THE ELECTRIC HEIR

by Lee, Victoria

“I don’t want you leaving the government complex,” he said. “And you’re not sleeping in the barracks. You’ll come back here tonight when your classes are through. Understood?”

  Noam nodded.

  “What’s that?”

  “Yes.”

  Lehrer shook his head, however minutely. “This isn’t a request. I am your commanding officer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lehrer’s hands fell away from Noam’s shoulders, and he straightened the cuffs so a perfect quarter inch of white sleeve showed beneath his suit jacket. “Better.” A brief pause, then something in Lehrer’s expression softened, and he added, “I’m sorry to be so strict about this, darling. But we have to be careful now—I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I know,” Noam said, and Lehrer tipped forward, resting his brow against Noam’s for a moment and closing his eyes. Noam had the odd urge to lift his hand and slip his fingers into Lehrer’s hair, keep him there.

  “I’ll cook something nice for dinner,” Lehrer told him. “I’ll make this up to you. I promise.”

  He left, and Noam waited the obligatory ten minutes there alone in the apartment, sipping his lukewarm coffee and watching people meander through the icy courtyard below the window, before he finally grabbed his satchel from the armchair and headed out in Lehrer’s wake.

  He always left when the hall was empty, mornings like these, but he didn’t have Dara’s skill of illusion—he couldn’t make himself look like anything but an out-of-bounds teenage cadet wandering through the government complex on his way back to the barracks. At least people recognized him. They knew he was Lehrer’s student. They assumed he had reason to be here.

  Over these past three days, Noam had barely spoken to Lehrer. Before Dara’s return they’d existed in the same small spaces, circling each other in their shared guilt over a death that never even happened.

  Noam’s guilt, perhaps, more than Lehrer’s.

  Now, after Lehrer had realized Dara was still alive, he hadn’t . . . he’d been so cold. He’d stood there in his apartment debating the merits of putting out a warrant for Dara’s arrest, hadn’t even considered the possibility of inviting his own son back home. Maybe Noam had been lying to himself thinking Lehrer’s grief was real.

  Lehrer sure as hell wasn’t grieving now.

  Noam got back to the barracks at nine and slid into his seat for Swensson’s class three minutes after the lecture had already started. Swensson paused midsentence to give Noam one long, meaningful look before proceeding with his discussion of inflammatory cytokines. Great. Now Noam was back on Swensson’s shit list. Not like he ever wasn’t, considering he barely attended class anymore thanks to Lehrer’s extracurricular excursions into the quarantined zone—

  “What the fuck, Noam?” Ames hissed, leaning halfway out her seat and across the aisle.

  Swensson’s sharp gaze swung over to fix on her instead. “Silence.”

  Ames’s expression was murderous, her lips twisting in a painful-looking knot, but she didn’t speak again. Just grabbed her pen and scribbled something down on a sheet of scrap paper. She at least waited until Swensson had turned toward the holoboard to toss it onto Noam’s desk.

  Where the hell were you?

  She was still glaring when he looked back over.

  He shrugged.

  The scowl deepened.

  He picked up his pen and wrote, Would you believe me if I told you it was classified?

  Ames practically snatched the note out of his hand when he offered it across the aisle.

  Fuck no. Where. Were. You?

  Noam sighed. He almost didn’t write back at all, but Ames would probably find a way to kill him with malevolent thoughts alone if he didn’t, so. Tell you later.

  Ames didn’t waste time, once class was out, in grabbing him by the arm and dragging him past a very befuddled-looking Bethany and Taye and into the boys’ bedroom. She kicked the door shut and rounded on him, arms folded over her chest.

  “Three days, Noam,” she said. “That’s how long you’ve been gone. So what the hell were you doing?”

  “It really was classified,” Noam said. In hopes of seeming casual, he added: “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

  “You were with Lehrer, then?”

  “Of course. I told you. It’s fine.”

  But that was the wrong thing to say; color flooded Ames’s cheeks, and she jabbed one tattooed finger in his direction. “I’m not putting up with this bullshit from you too. At least Dara—” She broke off, then scrubbed a hand over her scalp, mussing her hair.

