“What?” Call asked.

But Jasper just shook his head. He looked troubled. “You’ll have to see it yourselves. I don’t want to talk about it here.”

No matter how much they pressed him, he wouldn’t say anything more, but he made them promise to get out of whatever they were doing and meet him outside the next day, before lunchtime, by the path where they walked Havoc.

“We should bring Havoc, too,” said Call. “He can be a cover story in case anyone asks us what we’re doing outside.”

Tamara frowned. “Do you think you can get away from Alex?”

Call nodded. “No problem,” he said, though he doubted it would, in fact, be no problem.

“Okay. I’m going to bed, then,” Tamara said. “I’m worn-out.”

She headed toward the door, then paused, turned around, and kissed Call on the mouth. “Good night,” she said a little shyly, and practically skipped out of the room.

Jasper stared. “Holy moly,” he said after the door shut behind Tamara. Call didn’t say anything. He was stunned and silent.

Call cleared his throat. All his nerve endings felt exposed. “Now you know why I need advice!”

Jasper chuckled to himself. “You got problems,” he said. “I feel bad for you, son.”

“Get out, Jasper,” Call said in exasperation. “You’re not helping.”

“It’s my room,” Jasper pointed out. Call had to admit this was true. He went back to his own room and lay awake most of the night, dreaming sometimes that Aaron was dead at his feet again, and sometimes that Aaron was alive and he and Tamara were walking away from Call and never coming back.

The next day dawned and, as luck would have it, was overcast, with rain threatening all morning.

Alex appeared to be in a particularly foul mood. Call frowned at him as they tried, unsuccessfully, to come up with any new ideas for raising a stoat that wasn’t either Chaos-ridden or about to explode.

Call saw an opportunity for getting away from him. If Call could just use his superpower of being annoying, Alex would probably storm off on his own.

The first thing Call did was start to hum, off-key, to himself as he looked through the alchemy books Master Joseph put together for them. Alex glared.

Then Call picked up a historical book about a Makar called Vincent of Maastricht — one of the few not relegated to the basement — and began reading aloud, “Little is known of the methods Vincent undertook to secure the bodies for his experiments, but it is believed —”

“Are we going to get back to work?” Alex interrupted.

Call pretended not to hear him until Alex jerked the book away from Call. Then he looked up nonchalantly. “Huh?”

“I said,” Alex stated, clearly trying his most Evil Overlord-y look on Call, “that we had better get back to work.”

Call yawned exaggeratedly. “I am working. I’m thinking big thoughts. After all, I’m Constantine Madden. If anyone is going to figure out how to raise the dead, it’s going to be me.”

“You?” Alex took the bait, his voice withering. “All you want to do is boring stuff. We could be making more Chaos-ridden. We could be trying to bring people back from the dead, instead of stoats. We could even try to shape flesh and make something wholly chaos-born. Constantine Madden wouldn’t sit around all day, doing nothing. It’s dull and so are you.”

“Go eat a dirty sock,” Call told him, feeling a little weird about the insult after he spat it out. “You don’t know what Constantine would do.”

“I know what he should do,” Alex said, and turned his back on Call, stalking off.

That was ominous enough to worry Call, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. Instead, he had to meet Jasper and Tamara. It looked like he’d managed to get the afternoon free. He just wasn’t entirely sure what it was going to cost him.

Tamara and Jasper were waiting for him, looking out at the water from the yard. As he walked toward them, they abruptly broke off their conversation and Call had the uncomfortable feeling that they’d been discussing him. He bet Jasper had a lot to say about her kissing him … and none of it was good.

“You sure Alex isn’t following you?” Jasper asked as Havoc danced over to Call, jumping up to press his paws against Call’s chest.

Call looked nervously over his shoulder. “I don’t think so.”

“Let’s go,” Tamara said. “Before someone spots us.”

Jasper was looking anxious as they cut through the woods. He was so keyed up that when Havoc nipped lazily at a butterfly, Jasper startled.

“Over here,” he said, leading them through a copse of trees.

On the other side was what appeared to be an old quarry. It was carved out of the rocks, with water welling up from the bottom, as though someone had managed to drill through the base of the island and the sea was rising from underneath.

“What were they quarrying?” Tamara asked. Then, squinting, she answered her own question. “Looks like granite.”

“There’s a path down the side,” Jasper said, pointing to an area that ramped down. It was wide enough for a vehicle to drive on, but it was steep enough that Call found himself afraid he would stumble and roll all the way to the bottom. He clung on to branches he passed.

“We really have to go down there?” Call asked. “Can’t you just tell us?”

Jasper shook his head grimly. “No, you have to see it.”

It took them a little while to get all the way to the water. Tamara took Call’s hand and helped him along, which was nice and also kind of embarrassing. She knew about his leg and had kissed him anyway, so that must not bother her. But he wasn’t so sure that it didn’t bother him.

Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure what all the kissing meant. Jasper had been so sure that she didn’t like him and Anastasia so sure she did. But then she’d kissed him in front of Jasper, so that had to count for something.

He had to say something. He wasn’t sure when they would be alone next.

“Um,” he said, because his conversational skills were amazing.

Tamara looked his way, clearly waiting for him to talk.

He tried to remember Jasper’s tips about making girls like him, but all he could recall was that he wasn’t supposed to blink, and since Tamara was walking next to him, he wasn’t even sure she could tell.

“Are we going out?” he finally blurted. When she didn’t immediately answer, he kept going. “Am I your boyfriend?”

Then he realized he was going to have to get his hand away from her because it was getting sweaty. And, as the silence stretched on, he started thinking rolling down the hill might not be the worst thing. At least it would mean the subject was automatically changed.

“Do you want to be my boyfriend?” Tamara asked finally, looking sideways at him through her long, dark lashes.

At least this wouldn’t be the first time he’d made a fool of himself in front of her. “Yeah,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, giving him a brilliant smile. “I’ll be your girlfriend.”

In her answer, he heard what he was supposed to have said: Will you be my girlfriend? But she didn’t seem annoyed with him. She squeezed his hand and made him feel, for a moment, like good things were possible, even for him.