“Sure,” Aaron said, although Call could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Nonetheless, he followed Call and Tamara to the buffet table and watched while Call piled three plates with towers of shrimp and scallops, sausages and cheese.
People kept coming up to Aaron, congratulating him on his control of the chaos elementals, wanting to invite him to things or tell him a story about their involvement in the last war. Aaron was polite, nodding along with even the dullest anecdotes.
Call made Tamara a cheese plate, mostly because he was sure that Evil Overlords didn’t make other people cheese plates. Evil Overlords didn’t care if their friends were hungry.
Tamara took the cheese plate, shrugged, and ate a dried apricot off it. “This is so boring,” she whispered. “I can’t believe Aaron isn’t dead from boredom.”
“We have to do something,” Call said, throwing a breaded shrimp up into the air and catching it in his mouth. “People like Aaron act all nice until suddenly they explode and banish some annoying geezer into the void.”
“That’s not true,” Tamara said, rolling her eyes. “You might do that, but Aaron wouldn’t.”
“Oh, yeah?” Call raised his eyebrows. “Take a good look at his face and say that again.”
Tamara studied Aaron for a long moment. Aaron was trapped in conversation with a skinny old mage in a pink suit, and his eyes looked glazed. “Fine. I know where we can go.” She dumped the plate Call had made her and grabbed hold of Aaron’s sleeve. He turned toward her in surprise and then shrugged helplessly at the adult talking to him as she dragged him away from the conversation and toward the house.
Call abandoned his half-finished food on a stone banister and hurried after them. Tamara gave him a brilliant, crazy grin as they pulled Aaron inside, Havoc trotting behind.
“Where are we going?” Aaron said.
“Come on.” Tamara led them through the house until they reached a library lined with richly bound books. Mullioned windows set with colored glass let in sparkling beams of light, and deep-red rugs covered the floor. Tamara crossed the room toward a massive fireplace. A stone urn stood at each side, carved out of multicolored agate. Each one had a word inscribed on it.
Tamara took hold of the first one and twisted it around so that the word faced them. Prima. She moved to the second urn and twisted it until the second word faced them as well. Materia.
Prima materia, Call knew, was an alchemical term. It meant the very first substance of the world, the substance that everything that wasn’t chaos — earth, air, fire, water, metal, and souls — came from.
A sharp click sounded, and a section of the wall swung open onto a well-lit stone hallway.
“Whoa,” Call said.
He wasn’t sure where he’d been expecting Tamara to take them — to her room, maybe, or to a quiet corner of the house. He hadn’t expected a secret door.
“When were you going to tell me about this?” Aaron said, turning to Tamara. “I’ve been living here for a month!”
Tamara looked delighted at having kept a secret from him. “I’m not supposed to show anyone. You’re lucky to be seeing it now, Makar.”
Aaron stuck his tongue out at her.
Tamara laughed and ducked into the hallway, reaching up to pull a torch down from the wall. It glowed a bright gold green and gave off a faint smell of sulfur. She set off down the corridor, pausing when she realized the boys weren’t right on her heels. She snapped her fingers, her curls swinging. “Come on,” she said. “Move it, slowpokes.”
They looked at each other, shrugged, and headed after her.
As they walked, Havoc huffing along after them, Call realized why the hallways were so narrow — they ran through the whole house like veins beside bone, so anyone in any of the public rooms could be spied upon. And at regular intervals there were small hatches that opened into what looked like air ducts, covered by ornate ironwork registers.