“What about Aaron? How come he isn’t included in that lecture?” Tamara demanded, brows furrowed.

Master Rufus looked in Aaron’s direction and then back at Tamara and Call. “Because individually, you and Call might be trouble — but together, the pair of you are even worse.”

Aaron snickered. Call tried not to look in Tamara’s direction. He was afraid that if he did, he’d discover she was upset that Master Rufus thought she was anything like Call.

The day that everything started to unravel for Call wasn’t all that different from many other days. Call was outside with Master Milagros’s group — Jasper, Nigel, Celia, and Gwenda. They were practicing sending bolts of fire at one another. Call’s sleeve was already singed and, with his leg, he was having to do a lot of deflecting to avoid getting burned. Aaron, who Call had suddenly realized was a corrupt and evil-hearted cheater, was jumping out of the way half the time instead of bothering with magic.

Eventually, Call sat down on a log, breathing hard. Jasper looked over at him as though considering whether to set his seat on fire, but seemed to decide against it when Tamara sent a blast of heat in his direction.

“The important thing,” Master Rufus said, sitting down beside Call, “is to always control the circumstances. Other people will react to them, but if you control them, you’ll have the upper hand.”

That sounded disturbingly like something Alastair had said to him just that past summer. Our best bet of keeping people from making a fuss is controlling the circumstances under which Havoc is seen. It was easy to think of Alastair’s training at the Magisterium as not affecting him at all, but Master Rufus had been his teacher, too.

“What does that mean?” Call asked.

Master Rufus sighed. “If you can’t jump the way the others can, lead them to a terrain where they’ll have the same disadvantage. Up a tree. In a stream. Or even better, lead them to a terrain where you’ll have the advantage. Create your own advantage.”

“There’s no terrain where I have the advantage,” Call muttered, but he kept thinking about what Master Rufus had said all through the rest of the day, while eating purple tubers in the Refectory, while walking Havoc, and then as he stared up at the uneven rock ceiling of his room that night.

He kept thinking about his father controlling the circumstances and seeking a terrain where he’d have the advantage. He kept thinking about the chains in his father’s house and the drawing of the Alkahest on his father’s desk. He kept coming to the same disturbing conclusion.

He’d been pretty sure that his father was the one who’d tried to steal the Alkahest, but that had meant it was his father who failed. But what if the failure had been deliberate?

What if Alastair had failed, knowing that the mages would move the Alkahest out of the Collegium to a more secure location? What if he already knew the secure place that they were very likely to use — a terrain where he’d have the advantage?

Back at the house, beside the drawings of the Alkahest, there’d been a map of the layout of the airline hangar where the Trial had been held.

Call hadn’t wondered where Alastair had gotten that from, until now. Tamara’s parents said that Alastair was a great metal mage and Master Rufus had said that the Alkahest was safe, in a vault created by metal mages, below a place the kids had been before. The airplane hangar was made almost entirely of metal. Maybe Alastair — being a great metal mage — had been one of the people who’d helped build it, one of the people who knew exactly how to get into the hangar and to the vault that might be below it.

If all that was true, then Alastair hadn’t failed to steal the Alkahest. If all that was true, the Alkahest was more vulnerable than ever.

Call lay awake for a long time that night, staring into the dark.

Call went through much of the next day in a daze. He couldn’t pay attention in class when Master Rufus was trying to teach them how to levitate objects using metal and earth magic, and he dropped a lit candle on Tamara’s head. He forgot to walk Havoc, which had unfortunate results for the rug in his bedroom. In the Refectory, he got distracted by the fact that Celia was waving at him — and nearly tripped Aaron.

Aaron stumbled, catching himself on the edge of one of the stone tables bearing enormous cauldrons of soup. “All right,” he said firmly, taking Call’s plate out of his hands. “That’s enough.”

Tamara nodded fervently. “Way past enough.”

“What?” Call was alarmed; Aaron had become very businesslike, piling food briskly onto Call’s plate. Huge mountains of food. “What’s going on?”

“You’re being all weird,” said Tamara, who had piled her plate high as well. “We’re going back to the room to talk about it.”

“What? I’m not — I don’t —” But Call was caught up in his friends’ determination like a dust mote in a windstorm. Carrying plates, Tamara and Aaron marched him out of the Refectory, back down the corridors to their room, and pushed him inside still protesting.

They put their plates down on the table and went to grab cutlery. Seconds later they were gathered around the food, forking up lichen pizza and mossy mashed potatoes.

Hesitantly, Call picked up his fork. “What do you mean I’m weird?”

“Distracted,” Tamara said. “You keep dropping things and forgetting things. You called Master Rufus Jasper and you called Jasper Celia. And you forgot to walk Havoc.”

Havoc barked. Call looked at him darkly.

“Plus you keep staring off into space like someone died,” Aaron said, handing Call a fork. “What’s going on? And don’t say ‘Nothing.’ ”

Call looked at them. His friends. He was so tired of lying. He didn’t want to be like Constantine Madden. He wanted to be a good person. The idea of telling them the truth felt awful, but being good wasn’t supposed to be fun, right?

“Promise you won’t tell anyone?” Call asked them. “You absolutely promise and swear on — on your honor as a mage?”

Call was kind of proud of that one, since he’d just made it up. Both Call and Tamara looked impressed.

“Absolutely,” said Tamara.

“Definitely,” said Aaron.

“I think it was my dad who tried to steal the Alkahest,” Call confessed.

Aaron dropped a plate of lichen onto the table. “What?”

Tamara looked absolutely horrified. “Call, don’t joke around.”

“I’m not,” Call said. “I wouldn’t. I think he tried to steal it from the Collegium and I think he’s going to try to steal it again. This time, he might succeed.”

Aaron gaped at him. “Why would your father do that? How do you know?”

Call told them what he’d found in the basement, how Havoc had been chained up, how he’d found the open books with the illustrations of the Alkahest in them. He told them about the map of the airplane hangar, too.

“He was going to cut out Havoc’s heart to power the device?” Tamara asked, looking green.

At his name, the wolf looked up at Call and whined. Call nodded.

“But you didn’t see it anywhere? The Alkahest itself?” Aaron asked.