Alastair regarded them both with surprise. “Well, you’re welcome, but I don’t think your parents would stand for it. I’ve know them for a long time and I’d be surprised if they agreed to let you out of their sight.”
Tamara firmed her jaw, determination writ in every line of her face. “We have to take shifts watching over Call. I told them so and they agreed with me.”
“Shifts?” Aaron said.
“Someone tried to kill Call,” said Tamara. “That means we can’t ever let him out of our sight. Someone has to be watching him constantly, twenty-four hours a day.”
“Even when I’m sleeping?” Call asked.
Tamara fixed him with a gimlet eye. “Especially when you’re sleeping,” she said. “You’re defenseless then.”
Call wasn’t thrilled about the plan. “What? No! I don’t want Jasper watching me sleep — that’s creepy. I don’t want anyone watching me sleep!”
“We can discuss this later,” Alastair said. “If you want to come with us, Tamara, Jasper, we’re going now.”
Call looked over at Aaron, but he wasn’t paying attention to the discussion. He was staring past them, down the hall at the War Room and beyond, where Jen’s body was floating. Call thought about their carefree summer of building robots and running through sprinklers and wondered if he’d been foolish to think that just because he’d tricked the mages into believing things had changed, they really had.
“Come on,” Tamara said to Aaron, touching him on the shoulder and pulling his attention back to the here and now. Call allowed himself to be herded by his father toward the stairs. They passed the drinks table, now overturned, where Jen had handed Call the note.
When Alastair got to the stairs, he lifted Call in the air, moving him to glide swiftly and easily just above the steps of the staircase. He did it in a distracted, effortless manner, the same way he’d burned away the velvet ropes, as though he wasn’t even really paying attention to what he was doing. Call was shocked. His dad had avoided using magic for so long that Call didn’t think he really remembered how.
They reached the top of the steps and Alastair set Call gently down. He began striding ahead of the four kids, along the jetty, back toward where the car was parked.
They had just passed the giant weird statue of Poseidon when Jasper noticed Alastair’s Rolls-Royce Phantom. He gave a long, appreciative whistle that ended abruptly — in a choking noise — when he realized that the car he was admiring belonged to Call’s father.
“Not what you expected?” Call asked as Alastair opened the door and ushered them into the spacious backseat.
For once, Jasper didn’t seem to have anything to say. They all piled silently into the car, Call crawling into the front seat beside his dad. As they pulled away from the boardwalk, Call looked back to see a group of mages standing at the edge of the ocean, near the Collegium entrance. As he watched, one of them walked into the water and disappeared.
“Water mages. They’re retrieving the girl’s body,” said Alastair in a grim tone.
Call looked away. It was hard to believe that cheerful Jen, who’d teased him when she handed him the message, who Jasper had wanted to meet, was dead. The evening was supposed to honor the end of the war and somehow that made everything that had happened that much more grotesque. But could there ever really be peace, Call thought, when the Enemy of Death wasn’t dead?
Somehow, back at the house, Alastair found enough pillows and blankets for all of them. Aaron abdicated his military cot so Tamara could move it into the den, because he was like that. Jasper claimed the couch, though he complained bitterly that it didn’t fold out, and accused Havoc of giving the couch fleas. Call, who knew perfectly well that Havoc was flea-free, was back to hating Jasper. Aaron took a pile of blankets, made a makeshift bed on the floor at the foot of Call’s, and went to sleep.
Call was almost asleep himself when there was a knock on his door. It was Tamara, looking faintly embarrassed. “Do you have anything I could sleep in?” she asked. “All I have is this” — she indicated her floaty dress — “and, yeah, I probably shouldn’t …”
Call realized he was blushing. He wished it could be totally uncomplicated, having a girl best friend. It should be just like it was with Aaron. It shouldn’t matter that Tamara was a girl. Still, he felt clumsy and stupid as he fished around in his T-shirt drawer until he found an oversize shirt that read WELCOME TO THE LURAY CAVERNS on it in Day-Glo yellow. He handed it over silently.
“Thanks,” Tamara said. “I’ll wash it and give it back to you —”
“That’s fine, you can keep it —”
“— And, Call?”
“I mean, I’ve never worn it anyway, it’s too big, and —”
“Call,” Tamara said, again, looking at him with big, serious eyes. “We’re going to keep you safe, okay?”
Call wished he could believe it. “Okay,” he said.
They sat out in the yard the next day, Tamara back in her yellow dress, Jasper in a strange combination of Call’s clothes and his own. It was brightly sunny, and Alastair had made them lemonade out of powder, which Tamara was giving the fisheye. Call suspected she didn’t drink a lot of reconstituted things. Jasper was looking around haughtily at Call’s small backyard and slightly overgrown grass.
Not that Alastair seemed to notice. He was seated on a rock, tinkering with a broken alarm clock. Even though there were digital alarm clocks and cell phones nowadays, people would pay decent money for old-fashioned phones and other gadgets that had been fixed up to run well.
“So what does it mean?” said Tamara. “If someone’s trying to hurt Call because he’s the …” She swallowed.
“Enemy of Death?” Jasper volunteered.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go around saying ‘Enemy of Death’ a lot,” said Aaron. “We should come up with a code name. Like Captain Fishface.”
Havoc barked. Call agreed with him that the name sucked. “Why Captain Fishface?”
“Well, you have a fishy look,” said Jasper. “Plus, no one would ever guess what we meant because there’s nothing scary about it.”
“Fine, whatever,” said Tamara, sounding as if she thought the whole thing was a waste of time. “So who might know Call is Captain Fishface?”
“I refuse to be called that!” Call said. “Especially in light of recent events.”
Tamara groaned as though this conversation was tormenting her even more than it was tormenting Call. “Okay, what do you want to be called?”
“How about Commander Pinhead?” Aaron asked. Jasper laughed, spitting out his lemonade.
Call put his head in his hands and took a deep breath, drinking in the smells of summer — the perfume of warm earth, cut grass, and machine oil. There was no winning. He was going to wind up with a dumb name no matter what. “Captain Fishface is fine.”
“Good,” Tamara said, rolling her eyes. “Now can we talk about who might know about Call?”
“His father,” Jasper said, and they all glanced at Alastair, who seemed oblivious. He was whistling a jaunty tune in a slightly off-key manner.