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That hen it occurred to Quentin for the first time that maybe his father hadn’t been his real father Maybe he wasn’t who he appeared to be Maybe Quentin’s father had been a ician

—

The nextshop at Whole Foods, Quentin went back to his father’s study He resumed his post in his father’s chair

Quentin kneas a little old to be wrestling with questions like this—probably he should have had them wrapped up by around puberty—but he’d always paid ical problems than to the personal kind Maybe that had been a mistake Your father was supposed to love you, to pass on his power to you, to show you what it was to be a ood enough, but h the universe while disturbing it as little as possible, and how to compile and maintain the world’s most complete collection of Jeff Goldblum movies on Blu-ray, apart, presumably, from Jeff Goldblum’s

Quentin hadn’t had , not Mayakovsky, not Eod They hadn’t dispensed a whole lot of paternal wisdom to him over the years Whatever power and wisdoer to share it with hiures Maybe he hadn’t ure

Quentin tried to iine what his father should have been like, the father he wished his father had been Brilliant Funny Intense A bit of a rogue—at tirit and energy, a ht it to heel on his own terician’s father A father ould have seen what Quentin had made of himself and been proud

But Quentin’s father seemed not to have had any power at all, let alone any to share Quentin’s actual father had had one wife, one son, no hobbies, and probably a case of mild clinical depression which he self-medicated ork Not everybody led a double life, but Quentin’s father had barely led a single one How could soician for a son?

Unless he hadn’t been powerless, Quentin thought Unless that wasn’t the whole story It was starting to sound like a cover story—exactly the kind of cover story a ician would use

Methodically Quentin examined the study for evidence that his father wasn’t what he seeacy for his son that for whatever reason he couldn’t share with hi cabinets—there were char paper docuital files He checked for codes or hidden scripts He got back no results of any significance

He hadn’t expected any That was in in earnest

He exaht fixtures He squeezed the couch cushions and pulled up the rugs He used a spell to peer into the walls and under the floorboards He looked behind the pictures He scoured the rooic, but all he found was an old library book with a weak anti-theft charm put on it by somebody else, which in any case didn’t appear to have worked At least thekeys turned up in the couch

He checked the furniture for hollow legs He riffled through every book on the shelves in case one was underlined or hollowed out Once in a while he thought he was picking up on so, a secret pattern or a code, but every tiold, back into randoicks could his father have been trafficking in, that he would have kept them this well hidden? That he would have leaned on his son, tried to stop hi attention to himself? What sinister fate had Quentin avoided in Tarrytown? What did itbanjo in one corner? What ith his weird obsession with Jeff Goldblum?

The longer he worked with no result, the hostly presence of his father, his real father, his true father, as if he were in the room with him even now Quentin booted up the computer and after a half hour of sweaty-paluesswork he cracked the password (thelostworld—starring Jeff Goldblu file directories, one after the other

They were almost eerily clean No diary, no poetry, nothat wasn’t what it appeared to be Not even any porn Well, not much porn

Quentin was no hacker—he’d spent way too ical black hole of Brakebills to have any serious chops with conetic sorcery He cracked the case and went directly after the silicon, feeling withweird, any walled-off caches of hidden electrons pregnant withAll he could think was, this can’t be it This cannot be everything He

Come on Help ht in twenty years

He stopped and sat for a , in the empty house, in the deep cold suburban winter silence Where is it, Dad? It must be here I can’t be alone YouThis was always hoorked: the distant, withholding father was always guarding a terrible secret, always keeping his son safe froacy of power only in death

And then he found it It was at the back of a closet: a nubbly red plastic carton of index cards scribbled on in pencil, shoved behind a box of obsolete electronics andto throay He set the carton on the desk and flipped through the cards, one by one Strange names, columns of numbers, pluses and minuses It went on and on It was a lot of data A cipher like this could contain whole worlds of power, if he could break it And he would It was left here for him

He stared at the cards for it must have been ten minutes before the pattern solved itself all at once It wasn’t a cipher at all These were stats froue Quentin pushed the plastic box away from him violently, convulsively The cards spilled out all over the rug He left them there

There was no mystery to solve What had coic The terrible truth about Quentin’s father was that he was exactly the person he seeood person He was an ordinary man who hadn’t even loved his only son The hard truth was that Quentin had never really had a father