Recommend lab work today and close monitoring with repeat lab work in a few days: complete blood count, electrolyte panel, ANA with magic antibody reflex+SLE reflex, toxicology panel, liver enzymes.
Expressed concern to C. Lehrer regarding pt’s suitability for further Level 4 training.
Prescriptions: Iron replacement, potassium replacement, eszopiclone (for insomnia), sertraline (for depression)
Diagnoses: Primary: Fever (idiopathic); Secondary: Substance abuse disorder; unspecified eating disorder; major depressive disorder
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NOAM
Come by the apartment for dinner.
The text was waiting on Noam’s phone when he got out of Swensson’s Friday strategy class, Noam instantly tilting the screen away from curious gazes as he opened the messaging app. Lehrer never texted him anything incriminating, but even so the last thing Noam needed was Ames or Bethany catching his name on Noam’s phone.
Not like they didn’t already know, of course, but . . .
“I’m meeting a friend for dinner,” he told them when he split off from the group at the stairs. “I’ll see y’all later tonight?”
“Sure, if you ever make it back,” Ames said—but this time, to Noam’s surprise, it was Taye who elbowed her in the ribs and said: “Yep. Have a good time, Álvaro.”
Noam took the stairs down and cut across the atrium to head through the west wing to Lehrer’s apartment. He still wondered sometimes why Lehrer hadn’t taken up the chancellor’s residence outside downtown—although he supposed, on second thought, living in a mansion would probably harsh Lehrer’s whole ex-revolutionary style.
Noam expected Lehrer to be waiting for him when he opened the door, presiding from his favorite armchair with a neat scotch in hand. But although Wolf scampered up to nudge Noam’s thigh for a scratch behind the ears, the living room was empty. Noam wandered deeper, into the kitchen—and that was where he found Lehrer with a match in hand, bent over a pair of candles at the table to light the flames.
“What’s this?” Noam said.
Lehrer straightened, waving the match in the air to quench it. He gestured down at the table—white-tableclothed now, bearing the candles but also twin plates piled high with brisket and mashed potatoes and asparagus, a bottle of red wine and a kiddush cup, a loaf of challah resting beneath a drape of fabric. “Gut Shabbos,” he said, one brow lifting. “Forgive me; I was feeling nostalgic.”
Noam stared at him. Nostalgic. Despite knowing Lehrer was Jewish, both from history and from Lehrer’s having told him, he’d very much gotten the impression that nominal Judaism was as far as that went. Lehrer had mezuzot on his doorframes, another gesture, but this was . . .
“Since when do you observe Shabbat?”
The slight smile that had curved Lehrer’s lips flattened somewhat. “I thought you might . . . appreciate it. Was I wrong?”
Noam had no idea how to feel about this, actually. Lehrer preparing Shabbat dinner was the kind of surprise he would have found enchanting back when he and Lehrer first got involved. But now it felt manufactured somehow, like Noam could see the gears turning behind the construction of this whole scene, the intention behind bringing out what Noam assumed was Lehrer’s family’s own candlesticks—as if to say, You’re my family now. As if to say, Remember what I lost.
“No,” Noam said, a few seconds too late. “No, it’s . . . thank you. It’s nice.”
He sat down in his usual chair, Lehrer taking the one adjacent. They ate in silence for a few minutes, the clink of cutlery and an awkward curtain hanging between them—one Noam wasn’t sure he wanted to draw aside. Only when he stole a glance up at Lehrer’s face, Lehrer’s brows were still knit together; a pang of something grotesquely like sympathy shot through Noam’s blood.
“It’s delicious,” Noam said, a peace offering. “I still can’t figure out how you had time to learn to cook on top of everything else you have to do.”
“I’ve had quite a few years to hone my skills.”
“Still. Any other hidden talents I ought to know about? Are you a secret concert pianist? Marathoner? An expert at whittling?”
Lehrer laughed at last, his gaze meeting Noam’s over the candle flames. “I did devote twenty years or so to mastering the violin, actually. It was quite the passion for a while.”
