Pain rose up in Call, a pain that made him feel like he was choking.

Master Joseph was shouting, and the dark, swarming figures below were hurling magic at Ravan, but she was fast and clever and dodged everything they sent at her.

Call raised one hand. He was remembering a maze made out of fire, how he’d been lost in it until he’d realized his chaos magic could suck the oxygen out of everything, killing fire. He could kill Ravan. In that moment, he knew he could do it.

“Call.” It was Aaron. He was out on the roof of the house, one hand on Havoc’s ruff. He was barefoot, and had found a T-shirt somewhere to replace his uniform top. He looked pale in the darkness. “Let them go.”

Call could hear his own breath in his ears. Trucks were spinning their wheels all over the front lawn of Master Joseph’s house, none of them willing to get close enough to Ravan to explode their gas tanks.

“But —”

“It’s Tamara,” said Aaron. “You think Master Joseph will forgive her for running? He won’t.”

Call didn’t move.

“He’ll kill her,” Aaron said. “And you won’t be okay after that. You love her.”

Call lowered his hand slowly, hovering just above the roof. He felt Aaron reach forward, grab the back of his shirt, and pull him down onto the tiles. He collapsed, half on top of Havoc, nearly knocking Aaron over. By the time they’d sorted themselves out, Call could no longer see the small running figures of Tamara and Jasper.

Hot tears started in Call’s eyes, but he blinked them back. “She left me.”

Aaron sat up, disentangling himself from Call. He scooted sideways on the roof tiles, Havoc behind him. “She left us, Call.”

Call made a choking sound that was partly a laugh. “Yeah, I guess she did.”

“She wants to warn the Magisterium,” Aaron said. “It’s better for us not to go there.”

Call suddenly realized what was weird about the way Aaron was talking. “Why do you suddenly hate the Magisterium so much?”

“I don’t hate them,” said Aaron. He looked out toward where the battle must be taking place. “But it’s like I can see them more clearly than I could when I was alive before. They only ever wanted what they could get from us, Call. And they can’t get anything from me anymore. And they’ll want to punish you. You proved them wrong, you know. They never believed Constantine could really raise the dead.”

Call stared at him, trying to decode something from his expression, from the clear green of his eyes, but this Aaron wasn’t easy to read. He was, however, super creepy.

But he hasn’t been back long, Call reminded himself. Maybe death clings to you for a while, shadowing everything. Maybe that shadow lifts eventually.

“Do you think I did the right thing, bringing you back?” After he asked it, Call felt like he couldn’t quite breathe until he had the answer.

Aaron made a sound that was not quite a sigh. It was like wind whistling through trees. “You know I’m not a Makar anymore, right? I’m not a mage at all. That part of me is gone and everything feels — I don’t know, washed-out and dull.”

Call felt a little sick. He’d known Alex had taken Aaron’s Makar power with the Alkahest, but not that Aaron would come back with no magic at all. “That could change,” he said desperately. Without Aaron, he didn’t know what he’d do. He didn’t know what he’d become. “You could get better.”

“You should be asking yourself if you’re glad you brought me back,” Aaron said with a half smile. “The mages will never take you back now, and I know you don’t want to stay here with Master Joseph.”

“I don’t need to ask myself anything,” Call said fiercely. “I’m glad I brought you back.”

Havoc barked at that, and nosed in between them. Aaron reached to pat the wolf, and Call felt the tension in his chest ease slightly. Surely if there was something really wrong with Aaron, Havoc would sense it?

Master Joseph came into view, a phalanx of the Chaos-ridden and several dozen mages following him. He was marching back toward the house. When he saw Call and Aaron sitting on the roof, the chaos-eaten hole behind them, he looked momentarily furious. Then his expression smoothed out.

“It’s lucky for you two you didn’t go with them,” Master Joseph yelled up.

Coming up behind him, Alex laughed. “They weren’t invited.”

“Once the Assembly knows the power you have unlocked, everything will be different,” said Master Joseph, but Call wondered if that could be true. Tamara’s parents were on the Assembly. If she was horrified, weren’t they likely to be equally horrified — if not more so?

But Call just nodded.

“Come inside,” Master Joseph said coldly. “We’ll talk.”

Call nodded again, but he didn’t go inside. He sat on the roof until the sun was much higher in the sky. Aaron sat there, too.

As the yellow light burnished his lashes to gold, he turned to Call. “How did you do it? You can tell me.”

“I gave you a piece of my soul,” Call said, checking Aaron’s expression to see if he was horrified. “That’s why it didn’t work before. Constantine Madden would never have tried something like that. He would have never given any of his power away.”

Aaron nodded. “I think I can tell,” he said finally. “I think I can feel it — part of me, but also not.”

“And that’s why it’s not going to work the way they’re hoping,” Call stumbled on. It was uncomfortable to talk about sharing souls. “Because I can’t keep using pieces of my soul to bring people back. They’re not … unlimited. You can run out.”

“And then you’d die,” Aaron said.

“I think so. I think that’s why Constantine kept Jericho around — so that he could use his soul. And I read Jericho’s diary —” Call looked around, meaning to show it to Aaron, before he realized it wasn’t there. Tamara had taken it with her. To show to the Magisterium, Call assumed. Proof. He felt sick again.

“You don’t feel Constantine’s soul in you, right?” Aaron said. “You just feel normal. You’ve always felt normal.”

“I’ve never known anything different,” Call said.

“Maybe I just have to get used to it,” Aaron said, sounding a lot like his old self. He even grinned a little, sideways. “I’m grateful. For what you did. Even if it doesn’t work.”

But it did work, Call wanted to insist.

Before he could, someone knocked on the door. It was Anastasia, who didn’t wait for them to answer before she opened it. She stepped into Call’s room and then stopped at the sight of the devastation Call had wrought — the chaos-eaten wall and the morning sunlight streaming in. She blinked a couple of times.

“Children shouldn’t be cursed with so much power,” she said, as though she was speaking to herself. She was dressed in what looked like battle gear — pale silver-and-white steel over her chest and along her arms and a chain-mesh hood over her silver hair.

For once, it seemed like she was thinking of Call and Constantine as separate people, cursed equally. He wished she would keep thinking of them that way, but he wasn’t particularly hopeful about it.