THE ELECTRIC HEIR

by Lee, Victoria

  Noam’s anger seethed inside him as he pushed his way back through the crowd, growing more and more lethal the longer he held on to it. Dara knew he wasn’t supposed to leave the apartment. He knew how dangerous it was—not only for himself but for the entire fucking mission. And he did it anyway.

  He barely felt the midnight cold as they stepped out onto the street, even though an icy wind had picked up from the east, tearing through their hair and making Dara’s unbuttoned jacket flap around him like black wings.

  “How did you get here?” Noam asked.

  “I took the bus.”

  Noam laughed, a bitter sound that tore itself out of his lungs and left his throat feeling raw. “Right.”

  Of course he did. Of course the one time Dara Shirazi deigned to take the fucking bus was when he had a missing person notice out for him. And they couldn’t walk. It was at least forty-five minutes from here to Dara’s apartment. That was forty-five minutes to get caught. Noam started off down the alley, cutting back around toward Main Street; he didn’t look back, but he heard Dara’s boots crunching through the snow in his wake, so at least he was following.

  The Texan contact was already halfway across town, per his burner phone. And that was assuming he hadn’t done the smart thing and ditched it after meeting with a known technopath.

  All so Dara could get some fresh fucking air. Goddamn it.

  There was a short line of rental cars parked along the intersection of Main and Market Street; Noam chose the cheapest one, not even driverless, and fed cash into the machine—enough to pay for two hours, just in case. The car beeped benevolently as it unlocked.

  “Get in,” Noam said, telekinesis tugging open the passenger-side door.

  “I’d rather walk,” Dara said, still standing there on the sidewalk with both arms hugged around his narrow waist, weight shifting from foot to foot.

  “I don’t care. Get in the fucking car.”

  At least Dara looked somewhat contrite as he obeyed. When Noam got into the driver’s seat, Dara was rubbing his thumb against the fake leather upholstery beneath him like he’d never seen anything like it. He probably hadn’t.

  “I couldn’t stand being in that apartment any longer,” Dara said quietly as Noam hit the button on the ignition and put the car in reverse. Noam could sense Dara’s gaze on the side of his face; he kept his own attention fixed on the rearview camera as he pulled out of the parking space. “It’s—you don’t understand what it’s like.”

  “I grew up in a tenement apartment half the size of your old bedroom at Lehrer’s place,” Noam said. “So yeah, actually, I do.”

  “At least you could leave,” Dara insisted. “You weren’t locked up there. You could see people, you could—”

  He broke off and went silent, presumably having seen the way Noam’s grip tightened around the steering wheel.

  “We’re going back to your apartment,” Noam said in a low voice, switching the car into drive and starting off down the street, although he didn’t make it far before the light at the upcoming intersection switched to red. “And you will stay there, if I have to lock you in myself.”

  He understood. Of course he did. Dara had spent days locked up in Lehrer’s apartment under suppressants—it couldn’t be easy to stay in that tiny claustrophobic room after something like that. But didn’t Dara get it? Coming out here like this . . . he was gonna get himself shot. He was gonna get himself killed for real, and Noam—Noam couldn’t handle losing Dara a second time.

  And goddamn it, his gun was digging into the small of his back, the grip twisted just enough to grind against Noam’s pelvis; he shifted in his seat, which only made it worse. Finally he swore under his breath and reached back, pulling the Beretta free and setting it on the center console between their seats.

  “Why do you have a gun?”

  Dara’s voice had gone tight. Noam glanced over, meeting his gaze—Dara had one hand braced against the dashboard, twisted fully around in his seat. The remorse of a moment ago was gone, replaced by flashing eyes and a thinned mouth.

  “Buckle your seat belt,” Noam said.

  “Why the fuck do you have a gun, Álvaro?”

  Noam inhaled a long breath, one meant to steady his anger. It had the opposite effect. And when he exhaled, all that frustration burst out of him with it.

