The Bronze Key (Magisterium #3)(61)

She looked like she was asleep. Her long black hair puddled around her head. Her feet were bare, and she wore the same bloodstained dress she’d been wearing at the party. Her hands were folded over her chest.

“Her body has been held by the Collegium since the murder,” said Alma, locking the door behind them. “They have preserved her against decay, for the time when she might be needed as evidence.”

Call wondered if that was how Constantine had preserved Verity Torres’s head all those years ago. He felt as though no matter what he did, he veered closer and closer to Constantine’s life and Constantine’s decisions. It was like being on a collision course with himself.

“Aren’t they going to notice her missing?” Aaron asked.

“We will have the body back before anyone at the Collegium is looking for it,” Anastasia informed them.

Call thought of how fast elementals traveled and of the Assembly member’s particular skill in controlling them. If Anastasia borrowed one of the elementals from the Magisterium, she probably could get Jennifer back to the Collegium pretty quickly. But if Anastasia and Alma could steal a body out of the Collegium, then the spy could have probably managed a lot of sneaky things, too.

After all, he or she was the greatest Makar of their generation.

“I will explain what we must do,” Alma said to Call and Aaron. “You’re going to have to learn a fairly difficult skill and you’re going to have to learn it quickly.”

Call remembered Alma trying to teach them about the soul tap. It was hard to learn how to do something from someone who understood the theory and had seen it done but had never done it themselves. It had taken him and Aaron hours to learn. Call wasn’t sure they had hours this time.

“And you,” Anastasia said to Tamara. “You need to prevent anyone from looking for Callum or Aaron.”

“What?” Tamara asked.

“Master Amaranth is likely to check on her charges before we’re done. Go back and let her know that Callum has returned to his rooms and that he will visit the Infirmary tomorrow if she likes. We need to be sure that the whole school isn’t up in arms, looking for Call while we’re in the middle of an illicit magical experiment.”

Tamara sighed. “Fine. I’ll be back.”

“Shouldn’t one of us go with you?” Call asked. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of any of them wandering around the Magisterium alone with the spy on the loose. He glanced over at Aaron to see if he was thinking along the same lines, but Aaron was staring at Jen’s body on the table, his face white.

“I’ll take Havoc. At least I’ll be doing something this way, not just standing around watching. I hate not being able to help,” Tamara told him, heading for the door. Then she turned back, braids swinging. She was smiling. “Good luck talking to the dead.”

Once Tamara left, Call felt very alone. It was just him and Aaron and two crazy old ladies and a corpse.

“Okay,” he said. “What do we do?”

“As I understand it,” Alma began, reminding Call that she probably wasn’t all that sure, “you have to imagine the chaos magic running through the brain of the deceased, like blood. You have to send chaos energy through it, activating the mind.”

That sounded hard. And not very specific.

“Activating the mind?” Aaron echoed. He looked as baffled as Call felt.

“Yes,” Alma said with more certainty. “The chaos magic approximates the spark of life, allowing the dead to communicate.”

Anastasia gestured toward Jen’s body on the table. “Call and Aaron. Come closer and look at the girl.”

They moved toward the table uncertainly. Jen’s eyes were closed but there was a smear of blood on her cheek. Call remembered her laughing at the awards ceremony. It seemed incomprehensible that she would never smile or flick her hair or whisper a message or run through the corridors again.

This was what Constantine had wanted to stop, he thought. This feeling of wrongness. The going away of life and meaning. He tried to imagine if it were someone he really loved lying there, Alastair or Tamara or Aaron. It was hard not to understand where Constantine had been coming from.

He wrenched his mind back to the present. Understanding where Constantine had been coming from was not what he was supposed to be doing. Finding the spy was.

“Reach for each other,” Alma instructed. “Use each other as counterweights. You carry within you the power of chaos, of ultimate nothingness. What you are reaching for is the soul. Ultimate existence. Use that to reach Jennifer.”

That made a little more sense, Call thought. Maybe. He exchanged a quick glance with Aaron before they both closed their eyes.

In the dark, Call balanced himself. It was easier, now that he had practiced, to fall into that inner space. It was like everything rushed away, even the pain in his leg, and everything was black and silent, but in a comforting way, like a familiar blanket. He reached out and felt Aaron there. Aaron’s self, his Aaron-ness, cheerful reliability layered over a darker core of determination and anger. Aaron reached back for him, and Call felt strength flow into him. He could see Aaron now, the outline of him, bright against the dark.

Another dim outline seemed to float up toward them. Hair that looked white, like a photo negative, streamed behind her.

Jen.

Call’s eyes flew open, and he nearly yelled. Jen hadn’t moved on the table, but her eyes were wide-open, their black irises filmed over. Aaron was staring, too, shocked and a little sick.