The Copper Gauntlet (Magisterium #2)(50)

Jasper shrugged. “He was watching television. I don’t think he cared about anything except that we paid.”

“Let’s go,” said Tamara, climbing into the back to sit next to the still-sleeping Aaron. “Before he thinks about it.”

Tamara used the map to direct Call through the town until they came to a closed sporting goods store with a big, empty parking lot. Call very slowly and carefully pulled into a vacant spot. Aaron was still asleep. Tamara yawned.

“Maybe we should let him rest,” she said.

“Yeah,” Jasper said muzzily. “You’re right. I am totally awake and alert in every way, but chaos magic is hard on Makars.”

Call rolled his eyes, but he was as exhausted as the rest of them. He allowed himself to doze, leaning across the center console to pillow his head on Havoc. A moment later, he’d fallen into a fitful sleep. When he woke up, Aaron was awake and Tamara was asking him if he was okay and lemony daylight was filtering through the window.

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “I feel a little weird. And dizzy.”

“Maybe you need food,” Call said, stretching.

Aaron grinned as Jasper and Tamara climbed out of the car. “Food does sound good.”

“Stay here, boy,” Call said to Havoc, scratching behind his ears. “No barking. I’ll get you a sandwich.”

He left the car window cranked open, in case Havoc needed fresh air. He hoped nobody tried to steal the car, mostly for the thief’s sake. No regular person, even a car thief, was prepared for a surprise faceful of angry Chaos-ridden wolf.

The street had a few other shops, including a used-clothing store that Tamara pointed to with great enthusiasm.

“Perfect,” she said. “We can pick up some new clothes. Aaron, if you don’t feel up to it …”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. He still looked exhausted but managed to grin anyway.

“No amount of clothing is going to make that car of yours stand out less,” said Jasper, who knew how to bring down any mood.

“We can buy it a scarf,” Call told him.

The store was full of racks of used and vintage clothes, and all sorts of secondhand knickknacks that Call recognized from his dad’s forays to antiques fairs and junk shops. Three Singer sewing machine stands had been turned into a counter. Behind it sat a woman with short white hair and purple cat-eye glasses. She glanced up at them.

“What happened to you four?” she asked, eyebrows going up.

“Mudslide?” Aaron said, although he didn’t sound very certain.

She winced, as though either she didn’t believe him or she was generally disgusted with them in her store, tracking mud and touching things with sooty fingers. Maybe both.

It didn’t take too long for Call to find the perfect outfit, though. Jeans, like the kind he’d worn back home, and a navy blue T-shirt proclaiming I DON’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC with a squashed fairy in the lower right-hand corner.

Aaron started laughing when he saw it. “There is something seriously wrong with you,” he said.

“Well, you look like you’re on your way to yoga class,” Call said. Aaron had picked out gray sweatpants and a shirt with a yin-yang symbol on it. Tamara had found black jeans and wore a big silky tunic that might be a dress over it. Jasper had somehow discovered khakis, a blazer in his size, and mirrored sunglasses.

The total for the clothes came to about twenty dollars, which had Tamara frowning thoughtfully and counting out loud. Jasper leaned past her and gave the cat-eye-glasses lady his most charming smile.

“Can you tell us where we can get sandwiches?” he asked. “And Internet?”

“Bits and Bytes, two blocks down Main,” she said, and pointed at their heap of discarded, muddy green uniforms. “I’m guessing I can toss these? What kind of clothes are they, anyway?”

Call gave the clothes an almost regretful look. Their uniforms branded them as Magisterium school students. Without them, all they had were their wristbands.

“Karate uniforms,” he said. “That’s how we got dirty. Karate-chopping ninjas.”

“In a mudslide,” Aaron interjected, sticking to his story.

Tamara dragged them out of the store by the backs of their shirts. Main Street was mostly deserted. A few cars drove up and down, but nobody gave them a second look.

“Karate-chopping ninjas in a mudslide?” Tamara gave Aaron and Call a dark look. “Could you guys try to lay low?” She stopped in front of an ATM. “I’ve got to get some money out.”

“Speaking of lying low, I’ve heard they can trace your ATM card,” said Jasper. “You know, using the Internet.”

Call wondered if he’d thrown away his phone for nothing.

“The police can,” said Aaron. “Not the Magisterium.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, we have to risk it,” said Tamara. “That was all the rest of our cash, that twenty bucks, and we’re going to need more gas and food.”

Still, her hand shook a little as she took out the money and stuffed it in her wallet.

Bits and Bytes turned out to be a sandwich shop with a row of computers where you could rent Internet time, a dollar an hour.

Aaron went to buy sandwiches while Call logged in. He typed latitude and longitude into Google, which took him to a page that calculated both from an address. He pressed the reverse lookup button and entered the numbers he had.