“Don’t you get it? I don’t know where it comes from! I do a spell, I don’t know if it’s going work or not!” His normally soft, placid face had worked itself into a mask of anger. “You look for the power, and it’s just there! Me, I never know! I never know if it’s going to be there when I need it. It comes and it goes and I don’t even know why!”

“Okay, okay.” Quentin put his hands on Josh’s shoulders, trying to calm him down. “Jesus. You’re hurting my man-boobs.”

Josh let go of him and stalked off in the direction of the Maze. Quentin caught up with him.

“So you thought Lovelady could help.”

“I thought he could . . . I don’t know.” Josh shrugged helplessly. “Give me a little boost. Just make it so I could count on it a little more.”

“By selling you some trash he got off eBay.”

“You know, he has interesting connections.” Just like that Josh was finding his good humor again. He always did. “They act all superior when we’re watching, but some of the faculty buy from Lovelady. I heard a couple of years ago Van der Weghe bought an old brass door knocker off him that turned out to be a Hand of Oberon. Chambers uses it to cut down trees around the Sea.

“I thought he could sell me a charm. Something to bring my grades up. I know I act like I don’t care, but I want to stay here, Quentin! I don’t want to go back out there!”

He pointed off in the general direction of the outside world. The grass was wet and half frozen, and the Sea was misty.

“I want you to stay, too,” Quentin said. His anger was going, too. “But Lovelady—Jesus, maybe you are an idiot. Why didn’t you just go to Eliot for help?”

“Eliot. He’s the last guy I’d talk to. Don’t you see how he looks at me in class? A guy like that—okay, he’s had it tough, in lots of ways, but this isn’t the kind of thing he understands.”

“What did Lovelady try to sell you?

“Bunch of old dust bunnies. Bastard told me they were Aleister Crowley’s ashes.”

“What were you going to do with them anyway? Snort them?”