“What? No!” Tamara said, shaking her head for emphasis. “It’s too dangerous. He’s got a chaos elemental.”
“Havoc will be with me. And freeing Aaron won’t work otherwise.” Call looked her in the eye and hoped she could see that he wasn’t going to back down. “Trust me.”
Tamara nodded once. Then, with a quick smile at him, she slid through the door, the tread of her boots so soft that after two steps, he could no longer make them out over Drew’s giggles and the growl of the chaos elemental. He counted to ten — one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand — and then flung open the door as wide as it would go.
“Hey, Drew,” Call said, plastering on a grin. “This sure doesn’t look like pony school to me.”
Drew jerked back so hard in surprise that he hauled on the chain, yanking Aaron several feet up. Aaron yelled out in pain, making Havoc growl.
“Call?” said Drew in disbelief, and Call flashed back to that night in the ditch outside the Magisterium, Drew shivering and shouting out for Call, his ankle snapped. Behind him, Call could see Tamara starting to climb the far wall, using the stacked cages as a sort of ladder, jamming her boots in between the bars, moving as silently as a cat. “What are you doing here?”
“Seriously? What am I doing here?” Call demanded. “What are you doing here? Besides trying to feed one of your fellow students to a chaos elemental. I mean, seriously, what did Aaron do to you? Beat you on a test? Take the last piece of lichen at dinner?”
“Shut up, Call.”
“Do you really think you won’t get caught?”
“I haven’t gotten caught yet.” Drew seemed to be recovering from his surprise. He gave Call a nasty smile.
“Was it all just an act — all that stuff about Master Lemuel, all those times you pretended to be a regular student? Have you been a spy for the Enemy all along?” Call wasn’t just playing for time now; he was curious. Drew looked the same — tangly brown hair, skinny, big blue eyes, freckles — but there was something behind his eyes Call hadn’t seen before, something ugly and dark.
“The Masters are so stupid,” said Drew. “Always worrying about what the Enemy was doing outside the Magisterium, worrying about the Treaty. Never thinking there could be a spy right among them. Even when I escaped the Magisterium to send the Enemy a message, what did they do?” He opened his blue eyes wide, and for a moment, Call caught a glimpse of the boy on the bus, sounding nervous about going to magic school. “ ‘Oh, Master Lemuel is so mean. He scares me.’ And they fired him!” Drew laughed, the innocent mask slipping away again, showing the coldness underneath.
Havoc growled at that, sliding between Drew and Call. “What were you bringing the Enemy a message about?” Call demanded. To his relief, Tamara was almost at the rafters. “Was it about Aaron?”
“The Makar,” said Drew. “All these years, the mages have waited for a Makar, but they’re not the only ones. We were waiting, too.” He jerked on the chain holding Aaron, who made a noise of pain, but Call didn’t look up. He couldn’t. He kept staring at Drew, as if he could make Drew pay attention to nothing but him.
“We?” Call said. “Because I just see one crazy person here. You.”
Drew ignored his dig. He even ignored Havoc. “You can’t think I’m in charge of this place,” he said. “Don’t be stupid, Call. I bet you saw the Chaos-ridden, the elementals. I bet you can feel it. You know who’s running this show.”
Call swallowed. “The Enemy,” he said.
“The Enemy … isn’t what you think.” Drew rattled the chain idly. “We could be friends, Call. I’ve been keeping an eye on you. We could be on the same side.”
“We really couldn’t. Aaron’s my friend. And the Enemy wants him dead, doesn’t he? He doesn’t want another Makar to challenge him.”
“It’s so much fun. You don’t know anything. You think Aaron’s your friend. You think everything they told you in the Magisterium is true. It’s not. They told Aaron they’d keep him safe, but they didn’t. They couldn’t.” He jerked on the chain holding Aaron, and Call winced, waiting for Aaron’s cry of pain.
It didn’t come. Call looked up. Aaron was no longer dangling. Tamara had pulled him up to the rafter and was kneeling over him, her fingers feverishly working to undo the chain around his ankle.
“No!” Drew yanked on the chain once more in a rage, but Tamara had broken it at her end. Drew let go as the chain came falling down.
“Look, we’re going to just leave now,” said Call. “I’m going to back out of here and —”
“You’re not leaving!” Drew shouted, racing forward to press his hand against the glass container.
It was like he’d slid a key into a lock and opened a door, but way more violent. The container shattered, glass blowing in all directions. Call threw his hands up to cover his face, as glass shards, like a rain of tiny needles, pierced his forearms. Wind seemed to be blowing through the room. Havoc was whimpering, and somewhere, Tamara and Aaron were yelling.
Slowly, Call opened his eyes.
The chaos elemental surged up in front of him, filling his view with shadows. Its darkness churned with half-formed faces and toothy mouths. Seven clawed arms reached out for him at once, some scaled, some hairy, and some as pale as dead flesh.
Call gagged and staggered back a step. His hand slapped blindly at his side — his fingers closing around Miri’s hilt, and he drew the blade from its sheath, swinging it out in front of him in a big, curving arc.
Miri sank into something — something that gave under the blade like rotten fruit. Howls poured from the chaos monster’s many mouths. There was a long gash down one of its arms, darkness pouring out of the wound to swirl in the air like smoke from a fire. Another arm tried to grab him, but Call dropped to the ground and it succeeded only in grazing his shoulder. Where it had touched, though, his arm went instantly numb, and Miri dropped from his fingers.
Call struggled up onto his elbow, trying to reach across his body with his good hand, scrabbling for Miri. But he was out of time. The elemental lunged, rolling toward him across the floor like an oil slick, a huge, toadlike tongue slithering out, right for Call —
With a howl, Havoc threw himself into the air, landing directly atop the back of the elemental. His teeth sank into its slick surface, his claws piercing the roiling darkness. The monster spasmed, rearing back. Heads exploded out all over its body, arms shooting out to grab for Havoc, but the wolf held on, riding the monster.
Seeing his chance, Call scrambled to his feet, grabbing Miri with his good hand. He lunged forward and sank the knife into what he thought was the elemental’s side.
The blade came away covered in dripping black, halfway between smoke and oil. The chaos elemental roared and thrashed, hurling Havoc off. The wolf flew and hit the floor on the far side of the room, near a pair of doors. He whimpered once, and then was still.
“Havoc!” Call shouted, darting toward his wolf. He was halfway there, when he heard a growling behind him. He whirled on the chaos elemental. Rage was pouring through him — if the creature had hurt Havoc, he would cut it up into a thousand gross, oily pieces. He stalked forward, Miri flashing in his hand.