“Now, we may need you three to answer questions about specifics,” said Master North. “And this may take some time. It is a formal inquest into Anastasia Tarquin and whether she was derelict in her responsibilities as the guardian of the elementals. Master Rockmaple will be recording our findings and sending them to the Assembly.”

  “I’ve already explained,” Anastasia said. She was dressed in her customary white suit, her icy hair held in place with ivory combs. White-gold rings shone on her fingers. Even her wristband was formed from a pale gray leather. The only color on her face came from her eyes, which were red-rimmed with sleeplessness and worry. “The elemental Skelmis must have been released before I put up the safeguards. There are only two spelled stones that open the vaults to the elementals. One remained around my throat. The other was in a magically sealed vault in my room — locked with three separate locks. I’ve carefully monitored everyone who’s come in and out. You’ve seen the notations. You’ve spoken with the guards. Blaming this on me because it gives you an excuse to push an Assembly representative out of the school doesn’t do any of us any good.”

  “So because you didn’t notice anyone coming in, no one must have come in? Is that what we’re supposed to believe?” Master North asked.

  Anastasia stood, hands slamming down on the table, making Call jump. “If you intend to accuse me of something, just do it. Do you think I am in league with the Enemy’s forces? Do you think I intentionally brought harm to this boy and his friends?”

  “No, of course not,” Master North said, clearly taken aback. “I am not accusing you of anything deliberate. I’m saying that you can brag about your safeguards all you want, but they didn’t work.”

  “So you merely think me incompetent,” she said, her voice icy.

  “Which would you prefer?” Master Rufus said, stepping in. “Because it’s one or the other. If Master North won’t say it, I will. It was your job to make sure no one released an elemental from the vaults beneath the Magisterium. And yet one got out and nearly killed a student, one of my apprentices. That’s on you, Tarquin, however you might not like it to be.”

  “It’s not possible,” she insisted. “I am telling you — I would never do anything to hurt Callum or Aaron. I would never let a student be put in danger.”

  Tamara gave a small snort at being left out of the declaration.

  “And yet they were in grave danger,” Master Rufus said. “So help us discover what happened.”

  Anastasia slumped back down onto her stool. “Very well.” She reached around her neck and drew a chain from under her shirt. Hanging from it was a large cage … and inside the cage was a bronze key, its bow an alchemical symbol for a crucible. “When I took over guarding the way into the caverns of the deep elementals, I made sure the key never left my side.”

  “What about the other one?” Master North asked. “There are two keys. You said you locked the other up. Could anyone have stolen it and then returned it?”

  “That’s very unlikely,” Anastasia replied. “You would need to get past three separate locking spells to get into my safe. And the safe itself was brought here with my other possessions. Master Taisuke himself helped me sink it into the stone.”

  “What kind of locking spells?” Master Milagros asked.

  Anastasia hesitated, then sighed. “I suppose I will have to change them now anyway, even though I judge it very unlikely that anyone could have done what you suggest. Fine. The first safeguard is a password, which must be spoken aloud. And no, I won’t tell it to you. I have told it to no one.”

  For a moment, she stared at her hands and her perfectly manicured nails. She was older than she seemed most of the time, older than Alastair, and in that moment, she looked it.

  Then her head rose and her expression resumed some of its earlier sharpness. “The second is a clever little spell, triggered by the password. A hole appears in the safe, but were you to just stick your hand in, a snake elemental would strike, poisoning the robber with a lethal toxin. To bypass that, fire must be cast into the opening.” A small, wicked smile turned up a corner of her mouth.

  “Cool,” Aaron said under his breath. Call agreed with him.

  “And then, last, there is a final spell, created by me. You are the first people I have told of it and I am regretful that it must be replaced. Once fire is cast, nothing will change visually. At this point, you can reach through the hole so long as you move slowly. Should you jerk your hand out suddenly, alarms will sound and the vault will shut itself up again. However, there’s an illusion of a snake elemental coiling out of the opening and drawing back to strike, so the temptation to withdraw quickly is understandable.”

