CHAPTER 6
They left the bookstore in two cars. A black Lexus SUV rolled up to the loading dock and Lionel loaded the birdcage carefully into the backseat, then put a seatbelt on it and climbed in the other side. Once they were gone a white stretch limousine pulled up.
It was still raining.
“If I’d’ve known it was prom night,” Pixie said, “I would’ve worn a dress.”
They piled in. The arrangement felt involuntarily intimate, like they were strangers who somehow wound up sharing a long cab ride from the airport. But they weren’t strangers anymore, they were his comrades-in-arms now. Quentin wondered if their stories were as complicated as his was. He especially wondered about Plum. From what he knew of her story, it wasn’t supposed to end up here.
The ceiling was mirrored, and the interior was black velvet trimmed with strips of LEDs. There was a moon roof in case anybody felt the urge to open it and stick their head out. It wasn’t exactly dignified, but there was plenty of room, and the five of them spread out along the banquettes so as to put the maximum amount of distance between them. Nobody spoke as the limo slid smoothly out into the New Jersey night, through the parking lot and onto the turnpike, past a seemingly endless power plant lit up with a grid of pale orange lights.
For a second Quentin was reminded of nights in the Muntjac: gliding from island to island on oily blackness, far out in Fillory’s Eastern Ocean, seawater slapping wood, creamy wake streaming out behind. He was heading out into the unknown again.
Then the LEDs came on—the kid had found the controls. He’d chosen a disco rainbow pattern.
“What can I say,” he said. “I love the nightlife.”
“So,” Plum said, to the group in general. “I’m Plum.”
“I’m Betsy,” said the Pixie.
“Quentin.”
“My name is Pushkar,” the older Indian man said. He had a salt-and-pepper goatee and looked way too placid and suburban to be involved in something like this. Everybody turned to the kid. Quentin put him at around fifteen.
“You’re joking, right?” the boy said. “You’re all gonna use your real names?”
“No,” Quentin said, “we’re not joking. And yes.”
“Well, I’m not. You can call me the Artful Dodger.”
The Pixie—Betsy—cackled.
“Try again.”
“What’s wrong with the Artful Dodger? Like in Oliver!”
“I know where it’s from, I’m just not calling you that.”
“Well I’m not going to be Fagin.”
“Maybe we should call you Stoppard,” Quentin said.
The boy looked confused.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Is that from Oliver!?”
“That is the name of the man who wrote the book that you were reading earlier,” Pushkar said. “At the bookstore. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”
“Jeez, I thought that shit was Shakespeare.”
“Well,” Pushkar said pleasantly, “you thought wrong.”
“Fine, OK. I’m Stoppard. Whatever.”
“Stoppard, please set the lighting system to a neutral white.”
Stoppard huffed loudly, but he did it.
In the white light Quentin could see better, and what he saw was five people who didn’t look much like a team of world-beating master thieves. He felt more like he’d just joined the French Foreign Legion: they were the sweepings of the magical world, the lost souls, here because nobody else would take them. When he leaned back Quentin caught a whiff of skunked beer and dead cigarette smoke, the ghosts of bachelor parties past.
“Anybody know where we’re going?” Betsy said, studying her reflection in the ceiling.
“If I had to guess,” Plum said, “I’d say Newark.”
“You don’t have to guess,” Stoppard said. “We’re going to the Newark Liberty International Airport Marriott.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw the guy put it into his GPS.”
“Now that is some master magician shit,” Betsy said. “Right there. Damn, I was hoping for at least a DoubleTree.”
Of them all she was the only one who really fit the profile. Lots of attitude, lots of aggression. And something else. She kept the banter coming, but she had the air of somebody who’d survived some tough breaks along the way.
“So have you guys done stuff like this before?” Plum asked. She was showing a lot of persistence in keeping the conversation going.
“Like what?” Stoppard said. “Like stealing something?”
“Like stealing something.”
“Torrenting porn doesn’t count,” Betsy said.
“I have,” Quentin said.
“Really. You have.” Betsy had dramatic eyebrows. She knitted them skeptically. “What have you stolen?”
“A crown. Some keys.”
Betsy didn’t look impressed, grudgingly or otherwise.
“Anybody else?”
“I’ve stolen things,” Stoppard said.
“Like?”
“Like I’m going to tell you!” He opened the mini-bar, but it was empty. He slammed it shut. “Cheap crow.”
“Like you’re such a big drinker. What are you, twelve?”
“It’s not a crow, it’s a blackbird,” Plum said. “Crows have black beaks. This one’s was brown.”
The mood in the limo was slightly hilarious—they might have been a bunch of tourists in the same gondola, passing a flask of schnapps around, and in another minute they’d get to the top of the mountain and ski off in separate directions forever. Except that they wouldn’t. It was strange to think that he might have to trust these people with his life.
“Tell me,” Pushkar said. “Who here went to Brakebills?”
“What’s Brakebills?” Stoppard said brightly.
“Oh my God.” Betsy looked like she was thinking about jumping out into traffic. “It’s like a mobile fucking Breakfast Club in here!”
“I did.” Quentin couldn’t think of any reason to keep it a secret.
“I did.” Plum shrugged. “Sort of.”
The limo slowed down and went over a speed bump. They were almost at the airport already.
“So are we supposed to have specialties, or something?” Plum said. “Is that how this works? I got the impression we were all supposed to have special skills or something.”
“You’re saying you don’t have any special skills,” Betsy said.
“Is that what I said? Probably I’m here because they want somebody who does illusions.”
“I specialize in transport,” Pushkar said crisply. “And some precognition.”
“Stoppard?”
“Devices,” he said proudly. Quentin tentatively tagged him as some kind of prodigy, or precocious anyway. That would explain his youth, and the special treatment from the bird.
“All right,” Betsy said. “I guess I’m offense. Penetration. Damage. What do you do, Quentin?”
She said it as if she were not completely convinced it was his real name.
“Not much,” he said. “My discipline is mending.”
“Mending?” Stoppard said. “The fuck do we need somebody who mends shit?”
“Beats me. You’d have to ask the bird that.”
Quentin very much doubted that that was why he was here. He was doubting it more all the time.
Fortunately it was a short trip: the limo drew up under the lighted awning of the airport Marriott, and bellmen in cheap livery converged on it, probably hoping it contained drunk, heavy-tipping newlyweds. They were going to be disappointed.
“I cannot wait to get out of this thing,” Betsy said.
“Speak for yourself,” Plum said. “I never went to prom.”
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