He hesitated on the threshold, torn between conflicting loyalties. She would probably be grateful for some quiet time to study.

“I think she’s coming later,” Quentin said. He called in the direction of the bedroom: “Okay! Bye! I’ll see you there!”

There was no answer.

“Bye Mom!” Eliot yelled.

The door closed.

Like everything else, Eliot was different in New York. At Brakebills he had always been supremely aloof and self-sufficient. His personal charm and odd appearance and talent for magic had raised him up and set him apart. But since Quentin had joined him in Manhattan, the balance of power between them had shifted somehow. Eliot hadn’t survived transplantation unscathed; he no longer floated easily above the fray. His humor was more arch and bitter and childish than Quentin remembered. He seemed to be getting younger as Quentin got older. He needed Quentin more, and he resented Quentin for that. He hated to be left out of anything, and he hated to be included in anything. He spent more time than he should have on the roof of his apartment building smoking his Merits and God knows what else—there wasn’t much you couldn’t find if you had the money, and they had the money. He was getting too thin. He was depressed and turned nasty when Quentin tried to jolly him out of it. When annoyed he was fond of saying, “God, it’s amazing I’m not a dipsomaniac” and then correcting himself: “Oh, wait, that’s right . . .” It had been funny the first time. Sort of.

At Brakebills Eliot had started drinking at dinnertime, earlier on weekends, which was fine, because all the upperclassmen drank at dinner, though not all of them bartered their desserts for extra glasses of wine the way Eliot did. In Manhattan, with no professors watching over them, and no classes to be sober for, Eliot was rarely without a glass of something in his hand from one in the afternoon on. Usually it was something relatively innocuous, white wine or Campari or a big dilute tumbler of bourbon and soda clunking with ice. But still. Once when Eliot was nursing a stubborn cold, Quentin remarked lightly that maybe he should consider something more wholesome than a vodka tonic with which to chase his plastic jigger of DayQuil.

“I’m sick, I’m not dead,” Eliot snapped. And that was that.