  “What about Dara?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  Noam lifted both brows. “Tell me.”

  “If Dara wanted you to know, he’d’ve told you himself.” Ames shook her head. “Nope. Although I’ll be shocked if you can’t guess, at this point.”

  She narrowed her gaze at him, as if trying to track every little shifting microexpression that crossed his face.

  He should tell her. It would be so easy. Dara’s still alive. He’d get to watch the relief dawn on her face—he could bring her to him, smudge out the misery that lined her eyes and mouth.

  But if he told Ames that Dara was alive, that’d be one more person Lehrer could take advantage of.

  “You’re being cryptic,” he said instead.

  “No more cryptic than you,” she shot back. “But I guess that’s what happens when you get tight with Lehrer. You start keeping secrets.”

  “Oh, fuck off, Ames,” Noam said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Ames shifted her weight from foot to foot, her jaw clenched hard enough Noam could practically hear her teeth grinding together. “Listen. I do know what I’m talking about. Okay? I do.”

  “Why don’t you enlighten me, then?”

  She looked like she would rather peel her own skin off slowly. But she said: “I know you don’t want to think of yourself as a victim, Noam, but—”

  Noam had heard enough. He shoved past her, stripping his shirt off over his head and tossing it into the hamper. When he glanced around again, she was staring at him, color high in her cheeks.

  “I have to shower,” he said and jerked his thumb toward the bathroom door. “Do you mind?”

  She left, but not before throwing her hands up and making a sharp, exasperated noise between her teeth.

  He rinsed off quickly—there wasn’t much time between Swensson’s class and Adebayo’s—and ran his fingertips over the skin on the underside of his wrist. The same place Lehrer’s fingers had touched, tracing the lines of Noam’s veins. The same place Dara’s lips had kissed as they lay in bed together, Dara’s hair sweat-damp and his body bare.

  Where was Dara now?

  When Dara had looked at them, at Noam standing so close to Lehrer, listing toward him as if Lehrer were the only light in the dark—had he known? Could he tell? Did he look into Noam’s eyes and see all those memories of how Noam had felt after Dara left—the day he realized Dara was probably dead, had died alone and feverish in Atlantia like so many of Noam’s old friends? This whole thing with Lehrer had seemed so horribly inevitable: Noam and Lehrer, shipwrecked by the same grief.

  Now Dara was back.

  Something sickly reached long fingers down into Noam’s gut and tangled him into a hot, pulsing knot.

  He barely paid attention in the rest of his lessons that day, even though they were doing demonstrations with Adebayo, and he usually loved watching the other Level IV witchings put their presenting powers to work. Instead he sat in the back row, saying nothing, while Ames shifted water from liquid to gel state and Taye exponentially shrank Adebayo’s desk down to the size of a pinhead. Their magic washed over him in strange oceanic waves, incomprehensible. Lehrer had canceled their private lessons, in the interest of catching up on some work he’d missed while watching Noam that first day after the gala. That meant Noam spent his afternoon bouncing around the barracks and wishing he had a power h
e could stretch out over the city—the kind of power that let you find people. Probably Lehrer would have wanted Noam to go straight back to his apartment now that classes were done, but he couldn’t bring himself to obey. It felt worse, somehow, to spend these hours staring at the same walls he’d stared at for three days, waiting obediently for Lehrer to come home like Lehrer’s . . . like Lehrer’s goddamn trophy wife.

  No. He wasn’t doing that.

  So Noam didn’t leave the barracks until six, an hour before he knew Lehrer would be leaving work himself. Plenty of time to get back, to seem like he’d kept himself busy reading Lolita while Lehrer shook hands with all the self-important diplomats and signed treaties Noam knew damn well Lehrer had no intention of honoring.

  As he walked through the government complex, he dragged his technopathy through the passing mobile phones, tablets, laptop computers—by force of habit more than anything else. The data poured through his mind and then slipped from conscious awareness just as easily. Noam realized only as he was passing the atrium that any of these people could be Dara. With Dara’s illusion ability . . . he could be here, even now—the black-suited man scowling at Noam as he headed for the doors, the woman chatting away into her phone. Noam still remembered how complete the disguise had been when Dara pretended to be Minister Holloway. That same dark-haired man walked toward Noam now, absorbed in his phone, typing away into the notes feature—

  Wait.

