The Bronze Key

Master Rufus squeezed Call’s shoulder and then departed the Infirmary. Call could hear his footfalls all the way out. He kept his eyes shut. Somewhere across the room, Master Amaranth was humming, doing something that involved clinking glass.

I’ll count to thirty, Call thought. Then I will pretend to wake up. That way she won’t know I was faking in front of Master Rufus.

He began to count … but he fell asleep instead.

The next time Call woke, Tamara was standing over him. When he tried to speak, she put her hand over his mouth. She smelled like sandalwood.

“Can you stand up?” she whispered. “Nod or shake your head.”

He shrugged and she, exasperated, took her hand away. “Don’t wake up Alex and don’t give Master Amaranth any reason to come in here. It took forever for her to leave.”

“I won’t,” he whispered back and swung down off the bed. His legs held him up. He felt pretty good, actually. Rested. He was still wearing the clothes he’d passed out in on the highway. “What happened?”

“Shhhh. Come on.” She led him out of the Infirmary and into the hall. Call gave a last look back before the door closed. Alex appeared to slumber on, a bandage over his shoulder. Master Amaranth was nowhere in sight.

Aaron and Alma were waiting for them in the hall. Like Tamara, Aaron was in his school uniform. His eyes lit up when he saw Call, and he stepped forward to clap him on the back.

“You okay?” he asked.

“A little sore, but yeah, better,” Call said. He glanced at Alma, who was wearing a flowing cotton dress. Her arms were swathed in bandages.

“Are you totally covered in fox bites?” asked Call.

Alma’s face darkened. Aaron shook his head and made a throat-slitting gesture at Call behind her back.

“We will not speak of it!” Alma said, glowering.

“Okay.” Call wondered if Alma regretted throwing the truck door open. It was pretty much all her fault that he and his friends had almost been killed by bears. “So what are you doing here, then?”

“You fulfilled your part of the bargain,” Alma said. “All is prepared for me to fulfill mine.”

That meant Jennifer was somewhere nearby. She had to be. Call shuddered at the thought — he wasn’t at all sure he was ready to see another dead person talk. It reminded him too much of Verity Torres’s head and the riddles. That was serious Evil Overlord business.

Aaron’s face looked as if he was having some of the same doubts. But Tamara seemed determined.

“Good,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Alma began to march down the hall. They followed her. Unlike Alex, she didn’t seem interested in doing any fancy air magic to conceal them. It must have been late, though, and the corridors were pretty deserted. They stuck close to the walls and took advantage of the shadows.

“Is Alex okay?” Tamara asked.

Call felt his skin prickle. It was normal for her to be concerned about Alex, he told himself, even if she’d never paid attention to him before. It didn’t mean anything. “I heard the Masters talking earlier,” he reported. “Or at least Rufus talking to Amaranth. He’s going to be fine. So you know, you can tell Kimiya that.”

Tamara looked puzzled. “She doesn’t know he got hurt.”

Call gave an airy wave. “Well, you never know what you’ve missed when you’ve been passed out, right?”

“Shh,” said Alma, gesturing for quiet. They had entered the part of the Magisterium where the Masters’ rooms were. They made their way down it in silence to Anastasia’s room.

Alma knocked on the door with three rapid taps, paused, and knocked again. A moment later, Anastasia threw the door open. She wore a white crepe dress with a long cape thrown over it, embroidered with black thread. Her silver hair was twisted into an updo. She gestured for them all to come in.

They stepped into her room and Call almost gasped. The whole place was spotless, as it had been before, but on the bare marble table in the middle of the room lay Jennifer.

She looked like she was asleep. Her long black hair puddled around her head. Her feet were bare, and she wore the same bloodstained dress she’d been wearing at the party. Her hands were folded over her chest.

“Her body has been held by the Collegium since the murder,” said Alma, locking the door behind them. “They have preserved her against decay, for the time when she might be needed as evidence.”

Call wondered if that was how Constantine had preserved Verity Torres’s head all those years ago. He felt as though no matter what he did, he veered closer and closer to Constantine’s life and Constantine’s decisions. It was like being on a collision course with himself.

“Aren’t they going to notice her missing?” Aaron asked.

“We will have the body back before anyone at the Collegium is looking for it,” Anastasia informed them.

Call thought of how fast elementals traveled and of the Assembly member’s particular skill in controlling them. If Anastasia borrowed one of the elementals from the Magisterium, she probably could get Jennifer back to the Collegium pretty quickly. But if Anastasia and Alma could steal a body out of the Collegium, then the spy could have probably managed a lot of sneaky things, too.

After all, he or she was the greatest Makar of their generation.

“I will explain what we must do,” Alma said to Call and Aaron. “You’re going to have to learn a fairly difficult skill and you’re going to have to learn it quickly.”

Call remembered Alma trying to teach them about the soul tap. It was hard to learn how to do something from someone who understood the theory and had seen it done but had never done it themselves. It had taken him and Aaron hours to learn. Call wasn’t sure they had hours this time.

“And you,” Anastasia said to Tamara. “You need to prevent anyone from looking for Callum or Aaron.”

“What?” Tamara asked.

“Master Amaranth is likely to check on her charges before we’re done. Go back and let her know that Callum has returned to his rooms and that he will visit the Infirmary tomorrow if she likes. We need to be sure that the whole school isn’t up in arms, looking for Call while we’re in the middle of an illicit magical experiment.”

Tamara sighed. “Fine. I’ll be back.”

“Shouldn’t one of us go with you?” Call asked. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of any of them wandering around the Magisterium alone with the spy on the loose. He glanced over at Aaron to see if he was thinking along the same lines, but Aaron was staring at Jen’s body on the table, his face white.