“I agree,” Noam said, and all their gazes slid to fix on him.
“This is a terrible idea,” Ames warned.
“All our ideas are terrible. But we can’t do nothing.”
After all ...
With enough IV steroids—enough transfusions, even if from less powerful witchings, witchings who’d burn out and die in hours—Lehrer might regain his strength. He might recover.
It was now or never.
Even after their meeting dissolved, anticipation hung over the house like a building storm. None of them spoke to each other after the decision was made, splitting off in separate directions to separate rooms, all coming to terms with the possibility this might be their last night alive.
Downstairs, Ames was probably drinking herself unconscious in the kitchen. Leo had locked himself in his room with the lights off—asleep already, perhaps, or awake in bed staring into the yawning dark.
Noam and Dara shut themselves away after dinner, Noam crouched down on the floor and struggling to start a fire in the stone hearth. Even with pyromancy it was difficult; he couldn’t get the wood hot enough to catch. The newspaper burned itself out, over and over, and Noam kept thinking about Lehrer doing that tohimtomorrow—and at last he snapped, “Fuckit” and dropped back onto his heels.
“Can I help?” Dara asked from his perch on the edge of the bed. He looked thinner than ever, shadows deepening beneath his cheekbones and fingers like spider legs clutching bony knees.
“You’re welcome to give it a shot.”
Dara pushed up and crossed to retrieve the poker from where it leaned against the wall, used it to stab at the coals and dig the newspaper deeper under the logs. Noam shifted aside to make room as Dara crouched down and blew on the embers, sparks flaring up toward the chimney.
They’d debated the various risks and benefits to lighting a fire in an unoccupied house, but after the second night with no heat—the homeowners had turned it off in their absence, and Priya’d expressed concern about their fancy smart-tech system alerting them if the squatters turned it back on—they’d decided it was worth not freezing to death before they could defeat Lehrer. Ground rules, of course: no turning on the lights—and they only burned fires at night, when dusk would conceal the rising smoke.
Dara and Noam sat back and watched as the pale flames licked at the underside of the dry wood. Slowly, slowly, the bark began to smolder and—at last—to catch.
“We can add fire starting to your list of hidden talents, I suppose,” Noam said as Dara stood and offered Noam a hand to pull him to his feet.
“A rare benefit of living in the QZ for six months.” Dara hadn’t let go of Noam’s hand; his thumb rubbed a pattern against Noam’s skin, warm and steady. “Come on. Let’s sit down.”
He drew Noam back to the bed, both of them climbing up to sit cross-legged facing one another, knees bumping. They hadn’t had sex since that night in Dara’s apartment. They’d tried, the first evening, but when Noam touched Dara in the darkness, kissed him, Dara had gone taut and still, and nothing Noam said—no number of reassurances spoken in a low voice—had been enough to remind him Noam wasn’t someone else.
Noam had his own tiny terrors. They rose up sudden and silent in the middle of the night when Dara shifted in bed next to him, every one of Noam’s nerves thrown on edge waiting for long fingers at the nape of his neck and Lehrer’s voice whispering in his ear.
“I like this house,” Noam said after several moments without either of them speaking. He lifted Dara’s hand to press his lips to Dara’s knuckles, glancing up between his lashes to meet Dara’s gaze. “Maybe we can buy it when all this is over.”
“We?”
Noam lowered Dara’s hand but didn’t let go. “Imagine it, Dara. We could have a life together—we could start over and do it properly this time. We’ll get a dog. I could learn to cook, and Lakewood’s close enough to downtown that we wouldn’t be far from other options if we got bored playing domestic.”
At first he worried Dara might say no—tug his hand away and tell Noam that was too fast, or that he wanted something different once they were free. But instead his grip tightened on Noam’s, a tremulous smile flitting across his lips. “That sounds nice.”
“I want to choose you,” Noam said softly. “Every day, again and again.”
Dara kissed him, Noam’s lips parting under the pressure of Dara’s mouth and his hand lifting to Dara’s cheek. And for that moment Noam let himself believe in the future they’d spun together, all its brightness and its flaws, something so magnificently mundane it almost felt unachievable: late mornings waking up together, Dara perched on the kitchen counter while Noam made dinner, trading work stories over tea in the early evening, Wolf curled up in bed between them while they slept.
After the fire had died down, Dara drifting in a doze curled up on his side of the bed, Noam still couldn’t sleep. He stared at Dara’s face in what was left of the ember-light, every muscle in his body clenched up hard enough it almost hurt.
Noam wanted that future. He wanted it so fucking much.
But in less than twelve hours they would be at Duke Chapel—both magic-less, defenseless, hoping past the point of reason that their terrible plan would work.
That Lehrer hadn’t outsmarted them even now.
Noam hadn’t put voice to his fears, and neither had the rest of them, although he knew they all felt the same way: like criminals on the eve of execution.
An encrypted email exchange between C. Lehrer and his personal physician, sent using a private server.
