The library was one of Call’s favorite places in the Magisterium, not because he was particularly bookish but because he’d spent a lot of good times there with Tamara and Aaron. Now he, Tamara, Gwenda, and Jasper trooped in under the inscription that read KNOWLEDGE IS FREE AND SUBJECT TO NO RULE, and sat down at one of the long wooden tables in the center of the room.
“Okay,” Tamara said, taking charge. “Here’s what we’re looking for. Stuff about Automotones — are there other elementals like him? And chaos — has anything ever come back from chaos? Do we know anything about the chaos realm?”
“Don’t you?” Gwenda said, eyeing Call. “I mean, you’re the chaos mage.”
He shook his head. “No. No idea. I can send things through to chaos, but I don’t have any idea what’s on the other side.”
They all split up and took different sections of the library; Call ended up in the chaos magic section, where there were a lot of books he guiltily realized he should probably have read already — books on the history of chaos mages, the meaning of counterweights, and the discovery of chaos magic. He was reaching for a book called Soul and Void: Preliminary Theory when Aaron spoke.
I need a body, he said. I can’t stay in your head forever.
Call slumped against the bookshelves. He’d known this was coming, and it would be a relief to be alone in his own head, but it still felt a little rejecting. Plus, he had no idea how to accomplish it. “It’s not that easy to just get a body,” he murmured.
Maybe someone dead?
“We can’t use a corpse — that’s what happened to you last time. You got weird in there because the brain had been dead. And that was pushing your soul back into you. Imagine how it would be with some random other dead body.” He paused. “And not a baby. That’s what happened with me. You’d lose all your memories. You’d be a different person. A really little, helpless person.”
I don’t want to be a baby. Aaron sounded appalled. And I definitely don’t want to push out the soul of a baby.
“We could go to the hospital,” Call said, realizing how morbid the whole conversation was. “Find someone who’s about to die?”
Wouldn’t I just jump into their body and then die?
“We could fix them with magic?” Call suggested, though he knew this was unrealistic. Neither of them knew that much about healing magic.
Then we should probably patch them up and let them live, Aaron said with the annoying nobility that told Call that this Aaron was okay. He was alive now and not a scary undead monster and there was a big part of Call that wanted to quit while they were ahead, even if it meant Aaron lived in his skull forever.
“If you keep shooting down all my suggestions, you’re going to be stuck here,” Call reminded him.
From behind a nearby bookcase, he heard someone giggling. He peered around, worrying that someone had heard him talking to himself. Instead, he saw Tamara sitting on the table, swinging her legs, with Jasper beside her, apparently saying something amusing. Call narrowed his eyes.
We’ll think of something. Aaron sounded desperate.
We could kill someone, thought Call, eyes narrowing further as he watched Tamara giggle again and Jasper preen. He was definitely flirting. We could kill Jasper, for instance.
We’re not going to kill Jasper. I don’t want to be a murderer.
You killed Master Joseph, Call thought, and then was surprised at himself. He wouldn’t have said that to Aaron out loud. He hadn’t wanted to mention anything that had happened during that horrible time. But he couldn’t seem to stop thinking. You practically pulled off his head like a tomato —
I wasn’t myself, Aaron protested. Call didn’t say anything. He heard Tamara giggle again but didn’t have the heart to look — he didn’t have any claim on her. She could go out with Jasper if she wanted, even if the thought made Call want to smash his own head against a stalactite.
There was no point being angry at Aaron either. None of this was Aaron’s fault. It was Master Joseph’s fault. Alex Strike’s fault. Constantine Madden’s fault. And Call’s own fault.
I guess jumping from one body to another is always going to be murder, Aaron thought somberly. You’re always killing someone else’s soul. That’s why it’s evil. That’s why all that Enemy of Death stuff was wrong. It turned out to cause a lot of death instead of reversing it.
I guess so. Call carried Soul and Void: Preliminary Theory over to the table, where Gwenda had already joined Tamara and Jasper. They were chattering about Automotones, Tamara and Jasper telling Gwenda about the battle at Alastair’s old car lot, especially Havoc’s heroics.
Do you remember? Call thought, but Aaron had gone silent in his mind.
It wasn’t fair. He felt bad about hurting Aaron’s feelings, but it was impossible not to think stupid, awful stuff. Horrible things floated to the surface of his mind all the time and he couldn’t stop them from coming. In the past, he’d barely restrained himself from saying the worst of his thoughts out loud; how was he supposed to restrain himself from thinking them? And then Aaron got to go off to hide in the back of his head and not reveal anything. Maybe Aaron’s thoughts were even worse than Call’s, but Call would never know.
From the table laden with books, he heard Gwenda speak. “So Call dragged you to this enormous car graveyard looking for his father and then an elemental attacked you, and Call still didn’t tell you that he was the Enemy of Death?”
“I think it was hard to say out loud,” Jasper said, surprising Call. “He probably wasn’t even sure we’d believe him. I wouldn’t have. Of course I would have pretended to at the time, because I was kidnapped and you should never tell your kidnapper that he’s a crazy person.”
“You get kidnapped a lot,” Gwenda said, gloriously unsympathetic.
“I do, now that you mention it,” said Jasper. “Why am I defending Call again? He’s the reason I am always getting kidnapped.”
“Because you’re super good friends?” Gwenda said, sounding confused. “You’re his sidekick. Well, one of his sidekicks.”
“That’s true,” said Tamara. “Havoc is really his main sidekick.”
“No, no, no, no, no!” Jasper said, clearly appalled. “You can’t really have thought of me that way. I am his rival! Call and I are always going head to head, toe to toe, in contests of war and love. And I win as often as I lose! I am his rival!”
“If you say so,” Gwenda said.
Call, despite everything else, had to smile.
Gwenda checked her watch. “We have to go meet with Master Rufus,” she said, sounding relieved. “Which is fine, because this is kind of boring. I can’t believe we’re here because a lizard dropped a hint.”
“Warren’s been right before,” said Call, not sure if he was defending Warren or himself. “We’ll take these books back to the rooms and keep going through them until we find something.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” said Gwenda. She made a clicking noise at Jasper, who looked incredulous. “Come on. Time’s a-wasting.”
“People click at dogs,” Jasper protested, following Gwenda from the room. “You can’t click at me.”