“Sounds good,” Claire said at last. “C’mere, let us help you get her upstairs ...”
Lugging Ames’s unconscious body to the second floor was a surprisingly rigorous undertaking. The stairs were narrow and uneven, and Ames’s body had a habit of slipping too far one way or another, like she had weights shifting from limb to limb.
“You sure she isn’t boneless?” Claire said through gritted teeth as they dragged her up the last step, Ames’s head lolling uselessly back toward the floor.
Claire entered the code on Noam’s wards, and Dara shouldered open the door to his apartment.
“Here,” he said, hooking his foot round the leg of his sturdiest chair and dragging it over.
They dumped Ames on the chair. Priya had scrounged up some zip ties from the emergency kit she brought to every meeting; she used them to bind Ames’s wrists and ankles to the chair.
“Every hour,” Priya said, passing over the kit with all its syringes of suppressant. “You have enough for six hours—I’ll be back in a few with a fresh supply.”
None of them voiced the obvious: it might take far more hours for Noam to return home than there was suppressant on the black market.
Dara took the bag and nodded. After a beat Priya reached over and clapped her hand on his shoulder, allowing him a soft and almost understanding smile.
“We’ll check in,” she said.
They left, and although Dara couldn’t sense the magical wards locking again in their wake, he could imagine them. He envisioned a silver-blue electric curtain falling around the apartment, a stage at the end of an act.
Dara turned toward Ames, still unconscious, and wiped away the trickle of blood running down from her temple.
“Just you and me,” he said. “Again.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE
NOAM
The Texan president’s residence was a massive construction in white marble, obviously modeled after the relics of the former United States—all grecian columns and broad, smooth steps. But they didn’t enter from the front. The motorcade took them round to the west side, to the more subdued private entrance meant for the presidential family themselves.
Noam rode in a separate car from Lehrer—for appearance’s sake, he presumed, although a tiny twist in the pit of his stomach suggested that maybe,maybe... it was personal.
Maybe Lehrer didn’t want to be alone with him now.
Well, that makes two of us,Noam thought as nastily as he could, and smiled and nodded as the Carolinian ambassador to Texas kept talking on and on about the winter weather like Noam gave a shit about whateverEl Niñowas supposed to mean.
“Ah, here we are,” the ambassador said as their car rolled to a stop behind Lehrer’s, as if Noam hadn’t noticed. “It’s a magnificent house. You’re very lucky to have the chance to see it. There’s nothing quite like it in Carolinia.”
Noam was starting to think the ambassador liked Texas better than his own home country.
One of the Chancellarian Guard opened the door, and the ambassador emerged first, Noam following in his wake. The drive was composed of what must have been ten tons’ worth of small white pebbles; they crunched and rolled under his feet as they walked up toward the house.
Lehrer preceded them all, a slim figure in navy blue trailed at great distance by two guards. Lehrer had told Noam once that he loathed the way the presence of the Chancellarian Guard undermined his power.They should never forget how capable I am of defending myself,he’d said.
And true to form, he eschewed bodyguards in Carolinia; the only time Noam ever saw them at all was in the wake of that assassination attempt.
But here they were. A muted presence to be sure, far back and armed only with handguns holstered at their hips, buthere.
Lehrer must be worried.
Only, of course he was, Noam realized. Texas had the vaccine—that was the whole reason Lehrer had declared war in the first place. If the Texans found a way to inject him with it, they would win the war in a single stroke. Lehrer would be trapped here, impotent and in Texan power. Carolinian armies would be trapped within Texan borders.
Every country in the goddamn world would ally themselves with Texas. They’d crush the life out of whatever was left of Carolinia in the wake of Lehrer’s neutralization.
We shouldn’t be here.Adrenaline bolted up Noam’s spine like a shot of lethal poison. Why hadn’t someone warned Lehrer? Why didn’t—
But they did. They did warn Lehrer. And if they didn’t, Lehrer would’ve known anyway, would’ve figured it out the same way Noam had.