“Do you still play?”
“Not as much as I should. I didn’t have nearly as much free time after I—” Lehrer broke off. It was the first time Noam had ever seen him look so caught off guard, like he’d forgotten what he was saying and who he was saying it to. But after a beat he continued, voice tighter than before: “Raising a young child was effortful.”
That flicker of sympathy sputtered and died.
Noam picked up his knife and cut into his brisket again, but it was too late now; he’d lost his appetite. His mind kept circling over all the things Lehrer used to say about Dara. How Dara was difficult. Dara was troubled.
“Maybe you should have hired a nanny,” Noam said at last.
Lehrer snorted. “I hired seven.”
The tension slid into the background once more, muffled by Lehrer’s charm and a quick change in conversation, Lehrer guiding them out of dangerous waters and onto safer ground. After, Lehrer stood at the sink doing the dishes, and Noam reached for the half-empty wine bottle, spinning it in semicircles atop the table.
“Can I have the rest of the cab?” he asked.
Lehrer frowned at him over his shoulder. “Of course. You know you don’t have to ask with me.”
“Right. Sorry.” And that was true—Lehrer’d never blinked at offering Noam anything from wine to his most expensive scotch, even when Noam was still sixteen. It used to make Noam feel so adult, enough that when he went to Leo’s bar and Leo wouldn’t serve him, Noam had actually been taken aback.
Noam refilled Lehrer’s own glass and took a sip of the wine. He barely tasted it.
“Do you have the phone?” Lehrer asked, and it took Noam a moment to realize what he meant.
The phone was in Noam’s pocket. He hadn’t kept it any farther away than that ever since he killed the Texan. He’d even slept with it under his pillow last night.
He drew the phone out now and set it on the kitchen table. Twenty-four hours, and he still hadn’t tried to read it. The most he’d done was write a script to elbow his way past the antiwitching tech protecting the phone from his technopathy. It had taken the better part of the day, Noam typing away at code in class and as he sat on the bus on the way back from Dara’s apartment. Now, the wards were down. He could tangle threads of his technopathy up in the phone’s cell drive, but all that data was still a buzz of electricity and binary code, uninterpreted. Because Noam hadn’t decided—
He hadn’t decided how much to tell Lehrer. Lehrer had the antiwitching tech schematics already, of course—doctored very slightly from the version he’d given the Black Magnolia—but the Texan’s phone connected to Texan servers. That was a whole new wealth of information; probably not as much as they’d like, but Noam had at least been able to access his messages and emails. He’d know everything the Texan knew.
And so would Lehrer. The moment Noam started parsing the data, Lehrer would sense it. He’d feel Noam’s magic, and he’d expect an answer.
Lehrer dried his hands on the dish towel and moved back to the table, resuming his seat and steepling his fingers.
Noam stared down at the phone, its unassuming black casing, the dark screen.
“Do you need a flopcell?” Lehrer asked eventually.
“No.”
“Then what’s the delay?”
Noam looked up. One of Lehrer’s long fingers tapped the backs of his own knuckles in rhythm with the tick of the second hand on his expensive wristwatch. Was that suspicion flickering in his eyes or just a reflection from the Shabbat candles?
“I’m thinking,” Noam said.
He couldn’t stall any longer. At last, Noam focused on the binary
and translated it into information. In his peripheral vision he saw Lehrer lean back in his chair at that, apparently satisfied that Noam was finally doing something—and he didn’t speak again, even though it took Noam the better part of twenty minutes to find what he was looking for.
The blood drained from his face so immediately that a flush of dizziness crested through Noam’s mind, and he jerked his gaze up to meet Lehrer’s. Lehrer sat forward, his expression gone sharp as his suit collar.
“What is it?”
Noam didn’t know how to put it into words. How could he possibly—how could he look right at Lehrer’s face and say—
“There was an email,” he said, the words like chunks of ice in his mouth, cold and painful. “And I don’t—maybe I misunderstood—no. I didn’t misunderstand. And it sounds like . . .”
