“So I’m a little worried about your parents,” Quentin said that afternoon. “I think they might be completely insane.”
They had retreated to Alice’s bedroom, where they lay side by side on her enormous bed in their bathrobes, looking up at the mosaic on the ceiling: Orpheus singing to a ram, an antelope, and an assortment of attentive birds.
“Are they?”
“Alice, I think you know they’re kind of weird.”
“I guess. I mean,
“Anyway, I thought you might find them interesting,” she said. “I know how mentally excited you get about anything magical. Well,
He wondered, theoretically, which of them had it worse. Alice’s parents were toxic monsters, but at least you could see it. His own parents were more like vampires or werewolves—they passed for human. He could rave about their atrocities all he wanted, he knew the villagers would never believe him till it was too late.
“At any rate I can see where you get your social skills,” he said.
“My point is, you don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a family of magicians.”
“Well, I didn’t know you had to wear a toga.”
“You don’t have to wear togas. That’s exactly the problem, Q. You don’t have to do anything. This is what you don’t understand! You don’t know any older magicians except our professors. It’s a wasteland out there. Out here. You can do nothing or anything or everything, and none of it matters. You have to find something to really care about to keep from running totally off the rails. A lot of magicians never find it.”
Her voice was strangely urgent, almost angry. He was trying to catch up to her.
“So you’re saying your parents didn’t.”
“No, they didn’t, despite their having had two children, which would have given them a minimum of two good options. Well, I think they might have cared about Charlie, but when they lost him, they lost their way completely. And here they are.”
“What about your mom and her fairy orchestras? She seems pretty serious about them.”
“That’s just to annoy my dad. I’m not even sure they exist.”
Suddenly Alice rolled over on top of him, straddling him, hands on his shoulders, pinning him down. Her hair hung straight down at him in a shimmering curtain, tickling his face and giving her the very authoritative appearance of a goddess leaning down from the heavens.
“You have to promise me we’ll never be like them, Quentin.” Their noses were almost touching. Her weight on top of him was arousing, but her face was angry and serious. “I know you think it’s going to be all quests and dragons and fighting evil and whatever, like in Fillory. I know that’s what you think. But it’s not. You don’t see it yet. There’s nothing out there.
“So you have to promise me, Quentin. Let’s never get like this, with these stupid hobbies nobody cares about. Just doing pointless things all day and hating each other and waiting to die.”
“Well, you drive a hard bargain,” he said. “But okay. I promise.”
“I’m serious, Quentin. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be so much harder than you think. They don’t even
She undid the drawstring on his pajama bottoms without looking and jerked them down, still staring directly into his eyes. Her robe was already open at the waist, and she had nothing on under it. He knew she was saying something important, but he wasn’t grasping it. He put his hands under her robe, feeling her smooth back, the curve of her waist. Her heavy breasts brushed against his chest. They would always have magic. They would have it forever. So what—?
“Maybe they are happy,” he said. “Maybe this is just who they are.”
“No, Quentin. They aren’t, and it isn’t.” She twined her fingers into his hair and gripped it, hard, so that it hurt. “God, you are such a child sometimes.”
They were moving together now, breathing hard. Quentin was inside her, and they couldn’t talk anymore, except for Alice just repeating:
“Promise me, Q. Promise me. Just promise.”
She said it angrily, insistently, over and over again, as if he were arguing, as if he wouldn’t have agreed to absolutely anything at that moment.