  For a moment, they all sat in silence. Call was pretty sure they were marveling over her security, but he thought they might also be marveling at her deviousness, because those were some pretty inventive locks.

  “Now, are we finished? There’s something evil at work here in the Magisterium,” said Anastasia, head held high. “We all know it. It’s why I came. I suggest we find the source of it, rather than throw baseless accusations. Before it’s too late.”

  Master North turned to Call, Aaron, and Tamara. “We want you to understand that nothing like this has ever happened at the Magisterium before and we’re going to make sure it never happens again. You three are excused. We will continue on from here without you, but do not doubt that we will discover what happened.”

  It was clear that the mages might go on arguing all night, even though they had no actual leads on finding the spy. Call thought, suddenly, of Jericho Madden and how his death had been an accident — an experiment gone wrong. Was there an inquest after that? A lot of people uselessly pointing fingers at one another?

  “I still believe that the safest thing would be to teach them,” Anastasia said, the edge in her voice unmistakable. “You may believe me derelict in my duties, but that doesn’t mean that you haven’t neglected yours as well.”

  “I do teach them,” Master Rufus said, turning his sternest look on her. “I teach them what they need to know.”

  “Ah,” she said, and it seemed clear that she was no longer upset because she was sure she had the upper hand. “So Aaron and Callum know that they have the power to remove a living soul from its body? They understand how to do it? What a relief, because I thought you were so terrified of their abilities that you were planning on keeping them in the dark, even if it got them killed.”

  “I have excused our students,” Master North said with unusual heat. “Tarquin, let them go. Defy me again and I will bar you from the school, no matter the Assembly’s orders.”

  Outside the meeting room, Call turned to Aaron and Tamara. Tamara raised her eyebrows in a gesture that seemed to capture how completely weird that meeting had been. Aaron shook his head. After walking a short way, they saw a familiar path, which was good, since it turned out the stones were only for a one-way journey and they would lead back to the meeting again and again.

  Finally, Aaron spoke. “Good thing we got out of there before Jasper’s date. I was getting worried.”

  “You don’t really think that Celia’s the one, do you?” Call asked. “I mean, not really, right?”

  “I know you don’t want it to be her,” Aaron said, walking past moss that fluoresced blue when their breath touched it. “I know you think she’s your friend, but we’ve got to be careful. Celia did something odd around the time of both attacks. It could be coincidence. Or maybe not.”

  “So how is the date going to help?” Tamara asked. “Even if it is Celia, Jasper’s not a target.”

  “Jasper promised me that he’d say stuff about Call. If she takes the bait, then we’ll know.”

  Tamara rolled her eyes. She probably thought that Call wouldn’t notice in the dim light of the moss, but he did.

  They arrived breathless at the Gallery, which was lit up for the night with spangled streamers of moss, glimmering blue and green. Students splashed in deep pools of water that glowed turquoise. Call remembered the first time he’d been there: Celia had invited him during their Iron Year, and it had been one of the first things about the Magisterium that he’d really liked. It had made him catch his breath and realize he was looking at stuff no ordinary person would ever see.

  Now he looked around the place with more familiarity. He certainly recognized people — there was Alex, lounging in a corner with Tamara’s sister and another Gold Year girl. Gwenda and Rafe were jumping out of one of the pools of water, splashing each other. Kai was over by the glass tubes that dispensed fizzing candy, digging through a mountain of sweets with one hand and holding up a book with another.

  “Look at me!” someone yelled. For a second Call thought he saw a skinny, brown-haired figure in a worn T-shirt, beckoning toward him. Someone whose eyes glowed black in a face that was too pale.

  Drew.

  Call blinked, and the vision resolved itself into Rafe, cannonballing into a pool. Water went everywhere. People clapped and cheered; Aaron leaned over and whispered to Call and Tamara, “There they are.”

