The Bronze Key (Magisterium #3)- Holly Black Page 0,17

that he’d had something to do with it as well. “Okay,” Tamara said. “Top of our suspect list — Master Joseph.”

Call shook his head. “I don’t know. If he is out to get me, why not use the Alkahest? And, well, I just don’t think he’s ready to give up yet. He tried to save my life back in the tomb. I think he’s still got hope that I am going to turn out … more like Captain Fishface.”

“What about Warren?” Aaron asked. They all just stared at him for a long moment.

Call looked at him the way that Tamara had looked at her lemonade. “You think a lizard is trying to kill me? And he faked a note from Celia?”

“He’s an elemental! And he was in the service of the Devoured who gave us that creepy prophecy.” Aaron sighed. “Okay, it was a pretty out-there theory.”

“It’s okay,” Tamara said. “We have to think outside the box. No matter how unlikely, we’ve got to put all our ideas on the table. Or at least on this stretch of grass.”

“We don’t have any suspects,” Call said. “We don’t have any ideas. We don’t even know why I was being targeted. Maybe it was because I’m a Makar. Maybe it had nothing to do with being Captain Fishface. Maybe the person who tried to smoosh me with a chandelier was the same person who let out Automotones to kill all of us.”

“That’s what the mages are going to assume.” Tamara sighed. “I guess it could be true.”

“We’re just going to have to stick together,” said Aaron, smiling up at the blue sky. “And we’re going to figure this out. We’re heroes, right? We’ve got medals. We can do this.”

Eventually, Call got out a pack of cards and they played a couple of rounds of a game that involved slapping one another’s hands. They talked about going back to the Magisterium and what they hoped to accomplish that year. Havoc chased several bees, snapping at them until they buzzed lazily out of his reach. As the afternoon wore on, Stebbins arrived with suitcases for Tamara and a message from her parents that could only be delivered in private. Jasper called home on one of Alastair’s restored chrome candlestick landline phones and then glumly reported that his family would send his things directly to the Magisterium. Call wondered if he’d tried to convince them to rescind permission for him to be there. Call wondered if his parents had forced him to come along in the first place and then quickly pushed away the thought.

“What are you looking at?” Jasper asked him gruffly when he noticed Call staring in his direction.

“Nothing,” Call said. The last person he needed to be worrying about was Jasper.

That night, Alastair grilled steak and they ate it outside, on paper plates, along with buttered corn, snap peas, and cold slices of watermelon. Tamara threw watermelon at Aaron, who got seeds down his shirt. Havoc stood on top of Jasper when Jasper refused to give him a piece of steak. They took turns seeing who could make the sparks above the banked coals on the grill dance. It was almost like a party, except for the specter of Jen’s death, which kept them from laughing too loudly or forgetting for too long that they could be next.

Two days later, Alastair drove them all to the Magisterium. Call sat in the front seat, gazing out the window, while Aaron dozed in the backseat. Tamara was listening to music on her phone and Jasper was reading the most recent comic book he’d found in Call’s room and gotten obsessed with. Havoc was stretched out across their laps, dead asleep.

“You let me know if you want to come home,” Alastair said to Call for what must have been the millionth time. “You’ve done enough. You know plenty of magic — enough to control your abilities. You don’t need the Magisterium.”

Call remembered the way Graves had insisted that Master Rufus give the Assembly updates on how Call and Aaron were doing. He remembered all the references to countries where mages with the ability to control chaos were killed or had their magic bound — even though the party was supposed to be in their honor. While Constantine Madden had been alive, Makaris were awesome. They were desperately needed weapons. They meant the end of the war. But with Constantine Madden dead, Aaron and Call were just a reminder of that war and how it could