Now he’d trapped himself, but good. He fumbled in his pocket and whipped out a Sharpie he’d been keeping on him in case of emergency. Scribbling at top speed he wrote an inscription in Swahili across the door, then sketched a big rectangle around the whole frame, with fiddly ornaments at the corners, all executed in one unbroken line. It was just a ward to insulate against magic, because, he reasoned hopefully, Alice was made of magic now. It was all he could think of.

The door shook with an impact, bulged visibly inward, air puffing in around the edges as if a grenade had gone off behind it. It held, but immediately it began warping in its frame, and the paint started to blister. It wasn’t going to hold for long. It wasn’t meant to be a magic barrier, it just wanted to be a bathroom door.

He turned around and his eye fell on the medicine-cabinet mirror, in which it continued to snow. Experimentally he put a hand through it—no resistance. Another portal. He put one foot on the toilet, planted his knee on the sink and fed himself through the narrow opening.

It was cold in the other bathroom—the other-other bathroom. He crawled desperately down off the sink and half fell onto the bathroom floor, which was slick with slush. Where was he now? Two worlds removed from reality now, a land within a land. Another level down.

What would he do when the door failed? He might be able to slip past her again, get back through, but then what had he gained? He didn’t want to leave empty-handed, not again. This free diver was going to touch bottom, even if it meant he wasn’t coming back up. There must be something interesting down here. At this depth maybe some of the rules would start breaking down.

Slipping and sliding to his feet, he half walked, half skated out into the hall and into the mirror-image of the mirror-image of the workroom. The lights were out in this one, and he hastily summoned some illumination—the palms of his hands glowed like flashlights. Something was different here. He could almost feel the increased pressure of the multiple layers of reality above him. This land was heavier somehow: like it had been put through a photo filter that saturated the colors and made the black lines thicker and darker. It tried to push into his eyes and ears. He couldn’t stay here long.

But where to? He went over to the windows and heaved one up and open.

The street was recognizably their street, or almost: there was a road, and streetlights, but there were no other houses. It was like a desert housing development that had suffered some financial calamity just as construction began. All around in the distance cold sand slid silkily, hissing, over more cold sand. It was night, and instead of light the streetlights poured down rain as if they were weeping. The sky was black, no stars, and the moon was flat and silver: a mirror, reflecting a ghost earth. This wasn’t something he was supposed to see. It was an unfinished sketch of a world, a set that hadn’t been properly dressed.

He shut the window. This workroom had a red door too. He opened it and stepped through.

Now he was getting close to the heart of something, he could feel it. Three levels down, the innermost chamber, the littlest Russian doll—a tiny wooden peg with smeary features, barely a doll at all. This room looked nothing like anything in the townhouse, but he recognized it anyway. The hushed carpet, that warm, fruity smell—a stranger’s house, that he’d only been in once, and that for about fifteen minutes, but it was like he’d never left it. He was back in Brooklyn, thirteen years ago, back at the house where he’d come for his Princeton interview.

It was like he was burrowing deeper into his own mind, back in time, back into his memory. This was where it all began. Maybe if he stuck around he could finally have his interview after all. He could go back and get his master’s degree. Was this really it, or just a simulacrum? Was there another, younger Quentin waiting just outside the door, getting even more depressed than usual as he stood there fretting in the cold rain? And his friend James, young and strong and brave-o? The loops were getting stranger, the time lines were in a Gordian knot, the thick was plottened beyond all recognition.

Or was this a second chance? Was this how to fix her? Change it all so it never happened—rip up the envelope and walk away? He heard the sound of cracking wood, a long way off, in another reality. Two realities up. Last time he was here he went for the liquor cabinet. Lesson learned. He looked around: yes, a grandfather clock, just like in Christopher Plover. It was so obvious now. He opened the case.

It was full of shining golden coins. They poured out onto the floor like a Vegas jackpot. They were like Mayakovsky’s coins, but there must have been hundreds of them. God, the amount of power here was unthinkable. What couldn’t you do with it? He had his master’s now, he was a master magician. He could fix Alice. He could fix anything. He stuffed his pockets with them.

Speaking of whom: Alice came drifting through the doorway behind him, slow-rolling languorously onto her back like an otter. Time to go. He juked past her and back through the door the other way.

In the workroom the snow was turning to rain, and the parquet had an inch of gray slush on it, and he half fell sprinting across it, his pockets heavy with treasure. He slammed shut the bathroom door but then fumbled the Sharpie and dropped it. No time. He spat out a spell that doubled his speed and scrambled up and over the sink and felt the hot prickle of way too much magic way too close on his trailing ankle. Alice was a blue blur behind him, and he wasn’t faster than she was but he was fast enough, just, to make it back across the landing and through the workroom and the red door and out into the real world.

She hadn’t gotten him. Not today. Not today. He stood there for a minute, puffing and blowing and pulling himself together, hands on his knees. Then he dug his hands in his pockets and spilled the gold out on the table. Show ’em what they’ve won.

He should have known. It was fairy gold, like in the stories—the kind that turns to dead leaves and dried flowers when the sun comes up. That’s what he’d found. The coins had turned to ordinary nickels.

It was never going to be that easy. This wasn’t working. There had to be another way. He needed sleep. His ankle was starting to burn where his close call with Alice had scorched it.

“Quentin.”

Eliot was standing in the doorway, looking in his Fillorian court finery like he’d just detached himself from a Hans Holbein painting. He held a tumbler from the kitchen in one hand, full of whiskey, which he raised in greeting.

“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” he said.

CHAPTER 23

Quentin hugged him so hard that Eliot spilled his whiskey down his front, which he complained about loudly, but Quentin didn’t care. He had to make sure Eliot was real and solid. It made no sense that he was here, but thank God he was. Quentin had had enough of sadness and horror and futility for one day. He needed a friend, somebody who knew him from the old days.

