“It needs a minute to take effect,” he said when he was done. “Of course, from this point forward the journey will be undertaken by members of the Order.”

Wait.

“What do you mean?”

“My colleagues and I will return with you to your ship and carry out the remainder of the quest. You may observe, of course.” Penny gave them a moment to take that in. “You didn’t think we would leave a mission of this importance to a group of amateurs, did you? We appreciate the good work you’ve done to get us this far, we truly do, but it’s out of your hands now. It’s time for the professionals take over.”

“Sorry, but no,” Quentin said. “It isn’t.”

He wasn’t giving this up. And he definitely wasn’t inviting Penny along.

“I suppose you’ll find your own way back to Fillory then,” Penny said. He crossed his handless arms. “I take back the spell.”

“You can’t take it back!” Poppy said. “What are you, nine? Penny!”

He’d finally gotten under even Poppy’s skin.

“You don’t understand,” Quentin said, though he wasn’t totally sure he understood himself. “This is our job. Nobody else can do it for us. That’s not how it works. You have to send us back.”

“I have to? Are you going to make me?”

“Jesus! Penny, you are unbelievable! Literally unbelievable! You know, I actually thought you’d changed, I really did. Do you even get that this isn’t about you?”

“Not about me?” Penny lost his grip on his interdimensional monk voice again and spoke in his old, higher-pitched voice, the one he used to use when he felt especially aggrieved and self-righteous. “Spare me that, Quentin. You haven’t spared me much during our long acquaintance, but spare me that. I found the Neitherlands. I found the button. I took us to Fillory. You didn’t do all that, Quentin, I did.

“And I got my hands bitten off by the Beast. And I came here. And now I’m going to finish this, because I started it.”

Quentin imagined it: Penny and his fellow Blue Oyster Cult members showing up on the Muntjac and ordering everybody—ordering Eliot!—around. Probably they were better magicians than he was, technically. But still, no, he couldn’t do it. It was impossible.

They glared at each other. It was a stalemate.

“Penny, can I ask you something?” Quentin said. “How do you do magic now? I mean, without your hands?”

The funny thing about Penny was that you knew questions like that weren’t going to make him uncomfortable, and it didn’t. In fact his mood brightened immediately.