There was a spot in the huge door into which it fit neatly, and when it was placed there, an entire tracery of symbols began to glow all over the door. Words Call had not seen before revealed themselves: Neither flesh nor blood, but spirit. As Call was puzzling over that, the door opened, swinging inward.

  They headed inside, passing quickly through the antechamber and into the dark red corridor. It was short, leading to a second, massive set of doors that went up and up, reaching over Call’s head, the size of the doors of an enormous cathedral.

  But there was a spot in them, too, a tiny hole, almost too small to notice. Call swallowed and fit the bronze key into the spot. The second set of doors opened with a groan.

  They stepped through.

  Call didn’t know what to expect, but the sudden heat of the room beyond surprised him. The air was heavy and smelled sour and metallic. It felt like a place where a huge fire was blazing, but no fire was visible. He could hear the rush of water in the distance and the roar of flames, much closer. Arched doorways in the stone led in five different directions. Chiseled in the rock were familiar words: Fire wants to burn, water wants to flow, air wants to rise, earth wants to bind, chaos wants to devour.

  “Which way?” Call asked.

  Aaron shrugged, then spun around with one arm out, letting himself point randomly, like a weather vane. “There,” he said when he’d stopped. The arch he was pointing toward seemed to be much the same as the others.

  “Warren?” Call called under his breath. It seemed like a long shot that the little lizard would hear them down there, but Warren had shown up in strange places and at odd times before. “Warren, we could really use your help.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Tamara said, heading in the direction Aaron had picked. “I don’t trust him.”

  “He’s not so bad,” Call said, but he couldn’t help thinking of how Warren had led them to Marcus, Master Rufus’s former Master, now one of the Devoured, drawn into the element of fire by using its power too much. Still, Marcus hadn’t hurt them. He’d just been scary.

  It was dim beyond the archway, less a corridor than an empty space of tumbled stone with a path cutting through it, leading into further darkness. A torch was embedded in one wall, burning greenly; Aaron took it down and led the way, Call and Tamara just behind him.

  The path sloped downward, becoming a ledge over a deep pit. Call’s heart started to thud. He knew that large elementals were imprisoned here, knew that theoretically mages were able to approach them without getting eaten — that was the whole point of the imprisonment. But by the dim light of Aaron’s torch, Call couldn’t help feeling a little bit like they were approaching a dragon’s den instead of a holding cell.

  A little farther and an alcove dipped into the wall. When they passed it, they saw a winged serpent hovering inside. It was covered in feathers of orange and scarlet and blue, vivid even in the gloom.

  “What’s that?” Call asked Tamara.

  She shook her head. “I’ve never seen one before. Looks like an air elemental.”

  “Should we wake it up?” Aaron whispered.

  There must be restraints, Call reasoned, but he didn’t see any. No prison bars, no anything. Just them and a deadly elemental, a few feet away.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered back. He racked his brain, thinking over monsters in books he’d read, but he couldn’t think of what this was called.

  One of its eyes opened, its pupil large and black, the iris around it a bright purple and star-shaped.

  “Children,” it whispered. “I like children.”

  The “for breakfast” went unsaid, but seemed clear to Call.

  “I am called Chalcon. Have you come to command me?” The eagerness with which it asked the question made Call very nervous. He wanted to command it. He wanted to force it to tell him everything it knew — or, even better, find and devour the spy. But he wasn’t sure what the price might be. If he’d learned one thing during his time in the Magisterium, it was that magical creatures were even less trustworthy than mages.

  “I’m Aaron,” Aaron said. Trust Aaron to introduce himself politely to a floating serpent. “This is Tamara and Call.”

  “Aaron,” Tamara said, between her teeth.

  “We’re here to question you,” Aaron went on.

  “Question Chalcon?” the serpent echoed. Call wondered if it was very bright. It was definitely big. In fact, he had a feeling it was bigger than it had been a few seconds ago.

