“If I were looking for missing puzzle pieces, I would start there. Go back to Earth. Find his things, see what he left behind. Maybe he wrote something down. And I think he nicked something—you weren’t supposed to bring things through, from Fillory back to Earth, or not big things anyway, but I think Rupert did. I think he stole something. At any rate when he left here there was a big stink about it. No one ever pinned it on him, and by then Martin was raising hell so it rather got lost in the shuffle, but I think he had something he wasn’t supposed to.

“That’s what I would do: go back, all the way back to where this whole disaster started. You weren’t there, and even I wasn’t there. But Rupert was.”

That was all they got out of her. Eliot asked her some polite questions about the garden, while Janet walked from clock-tree to clock-tree, knocking on the faces, trying to get them to open for her the way they did for Jane; Jane claimed not to know why they didn’t. After ten more minutes Eliot said they should be on their way, and Jane didn’t disagree.

She walked them to their horses. They hadn’t wanted to come inside the ring of clock-trees.

“Good luck,” the Watcherwoman said. “And I do mean that.”

“Thanks,” Eliot said. “Good luck with your clockwork lessons.”

“Thank you.”

“I bet you wish you hadn’t broken that watch,” Janet said.

She wouldn’t leave it alone.

“Wishes are for children,” Jane Chatwin said. “I grew up.”

CHAPTER 16

It was like a really terrible party where on top of everything else at the end it turns out your ride bailed and you have to walk home. It was cold, and Plum kept worrying that the bird would come back at any moment with reinforcements to claim its stolen goods. Or the surviving half of the Couple, if he had survived. She worried to the point where she kept losing her shit every time anything cawed or hooted or one of them stepped on a stick. It had to be after them. No way would it let this go, not after the lengths it had already gone to. The only question was when.

After Betsy left, or Amadeus, or whatever her name was, Stoppard had departed the scene too at top speed on the busted club chair, with promises to reconnect back in New York once the coast was clear. Plum and Quentin were going to take the pool table, but when they tried to shift it they discovered that they lacked the necessary motive power. All their magical strength was spent. So they set off on foot instead.

Maybe they should have taken Lionel’s gun, for added protection, but they didn’t. They just didn’t want it.