How hard can it be? he asked himself. Her password was probably something completely obvious. Something they could figure out just from looking at her stuff.

And her room might be obvious, too. He glanced over at Tamara and Aaron. They seemed ready to be convinced that this was a plan that could work. Maybe they’d already thought of a way. And at least they were all doing something, not just waiting around for the spy to strike again.

Call sighed. If the Masters and the Assembly couldn’t be relied upon to solve this, then it was down to them.

IT DIDN’T TAKE them long to reach the corridors where the Masters lived. It wasn’t a part of the Magisterium that Call had ever been to before. Though it wasn’t forbidden, the only students who generally braved the area were assistants like Alex running errands or students carrying messages for Masters. Going there otherwise was too much of an invitation to get in trouble.

Call, in fact, was having a hard time looking confident and walking as he normally did, which had been Tamara’s advice. He kept wanting to slink along the walls, out of sight, though very few other students passed them. No Masters did. They were all still holed up in their meeting, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, which was good news for Call’s plan. It did make things a little spooky as they turned onto the set of corridors where the Masters’ sleeping quarters were, though.

They had some fun guessing whose door was whose. Master Rockmaple must be the massive door studded with brass, Master North must be the plain metal door, Master Rufus the door of brushed silver. The door with a picture of a kitten dangling from a wire that had the message HANG IN THERE underneath obviously belonged to Master Milagros.

Anastasia’s was just as easy to spot. A thick white mat had been placed in front of it, and the door itself was made of pale marble veined with black that looked like smoke. Call remembered her having all her expensive, pale white furniture carried inside on the first day of school.

“This is her,” Call said, pointing. “It has to be.”

“Agreed.” Aaron drew close, tapped his fingers against the marble. He examined the seams of the door, but like all doors in the Magisterium, it didn’t have hinges, just the flat pad where you were supposed to wave your bracelet to get in. Eventually Aaron stepped back, raising his hand. Call felt a familiar pull underneath his rib cage.

Aaron was about to use chaos magic.

“Wait,” Call said. “Don’t — not unless we absolutely have to.”

The pulling feeling went away, but Aaron gave him a look that was almost hurt. “What have you got against chaos magic all of a sudden?”

Call tried to form his jumbled thoughts into words. “I think it brings the Masters running,” he said. “I think they have some way of sensing it, at least when it’s used in the Magisterium.”

“I figured it was the racket that Skelmis made in our room that got them there so fast,” said Tamara thoughtfully. “But they did race over pretty quickly for just some noise. Call could be right.”

“Okay, then,” said Aaron. “What do you suggest?”

For the next ten minutes they went at the door with everything they could think of. Tamara cast a fire spell, but the door was impervious. It didn’t react to freezing, either, or to “Open sesame,” or to the unlocking spell Tamara had used on the cages in the village of the Order of Disorder. It just sat there, looking at them, being a door.

It didn’t react to being kicked, either, Call discovered.

“Seriously?” Aaron said, after they’d exhausted their ideas and were leaning sweatily against the opposite wall. He glared at Master Milagros’s kitten poster. “All this worrying about the safe and we can’t even get past the door.”

“Somebody got past our door,” Tamara pointed out.

“So it’s possible,” said Call. “Or at least it should be. I mean, we knew it wouldn’t be easy. These doors are the Magisterium’s security. We shouldn’t be able to wave just any wristband at one of them and have the door open.” He waved his arm at the door for emphasis.

There was a click.

Tamara stood up straight. “Did that just —”

Aaron took two strides across the hallway and pushed. The door slid open smoothly. It was unlocked.

“That’s not right.” Tamara didn’t sound pleased; she sounded upset. “What was that? What happened?” She whirled on Call. “Are you just wearing your regular band?”

“Yeah, of course, I’m —” Call pushed up the sleeve of his thermal shirt. And stared. His wristband was on his wrist; that was true. But he’d forgotten the wristband he’d shoved up above his elbow.

The wristband of the Enemy of Death.

Tamara sucked in a breath. “That doesn’t make sense, either.”

“We’re going to have to figure it out later,” said Aaron from the doorway. “We don’t know how much time we have in her room.” He looked agitated but also a lot happier than he’d been a moment before.

Call and Tamara followed him in, though Tamara’s expression was still worried. Call felt as if the Enemy’s wristband was burning on his arm. Why hadn’t he left it back home, with Alastair? Why had he wanted to wear it to school? He hated the Enemy of Death. Even if they were in some way the same person, he hated everything Constantine Madden stood for and everything he had become.

“Wow,” Tamara said, shutting the door behind them. “Check out this room.”

Anastasia’s room was stunning. The walls were glittering, veined with quartz. A thick white pile rug covered the floor. Her sofa was white velvet, her table and chairs were white. Even the paintings on the wall were done in shades of white and cream and silver.

“It’s like being inside a pearl,” said Tamara, turning in a circle.

“I was thinking it was like being inside a giant bar of soap,” said Call.

Tamara gave him a withering look. Aaron was stalking around the room, looking behind the china cabinet (white, with white dishes) and behind a bookshelf (white, lined with books wrapped in white paper) and under a (white) trunk on the floor. Finally, he approached a long tapestry hanging on one wall. It had been woven in threads of cream and ivory and black, and it depicted a white mountain of snow.

La Rinconada? Call wondered. The Cold Massacre?

But he couldn’t be sure.