  “Someone broke in here a little while ago and freed one of you,” said Aaron. “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  “Freed,” Chalcon echoed wistfully. “It would be nice to be freed.” He swelled a bit more. Call exchanged an anxious glance with Tamara. Chalcon was definitely getting bigger. Aaron, standing in front of it with his torch raised, seemed very small. “If you free Chalcon, he will tell you everything he knows.”

  Aaron raised an eyebrow. Tamara shook her head. “No way,” she said.

  There was a loud thump. Chalcon had flown at them suddenly, his star-shaped eyes burning red with anger. Aaron jumped back, but the serpent was thrashing against an invisible barrier, as if a sheet of glass separated them.

  “This guy’s not going to tell us anything,” Call said, edging sideways. “Let’s try to find a different elemental. Someone more cooperative.”

  Chalcon growled as they moved away from his cell — it was a cell, wasn’t it, Call thought, even if it didn’t have a door or bars? He kind of felt bad for the winged creature, meant to fly but stuck down here instead.

  Of course if Chalcon actually flew around, he would probably pick Call off and snack on him like a hawk nabbing a tasty field mouse.

  They moved downward and into a bigger space — a massive hall lined with alcoves, each imprisoning a different elemental. Creatures squeaked and flapped. “Air elementals,” said Tamara. “They’re all air elementals — the other four archways must have led to the other elements.”

  “Over here,” Aaron said, pointing at an empty cell. “This is where Skelmis was — its name is engraved in the plate. So the elementals in this room had to have seen something.”

  Call walked up to one of the cells, and a creature with three big brown eyes on long eyestalks and a body that seemed more miasma than solid looked back at him. He wasn’t even sure it had a mouth. It didn’t look like it had a mouth.

  “Did you see who freed Skelmis?” Call asked it.

  The creature just stared back at him, floating gently in its prison. Call sighed.

  Tamara went up to a cell that opened into an enormous space where three eel-like elementals swam through the air. They were the same elementals that had carried Call, Tamara, Aaron, and Jasper back from the Enemy of Death’s tomb in their bellies, only much smaller now. Maybe all elementals could change their size like Chalcon could.

  Remembering flying inside the elementals also made Call remember where Jasper was now. On a date. With Celia. Who was almost definitely not trying to kill Call, but who might not be his friend anymore, either.

  “Are air elementals all pretty dumb?” Call asked, annoyance at Jasper bleeding into his voice. They had only a short amount of time before the Masters figured out who’d sent the guard and came down here, ending the whole operation. If they didn’t have anything by the time the Masters arrived, the trouble they were going to be in would be for nothing.

  “Harsh,” Aaron said.

  “Harsh, but fair.” Tamara was watching the placid movements of the eel-like creatures. “Let’s try the earth elementals. They’re friendlier.”

  They backtracked up the path, past Chalcon, who stared hungrily at them, trilling in a super-eerie way. Call’s leg felt as if it were full of jabbing knives. They’d done a lot of walking, but taking the steep slope up made his muscles burn. By the time they were back in the main corridor, despite this being his plan, he kind of wanted to give up. Tamara was studying the stone, trying to figure out if there were markings so they could tell which archway led to the earth elementals. Aaron was frowning, like he was trying to puzzle this whole thing through.

  “I hear you there, apprentices,” someone said from the farthest archway, a voice that seemed ominously familiar. “Come and find me.”

  Call froze. Was it the spy? Had they stumbled on the person who wanted him dead?

  Aaron whirled with the torch. The archway was empty, the space beyond it glowing a deep red-black, like old blood. The corridor seemed full of ominous shadows.

  “I know that voice,” Tamara whispered. Her eyes were wide, her pupils enormous in the darkness.

  “Come and find me, Rufus’s children,” the voice said again. “And I will tell you a secret.”

  Aaron raised his torch over his head, the fire spitting and crackling. In the greenish glow his expression was determined.

  “This way,” he said, and took off, running toward the sound, Tamara right behind him.

  That’s what heroes did, Call guessed. They ran straight toward danger and didn’t ever give up. Call wanted desperately to go in the other direction, or just lie down and cradle his leg until it hurt less, but he wasn’t about to let Aaron have to fight without his counterweight.

