by Holly Black
“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?”
“It doesn’t matter where I am. What matters is that you children are all in a great deal of trouble,” Master Rufus said. “An enormous amount of trouble and also a great deal of danger. Callum Hunt, you are already on thin ice. Aaron Stewart, you are a Makar and you have responsibilities — responsibilities that include behaving responsibly. And you, Tamara Rajavi, of the three of you, I expected you to know better.”
“Master Rufus,” Jasper began, in his sweetest tattletale voice, “I’ll have you know that I never —”
“As for you, Jasper deWinter,” Master Rufus said, cutting him off. “Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you really are more interesting than I originally imagined. But the four of you must return to the Magisterium immediately.”
Jasper looked horrified, probably for several reasons.
“Are you back at the Magisterium?” Call asked.
Master Rufus appeared highly peeved by that question. “Indeed I am, Callum. After spending most of yesterday and all of today fruitlessly searching for you children, one of you must have lost your protection against scrying. I see that you’re in some kind of vehicle. Pull over, tell me where you are, and some mages will be along to get you shortly.”
“I don’t think we can do that,” Callum said, heart pounding.
“And why not?” Master Rufus’s eyebrows twitched with barely contained annoyance.
Call hesitated.
“Because we’re on a mission,” Tamara said quickly. “We’re going to recover the Alkahest.”
“I’m the Makar,” Aaron said. “I’m supposed to save people. They’re not supposed to save me — they resent having to save me. And I’ve been told plenty that I can’t succeed doing stuff alone, so Call is here to be my counterweight. Tamara is here because she’s clever and crafty. And Jasper is …”
“Comic relief?” Call ventured under his breath.
“I’m your friend, too, you idiot!” Jasper burst out. “I can be clever!”
“Anyway,” Aaron said, trying to recover the situation. “We’re a team and we’re getting the Alkahest back, so please don’t send any other elementals after us.”
“Send any other elementals after you?” Master Rufus sounded genuinely confused. “What on earth do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” Aaron said in that flat voice he used when he was angry and trying not to show it. “We all know. Automotones nearly killed us, and he came from the Magisterium. You released him to hunt us down.”
Now Master Rufus looked shocked. “There must be a mistake. Automotones is here, our prisoner; he has been for hundreds of years.”
“It’s not a mistake,” Tamara said. “Maybe the other mages didn’t tell you, because we’re your apprentices. But it absolutely happened. Automotones murdered a woman, too. Burned her house down.”
Tamara’s voice shook.
“These are lies,” Master Rufus said.
“We’re not lying,” Aaron told him. “But I guess that means you trust us about as much as we trust you.”
“Then you’re being lied to,” said Master Rufus. “I don’t know — I don’t understand yet — but you must come back to the Magisterium. It’s more important now than ever. This is the only place where I can protect you.”
“We’re not coming back.” Surprisingly, Jasper was speaking. He turned to Call. “Hang up the phone.”
Call stared at ghostly Rufus. “I, uh, don’t know how.”
“Earth!” Tamara yelped. “Earth is the opposite of air!”
“Right. I, uh —” Call reached down and grabbed Miri out of the sheath on his belt. Metal had earth magic properties. “Sorry,” he said, and plunged the knife into ghostly Rufus.
Rufus disappeared with a pop, like a burst bubble.
Tamara screamed.
“I didn’t kill him, did I?” Call said, looking around at everyone’s shocked faces. Only Havoc seemed unmoved. He’d gone back to sleep.
“No,” Jasper said. “It’s just, most people just use the earth power to shut down the connection. But I guess that’s a lot of restraint to expect from you, weirdo.”
“I am not a weirdo,” Call grumbled, sheathing his blade.
“You’re a little weird,” Aaron said.
“Oh, yeah, well, who lost their protective rock?” Call demanded. “Who forgot to transfer it to their new clothes?”
Tamara groaned in frustration. “That’s how the mages found us! Jasper, did you?”
Jasper held up his hands, flummoxed. “That’s what that rock was? No one told me!”
“Now isn’t the time to worry about this,” Aaron insisted. “We made some mistakes. The important thing is that we hide from the mages as best we can.”
Call went to pull the car back onto the main road, when he realized the engine had stalled out.
Aaron had to spark the wires all over again, while they held their collective breaths, since there were no more cars to take if the Morris conked out on them. A few moments later, though, Aaron had it running once more.
Tamara didn’t have any more stones, so they took turns passing around the ones they had, so the mages might not scry the right person at the right time.
Call drove for the rest of the day and through the night, with the other kids sleeping in shifts. Call didn’t sleep, though. At each rest stop, he acquired more and more coffee until he felt as though his head was going to spin around like a top and then pop right off.
