The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)(31)

“I’m sure most of the ones in the battle were destroyed,” said Call. “But there would have been more. Constantine was careful. He wanted an army big enough to march on the Magisterium, the Collegium, the Assembly, everything.”

“We have to destroy them,” said Tamara, her voice stronger now. “If we all used elemental fire — but, no, we can’t burn them underwater. Maybe we could make a bomb.”

Call felt a rush of affection for Tamara. She did not think small.

“Or Call could order them to destroy themselves,” said Jasper.

“If they’re really mine — Constantine’s,” Call said, assailed by sudden doubt. He turned back toward the water. The Chaos-ridden were still, like trees that had grown up under the water of the quarry. As if they had been there when the quarry flooded, and had never moved — like those towns that were drowned underwater when reservoirs were built.

Call held out his hand, palm out. “Chaos-ridden!” he called. “Rise! Come to the one who made you!”

Silence. The cold wind blew. Call was starting to think he had gotten it wrong, when the surface of the water began to ripple and darken. They were moving. The Chaos-ridden were moving, under the surface. Jasper yelled as a head popped out of the water near his feet. It was a man, his face slack with water, eyes wide and blind. He started to turn toward Call.

Tamara caught Call’s arm. “Not now,” she said. “Make them go back under.”

Call stared into the blank eyes of the Chaos-ridden. “What are your orders?” he asked.

When the Chaos-ridden replied, Call knew that Tamara and Jasper would only hear senseless grunts and groans. But he heard words. The language he shared with the dead, that no one else could speak. “Rise up,” said the Chaos-ridden. “Destroy.”

“Call,” Tamara said.

He turned toward her. “They’re dangerous.”

“I know,” she said. “Now make them go back under.”

“The time is not now,” Call told them. “Return to the water and wait.”

As one, the Chaos-ridden disappeared underneath the surface again. Call’s mind raced. He could order them to destroy one another. He could maybe even send them all back into the void if he opened a gateway. But with all of them, he could bring down Master Joseph’s house, tear it to the studs. He could destroy Alex and Master Joseph both. Maybe that’s what Tamara was thinking, too.

There was just one problem: Aaron.

“We’ve got to warn someone,” Jasper was saying. “We’ve got to leave.”

“Can you command all those Chaos-ridden?” Tamara asked.

Call nodded, but he felt sick at heart.

“Good,” she said, planning as they walked back to the house. “We’re leaving tonight and we’re going to take Master Joseph’s army with us. That’s how you’re going to redeem your name, Call! No one can doubt you if you delivery victory to the Assembly.”

For a moment, Call was drawn into imagining himself heroically ahead of an army of Chaos-ridden, an army he had commanded to kneel down before the Assembly. Maybe they really would take him back. Maybe he really would be forgiven.

But if they left tonight, they would be leaving Aaron behind.

And while Call had learned a lot about chaos magic and a lot about filling souls with chaos, he hadn’t figured out how to raise Aaron from the dead. And once they escaped the island, there would be no way to bring Aaron back.

Unless Call did it tonight.



It was even easier to slip away from Tamara and Jasper than it had been to get away from Alex. Call just said he’d be in trouble if he didn’t go, and neither Tamara nor Jasper questioned him.

Once alone, Call grabbed Jericho’s diary and went down to the parlor to read. Before, he had flipped through it in search of experiments and secrets, but now he read with a burning intensity. If Jericho knew anything that might give Call a clue as to how to bring Aaron back, then he needed to find it. As the pages flipped by, a sense of dread filled him. Then Call came to an entry that made his blood run cold:

There is no one I can tell how I feel, but each day I get more tired and more afraid for the future. When I first became Constantine’s counterweight, it seemed to be such an honor, to keep my older brother safe. But neither of us really understood what a counterweight could do.

But then Constantine learned how to draw on my soul regularly, without compromising his own. He drains me nearly to death, again and again. He gives me back only a little of my own strength, barely enough to be conscious and far too little to do any magic of my own. I fear my soul will be all used up before he notices. He wasn’t always like this, but he changed so much in the last year that I feel like I don’t know him. I am so afraid and no one believes me, so taken are they all by Constantine’s charm.

Call flipped a few more pages.

I hate everything about bringing animals for Constantine’s experiments, but bringing him human bodies from hospitals is worse.

Call turned the page with reluctance. It was like reading a horror novel, but scarier. A horror novel about yourself.

I’m not Constantine, he told himself. But it was harder now. Anastasia thought he was Constantine. Master Joseph did, too. The only person who truly didn’t was Tamara. She believed he was Call, a whole person on his own. Aaron had believed in him, too. And look where that had gotten him….