فصل 8

Chapter 8

ALEX MIGHT HAVE hoped for big things, but the second day went even worse than the first. Call spent half of it looking through Constantine’s notes, which had been made in neat columns that caused Call to despair of his own handwriting. If you were going to get someone’s soul, Call thought, it would be nice if you also got their superior penmanship. Constantine had written down lots of numbers, indicating experiments and then measurements, which appeared to be chaos-related. He determined the minimum energy that was required to bring back one of the Chaos-ridden and then lists of improvements you could get with more chaos and more delicate handling of the soul.

Speaking was one of them, which annoyed Alex.

But the spirit — the essence of what was missing in a person — seemed to be something Constantine hadn’t been able to define or re-create. Despite Master Joseph’s insistence that they’d been close to a breakthrough, Call didn’t see anything in the list of experiments that actually indicated this.

What Constantine had actually done was to push his own existing soul into someone else’s body. That was impressive magic and it had saved Constantine’s life, but it wasn’t bringing back the dead.

That night, at dinner, both Jasper and Tamara appeared worked up in a way that puzzled Call. They seemed to be buzzing with a weird energy, and Tamara kept shooting Significant Looks over to Call, gesturing over the homemade pasta. He had no idea what she was trying to communicate.

He thought of Anastasia’s claim that Tamara had a crush on him. When Celia had liked him, she had done lots of confusing and inexplicable things. Maybe Anastasia was right … but that still didn’t explain what Tamara wanted him to do.

“We made progress today,” Alex lied. He gazed at Master Joseph as if hoping for approval.

Master Joseph just looked at Call. “Don’t force it,” he said. “Relax. The ability is there.” Call stared at Tamara. She was miming something to do with a cat. Cat? he mouthed at her, and she nodded, then mimed brushing her hair. Call was flummoxed. There was a cat in the house and she wanted him to brush it? Call liked cats, but Havoc regarded them as more of a delicacy. No cat would sit still to be brushed around a giant, Chaos-ridden wolf. What was Tamara thinking?

Unless it was a Chaos-ridden cat … Had Tamara found a Chaos-ridden cat?

“I really think we could make some advances,” Alex went on. “Change the way magic is done.” He glanced at Tamara, as if he was hoping she’d be impressed. Which made Call furious. He stopped paying attention to Tamara’s gesturing and glared at Alex, wishing he could punch him.

Call was jealous. Jealous of Alex because he was the kind of boy that people liked. Call knew Tamara hated Alex for killing Aaron and even if that had never happened, she still wouldn’t like Alex, because he had made her sister cry. He knew all that, but it didn’t help.

Whether or not Tamara actually had a crush on Call, it didn’t matter. Call liked her.

He liked her and he was going to have to tell her.

“So,” said Jasper, noting the strained silence. He gestured toward the sideboard. “Anyone for that chocolate cake?” After dinner, Jasper, still working on his plan to impress Master Joseph, asked if the older mage could show him how to create the force fields of air that barred the windows. Alex, who was an air mage, immediately offered to co-teach.

“You’re not going to be able to use this information to escape, you know,” Alex said with obvious pleasure. “It’s very advanced stuff. Besides, even if you got out of the house, you’d never make it off the island.” “Oh no,” Jasper said. “I wasn’t thinking of trying to escape.”

Master Joseph gave him an indulgent smile. “Of course not. Come along.” He led the way to one of the practice rooms.

The moment they disappeared, Tamara grabbed Call’s hand. “Come on,” she hissed, and dragged him out of the dining room, into the parlor. She shut the door and leaned against it.

“I have to tell you something,” she said, looking around as if someone might be lurking in the shadows, spying. She was wearing another pastel dress, this one pale apricot, with a lace skirt.

This was it. She was about to tell Call she liked him.

No, he should tell her first. Because once she got talking he was going to go all tongue-tied and make a fool of himself. He was going to get caught up in saying the right thing and might not be able to say anything at all.

