He’d missed dinner, but he could still eat with the kitchen staff. One thing was clear: this was a fragment chipped off the great arcane magical database of the adepts of the Neitherlands themselves, Penny’s gang. It was like an ultradense meteorite from some extrasolar intellectual realm, and it had come crashing to Earth, and there was no telling what exotic, unearthly elements it might contain.

He’d found a topic for his independent research project, anyway, Dean Fogg could stop noodging him about that. And in a small way he’d found a new adventure. It was a different kind of adventure from what they had in Fillory, a small and kind of nerdy adventure, but there was no question that’s what this was.

“Thank you,” he said to the page. “Thank you for being here. Whatever it is you’ve got inside you, I’ll take good care of it. I promise.”

Was it his imagination? Did the page unfold itself slightly—did it preen itself a little, basking in the praise of its reader? He took the heavy candlestick off one corner. Then, carefully, the wineglass and the clock. As soon as he moved the ammonite the page shot sideways, making for the crack under the window.

“Not yet.” He slapped his hand down on it and replaced the candlestick with a clunk. “I’m sorry, I really am. But not yet.”

—

There was one aspect of Quentin’s life at Brakebills that was still less than ideal, and that was his social life. He didn’t have one.

Even though he was almost thirty he was a lot younger than most of the faculty, and he was having a hard time connecting with them. Maybe it was the age thing, or that he hadn’t properly paid his dues yet, which was true. Maybe they figured he wouldn’t be here that long, so what was the point. The politics of the senior common room were byzantine and involved a lot of power struggles to which he, as low man on the totem pole, just wasn’t very relevant.

Also it was possible that they just didn’t like him very much. It had been known to happen.

Whatever the reason, he drew a lot of undesirable solo duties, like refereeing cold, wet welters matches and patching the dull but finicky network of spells that was supposed to bust students breaking curfew. (Now that he got a close look at it, he couldn’t believe how much they used to worry about getting caught. The spells were so rickety and put out so many false alarms that the faculty mostly ignored them.)