  “Because I have to kill that man,” Noam snapped at last, jerking around to face Dara properly. “Because I have to get those schematics for Claire, and I had to tell Lehrer what I was doing so he thinks I’m still honest. But now Lehrer wants them too. And Lehrer wants me to kill the Texan while I’m at it—so I have to, if I don’t want to fuck myself over. Only then you show up, because of fucking course. And now I’ve lost track of the guy I’m supposed to be shooting. It’ll take me forever to find him—he might report back. Or he might ditch his phone and I lose him entirely—and then I’ll have to explain that one to Lehrer too. Good job. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

  Dara stared at him with wide dark eyes, his shoulders rising and falling in quick, shallow rhythm. The light had changed back to green in Noam’s peripheral vision; he turned and pressed down on the gas pedal a little too hard, the car lurching forward into the intersection.

  “What side are you even on?” Dara said at last. “You were really going to kill our only Texas contact, just to keep your cover with Lehrer? Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  The words came out clipped. What else did Dara expect Noam to say? Lehrer would kill Noam if Noam slipped up, even for a second.

  And besides, Noam was out of patience for this—for Dara’s complete obliviousness, his selfishness. Which, really, where did Dara get off moralizing murder? He’d literally stopped the hearts of six people breaking Noam out of Sacha’s Faraday cage. He’d stabbed General Ames sixteen times.

  Dara somehow managed to hold so much fury against Noam in his heart, so much righteous anger, but the second Noam was angry with him in return, Dara shut down. It wasn’t fair.

  Wasn’t fair that Noam had to risk losing Dara over and over again.

  “Okay,” Dara said, “then I’ll ask again. Whose side are you on? Because at this point it seems like you’re equally committed.”

  Another goddamn red light. Noam hit the brakes just in time, the car jerking to a stop halfway through the pedestrian crosswalk and the gun sliding forward along the console to bump against the gearshift. At least the streets were empty.

  “I’m on our side,” he said. “But there’s a lot you don’t know, Dara. Like, do you know why Lehrer declared war on Texas?” He glanced sidelong, lifting a brow. “It’s because Texas got their hands on the vaccine. Lehrer figures it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to weaponize it. It’s one short step from that to releasing biological weapons on Carolinian soil. We’d be left magic-less.”

  “Oh, right. I can’t imagine what an abhorrent existence that would be.”

  “For fuck’s—we’d be defenseless, Dara. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And I hate Lehrer as much as you do, but—”

  Dara snorted.

  Noam clenched his jaw so hard he thought he might grind his teeth into dust. “Have something to say, Shirazi?”

  When he looked, Dara’s face was a mask of bitter amusement, mouth twisted in a tight knotted smile. “You really must hate him a lot,” Dara said, “to throw yourself at him like you did.”

  It was exactly what Noam expected him to say, but somehow it still sent ice plunging into his veins. He swallowed against the bloody taste in the back of his throat. “Are you done?” he managed at last, each syllable rough on his tongue, like speaking a foreign language.

  “You’re defending him.”

  “I’m explaining how he thinks. Isn’t that what you asked for, Dara? You said yourself I needed to understand him.”

  Dara laughed. “I was wrong. You don’t need to understand him—you’re just like him.”

  For a moment Noam coul
dn’t breathe properly, as if oxygen had turned to acid in his lungs. He kept his gaze fixed on the road, intently enough the horizon began to blur and wave.

  The silence stretched on, long enough it was too late for Noam to fill.

  Next to him, Dara picked up the Beretta. He turned it over in his hand, rubbing his thumb against the hammer; Noam felt his heat against the metal as if Dara was touching his own skin.

  “How many people have you killed?” Dara said.

  “What the hell kind of question is that?” Noam bit out, even though when he clenched his eyes shut to clear his vision, all he could see was the look on the face of that man he killed in the QZ with Lehrer. The fear widening his pupils. The taste of blood and magic in the air.

  Noam couldn’t even remember the dead man’s name anymore.

  “A fair question,” Dara retorted, and he put the gun back where he found it, dropping the weapon like he found it distasteful to touch. “How many, Noam? Just the one? Or have you been practicing since you killed Tom Brennan?”

  “Shut up,” Noam said, mouth barely moving.

