A small, dense, orange spark left Penny’s palm and flew across the grass, dead level. At first it looked absurdly inoffensive, silly, like a toy, or an insect. But as it sailed toward the trees it grew, blooming into a fiery sparking comet the size of a beach ball, veined and roiling and snapping. It was almost stately, spinning slowly backward as it moved through the cold dusk air. Shadows wound across the lawn, shifting with the fast-moving light source. The heat was intense; Quentin felt it on his face. When it hit a linden, the whole tree went up at once with a single loud crackling woof. A gout of flame ascended into the sky and vanished.

“Fireball!” Penny called out unnecessarily.

It was an instant bonfire. The tree burned fast and merrily. Sparks flew up impossibly high into the twilight sky. Janet whooped and jumped up and down and clapped her hands like a cheerleader. Penny smiled thinly and took a theatrical bow.

They stayed at the house upstate for a few more days, lounging around, grilling on the back patio, drinking up all the good wine, going through the DVD collection, all cramming into the hot tub and then not cleaning it afterward. The fact was, Quentin realized, after all the buildup, all the hasty preparation and rush-rush-rush, they were stalling, vamping, waiting for something to push them into pulling the trigger. They were so excited they didn’t see how terrified they were. And when he thought about all the happiness waiting for him in Fillory, Quentin almost felt like he didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t ready. Ember and Umber would never have summoned someone like him.

In the meantime Alice had somehow figured out a way of never being in the same room as Quentin at the same time. She’d developed a sixth sense about him—he’d catch a glimpse of her out a window, or a flash of her feet as she vanished upstairs, but that was as close as they came. It was almost like a game; the others played it, too. When he did spot her in the open—sitting up on the kitchen counter, kicking her legs and chatting with Josh, or hunched over the dining room table with Penny and his books, like everything was fine—he didn’t dare intrude. That would be against the rules of the game. Seeing her there, so close and at the same time so infinitely removed, was like looking through a doorway into another universe, a warm, sunny, tropical dimension that he had once inhabited, but from which he was now banished. Every night he left flowers outside her bedroom door.