“I like you!” he blurted out. “I think you’re pretty and I like you and I always liked you, even back when you really didn’t like me. You’re brave and smart and great and I think I am going to stop talking now.” “There are tunnels under the house,” Tamara said at nearly the same time.

The floor seemed to tilt under his feet. She hadn’t been about to confess her feelings. In fact, she was looking at him as though he was some new species of bug that she’d never encountered before.

His face heated. “Tunnels?” he echoed numbly.

“Jasper and I eavesdropped and heard Hugo and Master Joseph talking about them. Apparently deliveries come in through there, and they store extra supplies there, too. They called them the catacombs.” She spoke a bit stiltedly, as though stunned by his news.

“Oh,” said Call, realizing belatedly what Tamara’s gesturing had been about. “You were trying to mime catacomb.” “I’m sorry,” she said. “But if we’re going to explore them, we have to go there now, if we’re going to go. While Jasper is keeping Master Joseph distracted. We can talk later.” “I’m ready to go,” said Call, trying to act normal. “But we don’t need to talk about what I said. Like, ever.” Anastasia had been wrong — of course she’d been wrong. Tamara didn’t like him. She’d never had a crush on him.

He’d only believed it because he’d wanted it to be true.

Tamara gave Call a small smile and pushed past him to the center of the room. A thick Persian rug was on the floor. She started to roll it up, revealing the square of a trapdoor underneath. She glanced up. “Come and help me.” Call went over and knelt down by her, his leg twinging. For several minutes they wrestled with the door, trying to find a handle or a pressure point or anything that would open it.

Finally, Call bit his lip. “Let me try something,” he said.

He placed his hand on top of the door and thought hard about the chaos magic he’d been doing, the reaching through the void to try to find something. The wild, churning emptiness of the chaos element. He drew that darkness up, as if he were lifting smoke, and let it flow down out of his hand.

Blackness like ink spilled across the trapdoor. It gave a twitch under Call’s hand and vanished, ripped away into the void, revealing a ladder leading downward.

Tamara exhaled. “Was that hard?” she whispered.

“No,” Call said. It was true. Using chaos magic had once been difficult, but now it was becoming more and more like using any other element. He didn’t know if that should scare him or not.

The only problem was, he’d just eaten away a section of the floor, so if someone walked across the rug, they’d fall into a hole. But right now, brokenhearted, he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to care.

At least they were friends, he told himself. At least they would always be friends.

They climbed down into a long, dark tunnel with stone walls. Master Rufus had always taught him that chaos was not in itself evil. It was an element like any other. But there were plenty of places where Makars were killed at birth because chaos had so much power to destroy. It was why Anastasia had moved Constantine to America after he was born, to save his life.

And look how that turned out.

Tamara had lit a small flame in the palm of her hand. They were navigating by it, the orange light picking out the twists and turns of the corridors, the many rooms that led off them. Most were empty. Some contained stacked crates or jars that were clearly meant to hold elementals. One held a pile of steel chains that Call recognized; Master Joseph had once used them to imprison Aaron.

Tamara paused in front of one door. “In here,” she said in a low voice.

They stepped inside, and Call immediately saw what she’d noticed. A bow and arrow hung on one wall, and a sharp lance was propped against another. The whole room was a jumble of weird items — books, photo albums, boys’ clothes, furniture, sports equipment.

A cold feeling had set up house in Call’s stomach. Tamara had picked up a dagger with some initials etched on it — JM.

“Jericho Madden,” he said. “This must be Jericho’s stuff.”

“What’s it doing down here?” she asked.

Call frowned. “Probably Constantine had it stored for when he brought his brother back.” It must have been here for maybe twenty years. And now that Jericho’s body was destroyed, it would be down here for a lot longer.

Call couldn’t help wondering where Aaron’s stuff was, but he couldn’t talk about that. It would definitely tip her off that he was considering bringing Aaron back.

Aaron, who would definitely not laugh if Call told him the stupid thing he had done.

