فصل 9

Chapter 9

WHEN TAMARA, JASPER, and Call woke up in the morning, the boys retreated to their own rooms to shower and change for breakfast. Call waved at Tamara as he left, but she didn’t seem to notice.

After a quick shower, Call yanked the day’s selection of Constantine’s clothes out of the closet with distaste — another day, another flannel shirt. He wished he had his own stuff to wear.

As he pulled his jean jacket back on, Jericho’s diary fell out of the inner pocket. Call picked it up, turning it over slowly in his hands. Constantine’s brother had owned this book. Had written in it. Call had never thought of Jericho as a person, had never really thought of him at all. Even when he had stood over Jericho’s preserved body in the tomb of the Enemy, he had thought only about what Constantine must have felt when his brother had died.

But now he was counting on Jericho’s diary to give him an insight that Constantine’s notes had failed to provide.

A knock came on the door. There was just time for Call to slip the book back into his pocket before Jasper stuck his head in.

“Hugo came by,” he said, sauntering into Call’s room without permission. “He said Tamara and I have a free afternoon once our morning lessons are over. He’s going to go somewhere with Master Joseph, and I’m going to follow them.” He looked narrowly at Call. “Are you listening?” “I want to know everything you know about girls,” said Call.

“I knew you would bow to my superior knowledge of romance eventually.” Jasper appeared smug.

“How do you let a girl know you like her?” said Call. “And if you kiss one, does that mean you’re in a relationship?” Jasper leaned back against the wall, his hand under his chin. “That depends, my man,” he said, squinting as if he were wearing a monocle. “How well do you know the lady?” “Very well,” said Call, fighting the urge to tell Jasper he looked like Mr. Peanut.

Jasper frowned. “It’s weird that you’re asking me this now,” he said, “given that we’re stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with no girls around except … Tamara.” A look of shock dawned on his face. “You and Tamara?” Call bristled. “Does that seem so unlikely?”

“Yes,” Jasper said. “Tamara’s your friend. She isn’t — she doesn’t feel that way about you.” “Because I’m the Enemy of Death?” Call snapped. “Because I’m rotten inside and don’t deserve her? Thanks, Jasper. Thanks a lot.” Jasper looked at him without speaking for a long moment. “Do you know why Celia and I broke up?” he asked, finally.

“She got tired of your face?”

“I said I was going to visit you in prison, and she said I couldn’t. She said if you were the Enemy of Death, you were a murderer. She said I had to choose between you and her.” Call blinked. Part of him felt hurt, even now, by Celia’s words, a distant, deep-down ache. The rest of him was astonished by Jasper. “You stood up for me?” Jasper seemed to regret saying anything. “I don’t like being told what to think.” Call didn’t want to feel grateful to Jasper, but he did. Overwhelmingly grateful. “Thanks,” he said.

Jasper waved his words away. “Yes, yes, but the important point I’m making is that when I say that Tamara doesn’t like you that way, I’m not saying it because I think you’re a bad person. I just think Tamara — well, Call, I just think she liked someone else, if you get my meaning.” Aaron. He meant Aaron.

Call wanted to protest that Anastasia thought Tamara liked him, but he could just imagine what Jasper would say to that — that Anastasia had no idea what she was talking about at the best of times and certainly didn’t seem like an expert on love. And Tamara hadn’t looked at Call that morning, hadn’t said much to him since the kissing. And she hadn’t said how she felt about him, only that she thought he knew.

Jasper looked thoughtful. “And if she sucked face with you, it was probably because she didn’t want to die alone and respected Celia too much to throw herself at me.” It wasn’t like that at all, Call wanted to say. “But I could still ask her to be my girlfriend, right?” After all, even if it was a mistake, maybe it was one she would want to repeat a couple of times.

“Not unless you want to get shot down,” Jasper said. “But hey, there’s lots of other fish in the sea. A lid for every pot. Even for you.” Call felt like punching Jasper in the face, which was confusing because he was still feeling grateful that Jasper had gotten broken up with for his sake.

Grudgingly, Call realized that Jasper’s advice wasn’t going to make the weird feeling in his stomach any better. In fact, it was worse.

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The next few days passed in a blur of chaos theory. Master Joseph taught Call and Alex in the mornings and then let them experiment all afternoon while he taught Tamara, Jasper, and the other students.