  Noam, Holloway typed.

  Noam stared—but Holloway didn’t even look up, just kept typing.

  I have a message from Dara. He wants you to meet him in apartment 304 above that dive bar on Rigsbee Ave, near the original athletic park. Go now. Make sure you don’t run into Lehrer on your way. Right now.

  Holloway brushed past Noam, close enough Noam could have reached out and trailed his fingers against Holloway’s jacket sleeve. He left the distinct scent of bergamot cologne in his wake.

  Noam felt as if his body had suddenly been emptied of all organs, nothing left but a yawning void.

  Right.

  Right, okay.

  Noam was five steps from the door into the west wing when he diverted track—not for the front door, of course, as he didn’t doubt Lehrer had instructed the guards not to let him leave. He went back into the east wing instead, climbed the stairs to the second floor, then jumped out a hall window using magnetism to break his fall. He landed soft on the pads of his feet, right between the dumpster and the recycling bin. There was a security camera watching, but these days it took next to no effort to ensure it didn’t register his presence.

  Noam knew what bar Holloway was talking about. It was a mile or so away—easily walkable, but if Dara was there—if Dara was waiting for him—then seriously, fuck that.

  He grabbed the first northbound bus and stood there crammed in with all the government complex employees commuting home from work, staring at the back of someone’s conservative haircut with someone else’s briefcase bumping against his thigh. The ride felt as if it took ten years, each second dragging on into the next. Noam’s body buzzed with adrenaline, and he realized he was clenching his teeth only when his jaw started to hurt.

  He shoved his way out of the crowd when the bus stopped three blocks from the bar; there were closer stops, but he had to be sure he wasn’t being followed. He was too anxious to try and lose a tail or try again another day. Likely he’d have just killed whomever it was and dumped the body in a convenient alley.

  Noam’s breath froze in front of his face as he tramped through the snow that still hadn’t been shoveled off the sidewalk. Jesus, he should have at least gone back to the barracks and grabbed a coat and gloves. Instead he was going to show up on Dara’s doorstep, the first time after six months’ separation, teeth chattering and nose red and runny. He tried to adjust his satchel so the strap fell over the cadet star on his sleeve; drawing attention was the last thing he needed.

  Hopefully it was dark enough nobody would notice him at all.

  The bar was beginning to fill up, even at six thirty. The orange light glowing through the windows looked warm and welcoming from where Noam stood out on the sidewalk trying to decide which door was the right door to go up to the apartments. His fingers were frozen in fists.

  Whatever. Left door looked good enough.

  Noam opened it with telekinesis so he didn’t have to take his hands out of his pockets, leaning in with his shoulder to block the obvious magic from passing gazes.

  A narrow stair led upward, lit only by a single bare bulb screwed into the ceiling. Noam sucked in a shallow breath and started up. Each step jarred him down to the bone, spelling out a familiar rhythm: Da-ra. Da-ra.

  Apartment 304 was right at the end of the hall. Noam loitered on the stoop, staring at the peeling fake-gold stickers that numbered the door.

  It took several moments for him to muster the courage to lift his hand and knock.

  Footsteps, on the other side of the door. The creak of a loose floorboard. The heat of someone’s skin on the opposite knob. It turned, and the door opened.

  Dara looked as if he had just stepped out of Noam’s own memories. Well. His hair was shorter, unevenly cut, like it had been chopped off at some point and grown back wrong. But that face was the same. The expression on that face, too, as if someone had taken a snapshot of him as he was before the fever turned his eyes overbright and his cheeks too pink, and given it life.

  Noam’s next breath hitched in his throat. Somehow he hadn’t anticipated that seeing Dara again would feel like this. Without shock to cushion the blow, it was like being shot with a bullet he hadn’t sensed coming. He said Dara’s name, his voice coming out strangled and wrong.

