“You know the rules,” he said, like he was speaking to a child.

“Please? Just this once?” Quentin had never heard Eliot speak in that pleading, wheedling infantile tone before. “Please?” It was not a tone he had ever expected to hear Eliot speak in.

“Absolutely not!” Eric touched the tip of Eliot’s long, pale nose with his finger. “Not until you finish all your chores. Every single one. And take off that stupid shirt, it’s pathetic.”

Quentin got that it was a game they’d played before. He was watching a very private ritual.

“All right,” Eliot said petulantly. “And there is nothing wrong with this shirt,” he muttered.

Eric cut him off with a look. Then he spat, once, a white fleck on Eliot’s pristine shirtfront. Quentin saw the fear behind Eric’s eyes as he wondered if he’d gone too far. From this angle the armchair might have blocked Quentin’s view, but it didn’t quite as Eliot fumbled jinglingly with Eric’s belt buckle, then his fly, then jerked down his pants, exposing his thin, pale thighs.

“Careful,” Eric warned. There wasn’t much affection in his playacting, if that’s what it was. “Little bitch. You know the rules.”

Quentin couldn’t have said why he waited an extra minute before he ducked back down the ladder, back into his staid, predictable home universe, but he couldn’t stop watching. He was looking directly at the exposed wiring of Eliot’s emotional machinery. How could he not have known about this? He wondered if it was an annual thing, maybe Eliot went through a boy or two a year, anointing them and then discarding them when they no longer did the trick. Did he really have to hide like this? Even at Brakebills? On some level Quentin was hurt: If this was what Eliot wanted, why hadn’t he come after Quentin? Though as much as he longed for Eliot’s attention, he didn’t know if he could have gone through with it. It was better this way. Eliot wouldn’t have forgiven him for refusing.

The desperate hunger with which Eliot regarded the object on which he would perform his chores was unlike anything Quentin had ever seen. He was right in Eliot’s line of sight, but he never once glanced over at him.

Quentin decided he would do his reading elsewhere.

He finished Lady Amelia Popper’s Practical Exercises for Young Magicians, Vol. 1, at midnight the night before the exam, a Sunday. He carefully closed the book and sat for a minute staring at the cover. His hands shook. His head felt spinny and weightless. His body was unnaturally heavy. He couldn’t stay where he was, but he was too wired to go to bed either. He heaved himself up from the broken-backed couch and announced that he was going for a walk.

To his surprise Alice offered to come with him. Penny just stared at the green, overcast landscape in the mirror, waiting for his pale, stoic face to reappear so he could keep practicing. He didn’t look up as they left.