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THE ELECTRIC HEIR

Page 4

by Lee, Victoria


  So when Lehrer’s restraint finally broke, three weeks later, Noam didn’t hesitate. He threw himself into the affair with all he had.

  Third sin.

  After Faraday—after all Noam’s memories had come rushing back, blood welling to fill the wound—Noam had wondered if Dara had craved Lehrer’s affection the same way Noam had. As if Lehrer was the most intoxicating drug in the world and everyone else just addicts scrambling for another fix. And every time Lehrer pulled away, you wanted him more, and more, until you would happily strip your dignity down to the bone if it meant Lehrer wanted you back.

  Now look where we are, Noam thought as they both got dressed for the Keatses’ gala—in the same room, wordless, the only sound that of rustling cloth and the spritz of aftershave.

  But whatever other lies Lehrer might have told, his grief was real.

  The two of them built this hell together, and together they were damned to it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DARA

  They’d bought the suit secondhand in west Durham, untailored and sewed from cheap cotton, but it fit surprisingly well. Well enough, at least, that the man in charge of checking invitations didn’t give him the once-over the old Dara would have given someone walking up to a high-society gala in anything short of bespoke.

  Then again, the invitation was a very good fake.

  So good a fake, in fact, that it wasn’t a fake at all. Lehrer really should have done a better job sniffing out Sacha loyalists in his new administration. Not that being Grayson Heath, Minister Holloway’s nephew, was going to get him very far at a party full of people who’d known him since he was a terrifyingly telepathic four-year-old.

  Dara smiled at the invitation checker all the same and let the footman take his coat.

  The last time he’d visited the Keatses’ home, he’d been thirteen. Their daughter, Eleanor, took him up to her bedroom and tried to kiss him against the floral wallpaper. He’d spent the rest of the evening avoiding her and reading trashy novels in the toilet while pretending to have food poisoning.

  Eleanor wouldn’t be here, of course. She’d been a year older, and last he heard, she’d graduated Level II and promptly married the Norwegian ambassador to avoid military service. She lived in Oslo now.

  He didn’t miss Eleanor, but he missed a lot more than he’d have thought about being thirteen. For one, the ability to go hide in a bathroom.

  If Dara still had magic, he could have draped an illusion over himself like a cloak and looked like anyone. A grizzled old war vet, maybe, dripping with medals of honor and scowling at the world through filmy cataracts. Someone no one would mess with. If Dara still had magic, he’d have every thought in this room at his fingertips. He could dip his hands into the mind of the minister of finance, sifting through emotions like glittering jewels, and sense the precise moment Kurt Langley recognized him.

  “If it isn’t Dara Shirazi,” Langley said, clearly delighted with himself for having spotted Dara first. He reached forward with both hands, and Dara had no choice but to let him clasp one of his between them. Langley’s palms were moist with lotion. “My dear, dear boy . . . I thought . . .”

  Dara smiled back at him, waiting as Langley fumbled for the correct words.

  “Weren’t you,” Langley managed at last with a delicate little cough, “missing?”

  Dara patted his hand. “Hardly. And as you can see, I’m back now. Didn’t Calix tell you?” He detached himself before Langley could answer, drifting toward the refreshment table and leaving the man to wonder why, in fact, Lehrer hadn’t told him.

  Although something about the way Langley had said missing kept itching at him. Dara rather suspected Lehrer hadn’t said he was missing at all, but hidden away in some clinic in a foreign allied nation, kept comfortable as fevermadness ate away his brain and his life.

  Even Dara had to admit it was a deft move. No one would expect Lehrer to lie about such a thing, as Dara’s behavior reflected upon his own reputation. The story was just embarrassing enough to be believed. And that explanation would cast in new light anything Dara had ever said to suggest he was less than enamored with Lehrer. The promiscuity. The drugs.

  What a shame, they all used to think—always with that mental note of comingling disappointment and delight, pleased that their own children, at least, were not so fundamentally broken as Lehrer’s. What a waste of talent.

