The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)(29)

They hadn’t kissed since that one time in Jericho’s room, and Call was starting to feel a little crazy. She liked someone else, Jasper had said. If she sucked face with you, it was probably because she didn’t want to die alone. His words haunted Call.

Did he really need to stop thinking about Tamara when their escape and lives were on the line? Probably.

Jasper was winking and mouthing something across the table. After dinner, he said silently. In my room.

Alex looked over at them lazily. Call could never tell how much attention Alex was paying to anything they did. He seemed to have his own stuff going on, which involved locking himself in his room — which was at the other end of the house — blasting heavy metal, and collecting designer sweaters with skulls on them.

After dinner, Call and Tamara crowded into Jasper’s room. Most of the various stuffed and toy horses had been shoved under the bed, and the room looked strangely bare.

“What’s going on, Jasper?” Tamara asked, hands on her hips. She was wearing a pastel blue dress and her hair was down, rippling over her shoulders.

“Tomorrow,” Jasper said. “We have to get away for at least a few hours in the afternoon. We need to distract Alex and maybe Hugo.”

“Why?” said Call.

“Because there’s something we need to look at,” Jasper said. “Master Joseph comes in and out of here on elementals, but they don’t land near the house. I saw one landing the other night and I followed it to see where it came down.”

“You did?” Tamara was incredulous. “Why didn’t you bring us with you?”

“A lone wolf hunts alone,” said Jasper. “Besides, I wasn’t expecting it and I didn’t have time to get you. Anyway, I didn’t find the elemental. I found something else.”

“What?” Call asked.

But Jasper just shook his head. He looked troubled. “You’ll have to see it yourselves. I don’t want to talk about it here.”

No matter how much they pressed him, he wouldn’t say anything more, but he made them promise to get out of whatever they were doing and meet him outside the next day, before lunchtime, by the path where they walked Havoc.

“We should bring Havoc, too,” said Call. “He can be a cover story in case anyone asks us what we’re doing outside.”

Tamara frowned. “Do you think you can get away from Alex?”

Call nodded. “No problem,” he said, though he doubted it would, in fact, be no problem.

“Okay. I’m going to bed, then,” Tamara said. “I’m worn-out.”

She headed toward the door, then paused, turned around, and kissed Call on the mouth. “Good night,” she said a little shyly, and practically skipped out of the room.

Jasper stared. “Holy moly,” he said after the door shut behind Tamara. Call didn’t say anything. He was stunned and silent.

Call cleared his throat. All his nerve endings felt exposed. “Now you know why I need advice!”

Jasper chuckled to himself. “You got problems,” he said. “I feel bad for you, son.”

“Get out, Jasper,” Call said in exasperation. “You’re not helping.”

“It’s my room,” Jasper pointed out. Call had to admit this was true. He went back to his own room and lay awake most of the night, dreaming sometimes that Aaron was dead at his feet again, and sometimes that Aaron was alive and he and Tamara were walking away from Call and never coming back.



The next day dawned and, as luck would have it, was overcast, with rain threatening all morning.

Alex appeared to be in a particularly foul mood. Call frowned at him as they tried, unsuccessfully, to come up with any new ideas for raising a stoat that wasn’t either Chaos-ridden or about to explode.

Call saw an opportunity for getting away from him. If Call could just use his superpower of being annoying, Alex would probably storm off on his own.

The first thing Call did was start to hum, off-key, to himself as he looked through the alchemy books Master Joseph put together for them. Alex glared.

Then Call picked up a historical book about a Makar called Vincent of Maastricht — one of the few not relegated to the basement — and began reading aloud, “Little is known of the methods Vincent undertook to secure the bodies for his experiments, but it is believed —”

“Are we going to get back to work?” Alex interrupted.

Call pretended not to hear him until Alex jerked the book away from Call. Then he looked up nonchalantly. “Huh?”

“I said,” Alex stated, clearly trying his most Evil Overlord-y look on Call, “that we had better get back to work.”

Call yawned exaggeratedly. “I am working. I’m thinking big thoughts. After all, I’m Constantine Madden. If anyone is going to figure out how to raise the dead, it’s going to be me.”

“You?” Alex took the bait, his voice withering. “All you want to do is boring stuff. We could be making more Chaos-ridden. We could be trying to bring people back from the dead, instead of stoats. We could even try to shape flesh and make something wholly chaos-born. Constantine Madden wouldn’t sit around all day, doing nothing. It’s dull and so are you.”

“Go eat a dirty sock,” Call told him, feeling a little weird about the insult after he spat it out. “You don’t know what Constantine would do.”