The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [62]
There was a beat of silence.
“Holeeee . . .” someone said. Then everybody started talking at once. Alex didn’t look happy, but he didn’t throw them out either.
“Sign in,” he said. He blinked and blotted his eyes on his sleeve. “I don’t know where you learned that, but just get your flash working next time.”
“Cheers,” Quentin said.
Alex peeled a blue star sticker off a sheet and stuck it on the back of Quentin’s hand. Then he handed Quentin the clipboard. Where it said “Name” he wrote King Quentin and handed it to Julia.
When she was done Quentin dragged her out through the kitchen, with its bumpy linoleum floor and its fifteen-year-old Easy-Bake-looking range and its countertops crowded with a multicolored metropolis of unwashed glassware. Enough was enough.
“What the hell are we doing here?” he hissed.
“Come on.”
She led him deeper into the house, down a hall that in another, saner universe would have accessed Daddy’s study and a TV room and a laundry room, until she found the cheap hollow-core door that opened on the basement staircase.
He closed it behind them. The chilly mildewed silence of suburban basements everywhere embraced them. The stairs were unfinished pine planks, shaggy with cobwebs.
“I don’t understand this, Julia,” he said. “You don’t belong here any more than I do. You’re not like these people. You didn’t learn what you know from a bunch of unlicensed losers in a frat house. You can’t have.”
They were alone except for a roomful of taped-up cardboard boxes, a dead TV the size of a washing machine and half a Ping-Pong table.
“Maybe I am not who you think I am. Maybe I am an unlicensed loser too.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Was it? He was still trying to get his head around this place. “I can’t believe they haven’t burned this whole house down by now.”
“I think what you are trying to say is that you do not think they are good enough. They do not meet your standards.”
“This isn’t about standards!” Quentin said, though he felt the ground getting marshy under him. “This is about—look, I paid my dues, that’s all I’m saying. You have to earn this kind of power. You don’t just pick it up at the 7-Eleven with your Big Gulp and your Pokémon trading cards.”
“And what did I do? You think I did not pay dues?”
“I know you paid your dues.” He took a deep breath. Slow down. This place wasn’t the problem. The problem was getting back to Fillory.
“What did he call this house? A ‘dojo’?”
“Dojo, safe house, same thing. They are safe houses. He is just a dork.”
“Are there a lot of them?”
“A hundred maybe, in this country. There are more on the coasts.” Jesus Christ. It was an epidemic.
“What was that test back there?”
“You mean the one you flunked? That is the test to be a first-level magician. You have to be one to come in here. You pass the test, you get a star tattooed on you, you can stay. Most people get them on their hands, somewhere obvious. The more tests you pass, the more levels you go up, the more stars you get.”
“But who runs all this? That Alex guy?”
“He is just a den mother. Takes care of the house. The ranking system is self-policed. Any magician can ask another magician of equal or lower level to demonstrate the test corresponding to their level or any of the levels below that,” she recited. “To prove they know their shit. If you do not know your shit, you get busted down pretty fast.”
“Huh.” He wanted to find fault with the idea but couldn’t quite do it on the spur of the moment. He filed it away for later discrediting. “So what level are you?”
By way of an answer she turned around and showed him what she’d shown the doorman, and Alex: there was a blue seven-pointed star tattooed on the nape of her neck. Its upper points disappeared into the roots of her hair; she must have had to shave to get it done. It was like the ones he’d seen upstairs except bigger, a silver dollar, and it had a circle in the middle. Inside the circle was a number 50.
“Wow.” He couldn’t help but be impressed. “Ginger Balls back there only had eight. So you’re a fiftieth-level