Okay, Aaron hadn’t been perfect. He might have laughed.

Pushing all those thoughts away, Call lifted stacks of things and looked around. He found a few schoolbooks and novels and then a small, unmarked leather notepad. Call opened it. The handwriting looked like it belonged to a teenage boy. Drawings of lizards and other kids decorated the edges of the pages. Unlike Constantine’s notes, these weren’t just graphs and experiments.

I am doing a special project with Master Joseph and Con. Master Rufus gave me this book and told me to take notes on what happens, so that’s what I am going to do. So far, being the brother of the Makar means I get shuffled off wherever he goes. I am barely considered a mage in my own right anymore. Everyone only considers me his counterweight. No one wants to know how weird it is to feel his soul pulling at my own.

Call held the book up with a shudder to show Tamara. “Jericho kept a diary,” he told her.

Tamara’s eyebrows rose. She was looking at a Polaroid that she turned toward Call. It was of Anastasia with two little boys dressed in white. In the photograph, Anastasia had on a flowered dress and was sitting in the grass, unsmiling. Tamara turned it over. Someone had written the year on the back.

With a sigh, since Call knew how all of this turned out, he tucked the diary into a pocket of his flannel, to be read later.

“Maybe there’s something here they overlooked,” Tamara said. “Something they wouldn’t let us have on our own, but they kept for him?” “Like a tornado phone?” Call asked, thinking of the one on Master Rufus’s desk he’d used to contact his father when he’d first come to the Magisterium.

“Too good to hope for,” Tamara said.

They searched and searched, but they didn’t find anything else that seemed useful. The only thing remotely interesting was a bunch of old books about Makars from all over the world and their dubious achievements. A few of them had been called things like the Scythe of Souls, the Hooded Kestrel, Devourer of Men, the Maw, Shaper of Flesh, the Scourge of Luxembourg, and the Face Harvester — definitely inspirations for Constantine’s “Enemy of Death.” Several claimed to have discovered the secret of immortality, among other scary things, but obviously, the books didn’t actually tell you what the secrets were. Finally, Tamara sat down on a nearby chair.

“We should probably go back before anyone notices we’re missing,” she said.

Call nodded, suddenly conscious that they were alone, and that he’d just poured out his heart to her. No Jasper around to make snide comments, or Master Joseph or Alex to stare creepily. Just him and Tamara.

“Look, Tamara,” he said. “Everything I said before, it was dumb. You probably liked Aaron. You probably didn’t even mean to save me instead of him. You probably have a lot of regrets.” Tamara reached out and took one of Call’s hands. He wasn’t conscious of how cold he’d grown until he felt the warmth of her skin. “I wake up in the night sorry I didn’t save Aaron. But, Call — I’m not sorry I saved you.” He couldn’t quite draw a breath. “You’re not sorry?”

She leaned toward him. Their faces were very close together. He could see her small Fatima necklace glittering around her throat. “I thought you knew how I felt.” “How you felt?” Call wondered if he was doomed to repeat everything she said. She was clutching both of his hands now, nervously. Her eyes were huge and dark and fixed on him.

“Call,” Tamara said, and he kissed her. He wasn’t sure later what prompted him or suggested to him it would be a good idea. He had no idea what instinct told him he wouldn’t get slapped or, worse, informed that he was a really good friend but Tamara just didn’t feel that way about him.

But neither of those things happened. Tamara made a little noise and moved to adjust into a better position and what had been Call pressing his mouth nervously against Tamara’s became something else. Something that made it feel like his heart was exploding inside his chest. She put her hands lightly against either side of his face and the kiss went on for so long that Call’s ears were roaring.

Finally, they pulled apart. Tamara was blushing bright red but looked pleased. And Call felt happy. For the first time since Aaron had died, he felt happy.

He’d almost forgotten what it was like.

I just had my first kiss in a stronghold of the Enemy of Death, in a room full of his dead brother’s stuff, Call thought. Story of my life.

