The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(37)

She didn’t stop till she was back in the safety of the Senior Common Room, breathing hard. He was right behind her, just as he’d said. He’d done it, he’d gotten them out. Never had anything seemed so certain than that she was going to die in that room, but now it was over. The bad thing, the horror, had broken out of wherever it had been hiding all her life, but he’d shoved it back down. For now.

Without a word Professor Coldwater set about resealing the passageway behind them. She watched him work, her breath slowly going back to normal, dazed but not so dazed that she wasn’t interested in the technical aspects: moving in fast-motion, his arms flying crazily like a time-lapse movie, he assembled an entire intricately patterned brick wall in about five seconds.

She wondered where he’d learned how to do that. Not here. This time he left out the fancy signature angles. Say that for him: he learned from his mistakes.

Then he climbed out and closed the door. They were alone. It could all have been a dream except for the plaster dust on the shoulders of Professor Coldwater’s blazer.

“How did you know?” she said. “How did you know where I was? Where the ghost was?”

“Not a ghost. A niffin. Very bad news.”

“What did it want?”

“She. She used to be human. And I don’t know. Did she say anything to you?”

“No. Can they talk?”

“I don’t know.” One of his fingers was still crackling with a bit of white fire; he shook it and it went out. “Nobody knows much about them. I’m not even sure I did anything to her. I just distracted her and got out of there.”

“But you looked surprised when you saw it. You looked like you recognized it. I mean her.”

“I know.” Professor Coldwater looked sadder and less triumphant than she would have thought. “I know I did. I wish she’d said something.”

“I don’t care if it recited the goddamn King James Bible.”

Dean Fogg rounded the corner of the L at speed. He didn’t look happy.

“Do you know how many alarms you two set off, blundering around in the subspaces like that?”

Professor Coldwater ticked off on his fingers, silently.

“Eleven?”

“Yes. Eleven.” Fogg seemed perversely unhappy that Coldwater had got the right answer. “What the hell were you doing back there? Purchas?”

Plum flushed. The prank—she’d completely forgotten about it. She still had Wharton’s stupid pencil case in her stupid pocket. It was so utterly pointless. Maybe that’s what the ghost was trying to teach her: it’s all pointless. Fate is coming whatever you do, so quit wriggling around, it’s only making you look more ridiculous than you already do. We’re all ghosts here, you just don’t look like one yet.

But she wasn’t having that. If that was true then what was the point of anything ever? She was going to wriggle a bit longer anyway. Who the hell cared how ridiculous she looked.

Plum squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“I was looking for a secret passage to the wine closet,” she said, loud and clear, “so I could play a prank on Wharton.”

“A prank.” Fogg was unimpressed with her existential courage. “I see. Coldwater?”

“Dean Fogg.”

“You didn’t perform the incursion protocols, any of them.”

“No,” Coldwater said. “I didn’t. There wasn’t much time. The situation was pretty urgent.”

“Did you at least try to terminate the damn thing? Or banish it?”

“I—” He bit something back. “No.”

“Why not?”

A muscle moved in Professor Coldwater’s jaw.

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Professor Coldwater saved my life,” Plum put in.

“Thank you, Purchas,” Fogg said, “and he also put the lives of everybody else at this school at risk. I took a chance on you, Quentin, and it was a mistake. You’re fired. Be out of your rooms by end of day tomorrow. Professor Liu can pick up the rest of your teaching.”

Coldwater didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink, but Plum flinched for him, the way you do when you see somebody else take a punch.

“All right. I understand.”

“Do you?” Fogg was so angry he was spitting. “Do you? Well, you always were a quick one! I would think you of all people would have caught on a little quicker, given that you witnessed firsthand the reason why these protocols were created in the first place. Purchas?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can finish out the last three weeks of the semester. Then you’re expelled.”

Fogg glared at them both in turn, then walked out of the room.

Plum so wished she could be cool about it. She didn’t think she was going to cry, she just had to sit down on one of the red leather couches and put her head between her knees for a minute while her vision grayed out around the edges. She really did love Brakebills. She loved it so much. She really did. She really had.

She felt the sofa squish as Professor Coldwater sat down at the other end. He blew out a long sigh.

“Well—”

“I’m so sorry, Professor Coldwater. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to put you in danger! I didn’t mean to get you fired!”