But the light didn’t reach his face. With one weird magic hand Penny stopped the beam—his hand seemed to eat the light. With the other he grasped the beam like it was a solid thing and bent it 90 degrees downward so that it shone harmlessly at the floor. It stayed there. Too late Eliot weighed in with some kind of electric bolts, but those golden hands plucked them out of the air, one-two-three-four-five, in sequence and with inhuman quickness and accuracy. It was like a stage magician’s bullet catch.

Plum was frantically weaving a shield in front of Quentin. She was still weak on this kind of magic, nobody at Brakebills taught it, but Quentin had showed her a thing or two, and she was nothing if not a quick study. But she already knew it wasn’t going to be ready in time.

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” Penny said.

“Then this is going to be kind of an anticlimax,” Alice said, and she punched him in the face.

Boom! Oh my God. It was beautiful, just like in a movie: straight from the shoulder, feet planted, hips rolled, follow-through, the works. Penny never saw it coming. Do people really do things like that?

People like Alice did, apparently. Penny didn’t fall down, but he bent over double, clutching his face with both hands.

“Ahhhhhh!”

He said it quietly but with real feeling.

“We’re done,” Alice said. “Let’s go.”

Quentin looked at Alice with an expression Plum had never seen on him before. Love, she guessed it was. It was as bright as that beam he’d shot out of his hand.

“Penny,” Quentin said, “I don’t know what you would have done with that page, but I’ll tell you what I did with it: I made Alice human again. In case you were wondering how that happened. You’re a great magician, you always have been, and I’m sure you’re a pretty great librarian too. Magic and books: there aren’t many things more important than that. But there are one or two. We saved Alice, and now we’re going to save Fillory. Please don’t get in our way, that’s all I ask.”

Penny was bent over, working his jaw, both hands pressed to his cheek. He raised his face at them blearily as they filed out, Alice in the lead. She was studying the knuckles of her right hand.

“For a second there,” she said, “I saw the point of being alive.”

“I’m glad you are,” Quentin said. “You’re pretty good at it.”

“Can we get out of here now?” Eliot said.

But Plum had a thought.

“Hang on,” she said. “Somewhere in this building there must be everything there is to know about Fillory, don’t you think? Maybe before we go we should do a little research.”