The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(45)

Noam bit his cheek over what he could have said in response to that. Instead: “Clearly it goes a little past that.” Shitty father-son relationships didn’t make people try to hack the Ministry of Defense.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Ames said. “I know Dara gives you a hard time, but he doesn’t usually hate people for no reason. That includes Lehrer.” She opened the door and stepped out into the hall again. “I’m gonna make sure Dara hasn’t finished a whole bottle of gin on his own, okay? I’ll be out later. Hold down the fort.”

She clapped Noam on the shoulder and flashed one of those fake smiles that didn’t reach her eyes. He watched her disappear back into the other room, to Dara and Dara’s gin and Dara’s secrets. To whatever else they’d been doing, Ames with her hands on Dara’s body and their lips so, so close.

Bethany and Taye were still watching the movie, popcorn bowl lodged between their legs and Bethany’s head against Taye’s arm. Noam took Ames’s seat by the window instead. He didn’t smoke, but he lit one of Ames’s cigarettes and took a few drags anyway.

An hour later, Ames returned to claim her chair and cigarettes, and in another hour, Dara emerged from the bedroom wearing something black that clung to his body like it was painted on. He didn’t say a word. Just walked past the chairs and the movie screen, the edge of his coat grazing Noam’s thigh as he stepped over a forgotten glass on the floor.

He smelled like liquor and left through the front door. He didn’t come back till morning.





CHAPTER NINE

Monday, Lehrer was making coffee when Noam and Dara showed up for their lessons, seemingly having forgotten all about the incident at the government complex. As he shook ground beans into a filter and Noam and Dara dumped their satchels onto the floor, he spoke.

“Dara, at the table, please.”

Dara only made it two feet before he came to an abrupt stop.

Noam looked.

On the table was a small iron cage. In the cage lay the body of a dead goldfinch.

“I thought we’d try this again,” Lehrer said to Dara, watching him as he poured water over the coffee grounds. “You’ve had plenty of time to study.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Not with that attitude, surely.”

One of the chairs at the table pulled out by telekinesis. After several moments, Dara sat.

Noam opened his book and held it up just high enough so he could still see over the pages. Dara stared at the dead bird like it was something horribly contagious.

Lehrer took the seat opposite Dara, crossing long legs and balancing his coffee cup on his knee. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said, and Dara’s cheeks were bloodless.

Noam turned a page in his book, just for show.

“I don’t even know healing,” Dara said, clearly stalling.

Lehrer said nothing.

Dara exhaled and lifted both hands, fingers hovering over the iron bars of the cage. He trembled, very slightly, with the effort.

And then—

—the bird’s still body shuddered once and flopped onto its stomach. Noam muffled a gasp against the pages of his book as the bird rose on unsteady legs, wings twitching spasmodically.

He did it, he really did it, Dara—what the fuck, how could someone possibly . . . that bird was dead. Dead dead. Noam had never heard of anyone doing anything like this, not ever, not even in legends from the turn of the millennium when magic was still young.

If Dara could perform resurrection, he was . . .

A cold shiver went down Noam’s spine, because if Dara could do this, there was nothing he couldn’t do.

“No,” Lehrer said.

The bird vanished.

The corpse lay on the floor of the cage, had never moved.

An illusion.

“That,” Lehrer said, and Noam didn’t think he’d ever heard Lehrer’s voice with quite so sharp an edge, “was beneath you.”

Lehrer set his cup on the table with a click of ceramic on wood. There was something too slow and precise about the way he moved, an intent that carved through silence.

A spark of gold lit the air.

The bird burst into flight.

The sudden violence of it seared straight through Noam’s veins, and he startled, book toppling off his lap onto the floor.

The bird flung itself against the bars of its cage, a horrible screeching noise ripping from its throat. Its frantic wings beat too hard, too fast, feathers already gone bloody.

This was wrong—completely, fundamentally wrong in a way that set Noam’s teeth on edge.

“Stop it,” Dara hissed.

The bird kept screaming. Lehrer watched Dara with mild interest, as if cataloging his reaction for future study.

God . . . god, the bird collided with the cage again, its bones snapping like fine twigs. Bile flooded Noam’s mouth.

“Stop,” Dara pleaded again.

This time, at last, Lehrer nodded. The bird dropped like a stone, instantly and perfectly dead.

Lehrer picked up his coffee cup again and took a sip. Dara was breathless, his hands in fists and his magic a green and quivering aura. The whole thing was disturbing, yes, but Dara was ashen.

For the first time, Noam thought he understood why Dara hated Lehrer so much.

Noam stared at the bird’s corpse, which lay in a lump of red-and-gold feathers, open beak pointed skyward. For a brief moment, he remembered the girl from the red ward, her face frozen in a death mask.