  Dara might have chosen to take on this mission, but he hated being here. He hated that this was that kind of party, filled with the kinds of high-society people who would recognize Dara Shirazi even if Lehrer had kept Dara’s face hidden from the rest of the world.

  Still, he was glad he’d be the one holding the gun when its bullet tore through Lehrer’s brain.

  Now that Langley had recognized him, though, it was only a matter of time before that knowledge made the rounds. Dara had to find Lehrer before Lehrer heard that Dara was here.

  Lehrer was taller than anyone had any right to be, but in this crowd picking him out was impossible. Too many military uniforms, too many fine suits and fair-haired heads. After watching a moment, though, Dara noticed a pattern to the way people moved through the room. It was as if they were all asteroids in orbit around a knot of people at the far end, by the fireplace. And—

  Yes. There. Just a glimpse was enough, just the sharp line of a cheekbone and the neat part of Lehrer’s hair, and god, but Dara would recognize him anywhere.

  He wanted to reach for the gun strapped to his right hip. He wanted to start shooting right now, damn the consequences. He was nauseated down to the marrow of his bones, sickness seeping like venom into his blood. Even breathing was difficult, like his rib cage was constricting round his lungs and squeezing all the air out.

  He couldn’t do it. He—he couldn’t, he couldn’t walk over there and look Lehrer in the eye again, hear that soft voice twisting reality with every syllable he spoke. Not even to shoot him.

  You have to. Think about Noam, still in Carolinia, still trusting Lehrer and blind to what Lehrer really was. Maybe Lehrer’s persuasion would break when Lehrer died, every thread of that lethal magic snapping at once and freeing the nation from its bonds. Maybe Dara would miraculously manage to get out of here alive. And Noam would remember.

  That only happened if Lehrer died. Which only happened if he drank the suppressant first.

  Dara took in a sharp breath and made himself exhale slowly.

  All right. Where was Claire? He had to wait for the signal.

  He felt people’s eyes on him, gazes snagging on his face and dragging after him as he walked deeper into the room. They were thinking about approaching him. Dara didn’t need telepathy to know that. And if they weren’t thinking about approaching him, they were thinking of approaching Lehrer, waiting for a break in conversation to say, Dara looks well. You must be so relieved.

  He scanned the faces of the passing servers, meant to be unobtrusive in their plain black uniforms. What if something had come up with Claire’s papers and she hadn’t been able to get past security? He should find Holloway, perhaps. Make sure.

  Only—no. There she was, tangled up in a knot of giggling socialites who’d clearly already had enough to drink. She had a tray in hand, little glasses of schnapps. Which one was meant for Lehrer? Or had she poisoned them all?

  Their gazes met. He arched a brow. She shook her head, however minutely.

  Not yet.

  Maybe Dara could go hide in that bathroom after all.

  He started off in that direction, slipping his hands in his pockets and trying to look like he was headed somewhere in particular so he wouldn’t be interrupted. He made it about ten feet before the crowd shifted, a knot of partygoers departing toward the refreshment table, and Dara could see clear through to where Lehrer stood. He was facing away, toward the hearth, momentarily free from sycophants. But he wasn’t alone.

  Dara froze in place.

  He’d spent eight months memorizing the shape of that body, the long
limbs and narrow waist now flaunted to great effect in a tailored suit. How his hair looked almost red in the firelight, neatly trimmed for once and swept out of his beloved face, briefly visible in profile as he glanced toward Lehrer and said something inaudible.

  Dara’s pulse roared in his ears.

  And Lehrer.

  Lehrer’s hand rested on the small of Noam’s back like it belonged there, as Lehrer leaned over and murmured into Noam’s ear, then smiled.

  Dara spun on his heel, gasping for a breath that felt like it wasn’t coming. The rest of the party seethed on around him, loud voices wordless and incomprehensible, someone’s laughter, the distant shatter of a dropped glass.

  No. He was . . . this wasn’t. He must have imagined it.

