The Bronze Key (Magisterium #3)(35)

“Yeah, of course, I’m —” Call pushed up the sleeve of his thermal shirt. And stared. His wristband was on his wrist; that was true. But he’d forgotten the wristband he’d shoved up above his elbow.

The wristband of the Enemy of Death.

Tamara sucked in a breath. “That doesn’t make sense, either.”

“We’re going to have to figure it out later,” said Aaron from the doorway. “We don’t know how much time we have in her room.” He looked agitated but also a lot happier than he’d been a moment before.

Call and Tamara followed him in, though Tamara’s expression was still worried. Call felt as if the Enemy’s wristband was burning on his arm. Why hadn’t he left it back home, with Alastair? Why had he wanted to wear it to school? He hated the Enemy of Death. Even if they were in some way the same person, he hated everything Constantine Madden stood for and everything he had become.

“Wow,” Tamara said, shutting the door behind them. “Check out this room.”

Anastasia’s room was stunning. The walls were glittering, veined with quartz. A thick white pile rug covered the floor. Her sofa was white velvet, her table and chairs were white. Even the paintings on the wall were done in shades of white and cream and silver.

“It’s like being inside a pearl,” said Tamara, turning in a circle.

“I was thinking it was like being inside a giant bar of soap,” said Call.

Tamara gave him a withering look. Aaron was stalking around the room, looking behind the china cabinet (white, with white dishes) and behind a bookshelf (white, lined with books wrapped in white paper) and under a (white) trunk on the floor. Finally, he approached a long tapestry hanging on one wall. It had been woven in threads of cream and ivory and black, and it depicted a white mountain of snow.

La Rinconada? Call wondered. The Cold Massacre?

But he couldn’t be sure.

Aaron twitched the tapestry aside. “Got it,” he said, lifting the tapestry up and away. Behind it was a massive safe, made of enameled steel. Even it was white.

“Maybe her password is some variation on the word white?” Aaron suggested, looking around. “That’s definitely her thing.”

Tamara shook her head. “In this room, that would be too easy for someone to say by accident.”

Aaron frowned. “Then maybe the opposite. Jet? Onyx? Or a really bright color. Neon pink!”

Nothing happened.

“What do we know about her?” Call asked. “She’s on the Assembly, right? And she’s married to Alex’s dad, whose last name is Strike, so obviously she didn’t take his name.”

“Augustus Strike,” Tamara said. “He died a few years back. He was pretty old, though. She’d been filling in for him a lot by then, my parents said.”

“And she said something about a husband before that — and having kids,” Call said. “Maybe they got a divorce, but if not, that’s two people who married her and died. Maybe she’s one of those ladies who kills her husbands for their money.”

“A black widow?” Tamara snorted. “If she killed Augustus Strike, people would know about it. He used to be a very important mage. She has her seat on the Assembly because of him — before her marriage she was just some no-name mage from Europe.”

“She could just be unlucky,” Call said. He hadn’t realized Alex’s dad was dead. He wondered if Tamara’s parents had dissuaded Kimiya from seriously dating him because of his lack of connections. This year, Alex and Kimiya seemed to be close again, but Call wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Alexander,” he said aloud. “Alexander Strike.”

That wasn’t the password, either.

“Do we know where they were from?” Aaron asked. “Europe is a pretty big place.”

“France!” Call yelled. Nothing happened.

“Don’t just yell France!” Tamara scolded him. “There are a lot of other countries.”

“Let’s look around and see what we find,” Call said, throwing up his hands. “What do people use as their passwords? Their birthdays? The birthdays of their pets?”

Tamara found a notebook, bound in a light gray leather, under a stack of books. It held notes on the comings and goings of guards, names of elementals, and a half-composed note to the Assembly explaining how security measures at the Magisterium and Collegium could be tightened while the two Makaris were still apprentices.

Tamara dutifully read out anything that seemed like it could be a password, but the safe didn’t change.

Aaron discovered a small stack of photos with several grim-faced people, two small babies and a very young woman with dark hair standing off to one side in a baggy dress. The photos were grainy and nothing in them was familiar. The landscape was rural, with fields of flowers behind them. Was one of the children Alex? Call couldn’t tell. Babies all looked pretty much the same to him.

There was nothing written on the backs of the photographs. Nothing that could possibly help them discover a password.

Finally, Call looked under her bed. At this point, he was starting to feel a little desperate. They were so close to getting the key and being able to talk with the elementals, but increasingly he was feeling as though figuring out the password of someone they barely knew was impossible.