Call shuddered, but he didn’t say anything else. What could he say?

  Master Rufus looked disappointed. “I wish that you believed you could trust me. I hope you understand how serious this all is.”

  Call thought of Aaron and his weird not-quite-a-burn. He thought of the elemental and its terrible eyes, staring down at him through the dark, its claws sinking into his skin. He thought of the year before and all the things they’d never told Master Rufus about their failed quest to bring back the Alkahest. If he’d been a better person, he would have confessed to Master Rufus then and there. But if he’d been a better person, maybe there would never have been a problem in the first place.

  “I don’t know anything. I don’t have any secrets,” Call told Master Rufus. “I’m an open book.”

  THE NEXT FEW days passed uneventfully. Call didn’t like their new rooms, which felt more like a hotel than a place that belonged to them. Books, papers, and new clothes were brought to them by the mages — every time Call passed their old door, he saw that it was closed with an iron bar. He tried his bracelet on the lock, but it didn’t accomplish anything. He didn’t like the fact that Miri was locked in there, and so far he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to ask the mages to bring him his knife. Luckily, he’d managed to get Constantine Madden’s wristband out by virtue of wearing it above his own, shoved up under the sleeve of his uniform or his pajamas. He knew he should take it off, maybe even get rid of it, but he found that he was having a hard time with the idea of giving it up.

  His dislike of the room got way worse when Tamara turned up a photograph, wedged under one corner of her bed. It was a picture of Drew, grinning at the person taking the picture, one arm slung around Master Joseph’s shoulders. Drew was young in the picture — maybe ten years old — and he didn’t look like the kind of person who could have tortured Aaron just for fun. And Master Joseph, in the photograph, looked like one of those older, professory dads who wanted their kids to read picture books in the original French. He didn’t look like a psycho who’d trained an even bigger psycho. He didn’t look like a guy who wanted to take over the world.

  Call couldn’t stop looking at the photograph. It was ripped along one side, but an arm and part of a blue T-shirt showed there’d been another person with them. The shirt had black stripes on it. For a terrible moment, Call thought he might be looking at the arm of the Enemy of Death, before he remembered that Constantine Madden had to have died around the time Drew was born.

  But it wasn’t just the newness of the room and the loss of Miri and the photograph that made Call uncomfortable. He didn’t like the way Master Rufus was looking at him nowadays either. He didn’t like the way that Tamara glanced nervously over her shoulder all the time. He didn’t like the new, worried frown line between Aaron’s eyebrows. And he especially didn’t like the way that none of his friends would let him out of their sight.

  “Eight eyes are better than one,” Aaron said when Call told him that he wanted to go alone to walk Havoc.

  “I have two eyes,” Call reminded him.

  “Well, sure,” Aaron agreed. “It’s just a saying.”

  “You’re just hoping to run into Celia, aren’t you?” Tamara asked, prompting Aaron to give Call another stern look.

  Celia’s date with Jasper was that Friday and Aaron thought it would be the perfect opportunity to discover whether she was the spy. Tamara had managed to wheedle most of the details of the date out of Celia. It was going to be in the Gallery, and they were going to meet there at eight o’clock, after dinner, and watch a movie.

  “Seems innocent,” Tamara said with a shrug as they sat at lunch, forking up lichen pasta.

  “Well, of course it seems innocent,” said Aaron. “You wouldn’t expect her to make her evil intentions known this early.” He cast a glance toward Celia, who was giggling cheerfully with Rafe and Gwenda. Jasper was sitting with Kai and looked as if he was in the middle of an animated story.

  “If it’s Celia, how did she manage to get hold of a giant elemental?” Call demanded. “Without it, you know, killing and eating her?”

  “Elementals don’t eat people,” said Tamara. “They absorb their energy.”

  Call paused for a moment. He was remembering Drew, who had been killed by a chaos elemental while Call had looked on in horror during Call’s first year. He remembered how Drew’s skin had turned blue and then gray, his eyes going empty.

