“Rich?” said Call. “Well, at least you didn’t show up in your pajamas.”
Aaron grinned. “You always know how to make an entrance,” he said. Call figured he was thinking of when they’d met at the Iron Trial and Call had exploded a pen all over himself.
Call took the new clothes and went into the bathroom to change. They were, as he had suspected they would be, too big. Aaron had a lot more muscles than he did. He settled for rolling the sleeves of his jacket up practically to his elbows and running wet fingers through his hair until it was no longer standing up in crazy spikes.
When he came back into the bedroom, Aaron was standing near the windows, looking down at the lawn. There was a big fountain in the middle of the grass and some children had gathered around it, throwing in handfuls of some kind of substance that made the water flare up in different colors.
“So you like it here?” Call asked, doing his best not to sound resentful. It wasn’t Aaron’s fault he was the Makar. None of it was Aaron’s fault.
Aaron pushed some of his blond hair out of his face. The black stone in the band on his wrist, the one that signified that Aaron could work chaos magic, glittered. “I know I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t the Makar,” he said, almost as if he knew what Call had been thinking. “Tamara’s parents are nice. Really nice. But I know it wouldn’t be like this if I was just Aaron Stewart from some foster home. It’s good for them, politically, to be close to the Makar. Even if he is only thirteen. They said I could stay as long as I liked.”
Call felt his resentment starting to trickle away. He wondered how long Aaron had waited to hear that, that he could stay somewhere as long as he liked. He thought it probably had been a long time. “Tamara’s your friend,” he said. “And not because of politics or who you are. She was your friend before anyone knew you were the Makar.”
Aaron flashed a smile. “And you were, too.”
“I thought you were okay,” Call conceded, and Aaron smiled again.
“It’s just that being the Makar at school meant one thing,” he said. “But this summer, it’s been doing tricks and going to parties like this one. Being introduced to lots of people and everyone being really impressed to meet me and treating me like I’m special. It’s … fun.” He swallowed. “I know I really didn’t want to be the Makar when I found out, but I can’t help feeling like my life could be pretty great. I mean, if it wasn’t for the Enemy. Is it bad that I feel that way?” His eyes searched Call’s face. “I can’t ask anyone else but you. No one else would give me a straight answer.”
And just like that, Call’s resentment dissolved. He remembered Aaron sitting on the couch in their room at school, still white-faced and shocked from being dragged up in front of the whole Magisterium so the Masters could announce that he was the one great hope who would lead them all against the Enemy.
There was an enemy, Call knew now. It just wasn’t who they thought it was. And there were people who wanted Aaron dead. They wouldn’t stop. Unless the Enemy told them to stop …
If Call was the Enemy, well, then Aaron was safe, right? If Master Joseph needed Call to mount an attack, then Master Joseph was out of luck. Call would never do anything to hurt his friends. Because he had friends. And that was definitely not something that Evil Overlords had, was it?
Abruptly, he thought of his father slumped unconscious on the floor. He would never have thought he’d do anything to hurt his father, either.
“It’s not bad to think being the Makar is fun,” Call said finally. “You should have fun. So long as you don’t forget that ‘if it wasn’t for the Enemy’ is a pretty big if.”