“Spit it out, Noam.”
Noam sucked in a narrow breath. “Texas has been locking up witchings. In . . . facilities. For study.”
Just like in the catastrophe.
Lehrer’s face went blank—not neutral, but blank, as if he’d extinguished all emotion in that single moment, quenching it as efficiently as pouring a bucket of water over coals.
Somehow this—more than the knowledge that Lehrer had infected and killed his own people, more than the adrenaline that shot through Noam’s veins sometimes when Lehrer drew too close—this terrified him most of all.
After a moment Lehrer pushed back his chair and stood, tugging the cuffs of his sleeves down so a careful quarter inch showed below the hem of his suit jacket.
“I should have expected this,” he said, voice tight and bitter. “Bad enough that they exile their witchings to the quarantined zone—but of course. Of course. How else did they develop antiwitching technology, without witchings to test it on? How else was a vaccine developed? Those labs in the QZ had to get their funding somewhere. Foolish of me to think . . .”
He turned on his heel, pacing away from Noam—toward the kitchen window. He paused there with the fingertips of one hand perched on the sill, gazing down into the courtyard at . . . something.
Noam stayed in his chair, both hands gripping the underside of his seat. It was like everything in his chest was crumbling slowly, an ancient structure falling into dust.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. What else was there to say? He couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t even imagine what Lehrer felt. It was an incomprehensible evil.
Lehrer faced him, bracing both hands back against the window ledge. “No. I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to be angry. Last year you would have torn the world up at the roots for Atlantian justice.” Lehrer’s gaze was still and dangerous as shattered glass. “So now I need to know: Will you do the same on behalf of witchings?”
A year ago, Noam would have answered without hesitation. A year ago, he wanted nothing more than to make his anger into something caustic and violent: a tool he could use.
And maybe he was still willing to burn half the world down if it meant justice for all those people Lehrer killed. For his parents. For Dara.
But last year he let Lehrer wield Noam’s anger as a weapon to seize power, and it was a mistake.
Was he so willing to make that mistake a second time?
Lehrer’s right, a different voice murmured in the back of his mind. Hating him doesn’t make him wrong. Hating him doesn’t make Texas right.
If Noam did nothing, he was just as much a monster as Sacha had been.
“Yes,” Noam said. “Always.”
Lehrer pushed away from the window and drew close again, resting his fingertips atop the back of Noam’s chair, close enough his knuckles grazed the line of Noam’s shoulder blade.
Noam held his breath.
“Good,” Lehrer said. “Then I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”
Winter in Texas was snowless, but this close to the coast, the wind that blew in off the Gulf chilled to the bone. Noam drew his military-issue jacket a little closer around his shoulders as the icy air rippled through his hair and sent the evacuation notices fluttering against every window, every wall.
“These are the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Bethany announced when she emerged from the little corner store, the screen door falling shut behind her. The sound of her voice seemed to echo down the empty street. Her cheeks were a little pink, but that was the only sign she noticed the cold at all.
“You said that about taquitos.”
“That was before I had these.” She kicked his ankle with the edge of her boot and held out the open bag. “Go on—try one.”
Noam peered at the label. “Cheese straws? We have cheese straws in Carolinia.”
“These are jalapeño flavored. It makes them ten times better. Trust me.”
Noam took a handful, popping one into his mouth. It was crunchy, cheesy . . . and Bethany was right: the spiciness did make it better.
“I’m going out on the lines tomorrow,” he said after he’d chewed, swallowed.
He felt Bethany’s gaze like the point of a blade pressed against his cheek. When he turned to look at her, she tilted her chin up. The bloody light of the late sun deepened her hair from blonde to red. “Are you going to . . .”
“No,” he said with a heavy exhale, and he wished he wasn’t holding so many cheese straws; he fought the urge to knot his hands in fists. “No. Not yet. We should wait for orders.”
“We give the orders out here, Noam.”
