Quentin shouted, in pain or triumph or despair, Plum couldn’t tell which:

“Nothung!”

He spun the staff and banged the silver-shod end against the floor with a sound like a gunshot. She felt the shock through the soles of her feet. The wires in the ceiling and walls went red hot, and the letters on the floor burned white like magnesium.

Then they faded again, and bit by bit it all stopped. The floor stabilized. The air was still again; a couple of candles hadn’t blown out, and their flames wobbled and then straightened up. Quentin collapsed forward onto the table. The room was silent except for a faint high silvery tone, though it could have been her ears ringing.

The world outside the window had become lower Manhattan again, even that odd little window in the corner. Quentin raised his head and straightened up. He peered around, up at the ceiling, into the dark corners of the room, curiously. He looked over at Plum.

She pointed behind him.

A red door had appeared in the wall. It was painted wood banded with black iron that had been worked into elaborate curves and fairy spirals. Quentin dropped the staff, and it clattered to the floor.

CHAPTER 21

Plum watched him take a few slow, cautious, disbelieving steps toward the door and then stop again, as the dust settled and the ringing died away. Plum felt wrung out, shivery, like she’d gone for a run on an empty stomach, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the red door.

“We did it,” Quentin said solemnly. “It really worked. We made a new land.”

It had one brass knob, placed in the center. Quentin touched it and then put his hand on it, hesitantly, as if he expected an electric shock, or as if he thought his hand might go right through it. But it was solid. He turned the knob and pushed—wrong—then pulled the door toward him. It opened easily.

A cold wind breathed into the room. It cooled Plum’s overheated forehead, but it chilled something deeper inside her.

“Quentin,” she said.

He didn’t move, and she stepped forward to stand beside him on the threshold.

“Are you going in?”

Like he was waking from a dream Quentin looked over at her.

“In a minute.” He held up his hand. “I was sure I was going to have a scar there from Mayakovsky’s coin. Like in Raiders. It felt like it was burning. But there’s nothing.”

Plum had no idea what he was talking about, but she didn’t say anything. It didn’t seem like the moment.