“I know, I know. It would be a lot easier though.” Eliot heaved himself wearily to his feet. “Fine. Come on, let’s go yell at a god. If nothing else I want to hear Him admit it. I want Him to say it to my face.”
“I’m coming.” Plum got up too.
“Somebody should stay here with Alice,” Quentin said.
“Somebody young and inexperienced in the field,” Eliot said.
“No.” Plum glared at him, uncowed. “No way. I’m not babysitting the Blue Meanie.”
“Maybe Alice will come with us. Maybe she can help. Alice!” Quentin shouted up the stairs. No answer. “I’ll go talk to her.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Give me an hour.”
“I can help!” the bird said.
Quentin’s reflexes were good, but it still only worked because he had the element of surprise. He darted his hand out and caught the bird around the neck. Ignoring its hysterical thrashing, he walked over to a window, opened it, and threw the blackbird out.
—
Alice lay on her back on the bed with her eyes open. She heard the sounds of the house below her—walking, talking, shouting, slamming—but they were very far away. She stared at the ceiling. She felt like a marble figure carved on a tomb, her own tomb. This body was her coffin. She breathed shallowly; even that was an imposition she could barely tolerate.
She would not indulge this body. She didn’t owe it anything. She wanted to feel it as little as possible.
Clumping footsteps coming up the stairs. The door opened.
“Alice.”
It was Quentin, of course. She didn’t turn her head. She heard the scrape of a stool as he pulled it over and sat down. She couldn’t stop him.
“Alice. We’re going to go to the Neitherlands. We have a theory about what might be going on. We’re going to try to find Ember and talk to Him.”
“OK.” She felt her tongue, the worm in her head, lightly kiss the roof of her mouth to make the K.
She didn’t feel angry anymore. She wondered why she’d even bothered with all that anger, all that talking. Something had come over her, but now her rage was gone, a storm that had blown out to sea leaving behind a great peace. A flat strand swept smooth by the violence of the waves, dotted with sea wrack churned up from the depths. She just didn’t care.
“I don’t want to leave you here. I’d like you to come with us. I think you could help.”
Very slightly, she shook her head. She closed her eyes. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she felt weightless again. The whiskey helped—it was better when she was drunk. And it gave her pleasure to poison this body.
“I don’t think so.”
Seven years ago he’d watched as she made a blue bonfire of her flesh. For seven long years her human self had slept, and she had roamed Fillory as a dream of rage and power. The dream was over now, Quentin had ended it, he’d woken her up and forced her back into her body. But he couldn’t force her soul, her self. Did he actually hate her? That much? He said he loved her, once. That was both seven years ago and yesterday.
She wondered if she could burn again. Maybe she was like a spent match, to be struck only once, but she didn’t think so. It would take time to get ready, to relearn the skills, but soon. She didn’t mind if she died trying. Suicide was in everything she did now, and everything she thought. Suicide was her home: if she could find nothing else, then suicide would always have her.
And if it did work they would never catch her again. Never again.
“I’m going to touch your hand now.” She felt him take her fingers; she left hers limp. It was the first time anyone had touched her since she’d come back, and it made her skin crawl. “You’re going to get through this. It’s not as bad as you think. I’m going to try to help you. But you have to try too.”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t.”
Something happened in the silence that followed. Her eyes opened again. Something was pulling her back. It was something in the air, coming in through her nose and invading her mind. It was doing something to her. Magic? Not magic.
“What is that?” she said.
“What?”
“That smell.”
“You know what it is,” Quentin said. “Think.”
For an instant she lowered her guard, and forgot to fight, and in that instant her body sat up and inhaled. Neurons were firing in her brain that hadn’t fired for seven years. After eons of disuse, mental furniture was being uncovered, dusty drop cloths yanked back. Mental windows were being thrown open to let in the hot sun.
“Bacon,” she said.
He had a tray with him. Now he picked up a plate and held it in front of her. It was good bacon, quarter-inch-thick strips, and it had warped and bubbled as he fried it; he’d let one end of it char a little because he knew she liked it burned. Had liked it.
Well, he’d done something with his seven years. He didn’t used to be able to cook worth a damn.
She was tired, and she was famished—she wasn’t, her mind wasn’t, it was clear as a bell, but this body was hungry, this doll made of meat. It was weak, and it reached out and picked up the food and put it in her mouth. The meat took over and ate the other meat, and God it was fucking unbelievable, salty and fatty and smoky. When she was done she licked her thumbs and wiped her greasy hands on the sheets. It revolted her, she revolted herself, but there was so much pleasure in it. She was trying to reject her body like a bad organ transplant but she could feel herself trapped in its sticky embrace. It was trying to adhere to her, trying to become her, and Quentin was helping it. He was on its side.