  “Is that how you and Lehrer got so close, really? All those little assassination plots—did it turn you on, having so much power?”

  “I said shut up!” Noam slammed on the brakes to avoid running the next red light, his pulse pounding in his head and his knuckles gone white around the wheel. He turned a glare to Dara, who had gone still, both hands pressed against the flat of his seat. “You don’t get it, do you? You don’t—I’m doing the best I fucking can, and I’m sorry if that’s not good enough for you. But I’ve been managing pretty well on my own these past six months. I don’t fucking—I don’t need you, Dara.”

  The silence following those words was brittle as glass. Dara’s eyes were wide, glittering with the reflection of the stoplight as it switched back to green.

  Noam turned back to the road, jaw clenched so hard it hurt. He still felt Dara’s gaze on him, at least for a little while. Then Dara turned away, pressing his brow against the passenger-side window, and Noam finally dared to suck in another breath.

  They drove like that for a while, in silence. Noam’s heart felt bruised in his chest, twinging painfully with every beat.

  Noam couldn’t look at him. He glanced into the rearview mirror instead, into the too-bright glow of the headlights behind them. Better to be safe—no way to know if the Texas guy put a tail on them, or ditched the burner phone and followed them himself. Noam took the next left, then the left after that. Dara said nothing, just rolled down the window and draped one arm over the sill, fingers toying with the breeze.

  Noam’s fault. This was all Noam’s fault—the way Dara felt right now, the fact he couldn’t leave his apartment, all that anger tangled in a vibrant knot in Dara’s mind. If Dara had still had magic, Noam might have seen that rage, even, green fractals sparking and splitting off Dara’s skin.

  If Noam had never gotten involved with Lehrer . . . if he’d killed him when he had the chance, after they sparred, Lehrer’s cheeks flushed and his shirt sticking to his sweaty chest . . .

  Noam could have finished things then and there. It would have been easy.

  He hadn’t.

  To go back to Dara’s apartment, they should turn right at the next light. But Noam didn’t even slow down as he approached the intersection, just reached into the cell panel controlling the lights and switched them from red to green.

  He was tempted to turn on the radio, drown out their silence with the mumbling hum of talk show personalities and bad music. But then Dara would stay silent.

  Noam glanced sidelong at him. He had his eyes shut, head tipped back, and the wind was making a mess of his curls—although not as much of a mess as it would have once, before Dara cropped his hair short.

  His hand rested on the seat at his side. Noam bit the inside of his cheek, harder and harder until he tasted copper.

  Fuck it.

  He reached over and took Dara’s hand, curling his fingers around Dara’s palm and squeezing once. And Dara . . .

  Dara didn’t pull away.

  Noam’s heart was alive in his chest, wild and beating its way up into his throat. He shifted their hands onto the center console, wrist bumping against the grip of the Beretta, some part of him half expecting Dara to disentangle their fingers the moment he had a chance. But he didn’t. He stayed there, his palm warm against Noam’s skin, even if he kept his face turned away toward the window.

  And Noam kept the stoplights turning green, kept them moving through the neon blur of Durham past midnight. He didn’t track their path, just took them on loops through quiet residential neighborhoods, then speeding down Broad Street and turning up Gregson on the return, passing through small pools of yellow lamplight as his pulse finally slowed in his temples.

  The digital clock on the dashboard ticked a minute closer to one a.m. Noam rubbed his thumb against the back of Dara’s hand and finally turned the car onto Roxboro, heading back to Dara’s shitty studio apartment with the lights of the government complex at their backs.

  “Don’t leave the apartment again,” Noam said, hanging out the driver’s-side window as Dara stepped up onto the sidewalk outside Leo’s bar. “Dara. I mean it. Please . . . for me. Don’t risk it.”

  Dara turned to look at him. In his dark coat he looked like a smudge of coal against the ice. “Don’t kill the Texan.”

  Noam’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing.

  A soft laugh escaped Dara’s throat, and he shook his head before traipsing up the short steps to his apartment. Noam stayed until the door shut behind him, and after, too, staring at the building that had swallowed Dara up.

