The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)(21)

Call couldn’t decide if he was relieved or not when it turned out that Aaron’s body had been taken away. Instead, there was a different metal table in the room. On it lay something small and stiff and dead.

Call recoiled. “Yerk,” he said. “What’s that?”

“Common garden stoat,” said Alex, pacing behind the table. “We get to raise it. Something to practice on.” He lifted an eyebrow at Call’s expression. “This is necromancy, Callum. It can get messy and dangerous. And once Aaron’s body is damaged, it can’t be repaired.”

“How did Master Joseph steal Aaron’s body, anyway?” Call asked as Alex went over to a shelf and took down two pairs of heavy canvas gloves. He tossed one pair to Call and took the other.

“Anastasia was in the Magisterium after the funeral,” said Alex. “She arranged with Master Joseph to release an air elemental who carried the body here.” He grinned as he yanked the black gloves on. “I bet you could have heard those Masters screaming through the whole cave system.”

“So you don’t miss it, I guess,” Call said, putting on his own gloves. “The Magisterium. Kimiya.”

“Kimiya?” Alex burst out laughing. “You think I’m pining away over Kimiya? You think I feel badly about lying?”

“I guess it would have been awkward to tell her you were a murderer in thrall to Master Joseph,” said Call.

Alex raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t notice you running around blurting your little secret to everyone, Constantine.”

“Well,” said Call, “they all know now.”

Alex gave him an odd look. “Yeah, they do. And Kimiya knows about me.” He bent over the stoat. “So.”

“So,” echoed Call. “Time to share your wisdom. How do you raise the dead?”

“Anastasia said you brought back Jen Matsui,” said Alex.

“Yeah, but she was … Chaos-ridden.” Call shuddered. “She was all wrong.”

“She was able to answer questions. Chaos-ridden can’t do that. It’s a start.”

Call frowned at Alex. Of course Chaos-ridden could answer questions. They could talk! Did that mean that Alex couldn’t hear them?

Now that Call thought about it, it was weird that Jen had come back being able to be heard by everyone. Did that mean Call had done something different with her, something Alex wasn’t doing with his own Chaos-ridden?

Call held up his gloved hands. “I thought you were the expert here. I thought you’d been ‘practicing with Constantine’s methods’ or whatever.”

“I know a lot,” Alex said angrily. “For starters, we’re chaos mages. Chaos is unstable energy. Our instinct is to grab that chaos and shove it into an empty body without a soul. That’s how you get Chaos-ridden.”

“Uh-huh.” Call nodded, following so far, although the part about instinct was creepy.

“But every element has access to its opposite. And the opposite of chaos is the soul. The human stuff that makes people who they are. Stoats, too.” Alex looked as if he was amusing himself. “We’ve got to reach out there and find this weasel’s little weasel soul and shove it back into its body, just like Constantine shoved his soul into you.”

“Right,” Call said, remembering how it had felt to look for Jennifer Matsui’s soul. He and Aaron had caught traces of it to make her talk, but then it had started to fade away, back into nothing. He had grabbed for it and it had come apart in pieces. How he’d channeled magic into those shining threads to hold on to it.

She had woken up Chaos-ridden.

“Right,” Alex said, like Call wasn’t listening.

“That’s it?” Call demanded. He was realizing, with dawning horror, that Alex didn’t know more than he did about bringing back the dead.

And what did that mean, when Alex was supposed to have been studying Constantine’s methods and Call had stumbled into the same — or possibly even a better — technique? Was Master Joseph right about Call — did having Constantine’s soul make him automatically better at raising the dead?

Alex stared at Call with a superior expression on his face. “You might not think it’s much, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.”

Call sighed. “I already tried it.”

“What?” Alex frowned. “You have not —”

Call didn’t care about Alex or his attitude. “That’s how I brought back Jennifer. I didn’t mean for her to come back Chaos-ridden. There just wasn’t enough of her soul left.”

For a moment, Call thought Alex was going to hit him. “I know things, secret things,” he said, stabbing a finger toward Call.

It was clear, though, that he didn’t. “If what you’re saying actually worked, then we wouldn’t have to do any experiments. Master Joseph said Constantine was on the verge of a breakthrough, not that he’d had one.” Call sighed. “I want to see Constantine’s notebooks myself.”

“Why?” Nothing about this situation was going Alex’s way, but he was clearly unwilling to give an inch.

Call was tired of arguing. “If you don’t let me see them, Master Joseph will.”

“Let’s just try to bring back this stoat,” Alex said. “Come on — concentrate.”