Alex was an air mage, and one of the ways he deployed his talent was to shift and shape colored air against the wall of the Gallery cave, creating the illusion of popular movies. Sometimes he changed the endings to amuse himself. Call had a clear memory of an Ewok and droid and ghost Darth Vader conga line in Alex’s version of Return of the Jedi.
Jasper took Celia’s hand and helped her off the couch. Together they went over to the west side of the room, where rows of low stools had been set up. They found two seats together just as the light in that part of the cave dimmed and the first scenes of a movie started to play against the wall.
“Here we go,” Aaron whispered. “She’s going to take advantage of the dark to knock him unconscious.”
Call suddenly felt tired of the whole thing. “No, she’s not,” he said. “I’ve been alone with her dozens of times. If she’d wanted to hurt me, she could have. We should just give up on this. The only danger on this date is Jasper boring Celia to death.”
“Or us being bored to death,” muttered Tamara. “Call’s right, Aaron. Jasper promised to grill her about Call, but I think we can safely say that he’s forgotten all about that.”
Shapes moved against the wall, casting strange patterns of light. Call could see Alex sitting in the back, moving his hands slightly to make the images dance. From what Call could tell, the movie was a combination of Toy Story and Jurassic Park, with toys being chased across the screen by velociraptors.
“This is a dead end,” Call said. “But I have an idea of what we could do tonight.”
That made Aaron look over in surprise. “What?”
“If someone went down into the elemental prison and freed Skelmis, then there are at least some witnesses. There have to be.”
“The other elementals,” Tamara said, realizing what he meant instantly. “They’re imprisoned down there. They would have seen what happened.”
“But wouldn’t the Assembly already have asked them?” said Aaron.
“Not necessarily,” said Call. “Most people are pretty afraid of elementals. They don’t think of them as creatures you can talk to. And they’re hard to fight off. But with two Makaris … and an elemental in a cage …”
“It’s a crazy plan,” said Tamara, but her brown eyes were alight.
“Are you saying you don’t want to do it?” said Call.
“No,” said Tamara. “I’m just saying it’s a crazy plan. How would we get down there?”
“Anastasia practically gave us the whole rundown on how to do it during the meeting,” said Call. “She said she keeps a key in her room, and one around her neck. All we have to do is get into her room when we know she isn’t there and grab the key.”
“And the guards?” said Aaron. “What about the guards at the door?”
“We’ll worry about that when we get there,” Call said. “The spy got in. There must be a way. And if we don’t do it tonight, she’s going to change all her locks. We won’t have this chance again.”
Aaron gave Celia one last suspicious look and nodded his head. Together, they crept out into the hallway. As they started toward the area where the Masters’ rooms were, Call realized there were three complications to his plan. One, he wasn’t sure which room belonged to Anastasia Tarquin. Two, he didn’t have a way in. And three, once they were inside, they were going to have to guess her password.
How hard can it be? he asked himself. Her password was probably something completely obvious. Something they could figure out just from looking at her stuff.
And her room might be obvious, too. He glanced over at Tamara and Aaron. They seemed ready to be convinced that this was a plan that could work. Maybe they’d already thought of a way. And at least they were all doing something, not just waiting around for the spy to strike again.
Call sighed. If the Masters and the Assembly couldn’t be relied upon to solve this, then it was down to them.
IT DIDN’T TAKE them long to reach the corridors where the Masters lived. It wasn’t a part of the Magisterium that Call had ever been to before. Though it wasn’t forbidden, the only students who generally braved the area were assistants like Alex running errands or students carrying messages for Masters. Going there otherwise was too much of an invitation to get in trouble.
Call, in fact, was having a hard time looking confident and walking as he normally did, which had been Tamara’s advice. He kept wanting to slink along the walls, out of sight, though very few other students passed them. No Masters did. They were all still holed up in their meeting, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, which was good news for Call’s plan. It did make things a little spooky as they turned onto the set of corridors where the Masters’ sleeping quarters were, though.
They had some fun guessing whose door was whose. Master Rockmaple must be the massive door studded with brass, Master North must be the plain metal door, Master Rufus the door of brushed silver. The door with a picture of a kitten dangling from a wire that had the message HANG IN THERE underneath obviously belonged to Master Milagros.
Anastasia’s was just as easy to spot. A thick white mat had been placed in front of it, and the door itself was made of pale marble veined with black that looked like smoke. Call remembered her having all her expensive, pale white furniture carried inside on the first day of school.
“This is her,” Call said, pointing. “It has to be.”
“Agreed.” Aaron drew close, tapped his fingers against the marble. He examined the seams of the door, but like all doors in the Magisterium, it didn’t have hinges, just the flat pad where you were supposed to wave your bracelet to get in. Eventually Aaron stepped back, raising his hand. Call felt a familiar pull underneath his rib cage.
Aaron was about to use chaos magic.
“Wait,” Call said. “Don’t — not unless we absolutely have to.”
The pulling feeling went away, but Aaron gave him a look that was almost hurt. “What have you got against chaos magic all of a sudden?”
Call tried to form his jumbled thoughts into words. “I think it brings the Masters running,” he said. “I think they have some way of sensing it, at least when it’s used in the Magisterium.”
“I figured it was the racket that Skelmis made in our room that got them there so fast,” said Tamara thoughtfully. “But they did race over pretty quickly for just some noise. Call could be right.”
“Okay, then,” said Aaron. “What do you suggest?”
For the next ten minutes they went at the door with everything they could think of. Tamara cast a fire spell, but the door was impervious. It didn’t react to freezing, either, or to “Open sesame,” or to the unlocking spell Tamara had used on the cages in the village of the Order of Disorder. It just sat there, looking at them, being a door.
It didn’t react to being kicked, either, Call discovered.
“Seriously?” Aaron said, after they’d exhausted their ideas and were leaning sweatily against the opposite wall. He glared at Master Milagros’s kitten poster. “All this worrying about the safe and we can’t even get past the door.”