The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)(94)

A small, dense orange spark left Penny’s palm and flew across the grass, dead level. At first it looked absurdly inoffensive, silly, like a toy, or an insect. But as it sailed toward the trees it grew, blooming into a fiery sparking comet the size of a beach ball, veined and roiling and snapping. It was almost stately, spinning slowly backward as it moved through the cold dusk air. Shadows wound across the lawn, shifting with the fast-moving light source. The heat was intense; Quentin felt it on his face. When it hit a linden, the whole tree went up at once with a single loud, crackling woof. A gout of flame ascended into the sky and vanished.

“Fireball!” Penny called out unnecessarily.

It was an instant bonfire. The tree burned fast and merrily. Sparks flew up impossibly high into the twilight sky. Janet whooped and jumped up and down and clapped her hands like a cheerleader. Penny smiled thinly and took a theatrical bow.

They stayed at the house upstate for a few more days, lounging around, grilling on the back patio, drinking up all the good wine, going through the DVD collection, all cramming into the hot tub and then not cleaning it afterward. The fact was, Quentin realized, after all the buildup, all the hasty preparation and rush-rush-rush, they were stalling, vamping, waiting for something to push them into pulling the trigger. They were so excited they didn’t see how terrified they were. And when he thought about all the happiness waiting for him in Fillory, Quentin almost felt like he didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t ready. Ember and Umber would never have summoned someone like him.

In the meantime Alice had somehow figured out a way of never being in the same room as Quentin at the same time. She’d developed a sixth sense about him—he’d catch a glimpse of her out of a window, or a flash of her feet as she vanished upstairs, but that was as close they came. It was almost like a game; the others played it, too. When he did spot her in the open—sitting up on the kitchen counter, kicking her legs and chatting with Josh, or hunched over the dining-room table with Penny and his books, like everything was fine—he didn’t dare intrude. That would be against the rules of the game. Seeing her there, so close and at the same time so infinitely removed, was like looking through a doorway into another universe, a warm, sunny, tropical dimension that he had once inhabited, but from which he was now banished. Every night he left flowers outside her bedroom door.

It was a shame: he probably never even had to know what happened. He could easily have missed it. Though maybe they would have stayed there forever if he had. He stayed up late one night, playing cards with Josh and Eliot. Playing cards with magicians always degenerated into a meta-contest over who was better at warping the odds, so that practically every hand came up four aces against a couple of straight flushes. Quentin was, tecause he knew





entatively, feeling better. They were drinking grappa. The twisted knot of shame and regret in his chest that had been there since the night with Janet was gradually coming undone, or at least scarring over. It wasn’t nothing, but it wasn’t everything either. There was sotween him and Alice. They could get past this.





Maybe it wa much right be





BOOK III


FILLORY

THEY HELD HANDS in a circle in the living room, packs on their backs. It felt like a dorm stunt, like they were all about to drop acid or sing an a cappella show tune or set some kind of wacky campus record. Ana?s’s face blazed with excitement. She hopped up and down despite the load on her back. None of last night’s drama had registered on her at all. She was the only person in the room who looked and sweatpantsR and inircumstances cacodemon happy to be there.

The funny thing was that it had worked. Quentin wouldn’t let it alone, he kept hounding them, and eventually, with surprisingly little resistance, they gave in. Today would be the day. Partly they were afraid of him, with his scary glittering pain-eyes, but partly it was because they had to admit he was right: it was time to go, and they’d just been waiting for somebody, even somebody as obviously drunk and demented as Quentin was, to stand up and call it.

Looking back, in a philosophical frame of mind, it occurred to Quentin that he’d always thought this would be a happy day, the happiest day of his life. Funny how life had its little ways of surprising you. Little quirks of fate.

If he wasn’t happy, he did feel unexpectedly liberated. At least he wasn’t hunched over with shame anymore. This was pure emotion, unalloyed with any misgivings or caveats or qualifications. Alice was no longer the alabaster saint here. It was not so hard to meet her eyes across the circle. And was that a flicker of embarrassment he saw in hers? Maybe she was learning a little something about remorse, what that felt like. They were down in the muck together now.

They had spent the morning gathering up and packing the gear and the supplies that were already basically gathered up and packed anyway, and rounding up whoever was in the bathroom or dithering over which shoes or had just wandered off out onto the lawn for no obvious reason. Finally they were all together in the living room in a circle, shifting their weight from foot to foot and looking at each other and saying:

“Okay?”

“Okay?”

“Everybody okay?”

“Let’s do it.”

“Let’s do this!”

“Okay!”

“Okay!”

“Let’s—”

And then Penny must have touched the button, because they were all rising up together through cold, black ink.