The Bronze Key (Magisterium #3)- Holly Black Page 0,16

could sleep in?” she asked. “All I have is this” — she indicated her floaty dress — “and, yeah, I probably shouldn’t …”

Call realized he was blushing. He wished it could be totally uncomplicated, having a girl best friend. It should be just like it was with Aaron. It shouldn’t matter that Tamara was a girl. Still, he felt clumsy and stupid as he fished around in his T-shirt drawer until he found an oversize shirt that read WELCOME TO THE LURAY CAVERNS on it in Day-Glo yellow. He handed it over silently.

“Thanks,” Tamara said. “I’ll wash it and give it back to you —”

“That’s fine, you can keep it —”

“— And, Call?”

“I mean, I’ve never worn it anyway, it’s too big, and —”

“Call,” Tamara said, again, looking at him with big, serious eyes. “We’re going to keep you safe, okay?”

Call wished he could believe it. “Okay,” he said.

They sat out in the yard the next day, Tamara back in her yellow dress, Jasper in a strange combination of Call’s clothes and his own. It was brightly sunny, and Alastair had made them lemonade out of powder, which Tamara was giving the fisheye. Call suspected she didn’t drink a lot of reconstituted things. Jasper was looking around haughtily at Call’s small backyard and slightly overgrown grass.

Not that Alastair seemed to notice. He was seated on a rock, tinkering with a broken alarm clock. Even though there were digital alarm clocks and cell phones nowadays, people would pay decent money for old-fashioned phones and other gadgets that had been fixed up to run well.

“So what does it mean?” said Tamara. “If someone’s trying to hurt Call because he’s the …” She swallowed.

“Enemy of Death?” Jasper volunteered.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go around saying ‘Enemy of Death’ a lot,” said Aaron. “We should come up with a code name. Like Captain Fishface.”

Havoc barked. Call agreed with him that the name sucked. “Why Captain Fishface?”

“Well, you have a fishy look,” said Jasper. “Plus, no one would ever guess what we meant because there’s nothing scary about it.”

“Fine, whatever,” said Tamara, sounding as if she thought the whole thing was a waste of time. “So who might know Call is Captain Fishface?”

“I refuse to be called that!” Call said. “Especially in light of recent events.”

Tamara groaned as though this conversation was tormenting her even more than it was tormenting Call. “Okay, what do you want to be called?”

“How about Commander Pinhead?” Aaron asked. Jasper laughed, spitting out his lemonade.

Call put his head in his hands and took a deep breath, drinking in the smells of summer — the perfume of warm earth, cut grass, and machine oil. There was no winning. He was going to wind up with a dumb name no matter what. “Captain Fishface is fine.”

“Good,” Tamara said, rolling her eyes. “Now can we talk about who might know about Call?”

“His father,” Jasper said, and they all glanced at Alastair, who seemed oblivious. He was whistling a jaunty tune in a slightly off-key manner.

“My dad is not trying to kill me,” Call said. A year ago, he hadn’t been so sure of that, but he was sure now. “And I don’t think any of you are, either. Even you, Jasper. Who else?”

“Did any of us tell anyone?” Tamara asked, looking around at them.

“Who would I tell?” Jasper asked, and then blanched at their prolonged stares. “No! Okay? I didn’t tell anyone! It’s too big a secret, and I would get in trouble, too.”

“Me neither,” Aaron said.

Tamara sighed. “I didn’t. But I thought I’d better ask. Okay, so then there’s Master Joseph. He’s got to be pretty mad at Call.”

“I thought he needed Call,” said Jasper. “Isn’t Captain Fishface, like, his whole reason for being?”

Aaron grinned. “I think he hoped that either Call would be a lot more obedient than he is or that he could use Call to bring back Captain Fishface with all his memories intact.”

Call, who thought pretty much the same thing, shuddered. “He might blame me for Drew’s death.”

“He probably blames me, too,” said Aaron. “If it makes you feel any better.”

Drew was Master Joseph’s son. He’d gone to the Magisterium, pretending to be a regular student, but his real reason for being there had been to get close to Call. Drew had even helped his father kidnap Aaron and then swung him over a cage with a chaos elemental inside. The same chaos elemental that, ironically, wound up killing Drew. But Call had to admit