“No,” Quentin said. “I want to go alone.”

To his surprise it worked. She stayed put.

Becoming invisible was a simple idea in theory, but in practice it was a lot harder than you’d think. It had been done, but it took years of meticulous self-erasure, and once accomplished it was practically impossible to undo; apart from anything else you could never be sure you’d reinstated your visible self completely accurately. You came out looking like a portrait of yourself. The best work-around Quentin knew was more like an animal’s protective coloring. If you were standing in front of some leaves, you looked drab and leafy. If you weren’t moving or jumping around, an observer’s eye tended to skate over you. Usually. If the light wasn’t too good. The car door chunked shut in the stillness. He felt the others’ eyes on his back as he crossed the road.

There was something on top of the stone post: buttons. They were scattered in the grass around it too. Big ones, small ones, pearly ones, tortoiseshells. It must be a fan ritual. You come by, you leave a button, the way people left joints on Jim Morrison’s grave.

Still, he stopped and touched each of them, one by one, just to make sure none of them were genuine.

The camouflage spell was unbelievably crude. He picked up a big leathery oak leaf, snapped off a shingle of bark from a tree, plucked a blade of the scanty grass, and collected a granite pebble from the edge of the road. He whispered a rhyming chant in French over them, spat on them, and—the glamorous life of the modern sorcerer—stuffed them in his pocket.

Further up and further in. He stayed off the gravel driveway and picked his way through the trees for five minutes, until there were no more, and then he was looking at Aunt Maude Chatwin’s house.

It was like he was looking back through time. The unpromising driveway had been a feint, a hustle. It really was a grand house; it probably would have qualified as magnificent if they hadn’t just come from Plover’s house. As Quentin got closer the gravel track pulled itself together and became a proper driveway, which clove in two and formed a circle with a modest but still entirely effective fountain at the center. Three rows of tall windows adorned the front, and the gray slate roof was a beautiful profusion of chimneys and gables.

Quentin hadn’t known what to expect. A ruin, maybe, or some appalling new Modernist façade. But the Chatwin house was perfectly appointed and restored, and the lawns looked like they’d been trimmed that morning. It was everything Quentin had hoped for, except for one thing. It wasn’t empty.