“I hope,” she said, “that you don’t think you’re going to keep me here with bacon.”
“Not just bacon.”
He handed her a plate with fresh slices of mango on it, intensely orange, like little arcs carved off a tiny sweet sun. She fell on them like an animal. She was an animal.
No, she was not. She was pure and beautiful and blue.
“Why did you do it?” she asked with her mouth full. “Why did you do this to me?”
“Because this is who you are. Because you’re human. You’re a person, you’re not a demon.”
“Prove it.”
“I am proving it.”
She looked at him, really looked for the first time since she’d been back. He had a narrow, symmetrical face, rendered interesting by a slightly too-large nose and an expressive, too-wide mouth. He never knew it, which had saved him from developing one of those pretty-boy personalities, but objectively he’d always been handsome. And he still was.
But he was different now too. He didn’t stutter or duck her gaze the way he used to. He was right, he had changed.
“You could’ve got oysters,” she said.
“You hate oysters.”
“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 from it. The triumphant, righteous niffin in her shrieked defiance. She thought of flying, of plunging into the earth and flying again, of burning things, making them hurt the way she hurt, showing them how glorious 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, making her give it up.
“I’m going to make my new body fat,” she said. “I’m going 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 champagne and was pouring some into a wineglass.
“This is hardly fair,” she said.
“I never said it was.”
“You want me to drink champagne out of a wineglass? You’ve gone downhill, Quentin Coldwater.” Where were these words coming 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 might be my favorite part,” she said. “Is this all you have?”
“That’s all I have.”
“No, it’s not,” she said.
Abruptly, awkwardly, like an inexperienced schoolgirl, she kissed him. She did it roughly and hard, without knowing she was going to do it. She leaned forward and mashed her lips against his, felt a tooth grind into her lip, tasted blood. As she did something warmed and melted between her legs. She shoved her tongue into his mouth, let him taste the champagne. The dike that kept her mind separate from her body was leaking in a hundred places. Somewhere far away her glass smashed on the floor.
She wanted him. She was remembering things—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. “Show me what bodies are for.”
She was unbuttoning his shirt, but clumsily. She’d forgotten how. He trapped her hands.
“No,” he said. “Not yet. Too soon.”
“Too soon?” She grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him again. His stubble scraped her. She smelled him; it wasn’t like bacon, but it was still good. “You do this to me and then you tell me it’s too soon?”
He was trying to get up! The little shit! Anger came so easily, still, with all those lovely anger-words too. Rage combined with the pleasure but it couldn’t dispel it.
“Hang on. Alice. This isn’t how it works.”
“Then show me how it works.” She got up too, advancing on him. She felt like an animal—a predator. She wanted to pin him and devour him. “Does my body disgust you as much as it disgusts me? Too bad. You brought me back, you show me it was worth it.”
She was wearing 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 him again, pushed herself against him, felt the electric roughness of his shirt on her breasts. He stumbled back until his head knocked against the door. With her hand she found his crotch and massaged it. Yes, that’s how it went. 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 arms around her, fitting her body against his, her head beneath his chin, and just held her. Memories inundated her, human memories. The night 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 human. The way he looked at her as if there was nothing else in the world for him but her. As if he loved her as much as she hated herself. He was looking at her that way now.
Suddenly she felt desperate to connect with him again. She’d been alone for so long. She needed this. Along with so many other things, she’d forgotten what it was like to need.
She put her hand up under his shirt, felt his smooth skin. Something strange 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 time, but now it hurt her. She wished she could forget it.
She scooched away from him. She wanted to go away again. She let herself fall into herself, falling and falling, pulling away, into the inner darkness, dreaming of flying. She withdrew inside her body like a timorous crab inside an enormous whelk. She had felt so human before, so her old self, but she was losing it, and she let it go. She had thought for a moment that it was simple, but she was remembering that 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 him gone. It was so much easier this way. He was gathering 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 way when I say that you are being the most unbelievable pussy.”
He took her hand again and they vanished, both of them together.
CHAPTER 28
They were going to all go together, and from a tactical perspective Plum thought it would have been a better idea, but Eliot was getting impatient, and then there were the noises. From upstairs. Quentin and Alice. Plum and Eliot exchanged 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.