He didn’t mind, though. For the moment, he didn’t mind anything.

“Let’s go,” Tamara said. Her cheeks had faded to pink. “Before anyone comes into the parlor and notices we opened the trapdoor.” Call disagreed. He thought they should stay and kiss some more. It was an underrated invention, or at least one he hadn’t rated highly enough himself until this minute.

Tamara put her hand in his, and in a sort of daze, Call followed her out the door and back through the catacombs, holding hands tightly. Holding hands was also surprisingly awesome. Every time they turned a corner she squeezed his fingers and sent small bolts of lightning zipping up his arm.

They had to separate when they got to the ladder that went up to the parlor. Tamara climbed up first, and Call after, and they were distracted for a while cleaning up the room and making it look like they’d never been there. They found some boards to brace over the hole that seemed like they might hold someone’s weight.

They crept out of the room and up the stairs. Call was about to see if Tamara was maybe up for more hand-holding when Jasper loomed up at them out of the shadows. “Where have you been?” he demanded.

Call glared. Jasper was always going on and on about romance — you’d think he’d notice when he wasn’t wanted. But then Jasper had always been oblivious to his many severe personality defects.

“We explored the catacombs just like we planned,” Tamara said, nodding toward where they’d come from. At that moment, Call remembered that Jasper and Tamara spent all day together, planning things.

Jealousy flared up again, even though he’d just been kissing her. After all, Jasper was Tamara’s old friend and he had somehow convinced the last girl who liked Call to like him better.

The thought was like a splash of cold water. Abruptly he realized several things: (1) Kissing created a haze of stupidity that lasted for at least ten minutes; (2) now that it had worn off, he had no idea what kissing Tamara meant; and (3) he had no idea what he was supposed to do now.

All of a sudden, Call had an overwhelming urge to grab Jasper by the collar and force him to divulge all his romantical secrets. Previously, Call had scoffed at them, but now he was ready to listen unskeptically.

“Well, I stalled as much as I could but you better get up to our rooms before Master Joseph notices you’re missing,” Jasper said. Then his annoyance faded. “Did you find anything?” Tamara nodded. They started up toward the pink room, Call trailing behind. Sleeping in the same room made him feel weird. He recalled sleeping next to her on the cot in Alastair’s car barn. That had been a little strange, but nothing like it was going to be just to share a room now.

Tamara was beautiful, brave, awesome. He thought she was destined to go out with someone heroic like Aaron, or throwing herself away on a jerky aristocrat like Jasper. The idea that she liked him after all, when he had been sure she did, then was sure she didn’t, still had his head reeling.

He gave Jasper the side-eye thinking about jerky aristocrats, as he settled himself on his mattress on the floor. Tamara went into the bathroom and came out in purple pajamas with ruffles at the shoulders.

Just looking at her made his chest ache in a new, panicky way. If there was one thing he knew about himself, it was that he could take any good thing and make a mess out of it.

“What did you find?” Jasper asked.

“Jericho’s diary,” Call said. “I haven’t read it yet, but maybe there’s something in there.” He paused, realizing that what he was hoping for in the diary wasn’t anything the others were interested in. “I mean, about getting to the Alkahest or getting off this island or the missing army.” “We should go back and see if there’s something we missed,” Tamara said.

Was that an invitation to more kissing? Call couldn’t be sure. He looked her way, but she was staring up at the ceiling.

Jasper nodded. “I’ve been sticking tight to Master Joseph, but so far the only thing I’ve discovered is his chili recipe. The lesson on magical force fields wasn’t very informative.” Call hadn’t bothered changing his clothes for bed. He stretched out on his mattress, his head full of the kiss and all the confusion that came with it.

“Good night, Call,” Tamara said with a smile that seemed to have a lot of secrets in it.

Jasper gave him a weird look. Call decided that tomorrow, he would demand that Jasper explain everything he knew about girls. Call only hoped it wasn’t too late.

For once, his dreams weren’t full of chaos.