“You know you can get arrested for going under the speed limit, too,” said Tamara, her warm ginger ale in the cup holder beside her. She was unbraiding her hair, brushing it out as it blew around with the breeze of her open window. Tamara almost always kept her hair in braids, and Call was surprised by how long it was unbraided, black and shiny and hanging to her waist.
Call pressed his foot harder on the gas and the Morris lurched forward. As the speedometer needle started to edge up, the car began to shudder.
“Uh,” Tamara said. “Maybe we should take a chance on the cops.”
He gave her a quick smile. “Do you really think the Magisterium sent that monster after us?”
“I don’t think Master Rufus would,” Tamara said, hesitating. When she spoke again, the words came out in a rush. “But I’m not sure about anyone else. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Call, if there was something you knew — you’d tell us, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” she said, her fingers nimbly working her hair back into a single long braid.
Call focused on the road, on the blur of lines and keeping his distance from other cars.
“What’s the next exit?” he asked her. “We need gas.”
“Call,” Tamara said again. Now she was playing with her wristband. He wished she’d stop fidgeting. “You know if there was something you wanted to tell me that was a secret, I’d keep it. I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Like you didn’t tell anyone about my dad?” Call said, immediately regretting it. Tamara’s eyes went wide and then angry.
“You know why I did that,” she said. “He tried to steal the Alkahest! He was putting Aaron in danger! And things turned out even worse than we thought. He didn’t have good intentions.”
“Not everything is about Aaron,” Call said, which made him feel even more terrible. It wasn’t Aaron’s fault he was who he was. Call was just glad Aaron was asleep again, his blond head resting on Havoc’s fur.
“Then what is this about, Call?” Tamara said. “Because I have a feeling you know.”
Words felt like they were clawing their way up Call’s throat — he didn’t know if he wanted to yell at Tamara or spill everything just for the relief of not keeping it bottled up anymore — when suddenly the car started shaking hard.
“Call, slow down!” Tamara said.
“I am slowed down!” he protested. “Maybe I should pull over —”
Suddenly and without warning, Master Rufus appeared, popping into existence between Call and Tamara in the front seat of the car.
“Students,” he said, looking very displeased. “Would you like to explain yourselves?”
CALL AND TAMARA screamed. The car swerved, Call’s hands heedless on the wheel. That made Tamara scream even harder. All the screams woke Jasper and Aaron, who added their voices to the screaming. Havoc started to bark. Throughout all the commotion, Master Rufus just floated in the center of the car, looking annoyed and — translucent.
That was the final shock. Call slammed on the brakes, and the car screeched to a stop in the middle of the road. Everyone suddenly stopped screaming. There was a dead silence. Master Rufus continued to be see-through.
“Are you dead?” Call asked in a shaking voice.
“He’s not dead,” Jasper said, managing to sound smug and annoyed even though he was clearly terrified. “He’s calling from an ether phone. This is how it looks on the other end.”
“Oh.” Call filed away the knowledge that the thing he’d always called a tornado phone was actually called something else. He pictured Master Rufus holding the glass jar on his lap, staring into it balefully. “So you’re somewhere else?” he said to Rufus. “Not … actually here?”