  He pointed to where Jasper and Celia sat on a big overstuffed purple couch. Celia looked pretty in a pink dress, her hair tied up in a ponytail. Jasper looked like Jasper.

  A stone bowl floated between them. Celia dipped her fingers in, and when she brought them out, they shone. She blew on them, and multicolored bubbles spiraled up toward the ceiling. She giggled.

  “Ugh,” said Call. “Celia’s staring at Jasper with googly eyes. This is so weird. She doesn’t even like Jasper. Or at least if she does, she’s never mentioned it before.”

  “She’s leading him into her clutches,” said Aaron.

  “You’re both idiots,” said Tamara, sounding resigned. “Come this way.”

  They crept around the big bar full of snacks and candy, keeping to the wall. It was dark; Call followed the light of Tamara’s glinting gold barrettes. When they emerged on the other side, they were behind the purple couch, much closer to Celia and Jasper. It was Jasper’s turn with the bowl, apparently. He gave Celia a meaningful look, then blew on his fingers. Bubbles in the shape of hearts rose into the air.

  “Oh, gross,” said Call. “I’m going to puke.”

  Tamara had to slap a hand over her mouth to smother her laughter. “It’s a date,” she said when she’d stopped wheezing. “On dates, people are supposed to have fun.”

  “Or pretend to,” Aaron said, narrowing his eyes at Celia. He really seemed to think she might be guilty.

  “How is staring at each other fun?” Call demanded.

  “Okay,” Tamara said, giving both boys an unfathomable look. “If you two jokers were taking somebody out, what would you do?”

  Call watched Celia’s cheeks go pink as Jasper leaned in and said something to her. It was weird to watch. For one thing, it was bizarre to see Jasper be nice to someone. Usually, even when he was in his not-a-total-jerk guise, he had an edge to the stuff he said. But with Celia, he seemed like he was acting like a normal person.

  And she seemed into him.

  Which was totally unfair, since the only reason that Jasper even asked her out was to cover up what they’d really been doing in the library.

  Come to think of it, Celia had always said that Call was overreacting when he talked about what a jerk Jasper was. Maybe she’d liked Jasper! Maybe she’d only been pretending to like Call to get closer to Jasper.

  “I don’t know,” Aaron said. “Whatever she wanted to do.”

  Call had forgotten the question that Aaron was answering. For a moment, Call kind of hoped Celia was the spy after all. It would serve Jasper right if she were.

  Tamara poked Call in the shoulder. “Wow. You must really like her.”

  “What? N-no!” he sputtered. “I was just lost in thought! About how Jasper is a total sucker.”

  Aaron nodded sagely. Jasper and Celia were dipping their fingers at the same time and blowing, causing illusions of butterflies and birds to fly up in the air. Both of them started to laugh, just before one of Jasper’s birds swooped down to eat one of Celia’s butterflies.

  That was more like it! Call grinned. He wondered what would happen if he conjured the illusion of a cat to chase all the birds.

  “You should just ask her out if you like her that much,” Tamara said slowly, thinking through her words carefully. “I mean, I think she’d forgive you if you explained.”

  “Explained what?” Aaron asked.

  Call overheard Jasper start to complain to Celia about Fuzzball, Gwenda’s ferret. And even though Celia had told Call all about Jasper’s allergic reaction to Fuzzball last year, so Jasper had to know she knew, Celia still totally pretended this was new information. Jasper ate it up. He went on and on about the dumb ferret and how much he didn’t like it and she acted like she was fascinated.

  Call wanted to scream.

  “Ooh, look,” Celia said when Jasper had finally exhausted the ferret topic. “Alex Strike is starting up a movie. Do you want to go watch?”

  Alex was an air mage, and one of the ways he deployed his talent was to shift and shape colored air against the wall of the Gallery cave, creating the illusion of popular movies. Sometimes he changed the endings to amuse himself. Call had a clear memory of an Ewok and droid and ghost Darth Vader conga line in Alex’s version of Return of the Jedi.

