Deep cover notwithstanding, Josh revealed himself to be conspicuously American by asking the bartender for beer. He wound up settling for a Pimm’s Cup, which he consumed with an air of disappointed bafflement. But he and Poppy made themselves agreeable to the other guests with an ease and skill that Quentin found awe-inspiring. Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all. It was a trick Quentin had never figured out.As an unattached American male among English strangers, he felt inherently suspicious. He did his best to affiliate himself with small groups and nod along politely in response to people who weren’t especially talking to him.

Julia found a wall to put her slender back against and looked decorously mysterious. Only one man dared to approach her, a tall Cantabridgian type with a half-grown beard, and she sent him packing in terms so uncertain he had to salve his wounds with cucumber sandwich. After a half hour of this Quentin felt he could begin a slow drift toward the stairs—not the grand Tara-style ones in front but a more unassuming, utilitarian staircase toward the back of the house. One by one he caught the others’ eyes in turn and inclined his head. We were just looking for a bathroom? All four of us? Too bad they didn’t have drugs; that would have made a better cover story.

The staircase performed a tight switchback up to the second floor, a hushed and darkened maze of white walls and parquet. The rumble and tinkle of the party was still clearly audible, but hushed now, like distant surf. There were a few kids up here, helling along the hallways and racketing in and out of rooms, laughing a little too hysterically, playing some game nobody knew the rules of, flopping down on the coats when they got tired, the kind of forced pack of one-shot friends that exists on the margins of all grown-up parties.

The World in the Walls wasn’t a how-to manual, and it was irritatingly vague as to the precise location of the famous clock. “One of the back corridors of one of the upper floors” was all the detail Plover gave them. Maybe it would have been better to split up, except that would have violated the basic teaching of every movie ever made. Quentin would have worried that everybody else would slip through into Fillory without him, leaving him behind in reality like the last man standing in a game of Sardines.