Noam pushed another cheese straw into his mouth to buy time before answering. “I meant from Major General García.” Or Lehrer. “Believe me. I’d love to end it all tomorrow, but—”
“Field Commander Álvaro, sir!”
Noam turned. A private stood at attention, hand drawn to his brow in a salute.
“What is it, Private?”
“There’s a call for you and Field Officer Glennis in the officers’ barracks from the First Battalion, Twenty-Third Regiment.”
Noam and Bethany exchanged glances.
“Thank you,” Bethany told the private, and she rolled up the bag of cheese straws and stuck it in her pocket as they headed back.
The combat outpost had been a school before it was their base. Not Noam’s first choice. He tried to avert his gaze as they passed by the corkboards posted full of children’s drawings and framed awards: Science Olympiad, Mathletes, Battle of the Books. The town had been evacuated bloodlessly, empty by the time their battalion got here.
Even so.
Lieutenant Colonel Harris was in the comms room when they got there, sipping black coffee—burnt, Noam could smell it from here—and scrolling through something on her holoreader. She had the privacy settings on so no one could see her screen; not that it made a difference, with Noam around.
“We need the room,” Noam said.
She shot him a narrowed glare over the edge of her holoreader, looking very much like she was considering snapping back. Harris hadn’t taken well to the idea of Level IV cadets being afforded tactical command over her unit. Which, yeah, if Noam had his way, he wouldn’t be in charge either. He was seventeen. But Lehrer gave the order when he sent them out here to organize the push toward Houston. All Level IV cadets were provisionally promoted for the duration of wartime.
Noam swallowed back his urge to add please. The moment he pretended subservience, he’d never claim his authority back.
After a moment the lieutenant colonel sighed and flicked her holoreader off, tucking it into her back pocket and heading out through the side door.
Noam took her vacated seat and put the phone on speaker. “Hi, Ames.”
“Hey yourself,” Ames’s voice said back, crackly—they were using satellite signal to avoid getting tapped in Texan wires. Noam nudged the signal a bit with technopathy, and her next words came out crisp and clear: “Just checking in to make sure y’all haven’t gotten killed yet.”
“Not yet,” Noam said dryly, and when he looked toward Bethany, she rolled her eyes.
“T
aye’s here too,” Ames said. “Taye, say hi.”
Taye’s voice piped up through the speaker. “Hello, hello. How’s the east side?”
“Cold,” Bethany said, drawing closer and perching on the edge of the table near the phone. “Uneventful. Especially uneventful.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see how long that lasts,” Taye said, and from the muffled way he said it, he probably had candy in his mouth.
“They have to let us fight,” Bethany said, tilting closer to the microphone like she was worried she wouldn’t be heard otherwise. “Otherwise, why send us? It’s certainly not for our prodigious strategic ability. They obviously want us to use our magic.”
“Rules of engagement with Texas are always no magic till otherwise ordered,” Ames pointed out.
“Only we’re the ones supposed to be giving said orders,” Bethany said. “If we all agreed to use our powers, we could have the airport under Carolinian control overnight. We’d take Houston in two days.”
“Sixty-four percent probability,” Taye piped up. “If we were gamblers, we’d have the best odds in the house.”
“This isn’t a math problem,” Noam said.
“Everything’s a math problem.”
“Oh yeah? And where did you pull those figures, out of your ass?”
“Actually,” Taye said. “I calculated it from—”
“You know what?” Noam said. “I don’t want to know. The point is right now they don’t know which regiments have witchings and which don’t. That’s our ace up the sleeve. If we play it too soon, they’ll fix us with antiwitching units, and we’ll lose our upper hand.”
“What upper hand?” Ames said, and this time if her voice sounded tight, it had nothing to do with radio signal. “We’re sitting ducks, Álvaro. Don’t you think it’s weird that Lehrer didn’t give you better instructions than this? He put you on the front lines. He put all of us on the front lines. Be pretty convenient if we died here, wouldn’t it?”
THE ELECTRIC HEIR Page 22