“I don’t understand why he’d leave in the middle of the night,” Celia said, her arms around herself, shivering even in her long bright blue parka. “None of this makes any sense.”

“We don’t know any more than you do,” said Tamara. “But if Drew ran away, he must have had a reason.”

“He’s a coward,” said Jasper. “That’s the only possible reason for leaving.”

The forest floor was covered in a thin dusting of snow, and the trees hung low all around them, Aaron’s blue light illuminating just enough to emphasize the eeriness of the sharp branches.

“What do you think he has to be afraid of?” Call asked.

Jasper didn’t answer.

“We’ve got to stay together,” Alex told them, conjuring three golden balls of flame that whirled around them, charting the outer edge of their party. “If you see or hear anything, tell me. Don’t run off.”

Frozen leaves crunched under Tamara’s feet as she dropped back to walk with Call. “So,” she said softly, “how come you thought that wristband belonged to your father?”

Call looked at the others, trying to decide if he was outside the range of their hearing. “Because it came from him.”

“He sent it to you?”

Call shook his head. “Not exactly. I … found it.”

“Found it?” Tamara sounded highly suspicious.

“I know you think he’s crazy —”

“He threw a knife at you!”

“He threw it to me,” said Call. “And then he sent this wristband to the Magisterium. I think he’s trying to tell them — to warn them about something.”

“Like what?”

“Something about me,” Call said.

“You mean you’re in danger?”

Tamara sounded alarmed, but Call didn’t reply. He didn’t know how to tell her more without telling her everything. What if there really was something wrong with him? If Tamara found out, would she keep his secret, no matter how bad it was?

He wanted to trust her. She’d already told him more about the wristband than he’d figured out in months of staring at it.

“What are you guys talking about?” Aaron asked, falling back to join them.

Tamara immediately clammed up, her eyes darting between Aaron and Call. Call could tell that she wasn’t going to tell Aaron anything unless he said it was okay. It sparked a strangely warm feeling in his stomach. He’d never really had friends who’d kept his secrets before.

It was enough to decide him. “We’re talking about this,” he said, pulling the wristband out of his pocket and handing it over to Aaron, who examined it while Call explained the whole story — his conversation with his father, the warning that Call didn’t know what he was, the letter Alastair had sent Rufus, the message with the wristband: Bind his magic.

“Bind your magic?” Aaron’s voice rose. Tamara shushed him. Aaron returned his voice to a harsh whisper. “Why would he ask Rufus to do that? That’s crazy!”

“I don’t know,” Call whispered back, looking up ahead anxiously. Alex and the other kids didn’t seem to be paying any attention to them as they made their way up a low rise of hill, snaked through with big tree roots, calling Drew’s name. “I don’t understand any of it.”

“Well, clearly the wristband was supposed to be a message to Rufus,” Tamara said. “It means something. I just don’t know what.”

“Maybe if we knew whose it was,” said Aaron. He handed the wristband to Call, who tied it onto his arm, above his own wristband and under his sleeve.

“Someone who didn’t graduate. Someone who left the Magisterium when he or she was sixteen or seventeen — or someone who died here.” Tamara looked at it again, frowning at the small medals with symbols on them. “I don’t know exactly what these mean. Excellence in something, but what? If we knew, that would tell us something. And I don’t know what this black stone means either. I’ve never seen one before.”

“Let’s ask Alex,” Aaron said.

“No way,” said Call, shaking his head and looking warily at the others trooping through the snow in the dark. “What if there is something wrong with me and he can figure it out just from looking at this wristband?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Aaron said sturdily. But Aaron was the kind of person who had faith in people and believed stuff like that.

“Alex!” Tamara said loudly. “Alex, can we ask you something?”

“Tamara, no,” Call hissed, but the older student had already fallen back to walk alongside them.

“What’s up?” he asked, blue eyes inquisitive. “You guys all right?”

“I was just wondering if we could see your wristband,” Tamara said, with a quelling look in Call’s direction. Call relented.

“Huh. Sure,” Alex agreed, unsnapping the band and handing it over. It had three stripes of metal on it, ending with bronze. It was also studded with gems: red and orange, blue and indigo and scarlet.

“What are these for?” Tamara asked innocently, though Call had a feeling she probably knew the answer.

“The completion of different tasks.” Alex sounded matter-of-fact, not like he was bragging. “This one is for using fire successfully to dispel an elemental. This one is for using air to create an illusion.”

“What would it mean if you had a black one?” Aaron asked.

Alex’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth to answer at the same moment Jasper yelled, “Look!”

A bright light glowed out from the ridge of the hill opposite theirs. As they stared, a scream split the night, high and terrible.

“Stay here!” Alex barked, and started to run, half slipping down the side of the hill they were on, heading toward the light. Suddenly, the night was full of noise. Call could hear other groups shouting and calling to one another.

Something slid through the sky above them — something scaly and snakelike — but Alex wasn’t looking up.

“Alex!” Tamara yelled, but the older boy didn’t hear her — he had reached the other hill and was starting to scramble up it. The scaly shadow was over his head, swooping and dipping.

The kids were all shouting for Alex now, trying to warn him — all of them except for Call. He started to run, ignoring the twisting burn in his leg as he slid and nearly fell down the hillside. He heard Tamara scream his name, and Jasper yell, “We’re supposed to stay here,” but Call didn’t slow. He was going to be the apprentice that Aaron thought he was, the one who there was nothing wrong with. He was going to do the kind of things that got you mysterious heroic achievements on your wristband. He was going to throw himself right into the fray.

He tripped over a loose stone, fell, and rolled to the bottom of the hill, banging his elbow hard on a tree root. Okay, he thought, not the best start.

Staggering to his feet, he started to climb again — he could see things more clearly now, in the light that poured down from the hilltop. It was a clear knifelike light that threw every pebble and hole into sharp relief. The rise grew steeper as Call reached the top; he fell to his knees and clambered the last few feet, rolling onto the flat surface of the hilltop.