“There,” Lionel said. “It’s that window. The wing on the right, top floor, middle window.”

“That’s where the case is?” Quentin said.

“That’s where we get in.”

For a second Quentin didn’t know what was missing, then he did: Stoppard’s machine had stopped ticking. Stoppard reacted faster than he did—he lunged across the carpet from where he’d been trying to talk to Betsy, fumbled the crank into its hole, and cranked the handle madly. The device started up again almost immediately.

“You fucking shitbag!” Lionel hissed. “How long were we visible for?”

“I don’t know!” Stoppard didn’t stop cranking. “Couple of seconds maybe! I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened!”

They all waited for the alarm to go up. Everyone held still. It was not unlike being in a submarine and waiting for the depth charges to start dropping. The carpet kept sailing forward, unfazed. Quentin stepped rapidly through a very hard shield spell that would stop a bullet, probably, if he were facing in exactly the right direction.

But the depth charges didn’t come, and they kept going. When Stoppard got tired Quentin dropped the spell and cranked instead, until the mainspring protested. This is ridiculous, Quentin thought, but coldly—he wasn’t going to let himself panic. We’re making it up as we go along.

Pushkar slowed them down and commenced fine adjustments, drifting a little left, then right, up and down, whispering patiently to his steed, a pilot steering a tanker into a narrow slip. They were close to the house now, passing over a tiled terrace strewn with weathered Adirondack chairs, and they could see into a few rooms where the lights were on. Quentin got a glimpse of a woman standing up at a counter, drinking coffee and reading a magazine. Two men stood outside on the patio smoking; they held their cigarettes Eastern European style, like darts. They could have been anybody, in any house, anywhere. The carpet was going to pass barely ten feet over their heads.

The invisibility field brushed a tree branch. Instead of just passing through it the branch snagged, as if the field were a bubble of tacky glue, then curved and bent. They watched helplessly until it finally gave and a handful of oak leaves tore off.

Quentin’s toes curled. But at the same moment the oak branch snapped something fell inside the house—a coffee cup, it sounded like—and smashed on the floor. The two men turned. Someone swore, a woman. They were distracted. The moment passed.

That wasn’t luck; luck doesn’t come that good. Somebody must have—yes, Lionel was finishing up some arduous piece of probability-warping magic, breathing hard with the effort.

“Nice,” Quentin said.

“Shouldn’t have needed it.”

“It’s not his fault,” Quentin said. “He never even got to test it. We’re lucky we got this far.”