  Only he hadn’t imagined it, and he hadn’t misinterpreted it. Because Dara had once been the one standing at Lehrer’s side while Lehrer touched him and told him exactly what he planned to do to him later tonight once they were alone. He knew what that looked like.

  And he knew what he saw.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  He never should have left. He should have stayed, locked up in Lehrer’s apartment drunk on sedatives and suppressant, because at least then Lehrer would have been somewhere Dara could see him.

  In the QZ, Dara used to imagine Noam realizing the truth and escaping—showing up at camp dirty and exhausted but alive. After all, Noam had believed Dara—he’d worshipped Lehrer just like the rest of them, but at the end of it all Noam still believed Dara when no one else would, and so why not? Why not hope that was still true, that the bright-burning kernel of goodness that existed at Noam’s core could somehow overwhelm even Lehrer’s magic—that he’d come back to Dara?

  But it turned out all Noam wanted was to stay here, with Lehrer, and relish his temporary victory while Lehrer tied a rope around his neck.

  Only . . .

  No.

  That wasn’t right.

  Noam was a lot of things, but Dara refused to believe he would let Lehrer drag him down into this prison so willingly.

  Dara turned around again, and when he inhaled this time, his breath was even.

  He pushed forward, evading the sparkling socialite who tried to get his attention, ignoring the irritated grumble of the man whose champagne he plucked from his hand as he passed. The fluted glass fit perfectly against his palm, chilly and slightly damp. All Dara could see was them; all he could hear was the white noise buzzing in his skull.

  Lehrer must have heard him approach or sensed him somehow, even though Dara doubted they were close enough now for Lehrer to read his mind, because he began to turn when Dara was still two steps away, and their gazes met. It was like being shot in slow motion, adrenaline ricocheting through his chest and leaving him raw and bloody in its wake. Lehrer’s gaze was . . . exactly, it was exactly how Dara remembered it, that odd crystalline quality, the patternlessness of his irises. Dead eyes, Sacha had said once, but that wasn’t true. If anything they were too alive, lit from their own internal electric circuit that never shut off.

  There was that brief moment of recognition, shock flickering across Lehrer’s features, before it was subsumed by the still-water surface of Lehrer’s usual placid mask.

  “Lovely party,” Dara said. And that was when Noam turned too.

  He looked both completely the same and yet not at all. The same features, same height and skin color and brownish hair. But he looked too perfect somehow, as if someone (Lehrer) had taken the time to file away the rough edges and trim every loose end. Tall and neat and polished to within an inch of his life. It was worse, now that Dara couldn’t read his mind. Noam felt less like a person and far more like a sculpture.

  That perfection cracked, though, when he looked at Dara. The color drained from his cheeks, the series of expressions that flickered over his face all tumbling into one another and leaving Noam gaping at Dara like he, Dara, was a dead man.

  It occurred to Dara only now that was probably exactly what Noam thought he was.

  “Britta always did know how to play hostess,” Lehrer said without missing a beat.

  Noam was still staring at Dara, still shell shocked. A beat later his gaze flickered down to Dara’s hip.

  Of course. He sensed the gun.

  “You’re looking well,” Lehrer commented. He lifted his glass of scotch and took a small, controlled sip. His attention never wavered from Dara’s face.

  Something feral clawed at the inside of Dara’s chest. Run. Run away. Run now.

  “Must be all that fresh mountain air,” Dara said.

  Lehrer smiled blandly, politely, and stepped forward. Dara moved back just quickly enough, before Lehrer could reach for him. He saw it in Lehrer’s eyes, what Lehrer meant to do—the same thing Lehrer did that time at Minister Langley’s party, Lehrer’s hand on Dara’s shoulder: barely touching him, but with enough magic seeping through his fingertips that it felt like being crushed under a boulder. Dara had fought so hard to keep from crying out, from letting the pain flicker across his expression and betray them both. It would be so easy, even now, for Lehrer to close his fingers around Dara’s arm and direct him away from here, out of sight, somewhere he could snap Dara’s neck like a twig and deal with the fallout later.

  Instead, Lehrer’s fingertips skimmed empty air.