Call had to admit that Master Joseph was an exciting teacher. He wanted them to try things, test out new ideas, and he wasn’t particularly concerned about risk. Call learned a lot about chaos, learned to hold it in his hand, to mold it and shape it. He learned to bring chaos creatures through from the void and to keep them with him all day, dark shapes that whisked around his legs and worried Havoc. He learned to look into the void itself, a place of shadows where the longer he looked, the more the shadows seemed to be just the opposite, made of all colors at once, swirling in Call’s eyes.

At night, they ate together. Sometimes Master Joseph cooked. Other times he ordered food and one of his minions picked it up. That night they were eating deliciously fried chicken with lots of sides. Call gnawed on a bone thoughtfully. Evil definitely had superior culinary arts on its side.

“Tomorrow,” Master Joseph said, “I am going to be gone all day, so I’d like you two — Call and Alex — to concentrate on your experiments. Jasper and Tamara, I will give you some exercises.” Tamara met Call’s gaze from across the table, but he could no longer read her looks. She probably meant Good, Master Joseph is going to be gone, so we should search the house, but he wanted her to mean Good, he’s going to be gone, so we can sneak off and be alone together.

They hadn’t kissed since that one time in Jericho’s room, and Call was starting to feel a little crazy. She liked someone else, Jasper had said. If she sucked face with you, it was probably because she didn’t want to die alone. His words haunted Call.

Did he really need to stop thinking about Tamara when their escape and lives were on the line? Probably.

Jasper was winking and mouthing something across the table. After dinner, he said silently. In my room.

Alex looked over at them lazily. Call could never tell how much attention Alex was paying to anything they did. He seemed to have his own stuff going on, which involved locking himself in his room — which was at the other end of the house — blasting heavy metal, and collecting designer sweaters with skulls on them.

After dinner, Call and Tamara crowded into Jasper’s room. Most of the various stuffed and toy horses had been shoved under the bed, and the room looked strangely bare.

“What’s going on, Jasper?” Tamara asked, hands on her hips. She was wearing a pastel blue dress and her hair was down, rippling over her shoulders.

“Tomorrow,” Jasper said. “We have to get away for at least a few hours in the afternoon. We need to distract Alex and maybe Hugo.” “Why?” said Call.

“Because there’s something we need to look at,” Jasper said. “Master Joseph comes in and out of here on elementals, but they don’t land near the house. I saw one landing the other night and I followed it to see where it came down.” “You did?” Tamara was incredulous. “Why didn’t you bring us with you?” “A lone wolf hunts alone,” said Jasper. “Besides, I wasn’t expecting it and I didn’t have time to get you. Anyway, I didn’t find the elemental. I found something else.” “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.

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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.

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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.

You’re wrong! He wanted to shout at Jasper. She likes me after all! Not Aaron, me!

The path ended, leveling out into a sandy beach where the water lapped against uneven small clumps of granite. It was pretty — or would have been, Call thought, until he saw what was under the water.

At first they seemed like rocks, like the shallow bottom of the quarry, except for the dark depths between them. No, what he was looking at were heads, hair rippling in the current like duckweed. Hundreds — no, thousands — of Chaos-ridden bodies. All of them standing in neat rows, waiting for the summons that would bring them to battle.

Call stopped, jerking Tamara to a stop beside him. They released each other’s hands and stared. Jasper was already standing by the edge of the water, pointing down.

The wind blew Call’s hair into his face. He pushed it back with his hand. He couldn’t stop staring.

“So many,” Tamara whispered. “How — Alex didn’t make all these.”

“No.” Jasper was still staring at the water. “Now you know why I wanted you to see it yourselves.” “Constantine made these,” said Call. “I know it.” He couldn’t explain quite how he knew it. He had no memories of Constantine’s life. But he’d been reading what Jericho had to say about his brother, and he had his own feelings. He knew.

“All this time we thought there were only the Chaos-ridden we’ve seen,” Tamara said, a worried hitch in her voice. “But there are so many more.” “Everyone said most of them were destroyed in the Mage War,” said Jasper.

“I’m sure most of the ones in the battle were destroyed,” said Call. “But there would have been more. Constantine was careful. He wanted an army big enough to march on the Magisterium, the Collegium, the Assembly, everything.” “We have to destroy them,” said Tamara, her voice stronger now. “If we all used elemental fire — but, no, we can’t burn them underwater. Maybe we could make a bomb.” Call felt a rush of affection for Tamara. She did not think small.

