Janet was circling the fight, trying to cram bullets into the revolver and dropping them freely on the sand, but there was nowhere to aim anyway. They were all tangled up together. The next moment the Beast was in the coils of a massive spotted anaconda, then Alice was an eagle, then a huge brindled bear, then a horrific man-size scorpion with pincing legs and its venomous sting, the size of a crane hook, lodged in Martin Chatwin’s back. Light flashed and crackled around them as they fought, and their struggling bodies rose from the ground. The Beast was on top of her, and Alice expanded hugely to become a limber, sinuous white dragon on its back, her enormous wings slapping the sand and sending everybody scrambling. The Beast grew with her, so that she was wrestling a giant. She gripped him in her talons and screamed a torrent of blue fire like jet exhaust straight into his face.

For a minute he writhed in Alice’s grip. His eyebrows were gone, and his face was comically blackened. Quentin could hear the Alice-dragon panting raggedly. The Beast shuddered and was still for a moment. Then he appeared to compose himself, and he punched Alice once, hard, in the face.

Instantly she was human again. Her nose was bleeding. Martin rolled neatly to one side and got to his feet. Naked though he was, he produced a clean handkerchief from somewhere and used it to dab some of the soot from his face.

“Dammit,” Quentin rasped. “Somebody do something! Help her!”

Janet got one last bullet in and fired, then she threw the pistol overhand. It bounced off the back of Martin Chatwin’s head without mussing his hair.

“Fuck you!” she shouted.

Martin took a step toward Alice. No. This had to end.

“Hey, asshole!” Quentin managed. “You forgot one thing.”

He spat blood and switched to his best Cubano accent, his voice cracking hysterically: “Say hello to my leel friend!”

Quentin whispered the catchword Fogg had given him the night of graduation. He’d imagined it in his head a hundred times, and now as he pronounced the final syllable something big and hard was struggling and thrashing under his shirt, scrabbling at the skin of his back.

Looking up at it, Quentin noticed that his cacodemon was wearing a little pair of round spectacles hooked over its pointy ears. What the fuck, his cacodemon had glasses? It stood over him, uncertain, looking learned and thoughtful. It didn’t know whom to fight.

“The naked guy,” Quentin said in a hoarse whisper. “Go! Save the girl!”