Ames drew closer, the color drained from her face. “Did he mean—I mean, Lehrerthinkshe owns a lot of people, but—”
“Do you really wanna take that risk?”
“I should have guessed,” Dara said, voice gone tight. “I should have—ofcourse. Because why didn’t Lehrer kill Holloway the second he realized? Or at least put him under persuasion—stupid. We were so stupid to think—”
“We all assumed it,” Noam said, turning his gaze up toward the ceiling now and trying to slow his heart rate as Bethany moved on to his broken wrist. “We all thought he’d save the magic, use Holloway as bait to draw out any other sympathizers. And that was exactly what made sense, given everything else Lehrer was saying at the time—letting the resistance stay in place, waiting for a critical mass to strike. But.”
But they were wrong.
Lehrer didn’t have to persuade Holloway, because he’d been bad from the beginning.
Lehrer and Holloway’s twisted little alliance was stronger than ever. Probably the first political deal that either party had stuck to long term.
“Okay,” Ames said, ruffling her hair badly enough it stuck out from her head in all directions, scarecrow-like. “Okay. So we gotta leave. Right? But where?”
Noam flipped through the list of options: Migrant Center was out, of course; that was too obvious. Same with Ames’s house. The QZ was too far away. And Holloway had probably already warned every hotel in Durham to turn them in to the MoD if they showed up wanting rooms.
Goddamn it, why couldn’t Independence Day betomorrow?
Bethany had finished with Noam’s wrist; she sat back on her heels as Noam pushed himself gingerly up to a sitting position. He still didn’t feel great, but he’d spent a lot of magic fighting Lehrer. Maybe that was to be expected.
He dragged both hands over his face and blew out against his palms. Looked up at the others again, gathered round the bed and staring at him like they expected Noam to have the solution.
And he had one, all right. He was just pretty sure they weren’t gonna like it.
“How do y’all feel about squatting?”
Noam was the one who found the house, listed online asfor sale—had confirmed the present owners were out of town for the holiday week and that there were no showings or open houses scheduled until after Independence Day. Still, they had to wait till nightfall to flee, slipping out of Holloway’s house in the early hours like fugitives—which, Noam supposed, they were.
The escape was easy.Too easy,Noam had thought, and it was only after they’d broken into that house and Noam had set up the wards—after they’d unpacked their bags and claimed rooms and Dara had Claire and Priya on the phone, Bethany safely back in the barracks—that they realized how fucked they really were.
They’d been lying to themselves, thinking Holloway didn’t know they knew. Thinking Lehrer wouldn’t have warned him. This whole time Holloway must have been waiting for them to leave, because when Priya checked their supplies, everything was gone.
Holloway had stolen the suppressant.
It wasn’t like they couldn’t get more on the black market—and Noam did, of course; he had the package shipped to the mailbox of an empty house, and Ames picked it up early in the morning, backpack on like she was headed off to school. They tested it on Priya—You don’t need my magic as much as you need Noam’s,she’d said. Well, it was true. They couldn’t afford for Noam’s magic to fail before they confronted Lehrer.
Independence Day was out, obviously. Now that they knew about Holloway—now that Holloway knew they knew—they couldn’t follow through with the same plot as before. Problem was they didn’t have a better plan.
Or: they didn’t at first.
Lehrer made the announcement four days after Noam’d escaped. Noam was making tea in the kitchen when Claire called them into the living room, where she had the news playing on TV, Lehrer’s face blown up larger than life on the huge flat-screen. He stood on the steps of the government complex, the Carolinian flag rippling huge and blue behind him, illuminated by spotlights and city glow.
“In the years following the catastrophe, shortly after Carolinia was founded, our nation was besieged from all sides,” Lehrer said. He wore his military uniform, not the tailored suits he’d adopted as chancellor—and that had to be intentional. That was a message every bit as much as the words coming out Lehrer’s mouth. “Peace was hard won ... but in the end, we convinced Texas and Japan and England and all the other nations that Carolinia is stronger than they imagined. Stronger than theycouldhave imagined. Our message was heard and understood: Carolinia is a nation of witchings, and we will always fight back.”
Applause answered those words, a roar so loud that if there was anyone in that audience who had read all those files Noam leaked online, anyone who doubted Lehrer’s authority, their voices were completely subsumed.
Noam slowly sank onto the sofa next to Dara, whose gaze was locked on the screen. Dara didn’t even spare him a glance as Noam’s hand found his leg, squeezing above the knee.
“The time has come to fight back once more. Texas has played their gambit. Now, we decide how Carolinia will respond. Tomorrow afternoon, at five p.m., I will be speaking live from Duke Chapel—a message for Texas, and for Carolinia ... and anyone else who cares to listen.”
Lehrer’s gaze met the camera at that, and ice plunged into Noam’s blood because for a second—just for a second—it felt like Lehrerknewsomehow. Like he sensed Noam watching there on the other end of that live feed. Like these words were for him.
“This is it,” Dara said from Noam’s left. “We have to go tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Priya echoed sharply. “We aren’t ready. We only just got the suppressant. We haven’t had time to assess the security at the event—figure out where Lehrer’s supposed to be and when—we have noplan.”
“Waiting for Independence Day isn’t any better,” Dara snapped. He’d gone straight-backed, one of his hands in a fist against his knee. “He’s still weak from fighting Noam. We can’t give him time to recuperate—we have to strike now.”