  “Don’t you ever,” Dara said, his voice low and very, very even, “touch me again.”

  Lehrer’s hand curled into a loose fist, and his arm dropped back down to his side. That mild smile was back. Of course, Lehrer didn’t want to cause a scene. Not here. And especially not in front of Noam.

  Dara looked back at Noam. Noam’s gaze immediately flitted away, staring down at his whisky instead like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

  “Why are you with him?” Dara demanded.

  Noam sucked in a shallow breath and opened his mouth to answer, but Lehrer was faster.

  “I don’t know—why are you with me?” Lehrer asked Noam, so lightly it might have been a private joke shared between the two of them, and he laughed.

  His hand, again, was at Noam’s back.

  Noam startled visibly. For one moment he looked between Dara and Lehrer like he was waiting for one of them to tell him what to say—how to react—and in that second Dara was so sure Lehrer must have done something. Hurt him, somehow. Electricity—or superstrength.

  But that wasn’t pain in Noam’s eyes.

  It was something else.

  Dara rotted slowly, standing here looking at Noam not looking back, at Lehrer’s gaze burning a hole in the side of Dara’s face, Lehrer’s small and self-satisfied smile.

  What if Noam chose this?

  Dara’s hand was shaking. He put the champagne glass down on a passing tray, quick, before Lehrer saw the liquid sloshing in the glass.

  “This has been an illuminating conversation,” he said, and it was a struggle to keep his voice steady. Noam still wouldn’t meet his gaze. Dara looked at Lehrer instead, and Lehrer arched a brow. “But I’m afraid I have appointments elsewhere this evening.” He pushed the corners of his mouth up and inclined his head toward them both. “Please tell Britta it was a lovely party.”

  He left before he could think better of it. And he didn’t look back, not even at Claire, who glared at him as he slipped past her and out the front door. Lehrer must have wasted no time when Dara left—he had a tail on him almost immediately, some baseline in a suit. Pathetic. An insult to all that Level IV training, to every time Lehrer had taken Dara out to the QZ and had him pull a trigger. Even with the man’s mind nothing but a smear of silence, outsmarting him was only too easy. Dara slipped his tail in an alley, lurking in the shadow beneath a fire escape until the baseline passed. Dara caught him from behind. Easy. And as he tightened the garrote around the man’s neck, as the man struggled to breathe—as, a minute later, Dara lowered his unconscious body to the slick asphalt—he couldn’t stop thinking that this was what Lehrer wanted, in the end.

/>   And Lehrer always got what he wanted.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NOAM

  Lehrer led the way into the apartment, Noam trailing a half step behind. In the dim hallway Lehrer was a shadow limned in gold—light? magic? what did it matter—as he slipped out of his coat.

  Noam’s mouth felt sewed shut. All the words he might have said were dead in his lungs.

  “I don’t know how he survived,” Lehrer was saying, clearly to himself and not to Noam. There was something sharp about the way he moved through the shadows, flicking on a lamp with a twist of his fingers and sparking telekinesis. “He should have died within weeks. Perhaps days.”

  Noam took off his shoes in the foyer and stood there with his toes curling in the faded rug, wondering if perhaps he ought to go. But Lehrer hadn’t yet given him permission to return to the barracks, and Noam knew damn well how Lehrer felt about him leaving prematurely.

  “He’s sided with those terrorists in the quarantined zone,” Lehrer said. A scotch bottle uncapped itself and poured two fingers’ worth into a glass. To Noam’s surprise a second glass poured as well. Lehrer turned and offered that one to him. Noam drifted forward as if in a dream and took it. Even from a foot away he could smell the peat. “He came to that party to kill me.”

  “You don’t know that,” Noam said at last. He held the whisky between his hands without drinking. Lehrer’s gaze was sharp on his face, all-seeing. “You’ve barely spoken to him.”

  “While I’m not surprised you defend him,” Lehrer said, “I should think I know my own child far better than you do.”

  It was one of the only times Noam had heard Lehrer call Dara his child. Usually it was ward or even student.

 

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