The landscape had changed, becoming more mountainous. The air was cooler, and pine trees took the place of mulberry and dogwood.
“I could drive for a while,” Tamara offered, coming out of a Gas and Grub in Maine. Dawn was breaking by then and Call had been caught at lea
st once driving with a single eye open.
Aaron had bought a Butterfinger and a Honey Bun and was mashing the candy bar into the pastry to make a bizarre sugar hot dog. Call approved. Jasper ate pretzels and stared.
“No,” Call said, taking a swig from his coffee. One of his eyes twitched a little, but he ignored it. “I’ve got this.”
Tamara shrugged and handed the directions to Jasper. It was his turn to navigate.
“I refuse,” Jasper said, taking a long look at Call. “You need to sleep. You’re going to drive into a ditch and we’re going to die, all because you won’t take a nap. So take a nap!”
“I’ll set an alarm,” Tamara offered.
“I could stretch my legs,” said Aaron. “Go ahead. Lie down in the backseat.”
Now that they mentioned it, Call was feeling kind of fuzzy-headed. “Okay,” he said, yawning. “But just for twenty minutes. Dad used to say that that was the ideal amount of time for a nap.”
“We’ll take Havoc for a real walk,” Tamara said. “See you in twenty.”
Call climbed into the backseat. But when he closed his eyes, what he saw was Master Rufus, his eyes going wide as Call drew Miri and stabbed the image of him. His expression had reminded Call of the way his father had looked, right before Call used magic to slam him against a wall.
Despite being exhausted, Call couldn’t stop his brain from showing him those images over and over again.
And as soon as he shoved those images away, new ones rose up to take their place. Images of things that hadn’t happened yet, but might. The look of betrayal on Aaron’s face when he discovered who Call really was, the look of fury on Tamara’s. Jasper’s smug certainty that he’d been right about Call all along.
Finally, he gave up and got out of the car. Early-morning sunlight dappled the grass, and the music of distant birdsong hung in the air. Aaron and Tamara and Havoc were gone, but Jasper was sitting at a worn old picnic table. Sparks flew from his fingers as he set fire to a pinecone and then watched it turn to embers.
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” Jasper said.
“I know,” Call told him. “But I wanted to talk to you about something, while the others aren’t here.”
Jasper narrowed his eyes. “Oh, going behind your friends’ backs? This should be interesting.”
Call sat down at the picnic table. The wind had picked up and it was blowing his hair into his eyes. “When we get to the destination on the map, hopefully, my father is going to be there and he’s still going to have the Alkahest. But I need to talk to him — alone.”
“About what?”
“He’ll listen to me, but not if he thinks a bunch of apprentices are going to attack him. And I don’t want Aaron getting too close, in case my dad does try to hurt him. I need you and Tamara and Aaron to keep back, at least until I finish my conversation.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Jasper still looked suspicious, but not unconvinced.
Call couldn’t tell him the truth — that it was easier to lie to Jasper than to his friends. “Because you care about protecting Aaron a lot more than you care about protecting me.”
“True,” said Jasper. “He’s the Makar. You’re just …” He looked curiously at Call. “I don’t know what you are.”
“Yeah, well,” Call said. “That makes two of us.”
Before Jasper could say anything else, Tamara and Aaron appeared from between the trees, Havoc bounding around excitedly beside them.
Call slid off the bench. “What’s he so happy about?”
“He ate a squirrel.” Tamara sounded disapproving.
As Call headed toward the car, he bent down to pet Havoc’s head and whispered, “Good dog. Excellent hunting instincts. We eat squirrels, not people, am I right?”
“Never too early to start molding his character,” Aaron said.
“That’s what I was thinking.” Together Call and Aaron helped heave a reluctant Havoc into the backseat. Jasper and Tamara clambered in after him, and Aaron took the passenger seat.
The moment they all sat down, the doors of the car slammed shut in unison.
“What’s going on?” Tamara demanded. She scrabbled at her door, but it wouldn’t open. None of their doors would budge. “Start the car, Aaron!”
Aaron reached across Call for the wires, trying to get a spark. Nothing happened. No sound of the engine turning over. He did it again, and again. Sweat started to prickle along Call’s back. What was going on?
From the backseat, Jasper shouted, “I tried to use metal magic and sparks hurt my hand instead.”
“It must be warded,” said Tamara.
Something swooped in front of the windshield. Call yelled and Aaron jerked back, wires dropping from his hands.
Two huge air elementals had appeared in front of the car. One of them looked like a six-legged horse, if horses were about twice the size they normally were. The other one resembled a brontosaurus with wings. Both were bridled and saddled: Master Rockmaple was riding one, and Master Milagros the second.