  Jasper took Celia’s hand and helped her off the couch. Together they went over to the west side of the room, where rows of low stools had been set up. They found two seats together just as the light in that part of the cave dimmed and the first scenes of a movie started to play against the wall.

  “Here we go,” Aaron whispered. “She’s going to take advantage of the dark to knock him unconscious.”

  Call suddenly felt tired of the whole thing. “No, she’s not,” he said. “I’ve been alone with her dozens of times. If she’d wanted to hurt me, she could have. We should just give up on this. The only danger on this date is Jasper boring Celia to death.”

  “Or us being bored to death,” muttered Tamara. “Call’s right, Aaron. Jasper promised to grill her about Call, but I think we can safely say that he’s forgotten all about that.”

  Shapes moved against the wall, casting strange patterns of light. Call could see Alex sitting in the back, moving his hands slightly to make the images dance. From what Call could tell, the movie was a combination of Toy Story and Jurassic Park, with toys being chased across the screen by velociraptors.

  “This is a dead end,” Call said. “But I have an idea of what we could do tonight.”

  That made Aaron look over in surprise. “What?”

  “If someone went down into the elemental prison and freed Skelmis, then there are at least some witnesses. There have to be.”

  “The other elementals,” Tamara said, realizing what he meant instantly. “They’re imprisoned down there. They would have seen what happened.”

  “But wouldn’t the Assembly already have asked them?” said Aaron.

  “Not necessarily,” said Call. “Most people are pretty afraid of elementals. They don’t think of them as creatures you can talk to. And they’re hard to fight off. But with two Makaris … and an elemental in a cage …”

  “It’s a crazy plan,” said Tamara, but her brown eyes were alight.

  “Are you saying you don’t want to do it?” said Call.

  “No,” said Tamara. “I’m just saying it’s a crazy plan. How would we get down there?”

  “Anastasia practically gave us the whole rundown on how to do it during the meeting,” said Call. “She said she keeps a key in her room, and one around her neck. All we have to do is get into her room when we know she isn’t there and grab the key.”

  “And the guards?” said Aaron. “What about the guards at the door?”

  “We’ll worry about that when we get there,” Call said. “The spy got in. There must be a way. And if we don’t do it tonight, she’s going to change all her locks. We won’t have this chance again.”

  Aaron gave Celia one last suspicious look and nodded his head. Together, they crept out into the hallway. As they started toward the area where the Masters’ rooms were, Call realized there were three complications to his plan. One, he wasn’t sure which room belonged to Anastasia Tarquin. Two, he didn’t have a way in. And three, once they were inside, they were going to have to guess her password.

  How hard can it be? he asked himself. Her password was probably something completely obvious. Something they could figure out just from looking at her stuff.

  And her room might be obvious, too. He glanced over at Tamara and Aaron. They seemed ready to be convinced that this was a plan that could work. Maybe they’d already thought of a way. And at least they were all doing something, not just waiting around for the spy to strike again.

  Call sighed. If the Masters and the Assembly couldn’t be relied upon to solve this, then it was down to them.

  IT DIDN’T TAKE them long to reach the corridors where the Masters lived. It wasn’t a part of the Magisterium that Call had ever been to before. Though it wasn’t forbidden, the only students who generally braved the area were assistants like Alex running errands or students carrying messages for Masters. Going there otherwise was too much of an invitation to get in trouble.

  Call, in fact, was having a hard time looking confident and walking as he normally did, which had been Tamara’s advice. He kept wanting to slink along the walls, out of sight, though very few other students passed them. No Masters did. They were all still holed up in their meeting, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, which was good news for Call’s plan. It did make things a little spooky as they turned onto the set of corridors where the Masters’ sleeping quarters were, though.

  They had some fun guessing whose door was whose. Master Rockmaple must be the massive door studded with brass, Master North must be the plain metal door, Master Rufus the door of brushed silver. The door with a picture of a kitten dangling from a wire that had the message HANG IN THERE underneath obviously belonged to Master Milagros.