The heat of the fire faded away. He could no longer feel his skin burning and prickling. In fact, he was cold. Cold as outer space, where there was no warmth, only nothingness. In the center of his palm, a black spiral began to dance. It rose up and up from his skin like a coil of smoke set free.

  Fire wants to burn.

  Air wants to rise.

  Water wants to flow.

  Earth wants to bind.

  Chaos wants to devour.

  The chaos rose up from Call’s hand, faster and faster now. It had become a black tornado, spinning around his wrist and hand. He could feel it, thick and oily, like quicksand that would pull you under. He thrust his hand up higher, as high as it could go, until he was reaching toward the top of the flames.

  Devour, he thought. Devour the air.

  The smoke exploded outward. Call gasped as a noise like a sonic boom punctured the air. The flames began to sway wildly back and forth as the black smoke ran across their tops, spreading like a cloud layer, devouring oxygen. Fire needed oxygen to live. Call had learned that in science class. His dark chaos was eating away at the oxygen surrounding the flames.

  He could hear other noises now: other apprentices, shouting in surprise and fear. The flames made a noise as if they were being turned inside out — then vanished, collapsing down to heaps of charred ash. Suddenly, the whole room was visible — Call could see the other students spread out across the floor, some of them clutching their canteens, all of them looking around wildly in shock.

  Call’s smoke was still hovering in the air. Dark and sinuous, it appeared to have fattened up on the air it had swallowed. Call started to gasp, remembering something else he knew from science class: Fire might need oxygen to survive, but so did people.

  The smoke began to drift down, questing, coiling. Master Rufus was striding toward the destroyed maze, shouting, “Call! Get rid of it, Call!”

  In a panic, Call flung his hand out again, reaching for the chaos, trying to pull it back toward him. He felt it resist. It wanted to push back and be free. It wanted him to leave it alone. He was stretching out his hand so hard his fingers were turning into aching claws. Come back.

  Suddenly, the dark chaos smoke swirled into a tight coil and sprang toward the ground. Call gave a yell — then saw that it was arrowing down toward Aaron, whose hand was also raised. It vanished into his palm and disappeared.

  Master Rufus skidded to a stop a few feet from Call. Aaron slowly lowered his hand. Call could see Tamara, her cheeks streaked with ash, her mouth open. Across the heaps of ash and the huddles of frightened students, Call and Aaron looked at each other.

  Tamara was the only one of the three of them who went to the Refectory for dinner that night. She brought back food for Call and Aaron — a tray piled with lichen, mushrooms, tubers, and the purple pudding Call liked.

  “How was it?” Aaron asked.

  She shrugged. “Fine, I guess.” Tamara could lie pretty well, so Call had his eye on her, ready to believe that no matter what she actually said, the truth was much worse. “Everyone had questions, but that was it.”

  “What kind of questions?” Call asked. “Like, am I crazy? Am I going evil?”

  “Don’t be paranoid,” Tamara said.

  “Yeah, they probably think I’m the crazy one,” Aaron put in with a sigh. The weirdest part was that Call had to acknowledge that this was probably true. Even though Aaron had saved everyone — from Call, which made him recollect his Evil Overlord list of last year, because almost murdering all the Copper Year apprentice groups would have gotten him mad points — his use of chaos magic had probably still scared them.

  “This is almost over,” Tamara told them. “We’re going to help Alma and she’s going to get Jennifer to … okay, I don’t know what she’s going to do exactly. But we’re going to know who killed Jennifer and that means we’re going to know who’s after you. So eat up. You’re going to need your strength.”

  “So who won?” Call asked.

  “What?” Tamara looked flummoxed. “What do you mean?”

  “Who won the test?” Call repeated. “Who gets to go to the Gallery? Like, did they pick the person who was closest to the center or did they decide to give up on the whole thing?”

  “We get to go,” she said slowly, as though she was trying to be very sympathetic to someone to whom she was giving bad news. “You won, Call.”

