The Magicians - Lev Grossman [91]
But Alice got an Exam, he thought, even though she wasn’t Invited.
“You could tell them, though. You can’t decide, but you can tell them I’m here, right? That I’m still out here? You can at least do that!”
She grabbed his arm again, and he had to mutter a quick counterspell to snuff out the Prismatic Spray. That stuff could eat into fabric.
“Just tell them you saw me,” she said urgently, her eyes full of dying hope. “Please. I’ve been practicing. You can teach me. I’ll be your apprentice. I’ll do whatever you need. I have an aunt who lives in Winchester, I can live with her.
“Or what do you need, Quentin?” She moved closer to him, just slightly, so that her knee touched his knee. In spite of himself he felt the old electrical field form between them. She hazarded a curvy, sardonic smile, letting the moment hang in the air. “Maybe we can help each other. You used to want my help.”
He was angry at himself for being tempted. He was angry at the world for being this way. He wanted to yell obscenities. It would have been terrible to see anybody scrape the bottom like this, but her . . . it should have been anybody but her. She has already seen more unhappiness, Quentin thought, than I will ever see in my life.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Julia. If I tell them, they’re just going to find you and wipe your memory. For real this time.”
“They can try,” she snarled, suddenly fierce. “They tried once already.”
She breathed hard through pinched white nostrils.
“Just tell me where it is. Where we were. I’ve been looking for it. Just tell me where the school is, and I’ll leave you alone.”
Quentin could only imagine the kind of shit he’d be in if Julia showed up at the House hell-bent on matriculating and dropped his name.
“It’s in upstate New York. On the Hudson somewhere, I don’t know exactly where. I really don’t. It’s near West Point. They make it invisible. Even I don’t know how to find it. But I’ll tell them about you, if that’s truly what you want.”
He was just making it worse. Maybe he should have bluffed her after all, he thought. Tried harder to lie. Too late.
She put her arms around him, as if she were too exhausted by relief and despair to stand anymore, and he held her. There was a time when this was everything he wanted.
“They couldn’t make me forget,” she whispered into his chest. “Do you understand that? They couldn’t make me forget.”
He could feel her heart beating, and the word he heard when it beat was shame, shame, shame. He wondered why they hadn’t taken her. If anybody should have gone to Brakebills, it was her, not him. But they really would wipe her memory, he thought. Fogg would make sure this time. She’d be happier that way anyway. She could get back on track, go back to college, get back together with James, get on with her life. It would all be for the best.
By next morning he was back at Brakebills. The others were already there; they were surprised he’d lasted as long as he did. The most any of them had spent at home was forty-eight hours. Eliot hadn’t gone home at all.
It was cool and quiet in the Cottage. Quentin felt safe again. He was back where he belonged. Eliot was in the kitchen with a dozen eggs and a bottle of brandy, trying to make flips, which nobody wanted but which he was determined to make anyway. Josh and Janet were playing an idiotic card game called Push—it was basically the magical equivalent of War—that was wildly popular at Brakebills. Quentin just used it as a chance to show off his card-handling skills, which was why nobody ever wanted to play with him anymore.
While they played Janet told the story of Alice’s Antarctic ordeal, despite the fact that everybody except Quentin had heard it already, and Alice herself was right there in the room, silently paging through an old herbal in the window seat. Quentin didn’t know how he would feel about seeing Alice again, after he’d made such a comprehensive mess of their last conversation, but to his amazed relief, and despite every possible