And seeing Eliot here, out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever, felt like proof that impossible things were still possible. He needed that too.

“It’s good to see you,” he said.

“You too.”

“You met Plum?”

“Yes, charming girl. I assume you’re—?”

“No,” Quentin said.

“Not even—?”

“No!”

Eliot shook his head sadly.

“I can see I came not a minute too soon.”

They stayed up late filling each other in on everything that had happened, then they slept late and drank too much coffee and went over it all again. Eliot’s news brought Quentin up short and sharp: whether or not he was in it, whether or not he could see it or touch it, he’d thought there would always be a Fillory out there somewhere. He loved knowing it was there. It anchored his sense of happiness, the way a distant stockpile of gold might underwrite the value of a paper bill. It was inconceivably sad to think of it ending. And where would they all go—all the people and animals and everything else? What would happen to them?

“But you think there might be something here that could save it?” he said. “Something Rupert had?”

Eliot paced around the living room in circles. Plum and Quentin sat on separate couches watching him. While they slept he’d been up even later, going through Rupert’s notebook. He’d been excited at first when he realized that his search had converged with theirs—he’d come to Earth on a quest, and his best friend had already done it for him! But he’d gone back to being frustrated.

“Maybe it was the knife. But what would I do with it? Who would I stab with it? I never know who to stab. But I don’t know what to do with the spell either.”

“It’s not for reviving a dead land,” Quentin said. “It’s for making somewhere new.”

“There must be something else in that manuscript then, a clue or something. And why would the bird want it?”

As urgent as this was, Quentin’s mind was still with Alice upstairs. Part of him wanted to snap into hero mode, to leap to Fillory’s defense, but saving Fillory was Eliot’s business now. It was hard to admit it, but it was true. He would do what he could, but right now his job was Alice.

“But so Martin made his deal with Umber?” Eliot said finally. “I thought Umber was good. And then didn’t Martin kill Umber?”

“He still could have,” Quentin said. “The classic double cross.”

“Or, maybe Umber’s still alive somewhere. Maybe we’re just supposed to think He’s dead.”

“Ooh, I like that one,” Plum said. “How do you even know Martin killed Umber? God, I still can’t believe I’m talking about Them like They’re real people. Or animals or gods or whatever.”

“Ember told Jane Chatwin,” Quentin said. “Jane told me. But you’re right, maybe this is all Umber’s fault. Maybe He’s the hidden hand or hoof or whatever behind the apocalypse.”

“But why?” Eliot rubbed his face with both hands. “Why would He do that? How can He be alive? Where’s He been all this time? How can He be evil? What, is He Ember’s evil twin? It’s a bit of a cliché, even for Fillory.”

Buckets of sunlight were pouring overenthusiastically in through the bay windows. It was claustrophobic in the house—Quentin hadn’t been outside for days. As tired as he’d been he hadn’t slept well the night before. It was hard knowing that Alice was right there, burning, always burning, with just a thin slip of world between them. He wondered if Alice ever slept. He didn’t think she did.

“And Castle Blackspire?” Eliot was getting more and more animated. “What’s that? It screws up the entire structure! Where does it end? Umber’s got to be the key, one way or the other. Got to. That must be the clue Jane wanted us to find.” Coming to the end of his caffeine fit, he dropped bonelessly into a vinyl armchair. “I’m going to send a message to Janet. She should know about this.”

“You can do that? Send a message to Fillory?”

“It’s not easy. Kind of like a very expensive telegram. But yeah, RHIP. Let’s talk about something else. What’ve you learned about your dead girlfriend?”

“She’s not dead,” Quentin said.

“Bzzt!” Eliot pressed an imaginary game-show button on the arm of the chair. “The answer I was looking for was, ‘She’s not my girlfriend, she’s a crazy magic rage-demon.’ Maybe you should just take the land apart. Scrub it out. Cut your losses.”

“What, with Alice inside?”

“Well, she’ll survive, probably. You can’t kill those things. She’ll just go back where she came from.”

“But she’s still alive, Eliot, and she’s right there. Right there! If there was ever, ever going to be a chance to change her back, this is it.”

“Quentin—”

“Don’t Quentin me.” Now he was the one getting animated. “This is what I’m doing. What I have to do. You’re saving Fillory, I’m doing this.”

“Quentin, look at me.” Eliot sat up. “You’re right. If there was ever a chance this would be it. But there isn’t a chance. That’s not Alice. Alice is already dead. She died seven years ago, and you can’t bring her back.”

“I went to the Underworld. She wasn’t there.”

“You didn’t see her, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. We’ve been over and over this. Quentin, I could really use your help. Fillory needs your help. And I hate to be crass, you know I do, but Alice is one person. We’re talking about Fillory, all of it, the entire land, thousands of people. Plus a lot of cute animals.”

“I know.” They were wasting time, he had to get back upstairs. “I know. But I have to try.”

“What’s your plan there?” Plum said.

“I don’t know. Run around some more, cast some more spells. Maybe I’ll stumble on something. Trial and error.”

Plum tapped her lips with one finger.

“Not my place, but it sounds to me like you’re a little stuck.”

“I am stuck.”

“It sounds to me,” she said, “like you’re dicking around. Sneaking, dodging, avoiding confrontation.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, I just don’t know what else to do.”

“Against my better judgment,” Plum said, “I’m going to give you the benefit of a woman’s perspective on this one.”

“I am so excited to see where this is going,” Eliot said, “I can’t even tell you. Keep talking.”

“What I mean is, meet her head-on. Stand and fight. Quit sneaking around. See what happens.”