The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(127)

“You hate oysters.”

“Do I?”

“You used to say they were like cold snot.”

“I can’t remember. What else do I like?”

“Hot baths. Fresh socks. Really big sneezes. That feeling when you successfully flip a pancake. And this.”

He gave her a square of chocolate—good chocolate—and when she tasted it she actually shed tears. Jesus, she was losing all control. All control. Was the flesh going to win? It was getting harder to disentangle herself from it. The triumphant, righteous niffin in her shrieked defiance. She thought of flying, of plunging into the earth and flying again, of burning things, making them hurt the way she hurt, showing them how glorious the pain was. She shuddered.

“Why did you come here?” he said.

“To kill you.” She said it without hesitating, because it was true.

“No. You came here so I could save you.”

She laughed—yes, that sick wicked niffin laugh, she still had it. She loved it. But she couldn’t let the food alone either. They were forcing her, making her give it up.

“I’m going to make my new body fat,” she said. “I’m going to eat until it is morbidly obese and I die.”

“You can if you want to. Here.”

A noise. What was it? Her body seethed with pleasure at it. He had opened a cold, sweating bottle of champagne and was pouring some into a wineglass.

“This is hardly fair,” she said.

“I never said it was.”

“You want me to drink champagne out of a wineglass? You’ve gone downhill, Quentin Coldwater.” Where were these words coming from?

“I’ve adjusted my priorities.”

When she had drunk it, sitting up in bed, taking quick little sips like a child taking her medicine, she burped loudly.

“That might be my favorite part,” she said. “Is this all you have?”

“That’s all I have.”

“No, it’s not,” she said.

Abruptly, awkwardly, like an inexperienced schoolgirl, she kissed him. She did it roughly and hard, without knowing she was going to do it. She leaned forward and mashed her lips against his, felt a tooth grind into her lip, tasted blood. As she did something warmed and melted between her legs. She shoved her tongue into his mouth, let him taste the champagne. The dike that kept her mind separate from her body was leaking in a hundred places. Somewhere far away her glass smashed on the floor.

She wanted him. She was remembering things—afternoons upstairs at the Cottage, in the stifling heat. He was lean and strong, stronger than he used to be, and she wanted him.

“Show me, Quentin.” She ordered him. “Show me what bodies are for.”

She was unbuttoning his shirt, but clumsily. She’d forgotten how. He trapped her hands.

“No,” he said. “Not yet. Too soon.”

“Too soon?” She grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him again. His stubble scraped her. She smelled him; it wasn’t like bacon, but it was still good. “You do this to me and then you tell me it’s too soon?”

He was trying to get up! The little shit! Anger came so easily, still, with all those lovely anger-words too. Rage combined with the pleasure but it couldn’t dispel it.

“Hang on. Alice. This isn’t how it works.”

“Then show me how it works.” She got up too, advancing on him. She felt like an animal—a predator. She wanted to pin him and devour him. “Does my body disgust you as much as it disgusts me? Too bad. You brought me back, you show me it was worth it.”

She was wearing one of his shirts, and it was big enough that she could pull it over her head in one angry swipe and drop it on the floor, leaving her naked except for a pair of underpants. Alice kissed him again, pushed herself against him, felt the electric roughness of his shirt on her breasts. He stumbled back until his head knocked against the door. With her hand she found his crotch and massaged it. Yes, that’s how it went. He used to like this.

He still did. He was getting hard under her hand.

“Isn’t this why you brought me back? So you could f*ck me like you used to?”

Even she didn’t believe that, but it was the cruelest, bitterest thing she could think of. She wanted to do violence to him, the kind of violence he’d done to her, but he didn’t waver.

“I didn’t bring you back for me.”

And then he did kiss her. Not hard, but gently and firmly. That was it, you could do it that way too. He wrapped his arms around her, fitting her body against his, her head beneath his chin, and just held her. Memories inundated her, human memories. The night they walked out from Brakebills in the snow, and he’d put his arm around her shoulders. The day in Antarctica when they were foxes and he chased her the way she’d wanted him to do when they were human. The way he looked at her as if there was nothing else in the world for him but her. As if he loved her as much as she hated herself. He was looking at her that way now.

Suddenly she felt desperate to connect with him again. She’d been alone for so long. She needed this. Along with so many other things, she’d forgotten what it was like to need.

She put her hand up under his shirt, felt his smooth skin. Something strange had happened to his shoulder. She rested her head flat against his chest.

“It hurt, Quentin,” she said. “It hurt so much when I died.”