Noam gritted his teeth so hard it hurt. “I can’t believe you,” he snapped, and he shoved his chair back, on his feet before Lehrer could react. “You’re powerful enough to just—to wipe the slate clean like that, to clear my guilt for crimesI actually committed, but you aren’t powerful enough to do anything real that might actuallysave lives?”
“Noam—”
Noam slapped his hand against the table, its legs rattling against the floor. “No. Shut up. I don’t want to hear whatever excuse you’ve come up with—it’s good to know just how bad the corruption in the Carolinian government really is, I guess.” He felt like he had a fever, like his blood had risen beneath the surface of his skin. “Back in 2018 you were willing to do whatever it took to overthrow the US and get justice for witchings. But if it’s Atlantians, suddenly it’s all mild sympathies and cryptic notes and cleaning up my messes. So I guess while you willliterallylift a finger on behalf of refugees, that’s about the extent of it.” His mouth twisted around the bitter taste on his tongue, mimicking Lehrer’s raised-brow disapproval. “Go on. Prove me wrong.”
Lehrer sighed, but instead of telling Noam to sit down, he rose to his feet as well in a single graceful movement. “Let’s continue this discussion elsewhere. I hate to impose on the officers’ time.”
“Fuck the officers.”
Lehrer reached into his pocket and passed Noam a blank two-terabyte flopcell.
Noam opened his mouth, but the look Lehrer gave him in response killed the words on his lips.
“I thought you might need an extra,” Lehrer said.
Noam fumbled for something to say, gripping the flopcell in his fist. “How did you know I—”
“Later,” Lehrer interrupted. He gestured toward the door. “After you.”
Noam slipped the flopcell into his back pocket to join its mate and preceded Lehrer out.
Lehrer didn’t speak as they left, not to Noam and not to the police officers—not that he had to. They got out of his way the second they saw him coming, doors opening the moment Noam and Lehrer reached them.
To Noam’s surprise, Lehrer didn’t lead him up to his study or even to the government complex. They took a sharp left on the street, away from the city and toward residential areas. Noam trailed at Lehrer’s heel, questions crowding his mouth, but Lehrer didn’t say a word. Just walked, hands slipped in his uniform pockets, casual as anything.
Noam wondered if he was being tested. If all these times when Noam questioned Lehrer and Lehrer fed him just enough crumbs to keep Noam on his side—if this was all being calculated and tallied up as points for and against. Like if Noam was just patient enough, Lehrer might eventually tell him the truth.
Fuck that.
“Where are we going? Sir.”
“I don’t want to be overheard.” Lehrer’s tone didn’t leave room for questions.
Out of downtown, trees sprouted from the ground lining the sidewalk. In winter their branches would reach like bony fingers toward a slate-gray sky—but in spring their broad leaves cast dappled shadows on the path. Somehow they managed to grow, despite the cold spell that had persisted into late spring. Noam shivered; they’d taken his coat at the jail and never given it back.
Lehrer glanced at him as they turned onto a new street. “Are you cold?”
“A little.”
Lehrer’s jacket buttons unclasped themselves—this close, Noam felt Lehrer’s gold-thread magic looping round each one in turn—and Lehrer shrugged off his coat, passing it to Noam. The wool was heavy in his hands, laden with all the sewn patches and stripes of Lehrer’s various honors and awards. Noam put it on anyway, sliding his arms through the sleeves.
“Thanks,” he said, and Lehrer nodded once.
Without his jacket, Lehrer looked far more human. He was still impossibly tall, broad shouldered, but the tailored dress shirt he wore betrayed a deceptively narrow waist. If it weren’t for the magic Noam still sensed on his skin, or the way Lehrer didn’t shiver in the icy air, he might have forgotten Lehrer was dangerous.
“I brought you here because I couldn’t discuss this where we might be overheard,” Lehrer said finally. When Noam looked, Lehrer was watching him.
“Your note?”
“I sensed it when you took the wards down.”
When Noam gave him a confused look, Lehrer just shrugged and said, “I made them. Very few witchings are capable of creating sustained magical shields, but I am one.”
“Okay,” Noam said, and at last he rounded on Lehrer, stopping there in the middle of the sidewalk. “But then why couldn’t you just take it down in the first place? You knew I was trying to expose Sacha. That day you caught me and Dara in the government complex and read the email off my computer, you could’ve just taken the wards down right then and there. Why didn’t you?”
“I had to know you could be trusted. If you weren’t serious about this—if you wouldn’t risk everything to take down Sacha—then I had no use for you.”
Noam’s chest went tight. This was it. This was what Lehrer had been up to, the whole reason he’d kept Noam on.
