We’re going to go to the Neitherlands. We have a theory about what might be going on. We’re going to try to find Ember and talk to Him.”

“OK.” She felt her tongue, the worm in her head, lightly kiss the roof of her mouth to make the K.

She didn’t feel angry anymore. She wondered why she’d even bothered with all that anger, all that talking. Something had come over her, but now her rage was gone, a storm that had blown out to sea leaving behind a great peace. A flat strand swept smooth by the violence of the waves, dotted with sea wrack churned up from the depths. She just didn’t care.

“I don’t want to leave you here. I’d like you to come with us. I think you could help.”

Very slightly, she shook her head. She closed her eyes. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she felt weightless again. The whiskey helped—it was better when she was drunk. And it gave her pleasure to poison this body.

“I don’t think so.”

Seven years ago he’d watched as she made a blue bonfire of her flesh. For seven long years her human self had slept, and she had roamed Fillory as a dream of rage and power. The dream was over now, Quentin had ended it, he’d woken her up and forced her back into her body. But he couldn’t force her soul, her self. Did he actually hate her? That much? He said he loved her, once. That was both seven years ago and yesterday.

She wondered if she could burn again. Maybe she was like a spent match, to be struck only once, but she didn’t think so. It would take time to get ready, to relearn the skills, but soon. She didn’t mind if she died trying. Suicide was in everything she did now, and everything she thought. Suicide was her home: if she could find nothing else, then suicide would always have her.

And if it did work they would never catch her again. Never again.

“I’m going to touch your hand now.” She felt him take her fingers; she left hers limp. It was the first time anyone had touched her since she’d come back, and it made her skin crawl. “You’re going to get through this. It’s not as bad as you think. I’m going to try to help you. But you have to try too.”

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t.”

Something happened in the silence that followed. Her eyes opened again. Something was pulling her back. It was something in the air, coming in through her nose and invading her mind. It was doing something to her. Magic? Not magic.

“What is that?” she said.

“What?”

“That smell.”

“You know what it is,” Quentin said. “Think.”

For an instant she lowered her guard, and forgot to fight, and in that instant her body sat up and inhaled. Neurons were firing in her brain that hadn’t fired for seven years. After eons of disuse, mental furniture was being uncovered, dusty drop cloths yanked back. Mental windows were being thrown open to let in the hot sun.

“Bacon,” she said.

He had a tray with him. Now he picked up a plate and held it in front of her. It was good bacon, quarter-inch-thick strips, and it had warped and bubbled as he fried it; he’d let one end of it char a little because he knew she liked it burned. Had liked it.

Well, he’d done something with his seven years. He didn’t used to be able to cook worth a damn.

She was tired, and she was famished—she wasn’t, her mind wasn’t, it was clear as a bell, but this body was hungry, this doll made of meat. It was weak, and it reached out and picked up the food and put it in her mouth. The meat took over and ate the other meat, and God it was f*cking unbelievable, salty and fatty and smoky. When she was done she licked her thumbs and wiped her greasy hands on the sheets. It revolted her, she revolted herself, but there was so much pleasure in it. She was trying to reject her body like a bad organ transplant but she could feel herself trapped in its sticky embrace. It was trying to adhere to her, trying to become her, and Quentin was helping it. He was on its side.

“I hope,” she said, “that you don’t think you’re going to keep me here with bacon.”

“Not just bacon.”

He handed her a plate with fresh slices of mango on it, intensely orange, like little arcs carved off a tiny sweet sun. She fell on them like an animal. She was an animal.

No, she was not. She was pure and beautiful and blue.

“Why did you do it?” she asked with her mouth full. “Why did you do this to me?”

“Because this is who you are. Because you’re human. You’re a person, you’re not a demon.”

“Prove it.”

“I am proving it.”

She looked at him, really looked for the first time since she’d been back. He had a narrow, symmetrical face, rendered interesting by a slightly too-large nose and an expressive, too-wide mouth. He never knew it, which had saved him from developing one of those pretty-boy personalities, but objectively he’d always been handsome. And he still was.

But he was different now too. He didn’t stutter or duck her gaze the way he used to. He was right, he had changed.

“You could’ve got oysters,” she said.