The Copper Gauntlet (Magisterium #2)(60)

Jasper looked surprised. “That’s right. It does.”

“Call, why’d you ask if you already knew?” Aaron said.

“Because I didn’t know until he told me!” Call said, exasperated. He pointed at the leader of the Chaos-ridden. “Didn’t you hear him?”

There was another horrible silence. “Call,” Tamara said slowly. “Are you saying those things are talking to you? We knew you were talking to them but haven’t heard them talking back.”

“Mostly him,” Call said, jabbing a finger toward the leader, who looked impassive. “But yeah. I can hear them talking and — didn’t you hear him back in the clearing? When he called me ‘master’?”

Tamara shook her head. “They’re not saying words,” she said quietly. “Just mumbling and groaning.”

“And making weird sounds like muffled screams,” put in Aaron.

“It sounds like they’re speaking perfect English to me,” said Call.

“That’s because you’re like them,” Jasper spat. “Their souls are all hollowed out and they’re nothing inside and neither are you. You’re nothing but the Enemy.”

“The Enemy made these creatures,” Aaron said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “He would have had to understand them because they served him. And you understand them because …”

“Because I am him,” said Call. It wasn’t anything they didn’t know, just another horrible piece of proof. “I’m so creepy I’m creeping myself out,” he muttered.

“Master,” said the leader. “Your tomb awaits.”

He clearly expected Call to step up to the huge mausoleum and walk right in. And Call was going to have to. This was their destination. This was where Master Joseph was going to meet Alastair.

Call squared his shoulders and started toward the door. Havoc bounced along beside him, clearly in his element. Behind Havoc came Aaron, Tamara, and Jasper.

“Oh, my God,” he heard Tamara say in a horrified voice. It took him a second to realize what she was reacting to. What he had taken for a door knocker in the shape of a head was actually a real, severed human head, mounted on the door like the head of a deer.

It had belonged to a girl, a girl who didn’t look much older than the rest of them. A girl who must have been killed recently; she would barely look dead at all if it wasn’t for the fact that the skin around the base of her neck was cut raggedly across. Her mahogany hair, blown by the wind, whipped around her oddly familiar face.

Tears sprang to Tamara’s eyes, rolling over her cheeks. She wiped them with the back of her hand but otherwise didn’t even seem to notice that they were falling. “It can’t be,” she said, walking closer to the door.

Call felt like he’d seen the girl’s face before — but where? Maybe at the party at the Rajavi estate? Maybe she was one of Tamara’s friends? But why would her head be displayed here, like a grisly trophy?

“Verity Torres,” Jasper said quietly, the words coming out almost like a whisper. “They never found her body.”

Call was struck by how lost Aaron looked, shivering in his thin shirt. Staring at the last Makar who’d defended the Magisterium. If he’d lived a generation earlier, this would’ve been him. His head nailed up there as a terrible warning.

“No.” Aaron blinked hard, like he could dispel the vision in front of him. “No, it can’t be her. It can’t.”

Call felt like he was going to throw up.

Then the eyes on the head opened to show milky marbles without pupil or iris.

Tamara gave a little cry. Jasper put a hand over his mouth.

The dead lips moved, and words came out. “As my name means truth, I assure you I am what remains of Verity Torres. Here sleep the dead, and the dead guard them. If you desire entrance, three riddles I will ask you. Answer them correctly and you may go inside.”

Call looked at the others helplessly. He’d been counting on the fact that he was Constantine Madden to get them into the building, but the head of Verity Torres obviously didn’t recognize him.

“Riddles,” Tamara said in a quavering voice. “Fine. We can do riddles.”

“What do you call something that’s not behind you?” the girl asked in an odd voice that didn’t quite line up with the way her mouth moved.

“Oh, no, that’s not funny,” Call said. “That’s not a good joke.”

“What are you talking about?” Aaron asked. “What’s the answer? In front?”

Tamara looked even more upset. “Ahead,” she said. “A head. Get it?”

Verity Torres laughed a croaky little laugh. There was no laughter in her eyes, though; they stayed white and blank.

“Who did this to you?” Aaron asked suddenly. “Who?”

“It had to be Master Joseph,” said Tamara. “Constantine had already left the battlefield by then. He was in the caves at the Cold Massacre —”

“Busy stealing other people’s bodies to live in,” Jasper interrupted. And even though the words cut, Call was staggered with relief that Constantine Madden couldn’t have done this horrific thing; that he had been busy being reborn as Callum. Of course, the Enemy had done other terrible things. But not this.