  “Oh,” he said. He wasn’t sure how to take the news. No one had congratulated him at the time. Master North had come roaring over the empty fire to shake Call’s shoulders and demand to know what he’d been thinking. When Call showed him the empty canteen with the hole in the bottom, though, his expression had gone shuttered and strange.

  Master Rufus had looked around coldly, as though thinking about what he might do to the culprit. Call knew how that felt, although it worried him that for a moment Master Rufus’s gaze seemed to have settled on Anastasia.

  Sometimes when Call looked around the Refectory, he thought it was impossible that a person who wanted to kill him could blend in with everyone else.

  “Tamara’s right,” Aaron said, lifting a large forkful of lichen. “We need to rest and get ready for tonight. We already used enough magic that I need a nap or I am going to fall asleep with my arms around a Chaos-ridden bear and get eaten.”

  Call, who fell asleep with his arms around a Chaos-ridden wolf a lot of the time, snickered. Then he dug into the food. He and Aaron polished it off in very little time. By then, he was feeling drowsy, too, and light-headed, and as though his skin wasn’t quite his own. He remembered Aaron being sick and passing out after large expenditures of chaos magic, but he’d never felt this way before. He lurched up and went to lie down.

  When he woke, tangled in his sheets, his uniform and boots still on, he couldn’t even remember hitting the bed. Outside the door were voices. The summons must have come.

  Call pushed himself to his feet and went out into the common room.

  Alex was sitting on their couch, talking to Tamara. Both of them were dressed in black, like ninjas. Alex’s brown hair was half-concealed under a dark cap, and Tamara was wearing an oversize black sweater and leggings. Her hair was in glossy braids tied with black bows. Alex was smiling at her in a new way, a way that Call had only previously seen him smile at Kimiya.

  Call didn’t like it.

  “My stepmother sent me to help,” Alex said, turning to Call. “Are you sure you want to do this? This whole — midnight caper? This is serious stuff.”

  “I didn’t actually know you were going to be involved,” Call said, and Alex blinked a little, as if surprised by Call’s tone. Tamara gave Call a reproachful look.

  “He’s Anastasia’s stepson,” she pointed out. “And he’s an air mage. We could use him.”

  Aaron came into the room, also dressed in black, though he hadn’t covered his bright hair. He nodded at Call. “We let you sleep as long as we could.”

  “That was some pretty serious chaos magic you laid down at the test today,” Alex said. “I can see I’m going to have a hard time keeping up with you two.”

  Call and Aaron exchanged a look. It was a look that said that neither of them were exactly looking forward to being called on to use their Makar powers again. Call felt completely tapped out.

  “You’d better go change into something dark,” Alex added. “We don’t want to be seen by the highway.”

  Call went back to his room and changed into black jeans and the darkest sweater he could find, which was navy. Almost as an afterthought, he took Miri from her place on his nightstand and slid her through the belt of his jeans. Then he woke up Havoc, who was asleep on the bed with his tongue lolling on the comforter.

  “Come on, boy,” Call said. “Time for an adventure.”

  When he went back into the living room, Havoc bounding at his heels, the others were waiting for him. Alex opened the door to leave. With a look back at Call, Tamara followed.

  Call stepped out into the corridor and glanced around in surprise. Everything was ordinary — the rock walls of the hall, the path stretching away on either side — but there was a strange shimmer in the air, as if it were vibrating around them.

  “Camouflage,” Alex said in a low voice. He had his right hand up, his fingers making a series of complicated movements, as if he were playing the piano. “Changing the molecular makeup of the surrounding air makes it harder for people to see us as we go by.”

  Call looked at Tamara with a raised eyebrow, as if for confirmation. She shrugged, but was clearly impressed. Which was also annoying — if anyone had done any impressive magic that day, it was definitely Call.

  Though he probably shouldn’t think about it that way.

  He couldn’t help wondering if Aaron was thinking the same thing, though, since a second later a coal of fire bloomed from Aaron’s palm, illuminating their way. “Let’s go,” he said. “Out through the Mission Gate?”

