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Now he’d trapped hiood He fumbled in his pocket and whipped out a Sharpie he’d been keeping on hi 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 ic now It was all he could think of

The door shook with an ies as if a grenade had gone off behind it It held, but i in its fra to hold for long It wasn’t ic 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 Experih it—no resistance Another portal He put one foot on the toilet, planted his knee on the sink and fed hi

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 noorlds removed from reality now, a land within a land Another level down

What would he do when the door failed? He h, but then what had he gained? He didn’t want to leave e to touch botto back up Theredown here At this depthdown

Slipping and sliding to his feet, he half walked, half skated out into the hall and into the hts were out in this one, and he hastily sulowed like flashlights So was different here He could almost feel the increased pressure of the multiple layers of reality above hih 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 s and heaved one up and open

The street was recognizably their street, or alhts, but there were no other houses It was like a desert housing development that had suffered soan All around in the distance cold sand slid silkily, hissing, over ht the streetlights poured down rain as if they eeping The sky was black, no stars, and the host earth This wasn’t so he was supposed to see It was an unfinished sketch of a world, a set that hadn’t been properly dressed

He shut theThis workrooh

Noas getting close to the heart of so, he could feel it Three levels down, the inner with s like anything in the townhouse, but he recognized it anyway The hushed carpet, that warer’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 tian Maybe if he stuck around he could finally have his interview after all He could go back and get his ree Was this really it, or just a si just outside the door, getting evenin the cold rain? And his friend Ja 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 ician He could fix Alice He could fix anything He stuffed his pockets with them

Speaking of whoh the doorway behind hiuorously onto her back like an otter Tih the door the other way

In the workroo 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 tooankle Alice was a blue blur behind hih, just, to h the workroom and the red door and out into the real world

She hadn’t gotten hi and blowing and pulling hi 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 flohen 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 hi 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 is were still possible He needed that too

“It’s good to see you,” he said

“You too”

“You met Plum?”

“Yes, charirl 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 ht 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 so it was there It anchored his sense of happiness, the way a distant stockpile of gold ht 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 ani else? What would happen to them?

“But you think therehere that could save it?” he said “So Rupert had?”

Eliot paced around the living room in circles Plu hih 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 hi frustrated