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“Do I?”

“You used to say they were like cold snot”

“I can’t remember What else do I like?”

“Hot baths Fresh socks Really big sneezes That feeling when you successfully flip a pancake And this”

He gave her a square of chocolate—good chocolate—and when she tasted it she actually shed tears Jesus, she was losing all control All control Was the flesh going to win? It was getting harder to disentangle herself frohteous niffin in her shrieked defiance She thought of flying, of plunging into the earth and flying again, of burning things, lorious the pain was She shuddered

“Why did you come here?” he said

“To kill you” She said it without hesitating, because it was true

“No You came here so I could save you”

She laughed—yes, that sick wicked niffin laugh, she still had it She loved it But she couldn’t let the food alone either They were forcing her, ive it up

“I’ to eat until it is morbidly obese and I die”

“You can if you want to Here”

A noise What was it? Her body seethed with pleasure at it He had opened a cold, sweating bottle of chalass

“This is hardly fair,” she said

“I never said it was”

“You want one downhill, Quentin Coldwater” Where were these words co from?

“I’ve adjusted my priorities”

When she had drunk it, sitting up in bed, taking quick little sips like a child taking her medicine, she burped loudly

“That ht be my favorite part,” she said “Is this all you have?”

“That’s all I have”

“No, it’s not,” she said

Abruptly, aardly, like an inexperienced schoolgirl, she kissed hi to do it She leaned forward and rind into her lip, tasted blood As she did sos She shoved her tongue into his ne The dike that kept herin a hundred places Solass smashed on the floor

She wanted his—afternoons upstairs at the Cottage, in the stifling heat He was lean and strong, stronger than he used to be, and she wanted him

“Show me, Quentin” She ordered him “Shohat bodies are for”

She was unbuttoning his shirt, but cluotten how He trapped her hands

“No,” he said “Not yet Too soon”

“Too soon?” She grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed hiain His stubble scraped her She sood “You do this to me and then you tell me it’s too soon?”

He was trying to get up! The little shit! Anger caer-words too Rage combined with the pleasure but it couldn’t dispel it

“Hang on Alice This isn’t hoorks”

“Then showon him She felt like an animal—a predator She wanted to pin hiusts ht me back, you show me it orth it”

She earing one of his shirts, and it was big enough that she could pull it over her head in one angry swipe and drop it on the floor, leaving her naked except for a pair of underpants Alice kissed hihness of his shirt on her breasts He stuainst the door With her hand she found his crotch and ed it Yes, that’s hoent He used to like this

He still did He was getting hard under her hand

“Isn’t this why you brought me back? So you could fuck me like you used to?”

Even she didn’t believe that, but it was the cruelest, bitterest thing she could think of She wanted to do violence to him, the kind of violence he’d done to her, but he didn’t waver

“I didn’t bring you back for me”

And then he did kiss her Not hard, but gently and firmly That was it, you could do it that way too He wrapped his arainst his, her head beneath his chin, and just held her Meht they walked out from Brakebills in the snow, and he’d put his arm around her shoulders The day in Antarctica when they were foxes and he chased her the way she’d wanted him to do when they were hu else in the world for him but her As if he loved her asat her that way now

Suddenly she felt desperate to connect with hi with so otten what it was like to need

She put her hand up under his shirt, felt his se had happened to his shoulder She rested her head flat against his chest

“It hurt, Quentin,” she said “It hurt so much when I died”

“I know But this is going to feel good”

—

Afterward they lay next to each other on the bed It had worked, for now, her body had gotten what it wanted Not once but twice, which if she remembered correctly had been rather a rarity in the old days But then again Quentin had had some practice since then Poppy, why had she watched him with Poppy? It had seemed so funny at the tiet it

She scooched away froain She let herself fall into herself, falling and falling, pulling away, into the inner darkness, drea She withdrew inside her body like a timorous crab inside an enormous whelk She had felt so hu it, and she let it go She had thought for athat it wasn’t

He sat up and started putting his clothes on

“I have to go,” he said “To the Neitherlands To find Ember Come with me”

She shook her head She wanted hi up her clothes too

“Alice” She didn’t react She would sleep now “Alice I want you to know that I mean it in the kindest possible hen I say that you are being the most unbelievable pussy”

He took her hand again and they vanished, both of theether

CHAPTER 28

They were going to all go together, and froht it would have been a better idea, but Eliot was getting impatient, and then there were the noises Froed looks and nodded; no words were needed It was probably a good development for all involved, on balance, but seriously: they were not going to hang around and listen to that