She nodded.
“Well, magic has its own energy signature. Only it isn’t kinetic, or thermal, or radiant, or any other energy type you’ve heard of. But if you can start to recognize it, you canseeit. You’ll know when someone is using magic in your presence.” He hesitated. “Of course, there are drawbacks. If you’re observing Lehrer, for example—and he constantly uses magic to repair his own body cells—it can get hard to tell the difference between that latent magic use and him using magic to back up a persuasive order.”
Priya exhaled roughly. “Then what’s the point? That’s what we need to identify.Lehrer’sour ultimate enemy. If he’s using magic all the time, we’re screwed.”
“I said it could behardto tell. Not impossible. You just have to practice ... a lot.”
But even as he said it, he knew she was right. Learning to see Lehrer’s persuasive magic was an uphill battle. Dara could, but he’d also lived with Lehrer his whole life. Noam couldn’t, not unless Lehrer wanted him to. And Priya certainly wouldn’t be capable of catching the subtle spark of gold that betrayed Lehrer’s true intentions.
Only if Dara didn’t do this—if he didn’t at leasttry—then what good was he?
They’d been practicing for a couple hours, Priya doing odd bits of magic—making her origami bird flap around the room, turning the lights on and off—and trying to sense her own energy signature each time. She never could. And it felt like there was nothing Dara could tell her to change that. She’d either ultimately grasp what he meant, howmagic is magic, or she wouldn’t.
A part of him wondered if that was a side effect of growing up in the QZ like Priya had. In the QZ, everyone was a witching—except, of course, a few infants born in the past few months who were vaccinated at birth. To Priya, magic wasn’tmagicalthe way it was to, say, Noam Álvaro. Or even to Dara, who’d had Lehrer drill the concept into his head over and over until he couldn’t forget it.
To Priya, magic was just mundane.
Maybe Dara would have felt the same way if he’d grown up there.
Dara got tired of the exercise early on, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to invent a reason to send Priya away. He wanted her here. He likedhavingher here. Having anyone here. The longer he spent in this apartment, the more it felt like the walls were slowly crumbling in on him, threatening to bury him under a mountain of plaster and brick. Priya’s presence kept them at bay. If she left ...
If she left, he’d be alone again.
Still, he was considering asking her to take a break and come back up in a few hours, when Priya’s phone rang.
She glanced at him, and he waved a permissive hand. She picked up.
“Yes?”
Dara couldn’t make out what was said on the other end of the line, but he did mark how Priya’s face settled like the still surface of a lake, her hand curled loose in her lap. Whatever it was ... it wasn’t good.
“What?” he said the moment she lowered the phone—although she didn’t put it down, just gripped it with tight fingers.
She took in a shallow breath and shook her head, and for a moment he thought she wouldn’t be able to speak at all. But then:
“It’s Lehrer,” she said. “He did it. He declared war against Texas.”
CHAPTERNINETEEN
NOAM
The bar was one of those places you could only find if you already knew where it was. There was no sign, no recorded address—just a black door on the back side of a strip of restaurants and shops along Main Street, nestled between the dumpsters and loading zones, the sidewalk underfoot practically soft with cigarette butts. A man checked Noam’s fake ID at the door and barely even looked at his face before letting him in. Noam descended the narrow steps into the basement, the bass throbbing in the walls and up through the soles of his feet to pulse in his bones. Noam chose this bar for that reason: it was hard to find, it only had one exit, and because tonight—instead of the usual acoustic singer-songwriter or piano man—they’d signed a DJ. The flyers plastered on the black-painted walls saidThursday Night Pride Party!
Yeah, that was the other plus. Texans fucking hated gay people.
Maybe Claire would’ve had something to say about Noam intentionally antagonizing her Texas contact, but it was good policy as far as clandestine terrorist meetings went. Noam needed the upper hand, but he had to get it without scaring the contact off. The guy was bound to be on edge already, considering he was meeting a Level IV witching in the capital of Carolinia.
Anger was better than fear. It made people just as predictable, without making them liable to run.
Being here, under these circumstances, was ... strange. This was exactly the kind of place Noam might’ve come on his own accord, back before Level IV—underground, tarot themed, queer friendly, with an Atlantian flag hanging behind the bar right next to a painting of a pentacle. Only Noam wasn’t here for himself. He was here for Lehrer.
Sort of.
“Good,” Lehrer had said when Noam told him the meeting was arranged. “Get the schematics from Jackson’s contact. Bring them to me first—I’ll make some changes—and then you can forward the altered files to the insurgents.”
Lehrer’d been pleased, a twitch at the corner of his mouth that he couldn’t quite suppress. Noam had hated the part of himself that still craved that, needed it like vital medicine. Lehrer touched his cheek with light fingers, touch trailing down toward Noam’s jaw.
“When you’re done,” Lehrer said softly, those achromatic eyes holding Noam’s gaze, his magic a faint swell of glittering gold—layering persuasion beneath the words? Impossible to say—“kill him.”
