So that happened. Bad as she thought it was going to be, it was worse. Six weeks of bad smells, bad food, and listening to her roommate, whose arms were crocheted with razor scars from cuff line to armpit, toss and turn and talk in her sleep about transformers, transformers, everything is a transformer, why won’t they just transform?

Who’s crazy now? Those movies were even worse than The Craft.

So she talked her shrinks in circles and took her meds, which helped to nudge the calendar along. Time sure flies when you’re having fun, and by fun she meant Nardil. Sometimes she really did think death would be preferable, except she wasn’t going to give those bastards the satisfaction. They couldn’t wear her down. No they couldn’t. No they couldn’t.

Eventually she was simply returned to sender. The doctors couldn’t keep her. She was no danger to herself or to others. She just wasn’t that crazy.

So that was another exclusive institution she’d been kicked out of. Badum-ching. Thanks very much, you’ve been a great audience. I’ll be here all week, all month, all year, indefinitely, until further notice.

Eventually, given that she had a little spare time on her hands, she opened up another front in the war. If magic was real, it stood to reason that some genuine information about how to work it must be in circulation. The Brakebills couldn’t have it all to themselves. It was inevitable; anybody who knew anything about information theory would know that. You just couldn’t contain a body of data that large completely hermetically. There would be too much of it, and too many pores it could leak out through. She would start tunneling from her side of the wall.

She began a systematic survey. It was good to give her always-hungry brain something to chew on—it kept it, if not happy, then at least busy. She drew up a list of the major magical traditions, and the minor ones. She compiled bibliographies of the major texts for same. She then read every one in turn, centrifuging out the practical information and ditching all the rest—the matrix of useless mystical crap in which it was suspended. This required some leaving of the house, some furtive forays into the Big Blue Room. But that had the extra effect of placating her parents a bit, so whatever, it’s all good.

She ground and boiled. She sniffed and daubed. It was fun, like a scavenger hunt. She haunted head shops and organic herb sections and familiarized herself with the restaurant supply stores on Bowery—a great source for cheap hardware—and online mail-order laboratory supply houses. It was amazing what they would send you through the mail if you had a fake ID, a PayPal account, and a P.O. box. If this magic thing didn’t pan out she could definitely go into domestic terrorism.