  Aaron wasn’t his enemy.

  With a gasp, trying to ignore the pain, he followed them.

  It was immediately evident what element they’d fled toward. Oppressive heat blasted from the archway and the corridor beyond. The walls were made of hardened volcanic rock, black and full of ragged holes. The roar of fire was all around them, like the blast and crash of a waterfall.

  Aaron was standing partway down the hall, Tamara beside him. He had lowered the hand that was holding the torch, though it was still shedding a weird greenish light over them. “Call,” he called, and there was a strange note in his voice. “Call, come here.”

  Call limped down the hall, passing different cells in which fire elementals were imprisoned. Their cages weren’t closed off by clear walls but by gold-colored bars sunk deep into the earth. Behind the bars, he could see creatures made out of what looked like black shadow with burning eyes. One was a circle of flaming hands. Another was a cluster of fiery hoops linked together, drifting and pulsing in the air.

  The heat was so oppressive that by the time Call reached Aaron and Tamara, his shirt was soaked in sweat and he was close to passing out. He could see immediately, though, why Aaron and Tamara were so still. They were staring through the bars of a cage at a sea of flames, and in the center of that sea of flames, a girl was floating.

  “Ravan?” Tamara said in a cracking voice that Call had never heard before. “H-how are you here?”

  Ravan. Call felt a shock of horror go through him. Ravan was Tamara’s sister. He knew she’d been swallowed up by the elements, becoming one of the Devoured, but it had never occurred to him that she would be down here.

  “Where else would I be?” the flame-girl asked. “They lie to us, you know? They tell us that the pitiful magic we learn in the Magisterium is the whole of what we can do, but I am so much more powerful now. I no longer call up fire, Tamara. I am fire.” The iris of her eyes flickered and danced with what Call at first thought was a reflection of the flames — but then he saw there was fire behind her eyes, too. “That’s why they have to lock me up.”

  “A touching family reunion,” a voice said from the other side of the room. Call whirled. Marcus the Devoured was looking out at them from an almost identical cage, grinning. “Callum Hunt,” he said in his crackling, roaring voice. “Aaron Stewart. Tamara Rajavi. Here you are. It seems not all my prophecies have come to pass yet, have they?”

  Call remembered Marcus’s words from two years ago, a terrible echo of his own fears: One of you will fail. One of you will die. And one of you is already dead.

  They knew, now, which of them was already dead: Call. He had died as Constantine Madden. Already dead. The words hung in the air, a terrible proof that what Marcus had said was the truth.

  “Marcus.” Aaron frowned at him. “You said you had a secret for us.”

  Tamara couldn’t seem to wrench her gaze away from Ravan. Her fingers reached out for her sister’s burning hand, as though she couldn’t quite accept that her sister wasn’t human anymore.

  Marcus laughed and the fire around him leaped and danced, flaring up volcanically. Even Tamara turned at that, jerking her hand back as though just realizing what she’d been about to do.

  “You seek the one who freed Automotones and Skelmis, yes?” Marcus asked. “The one who is trying to kill Callum? For they are one and the same.”

  “We knew that,” Aaron said. “Tell us who it is.”

  “An answer you will not like.” Marcus grinned a flaming grin. “It is the greatest Makar of your generation.”

  Tamara looked even more stricken. “Aaron’s trying to kill Call?”

  Call felt the words like all the air went out of the room. Aaron couldn’t be the spy. But hearing Marcus’s words, Call felt stupid. They were fated to be enemies. Aaron was fated to be the hero and Call was fated to be the villain. It was as simple as that. Call had never had friends like Aaron and Tamara before, and sometimes he wondered why they liked him. Maybe the answer was simple. Maybe Aaron wasn’t actually his friend.

  “No!” Aaron said, throwing his arms wide in a gesture that nearly put out the flame in his torch. “Obviously I’m not!”

  “So I’m trying to kill myself?” Call asked Aaron, unable to stop from blurting out what he was thinking. “That makes no sense. Also, there’s no way anyone thinks I’m the greatest Makar of my generation.”