  “… seems weird,” Call heard Aaron say as he snapped out of his reverie.

  “What’s weird?” Call asked.

  “The way everyone’s looking at us,” Tamara answered in a low voice. “Have you noticed?”

  Call hadn’t. But now that Tamara mentioned it, he realized that people were staring at them — at Aaron, specifically. And not the way they usually stared at Aaron, with admiration, or with a sort of Look, there’s the Makar expression.

  This was different. Eyes were narrowed, voices lowered. People were glancing at him suspiciously, whispering and pointing. It gave Call a queasy feeling in his stomach.

  “What’s going on?” Aaron asked, bewildered. “Do I have something on my face?”

  “Do you really want to know?” said a voice above their heads.

  Call looked up. It was Jasper. “Everyone’s talking about the elemental that almost ate Call —”

  “Elementals don’t eat people,” Tamara insisted, cutting him off.

  Jasper shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. Anyway, people are saying Aaron was the one who summoned it. Somebody told somebody that they overheard you two fighting and everyone saw Aaron summon all those chaos creatures last summer …”

  Call gaped. “That’s ridiculous,” he said.

  Aaron looked around the room. When he met other apprentices’ gazes, they looked away. Some of the Iron Years started giggling. One began to cry.

  “Who’s saying that?” Aaron demanded, turning back to Jasper. His ears were pink and his expression was that of someone who wanted to be anywhere but where he was.

  “Everyone,” Jasper said. “It’s a rumor. I guess because Makars are supposed to be unstable and everything, they figure you tried to kill Callum. I mean, some people think it’s understandable because Call is so annoying, but other people figure that there’s some kind of love triangle situation going on here with you two and Tamara.”

  “Jasper,” Tamara said in her firmest voice. “Tell people that’s not true.”

  “Which part?” Jasper asked.

  “None of it is true!” Tamara said, her voice rising dramatically.

  Jasper held up both his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Fine. But you know how gossip is. No one is going to listen to me.” With that, he wheeled away from the table, back toward the food.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Tamara said to Aaron. “He’s ridiculous and he gets mean when he’s scared. He’s probably nervous about his date and taking it out on you.”

  Maybe, Call thought, but something really was going on. People were definitely cheating looks in their direction. Call got up and chased after Jasper, catching his elbow as he’d reached a large pot of cinnamon-and-clove-smelling brown liquid.

  “Jasper, wait,” he said. “You can’t just tell us all that and then walk away. Who started the rumor? Who’s making this stuff up? You’ve got to have a guess, at least.”

  The boy frowned. “Not me, if that’s what you’re implying — although I have to say, it got me thinking. Aaron told you two different stories about his past. That’s pretty suspicious. We have no idea where he came from, or who his family really is. He just shows up out of nowhere and then, boom! Makar.”

  “Aaron is a good person,” Call said. “Like, way better than either of us.”

  Jasper sighed. He wasn’t laughing or sneering or making any of his usual pompous expressions. “Don’t you think that’s suspicious?” he asked.

  “No,” Call said, stomping back to the table. Fury boiled inside him. Jasper was an idiot. In fact, everyone in the room was an idiot except for him, Tamara, and Aaron. He flung himself down at their table. Tamara was leaning in to talk to Aaron, her hand on his shoulder.

  “Fine,” Aaron was saying, his voice strained. “But I really think we should leave.”

  “What’s going on?” Call asked.

  “I was just telling him not to let this get to him.” Tamara was flushed, red spots on both her brown cheeks. Call knew that meant she was furious.

  “It’s ridiculous,” Call said. “It’ll blow over. Nobody can believe something this stupid for long.”

  But Aaron’s expression told Call that he wasn’t reassured. His green eyes were darting around the Refectory as if he half expected people to start throwing things at him.

  “I’m going to go back to the room,” he said.

  “Hold on there.” It was Alex Strike, his long, lanky form casting a shadow across their table. His Gold Year band gleamed as he held out his hand. In the center of his palm were three round, reddish stones. “These are for you.”