  Dara took a step back, and Noam moved forward to fill the emptied space. He slid a hand into Dara’s hair, kicked the door shut with his heel, and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  He expected Dara to taste like whiskey and cigarettes the way he always used to, but this Dara tasted like nothing but himself. He felt the same, though. Same warm body, same firm chest pressed against Noam’s. Same slim fingers on Noam’s cheek. Same heartbeat pumping iron through his blood, tangible to Noam’s sense of all things ferromagnetic.

  A part of him thought Dara would push him away—braced for it, even, his veins all live wire crackling with electricity. But Dara didn’t. And when Noam drove him back, Dara went, the pair of them stumbling across the narrow space of Dara’s one-room apartment until Dara grabbed Noam by the collar, turned him around, and shoved him back onto the bed. He climbed after him, kissing Noam’s throat, the corner of his mouth, teeth catching Noam’s lower lip. Noam’s hands on Dara’s waist slid down to curve over his ass.

  God, how had Noam lived these past months without this—without him?

  Dara’s weight was heavy against Noam’s lap, and Noam wanted more of that, more of Dara touching him like he couldn’t get enough.

  “I can’t believe you’re alive,” Noam said, breathless and between kisses. “I can’t believe you’re here—”

  Dara broke the kiss but he kept his head there, brow tipped against Noam’s and his breath hot and humid between them.

  “I missed you so much,” Noam said and touched Dara’s cheek, Dara’s skin warm but not feverish, not anymore.

  Dara’s fingers curved around Noam’s wrist, and after a beat, he pulled Noam’s hand away. When he leaned back and met Noam’s gaze, his eyes were too serious. His thumb still pressed in at Noam’s pulse point as he said, “You’re with Lehrer now.”

  It wasn’t an accusation, not quite—but it struck like a thrown dart, a sharp and sudden pain lancing through Noam’s chest. He wondered if Dara could feel it against his thumb, the way Noam’s heart raced.

  “It’s . . . complicated,” Noam said. The words were lame and awkward on his tongue, even as he spoke them.

  Dara sat back. The light cast strange shadows on his face, making his expression unreadable. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  God. T
here was no way to put this that wouldn’t make Dara hate him.

  “We . . .”

  Noam’s tongue felt wrong in his mouth, too dry.

  Dara raised an expectant brow.

  Noam swallowed and forced himself to go on. “We’re sleeping together, yeah. Or we were.”

  “Were?”

  “Not since I realized . . . not since you came back.”

  Dara said, very calmly, “Was it consensual?”

  The sickness in Noam’s stomach swelled toward his throat. He wanted to reach for Dara with both hands and kiss him on the lips, pushing that question back into Dara’s mouth, silencing it.

  “Yes.”

  Dara slid off the edge of the bed, onto his feet. He had his face turned away from Noam. Noam couldn’t see his expression, couldn’t tell if Dara . . . if Dara hated him now, truly this time, or if he . . . if he . . .

  “Dara,” Noam said, shoving the rumpled sheets out of the way until he could sit on the edge of the bed and gaze up at the back of Dara’s head. “You have to understand—I thought you were dead; he was—he was the only person who understood what that meant, who’d lost you like I had. He—”

  Dara paced to the far end of the room, then back again. Both hands lifted to drag back through his hair, twisting dark curls in his fingers. When he rounded on Noam again, there was a hardness to his face that hadn’t been there before, like a thin layer of frost had crystallized beneath his skin. When he spoke, his voice trembled. “Lehrer raped me.”

  Noam wanted to die. He wanted to strip off this body like dirty clothes, toss it aside, and disappear. He could barely stand living with himself. Living in this skin, which Lehrer had touched—

  “I know.”

  He was crying; he was . . . he couldn’t help it, couldn’t hold it back. Noam scrubbed the heels of his palms against his damp cheeks, for what little good it did. Tears didn’t make it any better, not to Dara anyway—who had lived like this with Lehrer for years, and not because he chose to.

  Dara looked at him for one long, horrible moment. Then he spun on his heel, lashing out with one arm to hurl the lamp off the bedside table. It crashed onto the floor in a mess of pewter and shattering glass that spun out across the hard wood toward the far corners of the room. Noam startled where he sat, but he didn’t dare launch to his feet. Dara was a storm cloud blackening fast, a terrible energy pulsing off him that Noam felt in his very blood.