It took only about ten minutes for Alice to make a full lateral cut, then go back across it a second time. The trench glowed red.

When she was finished, Quentin walked back to where she was standing.

“You have ash on your face,” she said. She brushed at his forehead with her fingers.

“Maybe we should go across again. You know, just to be sure.” If this didn’t work, he was out of ideas, and he didn’t think he could spend the night out here. He also didn’t think he could face going back to the House in defeat.

“There’s not enough light.” She looked drained. “By the end the lens was probably out to a quarter mile. After that it just loses coherence. Falls apart at the edges.”

A quarter mile? Quentin thought. How powerful is she?

His stomach rumbled. It was fully dusk now, and the sky was a luminous blue. They stared at the scarred, blackened door. It looked worse than he thought—Alice’s aim had strayed on the second pass, so in places there were two separate trenches. If this was wrong, Eliot was going to kill him.

“Should I try to kick it in?”

Alice pulled her mouth to one side. “What if there’s somebody behind it?”

“So what do you suggest?”

“I don’t know.” She picked at one of the burnt parts that had cooled. “I think we’re almost through . . .”

There was an old iron knocker on the door in the shape of a disembodied hand holding an iron ball. It was bolted on.

“Okay,” Quentin said. “Stand back.”

God, please let this work. He got a good grip on the iron hand, put one foot on the door, uttered a long falsetto martial arts yell, and threw his weight backward. The top half of the door swung open with no resistance whatsoever—it must have been hanging on by a few flakes of ash. He fell down backward on the path.

A girl Quentin recognized as one of the Fourth Years stood in the doorway with warm light streaming out into the twilight around her, holding a glass of dark red wine in one hand. She looked down at him coolly. Alice was leaning against the side of the house laughing so hard that no sound was coming out.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” the girl said. “Eliot made an amatriciana sauce. We couldn’t get any guanciale, but I think bacon works fine. Don’t you?”

In spite of the heat a fire popped and flickered in the fireplace.

“Six hours, twelve minutes,” said a fat young man with wavy hair sitting in a leather club chair. “That’s actually about par.”

“Tell them how long it took you, Josh,” said the girl who’d met them at the door. Quentin thought her name was Janet.

“Twenty hours, thirty-one minutes. Longest night of my life. Not a record, but pretty close.”