CHAPTERNINE
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, hereally did it, Dara—what thefuck, how could someone possibly... that bird was dead.Deaddead. 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.