  “You don’t really think that I want to hurt you, do you?” Aaron demanded. “After everything — everything — I learned about you and had to accept —”

  “Maybe you didn’t accept it!” Call said.

  “That chandelier almost hit me, too!” Aaron yelled.

  “Free me,” Ravan said to Tamara, her face pressed against the bars. “Free both of us and we’ll help you. You know me. I might be a different creature now, but I am still your sister. I miss you. Let me show you what I can do.”

  “You want to help us?” Aaron said. “Get Marcus to tell them I’m not the spy!”

  “Everyone calm down!” Tamara said, turning her gaze on the Devoured Master and then toward her sister. “We don’t know how much of any of this is true. Maybe Marcus is making this up. Maybe he just wants what every elemental down here wants — a ticket out.”

  “Is that all you think I want?” Ravan put her hand on her hip. “You think you’re so great, Tamara, but you’re just like Dad. You think that because you break the rules and get away with it, you can sit in judgment of everyone who gets caught.” And with that, she let the flame overtake her, becoming a flaming pillar and falling backward into fire.

  “No, wait!” Tamara said, rushing over to her sister’s prison, hands grabbing the hot bars and holding on for a desperate moment, even though when she released them Call could see the pink skin on her palms where she’d burned them. “I didn’t mean it! Come back!”

  The fire leaped around, but it didn’t coalesce into any human form. If Ravan was still there, they couldn’t pick her out of the rest of the dancing flames.

  “I know you won’t release me, little apprentices, not yet — although I could teach you much. I taught Rufus well, didn’t I?” There was something hungry in Marcus’s gaze that made it hard to look directly at his face. “Well and yet not well enough. He doesn’t see what’s right under his nose.”

  His gaze was fixed on Call. Call flinched. He couldn’t look at Tamara and Aaron. He stared at Marcus. “You’ve been at the Magisterium a long time,” he said.

  “Long enough,” said Marcus.

  “So did you know Constantine? The Enemy?”

  “Whose enemy?” Marcus said with contempt. “Not mine. Yes, I knew Constantine Madden. I warned him, just like I warned you. And he ignored me, just as you have ignored me.” He smirked at Call. “It is unusual to see the same soul twice.”

  “But he wasn’t like me, was he?” Call said. “I mean, we’re completely different, aren’t we?”

  Marcus just smiled his hungry smile and sank down into the flames.

  THEY’D ALMOST MADE it back out into the hallway when the Masters burst into the guardroom, magic blazing in their hands. They were wild-eyed, ready to fight. At the sight of Tamara, Aaron, and Call, the crackling ball of white energy hovering in front of Master North slipped and crashed to the ground in a shower of sparks.

  “Apprentices?” he demanded. “What are you doing here? Explain yourselves!”

  Master Rufus strode forward, grabbing Aaron’s collar in one hand and Call’s in the other. “Of all the reckless, ridiculous things you have ever done — this one, this one is the worst! You have put not just yourselves, but the entire Magisterium, in danger.”

  Tamara, not yet being hauled along by Master Rufus, dared to speak. “We thought one of the elementals might know who let Skelmis out. I know you made us promise not to investigate, but that was before Call was attacked!”

  Master Rufus turned a look on her that Call worried might actually scorch skin. “And so you broke into an Assembly member’s room and stole property from her locked safe? Property that could then be stolen from you? Did you consider that?”

  “Uh,” Tamara said, having no good answer.

  “Oh, don’t be too hard on them,” Anastasia said, her voice cool as ever. She had to know they’d found her photographs and guessed her password, but she appeared entirely unruffled, as though she had nothing at all to feel guilty about or to fear. “It’s difficult to feel powerless when someone is hunting you. And they’re heroes, after all. It must be twice as hard for heroes.”

  Master Rufus twitched at the word hunting but didn’t loosen his grip on Call or Aaron.

  Tamara was watching Anastasia. Call could tell she was tempted to say something about what they’d found in her room, but it was difficult to go against the one person on your side. Besides, she was still reeling from having seen her sister, locked up like just another elemental.