“Hi,” Noam said, careful to sound casual. Normal. “Who’s winning?”
“Dara, as always,” Taye said with a dramatic sigh, tossing his cards onto the table. “I don’t know why I bother. I’m just hemorrhaging argents at this point.”
Bethany giggled, burying her pink-flushed face in her hands.
Noam pointed his finger down at the crown of her head and raised a brow.
“Oh yeah,” Taye confirmed. “Wasted.”
“Ames is gonna kill you for corrupting a fourteen-year-old.”
“What Ames doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
Dara picked up the cards and started shuffling. He hadn’t said a word.
“Dara,” Noam said. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Dara did something complicated with the cards, the kind of elaborate shuffling trick Noam used to watch gamblers perform at card tables crammed onto sidewalks and in the back rooms of stores. “What is it?”
Great. Dara had apparently decided to revert to old habits. Like he’d forgotten all about the way he moaned Noam’s name, fingers all tangled up in Noam’s hair.
Now it was back to how it was when they first met. Dara certainly had a flair for timing.
“Alone,” Noam said. He tried not to sound snappish; he didn’t want to give Dara an excuse to say no.
“I can finish shuffling,” Taye piped up.
Still, Dara hesitated for a long moment before he sighed and put the cards down. His chair legs scraped against the floor when he pushed back from the table, an obnoxious sound that grated Noam’s last nerve. His stomach was a mess of buzzing insects. He didn’t know how Dara was gonna react when Noam told him what he saw. But he couldn’t... he had to saysomething. Dara shouldn’t have to carry this secret alone.
Noam led the way down the hall, glancing back once to make sure Dara still followed. He was there, a featureless shadow in the dim light, but Noam didn’t need to see his face to know the expression on it. He sensed Dara’s magic, a dark-green glitter barely restrained, as if Dara thought he might have to use it.
Dara didn’t shut the bedroom door behind them, so Noam did it himself, a twist of telekinesis flipping the latch. He turned on the light.
“I’d rather not have this conversation,” Dara said.
“I’m not here to talk to you about the general. Well. I am, actually, but not... not the murder.” Noam forced himself to flex his fingers.
Dara stayed by the door, one hand resting on the knob.
“Do you... want to sit down?”
“I’m good, thanks.” Dara’s face was so deliberately blank. Only Dara couldn’t hide from Noam anymore. Noam knew him too well.
He was afraid.
But afraid of what?
“Okay,” Noam said. “Okay. I don’t know how to put this, so... I’m just gonna say it? I went upstairs during the wake. I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything left behind that might tie you to the assassination, but then I found the general’s computer, and I...”—wanted to dig up anti-Sacha shit for Lehrer—“I don’t know, I’m nosy, I guess, so I looked through it. And he had these... videos.”
He spoke the word so carefully, the syllables like poison on the tip of his tongue, but Dara was perfectly unaffected, as if Noam had said nothing at all.
Did he not realize the general filmed them together?
He had to. Someone had tried to erase those files, and whoever it was did it the same night the general died. It had to be Dara.
“Dara, are you listening to me?” Noam pressed, and he took a half step closer. “I saw the videos. I know what he did to you.”
“I told you I didn’t want to talk about this.”
