The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)(33)

“I hope you’ll forgive me,” Call said.

If he got it right, everything would be okay. They could all escape to the Magisterium and Call wouldn’t even be put in jail, since there was no way to lock up someone for the murder of a living person. They would return triumphant, with Master Joseph’s Chaos-ridden army. And if Tamara only wanted to be Call’s girlfriend because she was grief-stricken or something, like Jasper thought, well, maybe she would come to like him. Maybe he could convince her.

So long as Aaron was okay, he was sure she’d forgive him for how he got that way.

The room was full of shadows. Aaron lay still and waxy and white on the table, his face slack. He looked like Aaron and not like Aaron. Whatever it was that gave Aaron his personality and force was gone.

His soul, Call told himself. Name it what it is. He hadn’t believed in souls before he’d gone to the Magisterium, but Master Rufus had taught him how to see Aaron’s.

He placed his hands on Aaron’s chest. He’d touched him before, with Alex there, but now it felt strange. Like he was bidding Aaron good-bye.

But he wasn’t. The opposite, in fact. He forced his mind back from the dark paths it wanted to go down, the paths that reminded him that he was alone in the room with a dead body. Every horror movie he’d ever seen was competing to freak him out. This is Aaron, he reminded himself. The least scary person I know.

Constantine had used his brother’s soul, had torn off pieces of it to fuel his experiments. But what he hadn’t done was what Call was about to do. He hadn’t used a piece of his own soul.

Call kept his hands on Aaron’s chest, and reached down deep inside himself. He tried to remember what it had been like, seeing Aaron’s soul. He thought of what made him himself — his earliest memories: Alastair’s face, the streets of his town, pavement cracking under his feet. The gates of the Magisterium, the black stone in his wristband, the way Tamara looked at him. The feeling in his chest of Aaron’s magic pulling at him, what it was like to be a counterweight, the blackness of chaos …

Darkness in the form of smoke spread from his fingers. It spilled over Aaron’s chest like ink, wreathing his body.

Call gasped. Energy felt like it was pouring out of him, through his hands, making his body vibrate. He could feel his own soul, pressing against the inside of his rib cage.

He closed mental fingers around that soul and pressed down on it. It was as if a spark jumped through him, through his veins, and into Aaron. Aaron’s body jerked, his hands spasming, his feet drumming against the metal table.

Call was drenched in sweat, his body shaking. The spark was inside Aaron; he could feel it. He could even see it: Aaron had begun to glow from the inside, as if a lamp had been turned on within him. His mouth opened and he dragged in a long, slow breath.

Terror gripped Call, thinking of how he’d once pushed chaos into another body, thinking of the way that Jennifer Matsui’s eyes had opened and swirled endlessly with chaos.

“Please,” he said to Aaron. “Let it be you. Fight to be you. Please.”

If Aaron came back as one of the Chaos-ridden, Call would never forgive himself.

I shouldn’t have done this, he thought. It was arrogant; it was too risky. After the diary, he’d been so sure he wasn’t like Constantine. And maybe he wasn’t, because even Constantine hadn’t actually experimented on Jericho. Even Constantine had possessed more sense.

Aaron’s chest rose and fell, as though in sleep, but he still didn’t open his eyes.

“Aaron,” Call said, under his breath. “Aaron, please be you.”

Then Aaron moved, hand swiping at nothing, body rolling over. He turned onto his side, pushed himself into a sitting position, and with a shudder opened his eyes.

They weren’t coruscating.

They weren’t anything but a clear and steady green.

“Aaron?” Call felt as though he could barely get his throat to make a sound.

“Call,” Aaron said. He didn’t sound quite like himself — not yet. Maybe it was because his throat hadn’t been used in so long, but there was a weird hollowness in the way he spoke, an odd lack of inflection.

Call didn’t care. Aaron was alive. Whatever was wrong with him now could be fixed. Call threw his arms around his friend, felt the way his skin was growing warmer as his blood moved less sluggishly. He hugged him hard.

Aaron smelled strange, not like dead things or rot, but like ozone, like the air after a lightning strike.

“You’re okay!” Call said, as though by saying the words he was making it so. “You’re okay! You’re alive and okay!”

Aaron’s arm came around his back, patting him on the shoulder. But when Call pulled away, Aaron’s face was blank and tense. He looked around the room without recognition.

“Call,” he said hoarsely. “What have you done?”





IT’S OKAY,” CALL said. He grabbed Aaron’s hands. They were cold, but not cold. Definitely living hands. Call knew you were supposed to rub people’s hands to warm them up, so he set to it.

Aaron looked around. He was moving very slowly, as if all his muscles were stiff. “Where are we?”

“You should just concentrate on getting better,” Call said.

“Better?” Aaron definitely sounded like someone who was waking up after a long time asleep, but that made sense. “When did I get sick?”