By around five o’clock in the afternoon they realized they were putting off casting anything that would take them past the tipping point—that would commit them to doing this thing right here and now, tonight, and not tomorrow or some other day. The train was still in the station, it could still be delayed. But they’d run out of bullshit prep work. It was in or out.

Only now did Plum realize how nervous she was.

“I’m calling it,” Quentin said. “If we’re doing this let’s do it.”

“All right.”

“Go ahead and cast Clarifying Radiance.”

“OK.”

“I’ll start prepping the Scythian Dream.”

“Check.”

“OK, go.”

“Going.”

She went. Plum turned to the first set of materials on the shelf: four black powders in little dishes and a silver bell. Clarifying Radiance. Meanwhile Quentin said a word of power, and the light in the room became a shade more sepia, like the sunlight moments before a thunderstorm. Everything began to sound echoey, as if they were in a much larger room. Just like that they crossed the Rubicon. The train left the station.

From that point on it was controlled chaos. Sometimes they worked together—one or two of the spells were four-handed. Other times the flow diverged, and they’d be doing totally different spells in parallel, stealing glances at the other one’s work to make sure they finished up at the same time.

There was a steady flow of cross-talk.

“Slow it down, slow it down. Finish in three, two—”

“Look out, the streams are forking. They’re forking!”

A single curve of Irish Fire delaminated into two, then four, curling away to either side. The curls started pointing worryingly back toward Plum, who was casting them.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “Dammit!”

The fire went out.

“Do it again. Do it again. There’s still time.”

It went on like that for three or four hours—it was hard to keep track. By then they were deep into it, and the atmosphere in the room had gotten thoroughly dreamlike. Huge shadows stalked along the walls. The room seemed to list and bank like it had taken flight with them inside it. She banged a tray down onto the work table in front of Quentin, and he began picking what he needed off it without even glancing down at it, and she was shocked to realize that it was the second-to-last spell on the list. This was almost it.

Plum had run out of things to do so she just watched him, drinking a glass of water she’d placed under the table when they started and had somehow managed not to kick over. The rest of it was all him. She was dizzy, and her arms felt weak. She folded them over her chest to keep them from shaking.