  Alex nodded. They set off, Aaron’s light throwing their shadows against the wall — tall Alex, then Aaron, then Call and Tamara, and, behind them, the trotting shadow of Havoc.

  They encountered only a few people on their way to the gate, and just as Alex had said, no one seemed able to see them or their shadows. Celia was standing with Rafe, talking about something in low tones. When they passed her, she frowned but didn’t otherwise react. Master North even walked by, his face buried in a stack of papers, and didn’t glance up once.

  Call wondered when Master Rufus was going to teach them a trick as awesome as this and realized, gloomily, that the answer was probably never. Master Rufus was not a person who liked to stack the deck against his ability to find his own apprentices.

  They exited through the Mission Gate. Havoc, used to being taken this way to be walked, started toward his regular trees and patch of weeds. Alex was gesturing in the other direction.

  “This way,” Call called to his wolf, as loudly as he dared. “Come on, boy.”

  “Where are we going?” Aaron asked.

  “Alma’s waiting for us,” Alex said, leading them toward the dirt road the bus took up the hill to the Magisterium at the beginning of every year. It was a steep decline, but a fast one — much faster than sneaking through the woods, the way they had in their Copper year, or stumbling through them in a panic, the way Call and Tamara had after Aaron had been kidnapped in their Iron Year.

  Roads are great, Call thought meditatively, vowing to take them more. Less being kidnapped by elementals. More roads.

  They turned a corner and saw a van idling near a large group of rocks. Alma leaned out the window. “I didn’t think you kids would have the guts to turn up,” she said gruffly. “Get in.”

  Alex heaved open the van door and they piled inside in a tumble of bodies. As soon as the door shut, Alma took off, driving much faster than Call thought was strictly necessary. Havoc began to whine.

  “So I think we can get ahead of the truck on Route 211. The question is how to get it to stop, short of ramming it off the road. And before you say, ‘So what?’ that might hurt the animals.” Alma had an unfortunate habit of looking back at them while speaking, checking on their reactions. Call really, really wanted to remind her to keep her eyes on the road, but he was afraid of surprising her into jerking the wheel and sending them into a ravine.

  “Okay,” he said instead.

  “How come you couldn’t do this yourself, you and the rest of the Order of Disorder?” Alex asked.

  Alma sighed, as though the question was very stupid. “Who do you think they’re going to suspect first? The Order has been operating in the woods around the Magisterium since we were first allowed to be there, catching, tagging, and sometimes even putting down Chaos-ridden animals. But only when necessary. The Assembly knows we’re firmly against these valuable test subjects being slaughtered and so our members must have an ironclad alibi.”

  “Really warms the heart, how much she cares,” Aaron whispered to Call, in a rare moment of snark. Call agreed with him. Havoc wasn’t a valuable test subject; he was a pet wolf. Call wished all the animals had somewhere better to go than either death or the Order.

  “What about your alibi, then?” Tamara asked.

  “Me?” Alma said. “Why, records will show that I was with Anastasia Tarquin, prominent member of the Assembly, tonight. She was kind enough to allow me access to the elementals and we lost track of time, trying some new experiments.”

  “What about us?” Call asked, returning to what he considered the main point.

  “That’s your lookout,” said Alma, careening off the road and onto the highway. They whizzed past the gas station where, the year before, they’d waited for Tamara’s butler, Stebbins, to come and get them. The highway opened up in front of them. For a moment Call fantasized that they were going somewhere for no reason, just to have fun. Although maybe not with Alma. That would be weird.

  Alma gave a cackling laugh and pulled to a stop. They piled out of the van, grateful for the fresh air. It was cold out, the air nipping at Call’s cheeks and chin as he looked around. They were at a fork in the road, where Route 211 and Route 340 split from each other. There was no one on either right now, and the moon hung above them, huge and pale, illuminating the white lines painted down the center of the street.

