Aaron cut his eyes sideways toward Call. “I don’t want to do it,” he whispered.

“You can’t,” Call muttered under his breath.

“I have to do something.” Aaron sounded slightly panicked.

“Disappear the cage,” Call replied, keeping his voice to a near whisper.

“What?”

“You heard me.” Call grabbed Aaron’s arm. “Do it.”

Master Rufus’s eyes narrowed. “Call —”

Aaron’s hand shot out. A dark tendril uncoiled in his palm, then exploded outward, surrounding the cage, hiding Warren from sight. Call felt a slight pull inside himself, as if there were a rubber band inside his rib cage and Aaron was twanging it. Was that what it meant to be a counterweight?

The smoke began to clear. Call dropped his hand, just in time to see Warren’s tail disappear through a crack in the grotto wall. The cage was gone, the space where it had stood empty.

Rufus raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t mean for you to send the cage into chaos as well, but — good job.”

Tamara was staring at the place where Warren’s cage had disappeared. Under other circumstances, Call would have shot her a reassuring look, but not now. “What’s the limit to Aaron’s power?” she asked suddenly. “Like, what can he do? Could he send the whole Magisterium into the void?”

Master Rufus turned toward her, bushy eyebrows drawing together in surprise. “There are three things that make mages great. One is their fine control, another is their imagination, and the third is their well of power. One of our challenges is to discover the answer to your question. What can Aaron do before he needs his counterweight to pull him back? What can Call do? What can you do? There is only one way to find out — practice. Now, let’s try working with earth.”

Call sighed. It looked like they wouldn’t be finished for a long while.

After the exercises were finally over, the three apprentices walked back from the grotto. Call was exhausted and had fallen behind the others. His leg hurt, his head hurt, and he dawdled near a pool of eyeless fish.

“You guys have it easy,” he told them as they swam lethargically, pale in the moss-lit gloom.

The surface of the water was suddenly broken and a fish was swept up into the air by a long pink tongue. Call looked up to see Warren hanging from a stalactite.

The elemental blinked down at him. “The end is closer than you think,” he said.

“What?” Call asked, thinking he’d misheard.

“The end is closer than you think,” the lizard repeated. Then he darted up the rocky formation to the ceiling of the cave.

“Hey, we helped you!” Call called after him, but Warren didn’t return.

At dinner, Call sat with Aaron, Jasper, and Celia, while Tamara, once again, joined her sister. Call could practically feel waves of ice radiating off her back every time he glanced at her.

“Why do you keep looking over at Tamara?” Celia asked, spearing a bright yellow mushroom with her fork.

“Because she told the mages to investigate his dad,” Jasper said. Call startled, turning to glare at him. Jasper smiled angelically.

“Investigate him for what?” Celia’s eyes were round.

Call didn’t say anything. If he started explaining or manufacturing excuses, it would only make things worse. Instead, he wondered how Jasper knew any of this. Maybe he and Tamara were back to being thick as thieves. It served Tamara right to be stuck with someone like Jasper.

Jasper was about to make another comment, but Aaron warned him off with a “Shut it.”

“I don’t know what he did,” Jasper admitted. “But I heard some of the mages talking. They were saying the search party they sent to find him didn’t turn up anything. Apparently, he’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Celia echoed, looking over at Call, waiting for him to say something.

Call frowned at his plate, small cracks appearing at the edges of the pottery from the force of his rage. He was a second-year mage, he’d walked through the Gate of Control; he knew he shouldn’t be losing it like this. And yet he didn’t want to stop Jasper from talking, not when Jasper seemed to know more about what was happening with Alastair than he did.

“Yeah, I guess someone warned him,” Jasper went on, his gaze sliding over to Call, the implication of his words clear.

“Call didn’t warn anyone,” Aaron said. “He was with us the whole time. And stop acting like you know anything, when you really don’t.”

“I know more than you do,” Jasper said with a sneer in Aaron’s direction. “I know he’s not to be trusted.”

A shiver went up Call’s spine, because Jasper was right.

Call couldn’t even trust himself.

That night, Call flopped down on the couch in the common room. Rufus had assigned them some reading about the robber-baron era of mage politics, which had lasted until only a couple of decades back, but Call couldn’t concentrate. The words swam on the page, the edges of the book occasionally sparking into tiny flames he quickly put out. Anger and fear had scorched the spine with black ash that smeared darkly over his fingers.

Tamara had made herself scarce after dinner, and Aaron had gone to the library to do his homework. He’d invited Call to come along, but that was because Aaron was nice and couldn’t help doing nice things. Call knew he was better off alone. Just him and Havoc on the couch, the wolf curled up on his feet, panting softly, his coruscating eyes glowing in the dim room.

Just as he was pretty sure he was about to set fire to the book again, the door opened. It was Alex Strike, brown hair messy as usual — Call felt for him about that one — and an odd expression on his face.

Call shoved the history book under a cushion and sat up, careful not to dislodge Havoc. Because he was Rufus’s assistant, Alex was one of the only people besides Rufus to have access to the room. Still, he’d never come in like this before.

“What’s going on?” Call asked.

Alex sat down on the couch opposite Call, glancing at the closed doors of Tamara’s and Aaron’s rooms. “Are your roommates out?”

Call nodded, uncertain where this was going. Maybe he was in trouble. Maybe Alex had a message from Rufus. Maybe there was some kind of Magisterium second-year hazing ritual that involved being tied to a stalactite overnight.

“It’s about your dad,” Alex said. “I know about the Alkahest. I know the mages are looking for him.”

Call glanced down at Havoc, who growled low in his throat. “Does everyone know?” Call asked, thinking of Jasper.

Alex shook his head. “Not how serious things are.”

“My dad didn’t do it,” Call said. “Not like they’re saying. He’s not in league with the Enemy. He’s not in league with anyone.”

A strange expression passed over Alex’s face, like maybe he’d only just then realized how dangerous it was to be talking to Call about this. “I believe you,” he said finally. “Which is why you need to get word to your dad to stay hidden. If they find him, they’re going to kill him.”

“What?” Call said, although he’d heard the words perfectly clearly.