“We are in so much trouble,” said Jasper.
Master Milagros slid from the back of her six-legged horse and stalked over to the car. She lifted her hands, spread her fingers, and hurled from her palms long threads of glimmering metal wires. They wrapped around the front of the car and within seconds, it was tightly secured.
As she performed her metal magic, Milagros looked through the windshield at the kids. She shook her head disapprovingly, but Callum thought she looked a little bit as if she found the whole thing … funny.
She whirled around without a word to them and marched back to the elementals. She tossed a rope of metal to Rockmaple and climbed back up onto her own elemental, securing her rope to the pommel of the saddle.
“Oh, my God,” said Tamara. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
She threw herself against her door, but the car was already rising into the air like the basket below a balloon. Everyone in the car shrieked as maps and empty soda cans and candy bar wrappers flew off the dashboard and out of the cup holders and rattled around inside the car.
“What are they doing?” Call yelled over the sound of the wind.
“Taking us to the Magisterium — what do you think?” Jasper yelled back.
“They’re going to fly us to Virginia? Won’t someone normal, you know, notice?”
“They’re probably using air magic to block us from view,” Tamara said. Then she yelped as the car swung out over the forest below. All Call could see beneath them were miles of green trees.
“In movies, people pretend to be sick to get their jailers to let them out,” Aaron told them. “Maybe one of us could try throwing up — or frothing from the mouth.”
“Like we’re rabid?” Call asked.
“We don’t have time to argue,” Tamara said, reaching into her satchel, clearly completely panicked, and coming out with a little bottle of clear liquid. “I have hand soap. Quick, Jasper, drink it. You’ll definitely froth.”
“I am not drinking that,” Jasper said. “I am a deWinter. We do not froth.”
Aaron squinted at the air elementals pulling their car like a sled, as though he was reconsidering his own plan. “I’m not sure they’d hear us if we shouted anyway.”
“Wait,” said Call, turning in his seat. “I’ve watched my dad work on cars my whole life. You know what goes really early? The floor pan. Look down. It’s rusted, right? All we have to do is kick.”
For a moment, they all just stared at him. Then Tamara started kicking the floor with a vengeance. Havoc leaped up onto the seat, whining as Aaron climbed over the passenger seat to help. After three kicks, his booted foot went right through.
“This is going to work!” Jasper shouted, as much with surprise as with anything else.
A few more kicks and they were able to peel back the floor of the car. Tamara looked over at Call and then Aaron.
“Ready?” she asked.
“I’ve got Havoc,” Call s
aid.
“Wait, who’s got me?” Jasper asked, but Call ignored him and, grabbing hold of his wolf and his backpack, jumped out into the dark nothingness below the car. Havoc yipped, limbs flailing, tail cycling.
Above him, Call saw Tamara leaping out, her hair flying up in the blue sky. A moment later, he saw what he thought was Aaron shoving Jasper through the hole. Then Aaron appeared, falling through the air.
Call drew on the air, weaving an invisible net of magic around and beneath him. His fall slowed, and Havoc stopped barking as they descended steadily into the woods below.
Call hit the ground on his back, but the impact was light. He let go of Havoc, who rolled to his feet, his eyes wild. Call wasn’t sure exactly where they were and cursed himself for, in his panic, not remembering the map. But a moment later he realized that he couldn’t have found their place on it anyway. Even if they’d had it, it would have been useless.
Beside him, Havoc whined, looking up in the sky, as though he might be forced to fly again at any moment. He barked as Tamara drifted down gracefully, her dark braid floating up around her head. She alighted on a fallen log, a huge smile on her face. “That was amazing,” she said. “I always thought I liked fire magic the best, but air —”
WHAM! Jasper slammed down onto a pile of pine needles. A moment later Aaron touched down beside him, his arms crossed, looking furious.
“You let me fall,” Jasper moaned.
“I did not,” Aaron said defensively. “He said he could do it himself! He said he’d be fine!”
“Seems okay to me,” said Call. Tamara shot him a quelling look and ran over to Jasper, who pushed himself half upright.
“Ow,” Jasper muttered, collapsing again. “Ow ow ow.”
Tamara was leaning over Jasper, who was milking the attention for all it was worth.
“The pain,” he said. “The agony.”
“Aaron, don’t you have a first-aid kit in your backpack?” Tamara said.
“Yeah, but I left my backpack behind.” Aaron scanned the sky. “How long do you think before they notice they’re hauling an empty car?”
“Probably not very long,” Tamara said. “We need to hide.”
