The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [66]
Threading their way out through the tables, they emerged onto a wide stone square. A beautiful square, defined by sleepy stone buildings of indeterminate age.
“If I didn’t know better I’d think we were in Fillory,” Quentin said. “Or the Neitherlands.”
“We are in Italy. Venice.”
“I want some of that coffee. Why are we in Venice?”
“Coffee first.”
Bright sunlight on paving stones. Clumps of tourists standing around, taking pictures and studying guidebooks, looking both overwhelmed and bored by it all at the same time. Two churches fronted the square; the other buildings were a weird Venetian jumble of old stone and old wood and irregular windows. Quentin and Julia walked over to the other café on the square, the one out of whose kitchen they had not just magically burst.
It was an oasis of bright yellow umbrellas. Quentin felt like he was floating. He’d never been through so many portals in one day, and it was disorienting. They’d already ordered before they realized they had no euros.
“Fuck it,” Quentin said. “I woke up in Fillory this morning, or maybe it was yesterday morning, either way I need a macchiato. Why are we in Venice?”
“Warren gave me an address. Someone who might be able to help us—a fixer, kind of. He can get things. Maybe he can get us a button.”
“So that’s the plan. Good. I like it.” He was up for whatever as long as coffee was involved.
“Great. After that we can try your amazing plan which you do not have.”
They sipped their coffee in silence. Dreamily Quentin studied the chaotic surface of his macchiato. They hadn’t drawn a milky leaf on it the way they would have in America. Pigeons strutted in between the café tables, picking up unspeakably soiled crumbs, their clawed toes looking livid and pink this close up. Sunlight washed over it all. The light in Venice was like the light in Fillory: stone-light.
The world had changed again. It wasn’t as neatly divided as he remembered it, between the magical and the non-magical. There was this grubby, anarchical in-between now. He didn’t much care for it; it was chaotic and unglamorous and he didn’t know the rules. Probably Julia didn’t like it either, he reflected, but she hadn’t gotten to choose, not the way he did.
Well, his world hadn’t done them any good. They would go rooting around in hers for a while.
“So who was that Warren guy?” Quentin said. “Seems like you guys have some history.”
“Warren is nobody. He knows a little magic, so he hangs around the college and tries to impress undergraduates and teach them some things so he can bang them.”
“Really.”
“Really.”
“What happened to him at the end there? With his arm—what was that?”
“Warren is not human. He is something else, wood spirit of some kind. He just has a thing for humans. When he gets upset he cannot keep up the disguise.”
“So did Warren ‘bang’ you?” he said.
Who knew where it came from. It just bubbled up out of nowhere: a flash of jealousy, sour and hot like acid reflux. He didn’t see it coming. He’d had a lot to absorb in one day, or night, whatever it had just been, and it was just a little too much too fast. It spilled over.
Julia leaned across the table and slapped Quentin. She only did it once, but she did it hard.
“You have no idea what I had to do to get what was handed to you on a plate,” she hissed. “And yeah, I banged Warren. I did a lot worse things too.”
You could almost see the waves of anger coming off her, like fumes off gasoline. Quentin touched his cheek where she’d hit him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Not sorry enough.”
A few people looked over, but just a few. It was Italy after all. People probably hit each other all the time.
CHAPTER 12
It was another year and a half before Julia saw Quentin again. He’d become a hard boy to find. He didn’t seem to have a cell phone, or even a phone, or even an e-mail address. His parents talked in vaguenesses. She wasn’t convinced that even they knew how to find