The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)(20)

He stopped dead. Tamara looked like she’d lost every ounce of her fighting spirit.

“W-what is it?” he asked.

“Aaron,” she said. “It’s awful enough that he died, but for Master Joseph to have stolen his body — the way he looked, all white and cold on that table —”

Call’s feet moved without his conscious will. He couldn’t just let her stand there looking so miserable. He went across the room toward her and reached out his hand, meaning to pat her shoulder. But the moment he got close to her, she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest.

Call stood stunned, barely breathing. His heart felt like an untethered balloon, bouncing around in his chest. He folded his arms around her carefully. She was small and warm. Sometimes he forgot how small she was, because her bravery loomed so large in his mind.

She smelled like soap and sunshine. He wanted to breathe her in but recognized that this would be seen as weird and possibly creepy behavior.

He thought of Anastasia’s words and, despite the horror they’d just come from, his pulse began to beat so hard he was afraid Tamara would notice it.

“Call,” she said, her voice muffled. “I worried that once Aaron was gone you wouldn’t be my friend anymore.”

His heart thumped. “I was worried about the same thing.”

“It’s not true, though, right?” She looked up at him worriedly. “We’re still friends. We’re always going to be friends, no matter what.”

He found himself gently patting her hair. Stroking it, even. He felt like he was someone else, not Callum Hunt. Someone who deserved to have Tamara Rajavi care about him. “Yeah,” he said, surprised and slightly panicked by the words coming out of his mouth. “Ever since I first met you …”

The door flew open and Tamara and Call jumped apart as Jasper hastened in, wearing horse-covered pajamas and dragging a blanket. He curled up in it at the side of Tamara’s bed as she walked back over to sit on the edge of her mattress. Call, looking nonchalant, sprawled on his own makeshift bed.

“I was just telling Call,” Tamara said. “We have to be careful. Really careful.”

“Is that news?” asked Jasper.

“Master Joseph is considering taking Call’s power with the Alkahest,” said Tamara. She turned to Call. “Think about it — then Master Joseph could be the Enemy of Death. He wouldn’t need to try to make Call do what he wants; he could do it himself.”

“But he values Constantine’s soul,” Jasper pointed out.

“I know,” said Tamara. “He definitely thinks Call has a better chance of raising the dead,” Tamara said. “Otherwise he would have taken Call’s powers already. Which is why Call was smart to play along with Master Joseph about raising Aaron.”

Play along? Call had been feeling as if he were floating; now he crashed back down to earth. Tamara had thought he was playing along with Master Joseph, that he hadn’t meant anything he’d said about bringing back Aaron? But that had never crossed his mind. He’d thought they were in agreement. He’d thought that, for once, he wasn’t doing the wrong thing.

They’d been so close just a moment before. Now it seemed all wrong, as though he’d tricked her somehow.

“We’ll find a way out of here,” Tamara told him now. “And we’ll try to figure out how to get to the Alkahest. If we could steal it — or even better, destroy it — you’d be a lot safer. You just have to pretend to be trying to raise Aaron in the meantime.”

“Yes!” Call said, more forcefully than he intended. “Pretend. Definitely. That’s exactly what I was going to do.”

But as he allowed himself to relax into sleep, with Havoc warm beside him, he already knew he was lying. He was still going to bring Aaron back from the dead.

Maybe it wasn’t the right thing, but if everything could go back the way it was before, if Aaron could be alive and they could all be happy, he didn’t care about right or wrong.





BREAKFAST THE NEXT morning was served by Chaos-ridden, as though Call and the others were attending the world’s weirdest fancy boarding school. The Chaos-ridden plunked the dishes down hard, as though they were dropping rocks, causing food to occasionally bounce right off and into Havoc’s mouth. Still, the table was piled high, with French toast dripping with butter, bacon and scrambled eggs, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and grits.

Tamara and Jasper were both on their best behavior, apparently in an attempt to convince Master Joseph they were Down With His Plan. Tamara had on a pale blue dress with only some of the lace ripped off, and there were horses on Jasper’s shirt and pants.

Alex was there, too, though he didn’t eat anything and just drank black coffee. Call had a feeling Alex had an Evil Overlord list, too, but his scoring went the other way. He probably gave himself a point every time he dressed all in black or menaced small children. Maybe a gold star if he did both at once.

After breakfast, Master Joseph took Jasper and Tamara off for lessons in the library, while Alex — jittery from coffee — and Call returned to the room where they’d left Aaron’s body.

They didn’t talk on the way. Call had resigned himself to spending time with Alex, though there wasn’t anyone in the world he hated more. Alex had lied to him for years, had killed his best friend, had taken Aaron away from him. Call wouldn’t be sorry to see him dead. He knew that was Evil Overlordian of him, but he accepted it — even as he reminded himself that Alex was also his path back to Aaron. He knew more about Constantine’s methods than Call did.