The Bronze Key (Magisterium #3)(62)

Jen’s mouth didn’t move, but a flat voice issued from between her lips. “Who calls me?”

“Um, hi?” Call said. When she’d been alive, Jennifer had always made him nervous. She was one of the older, popular girls. He’d had enough trouble talking to her then. Talking to her now was nerve-racking on a totally other level.

“It’s Call and Aaron,” he went on. “Remember us? We’re wondering if you can tell us who murdered you?”

“I’m dead?” Jennifer asked. “I feel … strange.”

She sounded strange, too — there was a hollowness in her voice. An emptiness. Call didn’t think her soul was present, not really. More like the traces of it, the memory of what was left behind when it departed. Just hearing her talk freaked out Call so much that he was afraid he might start laughing from panic. His heart hammered in his chest and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. How was he supposed to break it to her that she wasn’t alive anymore?

He reminded himself that it wasn’t really her. She didn’t have feelings to hurt.

“Can you tell us about the party?” Aaron asked, polite as ever. Call gave him a grateful look. “What happened that night?”

Jennifer’s mouth twisted into the shadow of a smile. “Yes, the party. I remember. I was having fun with my friends. There was a boy I liked, but he was avoiding me and then — then the lights went out. And my chest hurt. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. Kimiya! Kimiya! Stay away from him!”

“What?” Call demanded. “What about Kimiya? What happened? Who’s she supposed to stay away from? She’s not the one who did this, is she?”

But Jennifer seemed to be lost in the memory, her body thrashing around, her words turning to one long, continuous scream.

Call had to focus on the magic. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to seeing that dim outline of Jen, that photo-negative version. In the dark, he saw her, faded and tattered. If he wanted to, he knew he could make her speak words that were not her own. But he needed her to have her own voice, not his. So he chased those shining leftovers of a soul, glad she was preserved only a short time after the soul’s departure. He channeled more chaos magic into her, to shore them up.

When he opened his eyes, her features had gone slack.

“Jennifer, can you hear me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, her voice flat and affectless. “What do you command?”

“What?” Call looked over at Aaron. He had gone very pale.

“Oh no,” Anastasia said. Her hands went to her mouth, one clapped over the other. Alma’s eyes had gone wide and she reached out as though she could stop something that was already over. “Call, what have you done?”

Call looked down at Jennifer and she looked up at him, with eyes that were beginning to swirl.

“Call,” Anastasia whispered. “Oh no, not again — not again.”

“What?” Call was backing away, shock spreading through him. What? seemed to be all he could say or think. “I — I didn’t — I’ve never done that before —”

But I have, as Constantine. I’ve done it a hundred, a thousand times.

Jen sat up on the table. Her black hair flowed down around her bone-white shoulders. Her eyes were swirling fire.

“Command me, Master,” she said to Call. “I wish only to serve.”

“It is you,” said Alma, looking at Call with a dawning horror. “Little Makar — why did no one tell me?”

Aaron moved to block Call from the two women’s horrified looks, from Jennifer’s staring, blazing eyes.

“You should never have suggested we do this,” he said angrily. “It’s horrible. Stealing her body, that was horrible.”

“Go, both of you,” Anastasia said. “We’ll deal with this.”

Call felt Aaron’s hand on his shoulder, and a moment later he’d been guided out of the room and was back in the corridor. He pulled the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands. He was freezing, shivering all over.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said. “I was only trying to hang on to her soul.”

Aaron’s eyes softened. “I know. It could have happened to either of us.”

“It couldn’t have,” Call hissed. “I’m the only one of us who’s the Enemy of Death!”

Aaron squeezed Call’s shoulder and let go. “You’re not the Enemy,” he said. “And the Enemy was just a Makar once, like me. Maybe the first time he did it was by accident. There’s a reason,” he added, in a lower voice, “that they’re all so afraid of us.”

Call glanced back at Anastasia’s closed door. Oh no, not again, she’d said. Did she think Call had done it before, or did she just mean Oh no, not another Constantine?

He started to walk back in the direction of their room, limping. Aaron followed him, hands shoved in his uniform pockets.

“I think Anastasia knows,” said Call. “Who I really am. Maybe Alma, too.”

Aaron opened his mouth as if to say, You’re Call, and then closed it again. A second later, he said, “She did see you control all those Chaos-ridden animals last night. And you said some weird things before you fainted. I mean, nothing too clear — just some stuff about how the animals should know who you were.”