“But what if I decide I want to stay here?” Call asked. “What if I decide I’m happy at the Magisterium? Will you still let me come home sometimes?”

There was a silence. The question hung in the air between them. Even if he was a magician, he still wanted to be Alastair’s son, too.

“I don’t — I —” His father took a deep breath.

“I know you hate the Magisterium because Mom died in the Cold Massacre.” Call spoke rapidly, trying to get the words out before his courage failed.

“What?” Alastair’s eyes went wide. He looked furious — and afraid.

“And I get why you never told me about it. I’m not mad. But that was war. They have a truce now. Nothing’s going to happen to me here in the —”

“Call!” Alastair barked. His face was pale. “You absolutely cannot stay at the school. You don’t understand — it’s too dangerous. Call, you must listen to me. You don’t know what you are.”

“I —” Call was cut off by a crashing noise behind him. He spun around to see that the lizard had somehow managed to knock its cage off the edge of the workstation. It was lying on its side on the floor, covered by a flurry of papers and the remains of one of Rufus’s models. From inside, the elemental was muttering weird words like Splerg! and Gelferfren!

Call spun back to the tornado, but it was too late. His concentration had been broken. His father had vanished, his last words hanging in the air.

You don’t know what you are.

“You stupid lizard,” Call yelled, kicking one leg of the workstation. More papers slipped onto the floor.

The elemental went quiet. Call fell back into Rufus’s chair, putting his head in his hands. What had his father been saying? What could he have meant?

Call, you must listen to me. You don’t know what you are.

A shiver went down Call’s spine.

“Let me out,” repeated the lizard.

“No!” Call yelled, glad to have a target for his rage. “No, I’m not going to let you out, so just stop asking!”

The lizard watched beadily from its cage as Call knelt down and began to pick up papers and gears from the model. Reaching for an envelope, Call’s fingers closed on a small package that must have also been knocked off the table. He pulled it toward him, when he noticed his father’s unmistakable spidery handwriting yet again. It was addressed to William Rufus.

Oh, Call thought. A letter from Dad. That can’t be good.

Should he open it? The last thing he needed was his father saying crazy things to Master Rufus and begging for Call to be sent home. Besides, Call was already going to be in trouble for sneaking around, so maybe he couldn’t get in much more trouble for opening mail.

He cut the tape free with the jagged edge of a gear and unfolded a note very like the one he had received. It read:

Rufus,

If ever you trusted me, if ever you felt any loyalty to me for my time as your student and for the tragedy we shared, you must bind Callum’s magic before the end of the year.

Alastair

CHAPTER TWELVE

FOR A LONG moment, Call was so angry that he wanted to smash something, and at the same time, his eyes burned like he was about to cry.

Trying to hold back his temper, Call pulled out the object that had been tucked into the package beneath his father’s letter. It was the wristband of an older Silver Year student, studded with five stones — one red, one green, one blue, one white, and one as black as the pools of dark water that ran through the caves. He stared at it. Was it his father’s bracelet, from the time he’d been in the Magisterium? Why would Alastair send that to Rufus?

One thing is for sure, Call thought. Master Rufus is never going to get this message. He jammed the letter and envelope into his pocket and clapped the wristband around his wrist. It was too big on him, so he pushed it high up his arm, above his own cuff, and tugged his sleeve down over it.

“You’re stealing,” said the lizard. The flames still burned along its back, blue with flashes of green and yellow. They made shadows dance along the walls.

Call stopped cold. “So what?”

“Let me out,” the lizard said. “Let me out or I’ll tell that you stole Master Rufus’s things.”

Call groaned. He hadn’t been thinking straight. Not only did the elemental know he’d opened the package, but it also knew what he’d said to his dad. It had heard his father’s cryptic warning. Call couldn’t let it repeat those things to Master Rufus.

He knelt down and lifted the cage by the iron handle on its top, setting it back on Rufus’s work table. He looked at the lizard more closely.

Its body was longer than one of his father’s boots. It looked a little like a miniature version of a Komodo dragon — it even had a beard of scales, and eyebrows — yeah, it definitely had eyebrows. Its eyes were big and red, glowing steadily like embers in a fire. The whole cage smelled vaguely of sulfur.

“Sneaking,” said the lizard. “You’re sneaking, stealing, and your father wants you to run away.”

Call didn’t know what to do. If he let the elemental out of its cage, it could still tell Master Rufus what it had seen. He couldn’t risk being discovered. He didn’t want to get his magic bound. He didn’t want to let down Aaron and Tamara, not when they’d just started to be friends.

“Yup,” Call said. “And guess what else I’m stealing. You.”

With a last look around the office, Call left, carrying the lizard’s cage with him. The elemental ran back and forth inside, causing the cage to rattle. Call didn’t care.

He walked down to the water, hoping a new boat might have drifted by. There was nothing but the underground river lapping at a stony beach. Call wondered if he could swim back, but the water was icy cold, the current was running in the wrong direction, and he’d never been the strongest swimmer. Plus, he had the lizard to think about and he doubted its cage would float.

“The currents of the Magisterium are dark and strange,” said the elemental, its red eyes glowing bright in the gloom.

Call tilted his head, studying the creature. “Do you have a name?”

“Only the name you give me,” said the lizard.

“Stonehead?” Call suggested, looking at the crystal rocks on the lizard’s head.

A puff of smoke came from the lizard’s ears. It looked annoyed.

“You said I should name you,” Call reminded it, squatting down on the bank with a sigh.

The lizard’s head squeezed between the bars. Its tongue shot out to curl around a tiny fish and pull it back between its jaws. It crunched away with disturbing satisfaction.

This had happened so fast that Call jumped, nearly dropping the cage. That tongue was scary.

“Fireback?” he suggested, standing, pretending he wasn’t freaked out. “Fishface?”

The lizard ignored him.

“Warren?” Call suggested. It was the name of one of the guys who sometimes came by to play poker with Call’s father on Sunday nights.

The lizard nodded in satisfaction. “Warren,” it said. “Warrens are there, under the earth, where creatures dwell. Warrens to sneak and spy and hole up tight!”

“Uh, great,” Call said, thoroughly unnerved.