  “You want to play marbles?” Call guessed.

  Alex’s mouth crinkled up into a smile. “They’re guide-stones,” he said. “The Masters are having a meeting tonight. You’re invited.” He wiggled his fingers. “One stone for each of you.”

  “We’re invited?” Aaron said as the three of them plucked the stones out of Alex’s hand. He looked nervous. “Why?”

  “Search me. I’m just the messenger.”

  “So what do we do with these?” Call asked, examining his stone. Perfectly round and shiny, it did look a lot like a red marble. The big ones that you shot with.

  “The Masters have been moving their meetings around to preserve security,” said Alex. “Unless you have one of these, you can’t find the room. The meeting starts at six — just let the stone take you where you’re supposed to go.”

  Six o’clock found the three of them sitting in their new common room with Havoc, staring at the stones in their hands. They were all dressed in their blue school uniforms; Aaron had polished his shoes and Tamara had her hair down, gold barrettes clipped above her ears. Call’s concession to fanciness was washing his face.

  “Whoa!” Tamara said as her guide-stone lit up like a tiny Christmas light. Aaron’s followed, flickering, and then Call’s. They all stood.

  “Havoc, stay here,” Call told his wolf. After the previous meeting with the Assembly, he didn’t want to give them any excuse to remember Havoc’s existence.

  Out in the hall, Tamara was using her stone to navigate. When she turned in the wrong direction, the glow of the stone dimmed.

  “Master Rufus should have given us one of these when we went into the tunnels,” Call said as they set off. “Instead of that vanishing map.”

  “I think that would have defeated the purpose of the lesson,” Aaron pointed out, folding his fingers over his stone so he didn’t have to keep squinting into its light. “You know, about finding your own way.”

  “Don’t be superior,” Tamara said, making an abrupt turn. All of their stones went to half-light.

  “I think you, uh, missed the turn,” Call said, pointing backward, into the large room with an underground waterfall that the stone seemed to indicate they should be heading into.

  “Come on,” she said, scrambling ahead, leaving Aaron and Call nothing to do but follow.

  She ducked into the small entryway that led to a space with high ceilings and a small group of bats huddled together, making little nickering noises to one another. The whole room stank of them. Call pinched his nose.

  “What are you doing, Tamara?” Aaron asked, voice low.

  She hunched down and crawled into a tight passageway. Call and Aaron traded worried looks. It was dangerous to explore the caves without a map or a guide of some kind. There were deep pits and boiling lakes of mud, not to mention elementals.

  Heading into the passageway after Tamara, Call really hoped she knew where she was going.

  The rock was rough under his hands as he crawled along what seemed to be a naturally forming tunnel. It narrowed, and Call wasn’t sure they were going to fit through. His heart began to thud as their only light faded dimmer and dimmer. After a few tense minutes, the area opened up into an unfamiliar but not particularly dangerous-looking room. Their stones brightened.

  “Are you going to explain what all of that was about?” Call demanded.

  Tamara put her hands on her hips. “We have no idea who’s after you. It might be one of the Masters or someone who knows where the meeting is being held. We can’t go the direct route. There might be a trap. The whole point of stones like these is to make sure we can’t get lost.”

  “Oh, that’s smart,” Call said, trying to ignore the cold dread pooling in his stomach. He wanted to believe that whoever his enemy or enemies were, they weren’t the current Masters at the school. He wanted to believe it was just some sneaky minion of Master Joseph or some random miserable Makar-hating mage. Or maybe a student who Call had annoyed in a big way. Call knew he could be really annoying, especially when he was putting effort into it.

  Call was still mulling it all over when they arrived at the room the Masters had chosen for the meeting. They were late and the session had already begun. A group of Masters in black sat around a semicircle of smoothly polished marble. A long, low marble bench ran across the outside of the semicircle, allowing the Masters to face the center of the room. The stalactites that hung from the ceiling ended in round pendant bulbs of clear stone, each one glowing with a yellowish light.

