Amazingly, Penny had survived, she told him, or at least he had for a while. The centaurs were unable to reconstruct his hands, and without them he could no longer cast spells. When they reached the Neitherlands Penny walked away from the rest of the party, as if he were searching for something. When he came to a tall, narrow stone palazzo, unusually old and worn, he stopped in front of it and spread out his handless arms as if in supplication. After a minute the doors of the palazzo opened. The others caught a glimpse of ranks of bookcases—the warm, secret paper heart of the City. Penny stepped inside and the doors closed behind him.

“Can you believe it even all happened?” she kept saying. “It is like a cauchemar . But it is all over now.”

It was strange: Anaïs didn’t seem to blame him, or herself. She had found some way of mourning what had happened. Or maybe it hadn’t touched her to begin with. It was hard to guess what went on under those blond curls.

Throughout the story she kept looking over his shoulder at the underwear model, and after a while he took pity on her and let her go. They said goodbye—kiss, kiss. Neither party promised to keep in touch. What was the point of lying now, at this late stage in the game? Like she said, it was all over now. He stayed sitting outside on the steps, in the warm early hours of the summer evening, until it crossed his mind how much he didn’t want to run into Anaïs again on her way out.

It was getting dark, and he would need somewhere to sleep tonight. He could find a hotel, but why bother? And why wait? He had abandoned almost everything he owned back in Fillory, but one thing Quentin had hung on to was the iron key Fogg had given him when he graduated. It hadn’t worked from Fillory—he’d tried—but now, standing by himself on a trash-littered street in Tribeca, breathing the soupy, sun-warmed city air, he took it out of the pocket of his brand-new jeans. It felt reassuringly hefty. On a hunch he held it up to his ear. It gave off a high, constant musical ringing tone, like a struck tuning fork. He’d never noticed that before.