Priya showed up every morning at eight with a plastic grocery bag of food and a pack of cigarettes. She’d stay an hour or so, pitying Dara enough to give him that small amount of human contact—but she always left, off to do whatever it was the Black Magnolia had her doing, and Dara was alone for the day to pace his narrow apartment and try to absorb himself in a new book before Claire arrived for the evening shift.
But not evenCrime and Punishmentcould hold Dara’s attention for long. His mind kept circling back to Noam and Ames—Bethany and Taye—all down in Texas fighting one of Lehrer’s wars. Possibly dying for it.
Dara had never been claustrophobic before now. He used to love small spaces, in fact—had filled his room in Lehrer’s apartment with dozens of houseplants with wide frond-like leaves, vines that dangled down from the ceiling like Spanish moss. It had made his bedroom feel like it was blocked off from the rest of the world ... and Dara liked the way Lehrer had to navigate around all those plants every time he came in, an invader in unfamiliar territory.
This was different. This felt like being trapped in that same room—barren now of plants, of Dara’s telescope, his books, and his ceiling stars—caught there with a line in his vein and his magic tamped down and bound. The rising panic of knowing he’d die between those four walls.
“War’s on hold,” Claire told him on the fifth night, the both of them perched on chairs shoved up against the window, blowing cigarette smoke out into the icy air. “Apparently Lehrer’s got Houston in a stranglehold, and the Texans want to talk treaties. All action is suspended until there’s word one way or the other.”
“That’s a good thing,” Dara said, making Claire glance over at him in surprise. He tapped ash against the windowsill and shrugged. “If the war went on much longer, Lehrer might not make it back in time for Independence Day. We’d lose our shot.”
Not to mention, the longer Noam was in Texas, the fewer chances he’d have to discover where Lehrer kept the vaccine.
“I suppose,” Claire said after a moment. She stabbed her cigarette out and flicked it into the night air, then pushed herself up, dusting both hands on her jeans. “Either way, I’m still doing damage control with Texas for their spy’s death in east Durham. Try explaining to a bunch of paranoid antiwitching freaks that random muggings happen in Carolinia just like they do anywhere else.” She shook her head. “Fucking nightmare.”
“Right,” Dara said and swallowed down the truth.
“Anyway. We’re meeting on Monday, as usual. I’ll have Priya come get you beforehand. And Dara ... maybe take a bath first?”
She left. Dara lifted an arm to sniff himself; he couldn’t smell anything.
But now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember the last time he took a shower. Before Noam and Ames went to Texas, for sure—all the days following that blurred together, indistinguishable except for whether Dara managed to make himself eat.
So he made a point of cleaning off and changing into a fresh set of clothes before Priya showed up to escort him down to Leo’s bar.
“Hey, where the hell’ve you been?” Leo asked, passing over a glass of club soda when Dara sat himself down at his usual stool. He’d added a twist of lemon this time; it bobbed up and down in the bubbles like a tiny yellow ship at sea.
“House arrest,” Dara muttered. “Álvaro put wards on my apartment. He thought Lehrer might send someone after me.”
“Wasn’t that already a risk?”
“I suppose. But you don’t know Álvaro.” Once Noam got it into his head that someone he cared about was in danger, he stopped caring about anything else.
Unless that person was Ames, of course. Guilt still twinged in Dara’s chest when she walked in, stripping off her parka and dumping it over the back of a wooden chair. Looking at her, all he could imagine was Lehrer’s golden magic tangled up inside her skull like so much metal wire.
But if Ames was back, then that meant—
“Where’s Noam?” he asked when she sat on the stool next to his.
“Texas,” she said, raising a finger to get Leo’s attention. “Can I get a whiskey sour?”
“What do you meanTexas?”
“I mean Dallas,” she said, twisting round to look at him properly. “Lehrer had him flown in. Some business about him being Atlantian liaison—I don’t know. Guess Lehrer wants him to reassure the Texans that Lehrer doesn’t plan to annex them the way he did Atlantia.”
“But he does,” Dara said.
“Probably. But anyway, point is Noam’s with Lehrer. So. It’s just me.”
A cold hand closed around Dara’s heart. Never mind not having time to look for the vaccine. In close quarters with Lehrer, with tensions running high ...
Dara had gone on trips with Lehrer before. When he was fourteen, Lehrer even took him to Paris on a diplomatic trip. They’d stayed at a beautiful historic hotel in the eighth arrondissement. The balcony had a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower, framed by the crimson flowers that grew thick and fierce in the window boxes. Dara had found a little used bookshop a few blocks away, would hole up there while Lehrer was in meetings and work his way through every book he could find, reading the entirety ofLes Misérablesin the original French. It was one of those rare early days, when Dara still saw this new arrangement with Lehrer through rose-colored lenses. Everything seemed bright and special. And Dara had felt so very adult drinking the glass of champagne Lehrer passed him, when Lehrer trailed his hand down Dara’s spine, when Lehrer took him to bed.
But it didn’t end well. A meeting didn’t go Lehrer’s way, and the glittering postcard-perfect façade shattered like mirror glass. They’d left early, Dara’s bruises covered with an unseasonable sweater, and Dara never readLes Misagain.
“Lehrer will catch him,” Dara whispered, clutching his club soda in one numb hand. “He’ll—Noam can’t fool him, he’ll—”
Dara managed to cut himself off just in time, tipping forward to take a big swallow of his soda to wash down the words he so nearly let slip.Lehrer will use persuasion, and Noam won’t obey. And then he’ll know.