“Or Call could order them to destroy themselves,” said Jasper.

“If they’re really mine — Constantine’s,” Call said, assailed by sudden doubt. He turned back toward the water. The Chaos-ridden were still, like trees that had grown up under the water of the quarry. As if they had been there when the quarry flooded, and had never moved — like those towns that were drowned underwater when reservoirs were built.

Call held out his hand, palm out. “Chaos-ridden!” he called. “Rise! Come to the one who made you!” Silence. The cold wind blew. Call was starting to think he had gotten it wrong, when the surface of the water began to ripple and darken. They were moving. The Chaos-ridden were moving, under the surface. Jasper yelled as a head popped out of the water near his feet. It was a man, his face slack with water, eyes wide and blind. He started to turn toward Call.

Tamara caught Call’s arm. “Not now,” she said. “Make them go back under.” Call stared into the blank eyes of the Chaos-ridden. “What are your orders?” he asked.

When the Chaos-ridden replied, Call knew that Tamara and Jasper would only hear senseless grunts and groans. But he heard words. The language he shared with the dead, that no one else could speak. “Rise up,” said the Chaos-ridden. “Destroy.” “Call,” Tamara said.

He turned toward her. “They’re dangerous.”

“I know,” she said. “Now make them go back under.”

“The time is not now,” Call told them. “Return to the water and wait.” As one, the Chaos-ridden disappeared underneath the surface again. Call’s mind raced. He could order them to destroy one another. He could maybe even send them all back into the void if he opened a gateway. But with all of them, he could bring down Master Joseph’s house, tear it to the studs. He could destroy Alex and Master Joseph both. Maybe that’s what Tamara was thinking, too.

There was just one problem: Aaron.

“We’ve got to warn someone,” Jasper was saying. “We’ve got to leave.”

“Can you command all those Chaos-ridden?” Tamara asked.

Call nodded, but he felt sick at heart.

“Good,” she said, planning as they walked back to the house. “We’re leaving tonight and we’re going to take Master Joseph’s army with us. That’s how you’re going to redeem your name, Call! No one can doubt you if you delivery victory to the Assembly.” For a moment, Call was drawn into imagining himself heroically ahead of an army of Chaos-ridden, an army he had commanded to kneel down before the Assembly. Maybe they really would take him back. Maybe he really would be forgiven.

But if they left tonight, they would be leaving Aaron behind.

And while Call had learned a lot about chaos magic and a lot about filling souls with chaos, he hadn’t figured out how to raise Aaron from the dead. And once they escaped the island, there would be no way to bring Aaron back.

Unless Call did it tonight.

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It was even easier to slip away from Tamara and Jasper than it had been to get away from Alex. Call just said he’d be in trouble if he didn’t go, and neither Tamara nor Jasper questioned him.

Once alone, Call grabbed Jericho’s diary and went down to the parlor to read. Before, he had flipped through it in search of experiments and secrets, but now he read with a burning intensity. If Jericho knew anything that might give Call a clue as to how to bring Aaron back, then he needed to find it. As the pages flipped by, a sense of dread filled him. Then Call came to an entry that made his blood run cold: There is no one I can tell how I feel, but each day I get more tired and more afraid for the future. When I first became Constantine’s counterweight, it seemed to be such an honor, to keep my older brother safe. But neither of us really understood what a counterweight could do.

But then Constantine learned how to draw on my soul regularly, without compromising his own. He drains me nearly to death, again and again. He gives me back only a little of my own strength, barely enough to be conscious and far too little to do any magic of my own. I fear my soul will be all used up before he notices. He wasn’t always like this, but he changed so much in the last year that I feel like I don’t know him. I am so afraid and no one believes me, so taken are they all by Constantine’s charm.

Call flipped a few more pages.

I hate everything about bringing animals for Constantine’s experiments, but bringing him human bodies from hospitals is worse.

Call turned the page with reluctance. It was like reading a horror novel, but scarier. A horror novel about yourself.

I’m not Constantine, he told himself. But it was harder now. Anastasia thought he was Constantine. Master Joseph did, too. The only person who truly didn’t was Tamara. She believed he was Call, a whole person on his own. Aaron had believed in him, too. And look where that had gotten him….

Something awful has happened. I was too tired to bring a body back for Constantine from the graveyard, so he summoned an air elemental and flew us to the hospital. We landed on the helicopter pad and he laughed about that. He helped me down the stairs and for a minute it was like he was back to being the brother I remembered, the one who took care of me. I asked why he’d brought me with him and he said he just wanted us to have a good time together.

We went right past the morgue and down the hall into the ICU. He used air magic to disguise our presence from the nurses. It was creepy, being among all those sick people who didn’t know we were there.

We went into one room where an old woman was lying with her eyes closed and a tube down her throat. Con’s eyes were shining. I figured out what he wanted to do but it was already too late. “Con, she’s not dead.” “Maybe that’s the key, though,” he said. “She’s nearly dead. Maybe you need to put the chaos in while there’s still a spark of life.” “You have to leave her alone,” I said. “She’s alive.”

I kept saying it over and over as he pushed me aside and reached his hand out for her. Dark chaos spilled from his fingers. I saw the woman’s body jerk and tremble.

I felt something pinch inside my chest. I gasped and fell to my knees just as the old woman opened her eyes; they were blank but swirling with colors, like the eyes of Chaos-ridden animals. They fixed on me and somehow I thought she recognized me. Jericho, her eyes were saying. Jericho.

Constantine wasn’t relying on me just for energy, I realized. He was using pieces of my soul — using them as if they were batteries, shoving them into the Chaos-ridden, into this woman, like an electrical shock that would bring her back to life.

I didn’t see the woman die. I could hear Con exclaiming in annoyance that she was gone. Another failed experiment. All I could do was wonder how much of my soul was left now that my brother had shredded it.

Call put the book down. He was breathing so hard he was light-headed. The words on the page were like a slap in the face. He had known Constantine Madden as the Enemy of Death, the cause of his mother’s demise, the monster who the Assembly would rather keep their truce with for fear of starting the war over again, but still this was horrifying in a wholly different way. It was personal — what he’d done to his brother, ripping pieces off his soul. Constantine hadn’t done it to save someone he loved. He hadn’t killed that woman in desperation. He’d done it as an experiment. Just because he was curious. And cruel.

Constantine Madden hadn’t been driven to making terrible choices by grief. He’d been making terrible choices way before his brother died.

And while Master Joseph might have pushed him into it in the beginning, he’d clearly taken to evil like a duck to water.

Call put down the diary and went to the window, looking out at the afternoon sunlight dappling the grass. He was afraid he was going to throw up. He felt like a storm was in his head.

But after a few moments, he felt steadier. And then a few minutes after that, something new occurred to him. For years, Call had been afraid that he was too sarcastic, too mean-spirited, too willing to cut corners. He’d imagined a straight line from accruing too many Evil Overlord Points by not taking out the trash and eating the last slice of pizza to leading an army of the Chaos-ridden.

But Call knew he would never do what Constantine had done to Jericho — never steal pieces of the soul of someone he loved. He knew that he would never murder someone for no reason. If that was what evil was, he wasn’t going to wind up that way by accident.

Maybe he should stop worrying that he was becoming Constantine Madden and start worrying about Alex. Alex, who wanted power and wasn’t afraid to kill for it. Alex, who might be willing to do everything Constantine had done and more.

Tamara and Jasper were right: They had to get away from here and they had to do it quickly, before Alex got used to what his power could do, before Master Joseph stopped believing in Call and used the Alkahest on him.

But for all his evil, Constantine had been right about one thing. Death wasn’t fair. Aaron shouldn’t have died, and if Call could bring him back, bring him back to life, not as a Chaos-ridden, then one good thing would have come out of Constantine’s horrible experiments, his terrible war.

But to do it, he had to crack the code. Over the days they’d been here, Call had heard about and read about so many experiments Constantine had tried. What hadn’t he thought of?

There had to be something, some clue.

Call thought about the entry he’d read, the one where Jericho had seen himself mirrored in the woman’s face — as though she was being animated by a piece of his own soul.

There was something there, something that tugged at Call’s thoughts.

When Call was a baby, Constantine must have done something very much like that — pushing his whole soul into Callum Hunt’s body. Why had that worked?

Call frowned, concentrating.

And then, all of a sudden, he had an idea. A real idea, not one of those stumbling-in-the-dark, maybe-it-will-work ideas that he and Alex had been pursuing with their fruitless experiments.

Tucking the diary in the pocket of his flannel, Call made his way to the experiment room where Aaron was kept and did the one thing that he’d been avoiding — he went to the table where Aaron rested and pulled back the covering from his face.

“I hope you’ll forgive me,” Call said.

If he got it right, everything would be okay. They could all escape to the Magisterium and Call wouldn’t even be put in jail, since there was no way to lock up someone for the murder of a living person. They would return triumphant, with Master Joseph’s Chaos-ridden army. And if Tamara only wanted to be Call’s girlfriend because she was grief-stricken or something, like Jasper thought, well, maybe she would come to like him. Maybe he could convince her.

So long as Aaron was okay, he was sure she’d forgive him for how he got that way.

The room was full of shadows. Aaron lay still and waxy and white on the table, his face slack. He looked like Aaron and not like Aaron. Whatever it was that gave Aaron his personality and force was gone.

His soul, Call told himself. Name it what it is. He hadn’t believed in souls before he’d gone to the Magisterium, but Master Rufus had taught him how to see Aaron’s.

He placed his hands on Aaron’s chest. He’d touched him before, with Alex there, but now it felt strange. Like he was bidding Aaron good-bye.

But he wasn’t. The opposite, in fact. He forced his mind back from the dark paths it wanted to go down, the paths that reminded him that he was alone in the room with a dead body. Every horror movie he’d ever seen was competing to freak him out. This is Aaron, he reminded himself. The least scary person I know.

Constantine had used his brother’s soul, had torn off pieces of it to fuel his experiments. But what he hadn’t done was what Call was about to do. He hadn’t used a piece of his own soul.

Call kept his hands on Aaron’s chest, and reached down deep inside himself. He tried to remember what it had been like, seeing Aaron’s soul. He thought of what made him himself — his earliest memories: Alastair’s face, the streets of his town, pavement cracking under his feet. The gates of the Magisterium, the black stone in his wristband, the way Tamara looked at him. The feeling in his chest of Aaron’s magic pulling at him, what it was like to be a counterweight, the blackness of chaos … Darkness in the form of smoke spread from his fingers. It spilled over Aaron’s chest like ink, wreathing his body.

Call gasped. Energy felt like it was pouring out of him, through his hands, making his body vibrate. He could feel his own soul, pressing against the inside of his rib cage.

He closed mental fingers around that soul and pressed down on it. It was as if a spark jumped through him, through his veins, and into Aaron. Aaron’s body jerked, his hands spasming, his feet drumming against the metal table.

Call was drenched in sweat, his body shaking. The spark was inside Aaron; he could feel it. He could even see it: Aaron had begun to glow from the inside, as if a lamp had been turned on within him. His mouth opened and he dragged in a long, slow breath.

Terror gripped Call, thinking of how he’d once pushed chaos into another body, thinking of the way that Jennifer Matsui’s eyes had opened and swirled endlessly with chaos.

“Please,” he said to Aaron. “Let it be you. Fight to be you. Please.”

If Aaron came back as one of the Chaos-ridden, Call would never forgive himself.

I shouldn’t have done this, he thought. It was arrogant; it was too risky. After the diary, he’d been so sure he wasn’t like Constantine. And maybe he wasn’t, because even Constantine hadn’t actually experimented on Jericho. Even Constantine had possessed more sense.

Aaron’s chest rose and fell, as though in sleep, but he still didn’t open his eyes.

“Aaron,” Call said, under his breath. “Aaron, please be you.”

Then Aaron moved, hand swiping at nothing, body rolling over. He turned onto his side, pushed himself into a sitting position, and with a shudder opened his eyes.

They weren’t coruscating.

They weren’t anything but a clear and steady green.

“Aaron?” Call felt as though he could barely get his throat to make a sound.

“Call,” Aaron said. He didn’t sound quite like himself — not yet. Maybe it was because his throat hadn’t been used in so long, but there was a weird hollowness in the way he spoke, an odd lack of inflection.

Call didn’t care. Aaron was alive. Whatever was wrong with him now could be fixed. Call threw his arms around his friend, felt the way his skin was growing warmer as his blood moved less sluggishly. He hugged him hard.

Aaron smelled strange, not like dead things or rot, but like ozone, like the air after a lightning strike.

“You’re okay!” Call said, as though by saying the words he was making it so. “You’re okay! You’re alive and okay!” Aaron’s arm came around his back, patting him on the shoulder. But when Call pulled away, Aaron’s face was blank and tense. He looked around the room without recognition.

“Call,” he said hoarsely. “What have you done?”