“I don’t think that’s the saying, Call.”

Call looked at Havoc bounding along the ridge. “Just don’t show her who you really are,” he said. “Pretend you’re a person she might love, and then she’ll love you. Because people just love who they think other people are, anyway.”

Alex whistled. “When did you get so cynical? Do you get it from your dad?”

Call frowned, no longer feeling inclined to be very helpful. “This has nothing to do with my dad. Why bring him up?”

Alex stepped back, raising his hands. “Hey, all I know is what people say. That he was friends with the Enemy of Death once. He was in his mage group. And now he hates magicians and everything having to do with magic.”

“So what if he does?” Call snapped.

“Has he ever reached out to anyone?” Alex asked. “Any mages? Anyone he used to be friends with?”

Call shook his head. “I don’t think so. He has a different life now.”

“It sucks when people are lonely,” Alex said. “My stepmother was lonely when my dad died, until she got on the Assembly. Now she’s happy running everyone’s life.”

Call wanted to deny that Alastair wasn’t happy with his new non-magical, antique-geek friends. But he remembered the tightness in his father’s jaw, how quiet he’d been over the years, the haunted way he looked sometimes, as though his burdens were almost too much to bear.

“Yeah,” Call said finally, snapping his fingers. Havoc rushed down the hill toward him, claws scraping on the wet ground. He tried to not think of his dad, alone, at home. Of what his dad had thought when Master Rufus came to tell him that Call didn’t want to even see him. “It does.”

He thought about it the next day, as he listened to Master Rufus’s lecture on advanced elemental usage. Master Rufus paced back and forth in the front of the classroom, explaining how rogue elementals were dangerous and usually had to be put down, but occasionally mages also found them useful to bind into service.

“Flying depletes our magical energies,” Master Rufus said. “For example.”

Aaron stuck up his hand, a public-school reflex. “But doesn’t controlling elementals also use up magical energy?”

Master Rufus nodded. “Interesting question. Yes, it does deplete energy, but not continuously. Once you’ve bound an elemental, keeping them requires less energy. Almost all mages keep one or two elementals in their service. And schools like the Magisterium have many.”

“What?” Call looked around, half expecting some watery wyvern to burst through the rock wall.

Master Rufus raised a brow. “How do you think your uniforms get cleaned? Or your rooms, for that matter?”

Call hadn’t much thought about it before, but found himself unnerved. Was some creature like Warren scrubbing his underwear? He was mightily creeped out. But maybe that was species-ist. Maybe he needed to be more open-minded.

He remembered Warren munching down eyeless fish. Maybe not.

Master Rufus went on, warming to his subject. “And of course, the elementals we use in exercises — but also some for defense. Ancient elementals, sleeping deep in the caves, waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Call asked, wide-eyed.

“For the summons to battle.”

“You mean if the war starts up again,” said Aaron tonelessly, “they’ll be sent out to fight the Enemy.”

Master Rufus nodded.

“But how do you get them to do what you want?” Call demanded. “Why would they agree to sleep for such a long time and then be woken up just to fight?”

“They are bound to the Magisterium by ancient elemental magic,” said Rufus. “The first mages who ever founded the academy captured them, bound their powers, and laid them to rest many miles below the earth. They rise at our bidding and are controlled by us.”

“How is that different from the Enemy and his Chaos-ridden?” Tamara asked. She’d somehow turned one of her braids into a lopsided bun with a pen, which now stuck out of her hair.

“Tamara!” Aaron said. “It’s completely different. The Chaos-ridden are evil. Except Havoc,” he added hastily.

“So what are these things? Good?” Tamara asked. “If they’re good, why keep them locked up underground?”

“They are neither evil nor good,” Rufus explained. “They are immensely powerful, like the Greek Titans, and they care nothing about human beings. Where they go, destruction and death follow — not because they wish to kill, but because they don’t recognize or care what they do. Blaming a great elemental for destroying a town would be like blaming a volcano for erupting.”

“So they have to be controlled for everyone’s good,” Call said. He could hear the doubt and suspicion in his own voice.

“One of the metal elementals, Automotones, escaped after Verity Torres’s battle with the Enemy,” said Rufus. “He tore a bridge apart. The cars on it plunged into the water. People drowned before he was returned to his place below the Magisterium.”

“He wasn’t punished?” Tamara sounded particularly interested in this.

Rufus shrugged. “As I said, it would be like punishing a volcano for erupting. We need these creatures. They are all we have to match the force of Constantine’s Chaos-ridden.”

“Can we see one?” Call asked.

“What?” Rufus paused, pen in hand.

“I want to see one.” Even Call wasn’t entirely sure why he was asking. There was something that compelled him about the idea of a creature that was neither evil nor good. That never had to worry about how to behave. A force of nature.

“In a few weeks, you will be starting missions,” said Rufus. “You will be on your own outside the Magisterium, traveling, carrying out projects. If you complete those successfully, I see no reason why you couldn’t view a sleeping elemental.”

There was a knock on the door, and after Rufus said it was okay to enter, it was pushed open. Rafe came inside. He’d looked a lot happier since Master Lemuel had left the Magisterium, but Call wondered if he’d been scared to come back to school after Drew’s death. “Master Rockmaple sent you this,” he said, holding out a folded-over paper to Master Rufus.

Master Rufus read it, then crumpled it in one hand. It burst into flame, blackening to ash. “Thank you,” he said to Rafe with a nod, as though setting correspondence on fire was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. “Tell your Master I will see him at lunch.”

Rafe left, wide-eyed.

Call desperately wished he could see whatever was on that paper. The problem with having a horrible secret was that any time anything happened, Call worried it had something to do with him.

But Master Rufus didn’t even look in his direction when he resumed the lesson. And when nothing happened the next day or the day after, Call forgot to be worried.

And as the weeks went by and the leaves on the trees began to blaze with yellow and red and orange, like conjured fire, it became easier and easier for Call to forget he had a secret at all.

AS THE WEATHER turned nippy, Call started wearing hoodies and sweaters on his walks with Havoc. Havoc had never really experienced fall and was having a deliriously good time hiding in piles of leaves with only his spotted paws sticking up.