  “Tamara, Aaron, and Call,” Master Rufus intoned as they filed into the room. “Please take your seats.”

  He indicated three heaps of jumbled polished rocks directly in front of the Masters’ table. Call stared. Were they supposed to sit on those? Wouldn’t the rocks just scatter, depositing them each onto the floor in an embarrassing pile?

  But Tamara brushed past him confidently and sat on one of the rock heaps. She sank down slightly and crossed her arms, but the rocks didn’t scatter. Aaron followed and Call went after him, throwing himself down on a rock pile. The stones hissed and clattered as his weight displaced them, but it was like sitting in a chair made out of taffy, though less sticky — the rocks molded and reformed around him until he was sitting as comfortably as his leg would allow.

  “Cool!” Call exclaimed. “We need one of these in our common room.”

  “Call,” Rufus said darkly. Call had the feeling Master Rufus still thought he knew something he wasn’t saying. “Please restrain your commentary on the furniture; this is a meeting.”

  Really? I thought it was a party! Call wanted to say but didn’t. Definitely, there couldn’t have been less of a party atmosphere. Master North and Master Milagros flanked Rufus; Anastasia Tarquin, her steely silver hair piled on her head, sat near the end of the table, her dark gaze fixed on Call.

  “What’s this about?” Aaron asked, looking around the room. “Are we in trouble?”

  “No,” said Master Milagros at the same time that Master North said, “Maybe,” and snorted.

  “We’re just trying to reason out how this attack could have happened,” said Master Milagros with a sideways look in Anastasia’s direction. “We had so many safeguards in place. We know you’ve gone through what happened before, but can you tell us all one more time, for the record?”

  Call tried to tell them, tried to focus on details that might be helpful instead of the terror and helplessness he’d felt. Tamara and Aaron jumped in to explain their parts. Call made a particular point of highlighting how helpful Havoc had been, since he was still worried about the view the Assembly had taken on Chaos-ridden animals.

  “Someone must be very determined. If anyone has an idea why, this would be a good time to tell us.” Master Rufus gave Call a stern look from across the table, as if urging him once more to confess. After Call had brought the Assembly the head of the Enemy of Death, he’d thought that his secret was safe, but now it felt closer to the surface than ever before. If only he could just tell them. If only they’d believe that Call was different from Constantine.

  Call opened his mouth, but nothing came out. It was Tamara who answered. “We have no idea why anyone would want to hurt Call,” she said. “Call doesn’t have any enemies.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Call muttered, and Tamara kicked him. Hard.

  “There’s a rumor going around among the students,” Master Milagros said. “We hesitate to bring it up, but we need to hear it from you. Aaron, did you have anything to do with the elemental attack?”

  “Of course he didn’t!” Call yelled. This time Tamara wasn’t kicking him for sticking his oar in.

  “We need to hear it from Aaron,” Master Milagros said gently.

  Aaron looked down at his hands. “No, I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t hurt Call. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “We believe you, Aaron. Callum is a Makar,” said Master Rockmaple, a short mage with a bristly red beard. Call hadn’t liked him at the Iron Trial, but he was glad Master Rockmaple believed Aaron. “There are any number of reasons those who oppose the Magisterium and what it stands for would attack a Makar. I think our primary concern should be discovering how a malicious elemental gained access to a student’s room and — more importantly — how we can make sure it never happens again.”

  Call looked over at Aaron. He was still studying his fingers, picking at the skin around his nails. For the first time, Call noticed that they were bit to the quick.

  “It wasn’t just any elemental,” said Master Rufus. “It was one of the great elementals. One of those from our own holding cells. Its name was Skelmis.”

  Call thought about Automotones crashing through the house of one of his father’s friends a year before, eager to destroy Call. Automotones had been another of the great elementals. It was disturbing to think that someone had been trying to murder Call for more than a year and that they seemed to be able to harness the most powerful creatures in the Magisterium to do it. Call wondered if it could be one of the Masters after all. He looked around the table and shuddered.