The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(87)

Dara didn’t need to be told a second time. It took Noam a moment to realize—shit—and dart back: one, two steps, reaching behind him with his power for the knob to another door. He shut himself inside the hall closet not a second too soon. Dara’s footsteps echoed off the hardwood floor as he walked past. Noam waited there, holding his breath, until he heard the other door open and shut again and Lehrer’s own steps passing by, slower than Dara’s.

What the hell had Noam just overheard?

Lehrer and Dara’s creepy-ass relationship was a problem for another day, though. Right now there were bigger issues—like what Ames did to Dara. Like Lehrer possibly knowing Dara killed the general.

Several minutes passed before Noam was able to make himself open the door again. He half expected to find someone waiting there in the hall outside, standing silently between Noam and where Noam was supposed to be, but the corridor was empty.

Noam didn’t want to go back. He wanted to stand in this dim light until he learned to stop feeling, because right now everything hurt.

Only someone would find him eventually, and Noam couldn’t be caught here.

No one noticed him stepping over the velvet rope and rejoining the guests. He looked for Dara first and found him by the windows with Ames, touching Ames’s wrist with his head slanted toward her; backlit, he looked like he came from another world. Noam’s heart ached.

“We should go,” Lehrer’s voice said from behind Noam’s left shoulder. “The service will be starting soon; people are already leaving.”

Noam managed to exhale, then looked back at him, hoping none of what he felt showed on his face. “I’m ready.”

He followed Lehrer out to the car. The thought of driving to the church, then sitting for the service, the funeral procession, the burial . . . it was a weight crushing Noam’s chest.

But he didn’t want to go home either. Home was the barracks, close quarters. Dara.

The driver shut the car door. Lehrer turned to him, expectant. “Any luck?”

“Ames—Carter Ames—still insists she’s innocent,” Noam said as normally as he could. “I believe her, for what that’s worth.”

“As do I,” Lehrer said. “Which means the killer is still out there. Did you have the opportunity to search the house?”

The flopcell in Noam’s pocket smoldered against his thigh. “Yes. I didn’t find anything, though. Nothing useful.”

“Really?”

Noam had always been a good liar. But his lips still felt foreign when he spoke again. “Really.”

Lehrer made a quiet noise. He reached out and touched Noam’s temple with just the tips of his fingers. Noam’s skin tingled, an electric current darting up his spine as Lehrer brushed his hand back to sweep a lock of hair out of Noam’s face. “All right,” he said.

Noam sat frozen in place while Lehrer turned to look out the window at the city sliding by. The sky outside was the same color as the steel watch around Lehrer’s wrist. Strange detail to notice, but Noam couldn’t stop staring at it the rest of the way to the service, its mechanical insides ticking away the seconds like a heartbeat.





Newspaper clipping, carefully preserved between the pages of a book in the apartment of C. Lehrer.





THE TORONTO STAR


Tuesday, May 8, 2019

CALIX LEHRER CROWNED KING IN CAROLINIA

DURHAM—Following a unanimous committee vote, Carolinia crowned Calix Lehrer its first king yesterday in a small ceremony.

Lehrer is the twenty-year-old major general of the Avenging Angels, the militia founded by his brother, Adalwolf Lehrer, and labeled a domestic terrorist organisation by the former United States. A survivor of the US-attempted genocide against so-called witchings, Lehrer was once notorious for his role as strategist with the Avenging Angels. That infamy has been overshadowed, however, by recent events: Reports suggest Lehrer is the official who gave the order to detonate a weaponised form of the magic virus across multiple locations in Washington, DC, an attack that killed millions of civilians and effectively ended the United States. Lehrer is also implicated in a number of specific actions taken against foreign military troops.

Lehrer delivered a press conference last week, which was broadcast internationally. In his speech, he directly addressed Canadian, British, and French leadership. “I wish to state clearly,” Lehrer said, “that any retaliatory measures taken by foreign powers against Carolinia will be met with the full force of our extensive military resources, both magical and nuclear,” a pronouncement praised by Carolinian civilians. Intelligence reports corroborate Lehrer’s claims that he possesses a large proportion of the US nuclear arsenal, along with the weaponised virus. Officials believe Lehrer’s threats are not idle. Canadian diplomats meet with Lehrer this week to discuss a treaty.

As king, Lehrer’s first act was closure of Carolinian borders, ostensibly to prevent further spread of the virus.





CHAPTER NINETEEN

Noam didn’t go to the barracks after Lehrer dropped him off. He spent what felt like hours walking in circles around the government complex, trying to drag his thoughts into some semblance of order. It was late when he got back, but everyone was still up. Dara, Taye, and Bethany sat at the kitchen table, the two boys teaching Bethany the basics of poker. A half-gone bottle of whiskey sat on the empty chair.