“Then you should do it.” He took a breath. “You’re right. It’s necessary.”
He tugged his hand out of Lehrer’s and stood. Lehrer rose as well, but he didn’t reach for Noam again—just stood there, with the firm and commanding posture of someone who has always known he’d get his way. Who never really worried Noam might say no.
Was that Lehrer’s magic Noam still sensed, glittering gold about him like an aura?
Noam stepped past him, telekinesis grabbing his satchel from the hook by the door. “I have to go to class,” he said. “I’ll tell you if the insurgents contact me again.”
Lehrer nodded and let him leave.
Let.
It was Noam’s turn to cook lunch. He’d managed to expand his repertoire from cold pasta to include stir-fry and salad, which probably ought to be embarrassing, but Noam figured it was in everyone’s best interest if he never tried to fix anything more complicated than spaghetti bolognese. Ames had offered to help, but that seemed like it mostly involved her sitting on the kitchen counter by the stove and swinging her heels against the cabinets while pointing out everything Noam did wrong.
“Maybe there’s someone out there whose presenting power is the ability to make a perfect meat sauce every time,” Noam said, prodding the sizzling onions with his spatula. “Sorry that’s not me.”
Ames laughed and kicked one of her feet against his ribs. “Christ, can you imagine? You’d never even know you were a witching. You’d think you were, like, the first personeverto survive the virus without magic. But hey, at least you’d have a future at Italian restaurants.”
“Mmm. I think the award for most useless power would go to somebody with the ability to ... I don’t know, speed up iron oxidization by a factor of two. Everything rusts, but only twice as fast as it normally would.”
At least she was talking to him. Noam had started to think she wouldn’t. These past few months she’d grown more and more distant—and that was Lehrer’s fault, of course. They might not talk about it, but Ames knew.
Presumably she knew about what Lehrer did to Dara too. But Dara was another thing they didn’t talk about.
The urge to tell her shot through him like a sudden bolt of lightning:Dara’s alive. Noam could imagine her reaction so clearly, how shock would dawn on her face—giving way to incredulity, happiness, relief.
Only then she’d want to see him, and Noam couldn’t allow that. Bringing Ames into the fold would introduce one more weak spot for Lehrer to exploit. One more potential victim.
He dumped the ground beef into the skillet too; the oil hissed and spat, violently enough Noam had to turn down the heat.
“Oh, I got it.” Ames grinned. “Jesus tricks. You know, water into wine, that kind of thing. Or—no, that’s actually the best power ever. Okay. How about ... carbonation. Your power is that you cancarbonateanything.”
“That has military potential, though. You could carbonate someone’s blood.”
As soon as he said it, he wanted to take it back. Carbonate someone’sblood? It was exactly the kind of idea Lehrer would have come up with. Always looking for the martial application of a given power. Always twisting magic to his own ends.
He could tell Ames was thinking the same thing; she’d stopped kicking the cabinets. For a moment she sat very still, both hands gripping the counter ledge.
“Anyway,” Noam said, voice coming out strained. He grabbed the saltshaker, only his hand wasn’t steady. He poured too much. Shit. “What about talking underwater? That’s pretty useless.”
“I’m gonna go watch TV,” Ames said flatly. She pushed off the counter and disappeared into the living room, leaving Noam alone to push browning meat around the skillet and wish he wasn’t such an asshole.
Maybe he should stay in the barracks the next several nights. He’d tell Lehrer people were getting suspicious—not that Lehrer cared; every time Noam had said something to the effect, Lehrer had laughed and said,The rules don’t apply to people like us.
He was right.
Still, Noam would come up with some excuse. It would be good to spend more time with Ames. The others too. How long had it been since Noam spent an entire weekend here? Before Faraday, he’d been consumed by his obsession with Lehrer—with winning Lehrer’s affection scrap by pathetic scrap. After, he’d had a different obsession entirely.
And while Noam was busy with Lehrer, every last one of his friendships had burned to the ground.
The less time Noam spent around Lehrer, the fewer chances he had to mess up and say the wrong thing. Maybe that was enough reason to avoid him. Only avoiding him was suspicious—more so now that Dara was back. It wasn’t like Lehrer wouldn’t guess why Noam had the sudden change in heart.
Noam had just finished making the sauce, straining the noodles through the colander over the sink, when he heard Ames speak up from the other room, voice sharp.
“Noam. Noam, get in here, right now.”
Noam dropped the colander and dashed into the living room, where Ames and the others all huddled around the television set. The news was running—and at first Noam didn’t know what he was seeing; they kept showing the same clip of a crowd of people and a sidewalk splattered with blood, antiwitching soldiers setting up a perimeter.
Then he saw the ticker marquee running beneath the images, white text on a bright-blue strip:
