The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(25)

“Not personal?”

When Bethany glanced up to meet his gaze, Noam made a face.

“Dara’s a really private person,” she said. “Taye’s probably just taking his lead.”

As usual, just hearing Dara’s name sparked a new flame of irritation. Of course Bethany made excuses for him. Dara was perfectly charming when she and the others were around, all smiles, but as soon as it was just him and Noam—or him and Noam and Lehrer—all that switched off like a lamp going dark.

Noam took it as a compliment. If the only person Dara despised as much as Noam was Minister Lehrer, then Noam must be doing something right.

“Where do you reckon they are, anyway?” Noam asked, tipping his head toward the empty barracks.

“The others like to go to this club over in Raleigh on off weekends,” Bethany said, tapping her holoreader screen. “I expect they’re still out.”

And Bethany hadn’t gone with them. Was that because she didn’t want to go, or because she felt sorry for Noam staying home alone?

Noam had never really enjoyed partying. After Carly died he went out some, mostly from a misguided sense that he needed to move on, to meet somebody. And yeah, he met people. But he’d never been able to muster the energy for the kind of relationship they wanted from him. Those romances fizzled out, quick and ephemeral as the rush from a tequila shot.

He chewed the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything he might regret and tried to pay attention to precalculus—a difficult task, as he couldn’t quite ignore the little blips of electrical current every time Bethany’s word processor autosaved.

“Do you ever get to go home?” Noam asked, giving up. “Your mother’s still alive, right?”

Bethany snorted. “Yeah, she’s alive. I never see her, though.”

Noam tried to imagine not visiting his mother, if he had the option. He still saw her body sometimes, when he was trying to fall asleep, her face swollen and red and her neck bruised where the rope bit into her skin. Her limp feet dangling inches above the floor.

He put his book aside and twisted to face Bethany properly. “Why not?”

She shrugged. “My mother doesn’t understand magic. It’s like she’s in awe of me and scared of me at the same time. The way she acts, you’d think her real daughter died in the red ward and I’m some impostor come to replace her.”

Noam hadn’t considered that. His mother died a long time ago, but what if his father hadn’t gotten sick? What if Jaime álvaro had survived the outbreak, only to watch Noam transform into a witching and be snatched away to Level IV?

There was a strange guilt about witchings among the older generations. Seeing a witching was to remember your grandparents’ sins, a stain that wouldn’t wash out. Noam went to the memorial with his school once, the black basalt monument carved with more names than Noam could count.

His parents fled Atlantia because they were worried about the virus outbreaks there. They thought Carolinia was safer.

They’d been wrong.

Atlantians didn’t share Carolinian guilt over the catastrophe, even though their ancestors were equally complicit in the genocide. To them, witchings represented Carolinia—Carolinia, with all its careful protections against the virus, with its militarized QZ border, weekly disinfectant sprays, and government-subsidized respirator masks—Carolinia, which refused to use those same protections to shelter Atlantian citizens. Carolinian armies, which marched south with promises of humanitarian aid and then refused to leave.

No. If Noam’s dad survived, he’d hate Noam just as much as Brennan did.

“I’m sorry,” Noam said.

“Why? It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know. It just felt like the right thing to say.”

“Anyway, she’s the reason I got the power I did, I think. So I’m grateful to her for that.” Bethany gave him a slight smile. “She’s a doctor, so I was exposed to a lot of medical stuff growing up. She used to take me in with her to work and let me watch the med students dissect cadavers.”

“That didn’t gross you out?”

“Me? Nothing grosses me out. Seriously. Try me.”

Noam grimaced. “I’d rather not,” he said. “I just ate.”

She laughed and kicked his thigh.

They worked in silence for another hour or so until Bethany went off to bed, taking her books with her. Noam stayed. Sleep seemed a long way off, chased away by an anxious determination to read just one more chapter, two more, three. Everything was finally knitting together, concepts he learned in math reappearing in physics, the physical laws threaded into the fabric of chemistry, chemical reactions shaping biology . . .

He could catch up. He could.

Ames and Taye returned around one, draped in clubbing clothes and exhaustion.

“Hey, Noam,” Taye said. He was so drunk that when he waved, even his hand looked slurred.

Noam’s grip tightened on his textbook. “Hey.” A beat, Noam turning the question over in his mouth a few times, before deciding he didn’t give a fuck what they thought of him for asking. “Where’s Dara?”

Ames tried tugging her jacket off and got her arm stuck in the sleeve. She laughed, stumbling as Taye tried to help her get free. “Dunno,” she said at last. “Probably went home with someone. Probably suffocating himself on dick as we speak.”