The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(22)

The whole damn city was alive with light.

He’d been at it for a couple hours when someone knocked. Noam turned and immediately leaped to his feet.

Brennan looked—good. He looked good. The circles under his eyes were darker than before, perhaps, but he didn’t have the flushed cheeks or glassy eyes of someone battling a fever. He wasn’t too thin and weak, like Noam was now. No magic flickered over his skin like lethal electricity.

He really was okay.

Noam darted across the space between them and threw his arms around Brennan like he was twelve years old again. Noam couldn’t stop shaking, a bone-deep tremor; when Brennan’s hands rose to grasp his shoulders, Noam’s fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt.

But Brennan didn’t smooth that touch down his arms, didn’t stroke his spine or whisper comforts against his cheek. That grasp tightened instead, and Brennan pushed him away.

Noam couldn’t name that look on Brennan’s face, or define the oddly flat set to his mouth.

“Please,” Brennan said. “Take a seat.”

Noam obeyed. He felt colder without the press of Brennan’s body heat against his chest.

“I’m very sorry to have heard about Jaime,” Brennan said. He didn’t step closer. He kept one hand on the knob, like he might leave at any second. “Your father was much loved by all of us. He did great things for the cause.”

Before Noam’s mother died, went the unspoken conclusion. Before he drowned himself in his depression and forgot he cared about anything, never mind politics.

Just hearing his father’s name was like dropping below the surface of a frozen lake. Especially when Brennan’s voice sounded like that, so formal, as if Brennan and Jaime álvaro hadn’t been best friends.

“Thank you,” Noam said, a little awkwardly. His hands curled into fists against his thighs, and an unexpected nausea rippled through his stomach.

Brennan’s gaze skimmed the length of Noam’s body, lingering on his sleeve. “And I see you’re doing well.”

Why did Noam get the feeling that wasn’t a compliment?

“I’m better,” Noam said. He lifted his chin to look Brennan in the eyes, flattening his hands again. “I’m a witching now.”

“Yes. I heard.”

Brennan surveyed him in cool silence, long enough that Noam thought about trawling through the phone he could sense in Brennan’s pocket and finding out if there was something going on. This was—weird. Brennan had always been reserved, but this wasn’t his usual reticence.

So what the hell was going on?

He’d actually reached his power out into the circuit board and started parsing binary when Brennan said, “I don’t think you should be here, Noam. You should go back to the government complex.”

Noam paused, all that data still humming at his fingertips.

“What? Why?”

Brennan shook his head. “It’s like you said. You’re a witching now. You should be with your own kind.”

It took a moment for that to sink in—and then it was like being shot in slow motion. Brennan’s words tore through Noam too hot, too fast, stealing the blood from his veins and leaving him cold.

“My own kind? Are you serious? They don’t even want me there. You should have seen the way they looked at me when they heard I’m Atlantian.”

“Be that as it may,” Brennan said, unruffled, “you’re working with Minister Lehrer. I’m sure he wouldn’t like you to get mixed up in refugee politics when your actions could reflect poorly on the administration.”

Noam couldn’t believe he was hearing this. His whole life he’d lived in tenement housing. He knew all the people who came to the Migrant Center by name. This was his home every bit as much as that burned-out hole that used to be his neighborhood. Brennan had been, if not a father, then like an uncle to him. He came to Shabbat dinner every Friday night. He gave Noam handmade birthday presents. Noam had organized the cyberattack on the Central News Bureau servers; he’d gone to every fucking protest. And now—now that he actually had a chance to make a real difference—Brennan wanted nothing to do with him?

He now recognized that look on Brennan’s face. It was the same look he used to give the government witchings who accompanied Immigration on its raids, the same look they had given him in return: a twist of the lips and a narrowed gaze.

Contempt.

“You aren’t getting it,” Noam said, trying to be calm. “That’s the point. I’m Level IV. Fuck DDOS attacks; I can do something real. We can stop the deportations. I’m a technopath now—I can get you anything you want off the government servers. We could prove what Sacha’s up to. We can prove there’s no real contamination threat from the refugees. If I can find a way onto Sacha’s computer—”

“That’s illegal,” Brennan said.

“You didn’t care about that when I was taking down CNB,” Noam retorted. His hands were in fists again, tight enough his nails dug into his palms. “You didn’t care when I went to fucking juvie. Back then it was all, ‘Oh, I’ll talk to your public defender, don’t worry Noam, you’re doing the right thing.’”

A threatening heat prickled at his eyes. God. If he started crying he would never forgive himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed the tears away, sucking in an uneven breath. He sensed Brennan still there, watching.