The Iron Trial by Holly Black, Cassandra Clare Page B

on the windows? Oh, wait, nope — because there aren’t going to be any windows, right?”
    “Uh,” Aaron said, holding out his open bag of cheesy-garlic-bread-flavored Lays. “Chip?”
    Tamara leaned across the aisle. “Are you actually deranged?” she asked, not really like she was insulting him this time, but more like she honestly wanted to discuss it.
    “You do know that when we get there, we’re going to die, right?” Call said, loud enough for the whole bus to hear him.
    That was met with a resounding silence.
    Finally, Celia piped up. “All of us?”
    Some of the other kids snickered.
    “Well, no, not all of us, obviously ,” said Call. “But some of us. That’s still bad!”
    Everyone was staring at Call again, except Master Rufus and Master Rockmaple, who were sitting up front and not paying any attention to what the kids were doing in back. Being treated like he was nuts had happened to Call more times that day than it had happened to him in his entire life, and he was getting sick of it. Only Aaron wasn’t looking at Call like he was crazy. Instead, he crunched a chip.
    “So who told you that?” he asked. “About us dying.”
    “My father,” said Call. “He went to the Magisterium, so he knows what it’s like. He says the mages are going to experiment on us.”
    “Was that the guy who was screaming at you at the Trial? Who threw that knife?” asked Aaron.
    “He doesn’t usually act like that,” Call muttered.
    “Well, he obviously went to the Magisterium and he’s still alive,” Tamara pointed out. She’d lowered her voice. “And my sister’s there. And some of our parents went.”
    “Yeah, but my mother is dead,” said Call. “And my father hates everything about the school. He won’t even talk about it. He says my mom died because of it.”
    “What happened to her?” Celia asked. She had a package of root beer gummies open on her lap, and Call was tempted to ask her for one because it reminded him of the sundae he was never going to get and also because she sounded kind, like she was asking him because she wanted him not to worry about the mages, rather than because she thought he was a raving weirdo. “I mean, she had you, so she didn’t die at the Magisterium, right? She must have graduated first.”
    Her question threw Call. He’d lumped it all together and hadn’t thought about the timeline much. There had been a fight somewhere, part of some magic war. His father had been vague about the details. What he’d focused on was how the mages had let it happen.
    When mages go to war, which is often, they don’t care about the people who die because of it.
    “A war,” he said. “There was a war.”
    “Well, that’s not very specific,” said Tamara. “But if it was your mother, it had to be the Third Mage War. The Enemy’s war.”
    “All I know is that they died somewhere in South America.”
    Celia gasped.
    “So she died on the mountain,” Jasper said.
    “The mountain?” asked Drew from the back, sounding nervous. Call remembered him as the one who had been asking about pony school.
    “The Cold Massacre,” said Gwenda. He remembered the way she’d stood up when she’d been chosen, smiling like it was her birthday, her many braids with their beads swinging around her face. “Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you heard of the Enemy, Drew?”
    Drew’s expression froze. “Which enemy?”
    Gwenda sighed with annoyance. “The Enemy of Death . He’s the last of the Makaris and the reason for the Third War.”
    Drew still looked puzzled. Call wasn’t sure he understood what Gwenda had said either. Makaris? Enemy of Death? Tamara looked back and caught sight of their expressions.
    “Most mages can access the four elements,” she explained. “Remember what Master Rockmaple said about us drawing on air, water, earth, and fire to make magic? And all that stuff about chaos magic?”
    Call remembered something from the lecture at the front of the bus,