  Then he spread his technopathy throughout the city like a web, into radio signals, catching the Texan’s phone signal as it pinged off the nearest tower.

  He tracked the man to a seedy neighborhood adjacent to downtown, waited for him in a narrow alley and stayed quiet till the Texan went past. Noam smelled liquor on the man’s skin as he came up behind him—the Texan had gone to a bar instead of straight back to his hotel. Foolish. Cocky.

  The man had just started to twist around when Noam aimed the silenced end of the Beretta at the side of his head and pulled the trigger.

  At least this time, Noam didn’t have to see the look on his face.

  He kept his gaze tilted away as he crouched down on the street, digging the Texan’s burner and personal phones out of his pocket. Just for show, Noam took his wallet too.

  He left the Texan’s body on the ground, bleeding into the gutter, and tried to tell himself for the hundredth time that what Dara said wasn’t true. Noam wasn’t like Lehrer.

  But he had to pretend he was, just a little while longer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DARA

  Dara had thought Noam would get the message after last night—and yet he turned up outside Dara’s apartment the very next afternoon all the same, wrapped up in a heavy coat he wouldn’t have been able to afford a year ago and knocking relentlessly on Dara’s front door.

  “What?” Dara snapped as he finally flung the door open after Noam had been banging away so long Dara had started imagining all the creative ways he could chop both Noam’s hands off without magic.

  “Are you going to invite me in?”

  “I don’t know—did you murder someone in cold blood last night?”

  Noam made a scoffing sound in the back of his throat and said, “Says the guy who killed six people breaking me out of jail.”

  “I was fevermad.”

  “Oh, so you wouldn’t have done it otherwise?”

  Noam had one of those infuriating looks on his face, tilting dangerously close to smug. Dara hated him a little for being right. Dara still remembered how easy it had been to kill them—even Sacha.

  Sacha, who offered Dara purpose when he’d been ready to put an end to things. Sacha, who, despite knowing about Lehrer—Dara had read his mind; Dara knew Sacha knew—had left him in Lehrer’s care. Because i
t was convenient. Because Dara was more useful in Lehrer’s orbit than he was safe.

  Those weren’t the only men Dara had killed. There was Gordon Ames, of course. He didn’t like to think about the others. Those memories were shrouded in shadow, thrust into the furthest corners of Dara’s mind along with all the other terrible things Lehrer had made him do.

  Dara stepped aside instead of answering, letting Noam move past him into the cramped space of Dara’s apartment. And even though Dara knew Noam had grown up places like this, he didn’t seem like he fit there anymore. Not with that sharply tailored shirt slanting in toward his narrow hips, not with that elegant wool coat he tossed over the back of Dara’s rickety chair.

  “Rossini?” Dara said.

  Noam’s brow knit. “Who?”

  Dara gestured toward him, a hand motion that took in Noam’s whole figure, from unbuttoned collar to the hem of his trousers. “Giorgio Rossini. The tailor?”

  “Oh,” Noam said, gaze dropping to his own sleeves, the steel cuff links pinning them closed. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just . . .” He trailed off, color lighting in his cheeks, presumably as he realized the implications of what he’d said: that Lehrer gave him these clothes. That Lehrer had him measured for them, dressed him to specification.

  “Why are you here?” Dara asked.

  “Last night,” Noam said. “That was risky—I’m not here to scold you some more,” he added, catching Dara’s expression. “But every time we meet . . . especially now that Ames is coming on Mondays, it’s a risk. Lehrer could send someone to your apartment. Or come himself.”

  Dara had considered the possibility. But that risk was part of the job; he knew that when he came back to Carolinia.

  Noam thrust his hands in his pockets. “So. I thought it might be a good idea if I put up wards in your apartment.”

  “Wards.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been practicing. I’m pretty good with them now, and I think I’ve come up with a pattern Lehrer won’t be able to break easily. It’s based off technopathy, right, so—”

  “I don’t care how it works, Álvaro,” Dara snapped. “I won’t be able to get past it either. You’ll be locking me in.”