“Yeah. He died on the floor of the experiment room. They say his ghost —”

“Shut up, Jasper,” said Tamara. She had her arm around another Iron Year girl, whose lip was wobbling.

“Well, anyway, Jericho was killed. And maybe you’d think that would have stopped Constantine, but it only made him worse. He became obsessed with finding a way to bring back his brother. To use chaos magic to bring back the dead.”

Celia nodded. “Necromancy. That’s completely forbidden.”

“He couldn’t do it. But he did manage to push chaos magic into living humans, which made the first Chaos-ridden. Seemed to drive out their souls so that they didn’t know who they were anymore. They obeyed him mindlessly. It wasn’t what he wanted and maybe he hadn’t meant to do it, but he didn’t stop his experiments then either. Finally, the other Masters discovered what he was doing. They were trying to figure out some way to strip him of his magic, but they didn’t know Master Joseph was still loyal to him. Master Joseph got him out — he blasted through one of the walls of the Magisterium and took Constantine with him. A lot of people say the blast nearly killed them both and that Constantine was horribly scarred. He wears a silver mask now, to cover up the scars. The surviving Chaos-ridden animals he’d created fled through the explosion, too, which is why there are so many of them in the woods around here.”

“So what you’re saying is that the Enemy of Death is the way he is because of the Magisterium,” Call said.

“No,” Jasper said. “That’s not what I —”

The Mission Gate came into sight, distracting Call with the promise that if he made it back to his room, it would be a million times easier to hide the wolf. At least it would be easier to hide it from all the people who weren’t his roommates. He’d get the wolf some water and food and then — and then he’d figure it out from there.

The gates were open. They passed under the words Knowledge and Action Are One and the Same and into the caverns of the Magisterium, where a gust of warm air hit Call in the face, presenting him with another problem. Outside, he’d been freezing. In here, as they trudged along toward their rooms, with his jacket zipped to his chin, he was rapidly overheating.

“So what did Constantine want?” asked Rafe.

“What?” Jasper sounded distracted.

“In your story. You said ‘it wasn’t what he wanted.’ The Chaos-ridden. Why not?”

“Because he wanted his brother back,” Call said. He couldn’t believe Rafe was being so dense. “Not some … zombie.”

“They’re not like zombies,” Jasper said. “They don’t eat people, the Chaos-ridden. They just don’t have memories or personality. They’re … blank.”

They were nearly at the Iron Years’ rooms now, and there were braziers spaced out along the corridors, full of fiery glowing stones. Having a huge furry bundle stuffed down his front was making Call’s temperature soar. Also, the wolf was breathing hotly on his neck. In fact, he thought it might be asleep.

“How do you know so much about the Enemy of Death?” Rafe asked, a flinty edge to his voice.

Call didn’t hear Jasper’s reply because Tamara was hissing in his ear. “Are you okay?” she demanded. “You’re turning kind of purple.”

“I’m fine.”

She gave him the once-over. “Is there something stuffed down your shirt?”

“My scarf,” he replied, hoping she wouldn’t remember he hadn’t been wearing one.

She narrowed her brows. “Why would you do that?”

He shrugged. “I was cold.”

“Call —”

But they had reached their rooms. With enormous gratitude, Call tapped the door with his wristband, letting himself and Tamara in. She was in the middle of waving good-bye to the others, when he slammed the door behind them and staggered toward his bedroom.

“Call!” Tamara said. “Don’t you think we should — I don’t know, talk? About Aaron?”

“Later,” Call gasped, half falling into his bedroom and kicking the door shut. He collapsed onto his back, just as the wolf popped its head out of the collar of his jacket and looked around.

Freed, it seemed wildly excited to bound around his room, nails loud on the stone. Call prayed Tamara wouldn’t hear as the wolf sniffed its way under Call’s bed, around his wardrobe, and on top of the pajamas he’d tossed on the floor when he’d been woken up earlier.

“You need a bath,” he told the wolf. It paused its rolling, legs in the air, and wagged its tail, tongue lolling from a corner of its mouth. As he looked down at its strange, shifting eyes, he remembered Jasper’s words.

They don’t have memories, or personality. They’re … blank.

But the wolf had plenty of personality. Which meant that Jasper didn’t understand as much about what it meant to be Chaos-ridden as he thought he did. Maybe that was how they were when the Enemy made them, maybe they even stayed blank throughout their lives, but the wolf pup had been born with chaos inside of it. It had grown up that way. It wasn’t what they thought it was.

His father’s words came back to him, making him shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.

You don’t know what you are.

Pushing that thought away, Call climbed into bed, kicked off his boots, and pressed his face against the pillow. The wolf jumped up next to him, smelling like pine needles and freshly turned earth. For a moment, Call wondered if the wolf was going to bite him. But then it settled next to him, circling twice before throwing its little body down against his stomach. With the warm weight of the Chaos-ridden wolf next to him, Call dropped immediately into sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CALL DREAMED THAT he was trapped under the weight of an enormous fuzzy pillow. He woke up groggily, waving his arms, and almost thwacked the wolf pup, who was curled on his chest and staring at him with huge, entreating, fire-colored eyes.

The full, crashing realization of what he had done hit Call, and he rolled out from under the wolf so fast that he slid off the bed and hit the floor. The pain of smacking his knees on the cold stone shocked him completely awake. He found he was kneeling, staring directly into the eyes of the wolf pup, who had crawled to the edge of the bed and was gazing at him.

“Mruf,” the wolf pup said.

“Shhhh,” Call hissed. His heart was racing. What had he done? Had he actually smuggled a Chaos-ridden animal into the Magisterium? He might as well have taken off all his clothes, covered himself in lichen, and run through the caves yelling, EXPEL ME! BIND MY MAGIC! SEND ME HOME!

The pup whimpered. Its eyes were spinning like pinwheels, fixed on Call. Its tongue darted out and then vanished again.

“Oh, man,” Call muttered. “You’re hungry, aren’t you? Okay. Let me get you something to eat. Stay there. Yeah. Right there.”

He stood up and blinked at the windup clock on the nightstand. Eleven in the morning and the alarm hadn’t gone off yet. Weird. He opened his bedroom door quietly — and was instantly faced with Tamara, already in her uniform, eating breakfast at their common table. It was a spread of deliciously normal-looking food: toast and butter, sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs, and orange juice.