  Alma checked her watch. “They’re about five minutes out,” she said. “No more than that. We have to figure out how to block their way.” She eyed Call, as if wondering if he’d make an adequate human roadblock.

  “I’ll do it,” said Alex. He walked to the patch of grass in front of where the roads split.

  “What’s he going to do?” Tamara whispered, but Call just shook his head. He had no idea. He watched as Alex raised his hands and made the same piano-playing movements he had before.

  Color and light swirled in front of him. Alex leaned back as the lights and colors grew. Call watched with a faint prickle of jealousy. This was what he’d always thought magic might be like, not the deadly darkness that poured from his own hands.

  “There they are,” Tamara whispered, pointing. Sure enough, in the distance Call could see a large black truck coming toward the intersection from the east. Its headlights looked like bright pinpricks at this distance, but they were coming fast.

  “Hurry up, Alexander!” Alma snapped.

  Alex gritted his teeth. He was clearly putting everything into this, and Call felt a flash of regret for having been short with him before. The light in front of Alex had darkened, and the color seemed to solidify into shapes — a jumble of yellow-and-orange wooden traffic barricades with the words ROAD CLOSED across them in big black letters. They were huge and looked terrifyingly solid.

  “Alex, move!” Tamara called. Looking tired, Alex slumped toward them. Alma pulled them all behind the van just as the truck rolled up, coming to a stop in front of the barricades.

  The truck itself was a nondescript eighteen-wheeler, nothing written along the side. When the driver swung down from the semi cab, he looked entirely non-magical. He was even wearing a baseball cap. He went up to the barricade and frowned at it. From the truck came a voice.

  “Just move them!” the voice said, clearly irritated and clearly used to being obeyed. “We’re on a schedule!”

  “What if the road’s out?” the first guy asked. “People don’t just put up these things for no reason.”

  Call wasn’t sure if Alex’s illusion could stand up to physical contact. He had to do something. He looked over at Alma and narrowed his eyes, suddenly totally aware why she’d taught him and Aaron the soul tap.

  “We have to knock them out,” he whispered.

  Aaron gave a quick nod, but he was already looking a bit drawn. They’d both used a lot of chaos magic that day and they weren’t going to be able to draw on each other as counterweights if they were both equally exhausted. They were going to have to try not to go too far.

  Call’s skin prickled. Chaos came easily to his fingers, tired as he was. He had the uncomfortable thought that maybe exhaustion actually made the magic easier and that if he got tired enough, chaos might devour him without him really quite noticing.

  The other man got out of the semi cab, climbing down to frown at the driver. He was dressed in olive green, like the other Assembly members. Call remembered seeing him before, but didn’t remember where. Tamara drew in a sharp breath. She knew him, of course. He was probably important.

  Alex had gone a little wide-eyed, and even Alma looked as though she was ready to call the whole thing off. Call had to act quickly, before panic got ahold of them. They’d come here to free the animals that were trapped in the back of the truck, animals like Havoc, that were in danger. Just thinking about that and looking over at Havoc, crouched down in the ditch, gave Call a fresh burst of resolve.

  “On three,” he whispered to Aaron. “Soul tap. You take the driver; I’ll get the other guy.”

  Aaron’s mouth turned up on one side and Call wondered if he was looking forward to trying the spell for real. Maybe he was thinking about the animals, too.

  Reaching out with his magic, he felt around for the soul of the Assembly member. It was different from reaching for Alma’s in the safe environment of the Magisterium, where he could take all the time he needed and she was prepared for it. The Assembly member’s soul was slippery, hard to latch on to, as if it were darting away from him. He could almost see it — a silvery thing that gave the distinct impression of being twisted around on itself in complicated coils. He reached out, fast, without the time for finesse he’d had before. He felt the chaos magic connect in more of a slap than a tap.

  At least it wasn’t a squeeze this time.

  The man went down. When Call shifted his focus back to his own self, he was lying on his back. Aaron and Tamara were crouched over him.