He didn’t know why he kept making the same mistake.
Or maybe the problem wasn’t other people at all. The problem wasn’t trusting in traitors. It was Dara. Dara, the common denominator at the end of the function, the first glinting chunk of superdense matter at the start of the universe.
All his fault.
Born broken, as Lehrer had told him so many times.
He twisted round again, back toward the dresser. Picked up the glass and hurled it against the far wall.
Crystal shattered, shards spraying across the hardwood floor and spinning underneath his bed. Dara screamed until his throat ached, until the neighbors pounded on the ceiling, until he had nothing left but air and anguish.
Then he made himself sweep up the broken glass and pour the whiskey out his window, sat on his bed, and glared at the opposite wall until his pulse slowed again.
A practical person would have picked up his burner phone and called Claire or Priya, told them everything Noam had said, everything Noam had gotten himself involved with.
They’d call the mission a failure. Pack up and flee back to the quarantined zone, regroup to try again some other day.
But how many people would die in the meanwhile?
Dara gripped his phone in one hand, staring down at the blank screen.
Maybe he was as bad as Noam, though, because Dara couldn’t bring himself to dial. He couldn’t walk away and leave Lehrer here, still living.
Dara had come to Carolinia to burn Lehrer’s kingdom down. He wouldn’t leave until he stood on its ashes.
He was about to go downstairs to get Ames when the burner phone buzzed against his palm. Dara glanced down, and his heart slammed to a stop.
Noam: downstairs, come get me. fast
Dara pitched himself up off the bed, shoving his feet into shoes and grabbing his coat from the hook by the door. He was still pulling it on as he clattered downstairs, running into Ames on the way. She caught his elbow and said, “Where are you going, mister?”
“It’s Álvaro,” Dara said. “He just messaged me. I don’t know why, but it sounds—he’s outside.”
Ames let go. They both dashed down the last flight of stairs and tumbled out into the snowy night. An unfamiliar car idled on the curb, something ancient and barely functional puffing exhaust into the dark.
The windows were tinted. It could be a trap.
Dara didn’t care if it was.
He yanked open the passenger-side door.
Noam lay slumped in the driver’s seat, blood dripping from a gash on his face and one arm—the one resting in his lap—so red and swollen it had ripped the seams of his shirtsleeve.
“Shit,” Dara gasped. He crawled into the car, bracing his knees on either side of the gearshift to slide a hand onto one of Noam’s cheeks, tilting his face toward him. Noam’s eyes cracked open, fluid-clumped lashes fluttering like it took effort just to look at Dara. “What did he do to you?”
Only Dara already knew the answer to that question.
Ames had moved round to the other side of the car, opened the driver’s door. Noam’s weight dropped back, and Ames braced against him just in time, looping both hands under his arms to keep him upright. She didn’t say a word, but her eyes were wide and her face gone pale. A muscle twitched in one cheek.
Dara wondered if this was how she’d looked with him, every time she dragged him home too drunk to stand. Too out of it to keep from aspirating his own vomit when withdrawal hit.
“Get his seat belt,” Ames got out. It sounded tight, like her teeth were clenched.
Dara jabbed his thumb against the latch and leaned forward to grab Noam’s ankles from the floor, pulling his legs up and onto the seat as Ames dragged him bodily out of the car. Noam cried out when they did that, his whole body arcing forward like he’d been shot through with an electric current.
“Don’t,” he mumbled when Dara had finally made it back out, grabbing one of his arms to take the burden off Ames. “Not . . . we have to go. Away.”
“What’s going on?”
Leo had emerged from the bar, messy haired and with a towel still thrown over one shoulder—he’d left midshift. He blew out heavily when his gaze fell to Noam, taking a halting step forward across the icy sidewalk. “Jesus Christ.”
Noam said something incomprehensible against Dara’s chest, his face tilted in against Dara’s shoulder. Dara nudged him up enough that Noam’s mouth wasn’t blocked.
“What did you say?” he whispered.
“He’s coming.”
It was like a blade fell, cutting through Dara’s spine and severing it in two. He stiffened, fingers clenching around a handful of Noam’s shirt.
“Get him in the car.”
Ames helped Dara drag Noam to the back door, Leo on the other side of the car pulling Noam in by the shoulders to sprawl across the back seat. This time, Noam didn’t scream. He barely even moved at all.
“Do you live around here?” Dara asked Leo, meeting his gaze across the seat, Leo’s fingers pressed against Noam’s neck like he was checking his pulse.
“Yeah. But I have a roommate.”
At least he didn’t suggest they go to the hospital.
Ames took the front seat, pulling the door shut in her wake. Then: “Shit! It’s not driverless.”
“Figure it out,” Dara snapped back, climbing into the back seat and dragging Noam’s limp legs up onto his lap, shifting over enough to see his face. Noam was looking paler by the minute, his eyes shut and still.
“Don’t you remember me crashing Lehrer’s car that time? I can’t fucking drive!”
“Ames!”
“Fine, fine—hope I don’t kill us all—”
She tossed something back toward him, and Dara caught it on reflex. It was surprisingly slippery; he glanced down—Noam’s phone, the screen covered in blood.
The car lurched out of park, Ames’s knuckles blanching around the wheel as she pressed the gas. Across the back seat Leo had his head tilted down to keep his ear near Noam’s mouth.
“Are you some kind of doctor or something?” Dara snapped, irritation rearing up in him—as if, in the absence of a better target for all that fear and anger, his temper had latched onto Leo instead.
“I got trained in basic life support while I was in the army,” Leo said. “Not much good without equipment, but . . .”
Dara wished he had Noam’s head in his own lap instead. That he could brush his fingers over Noam’s brow and tuck his hair back behind his perfect ear.
Instead he was useless. Always, always useless now.
Dara blinked his eyes hard against the tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks and patted Noam’s leg like that would make the slightest difference.
Noam wouldn’t die. He couldn’t.
Dara wouldn’t let him.
“Where are we going, exactly?” Ames said from the front seat. They turned onto Magnum Street, headed back downtown. Dara blinked against the glittering city lights as they rose to meet them, his pulse erratic. He kept expecting to see a black government car peel around the upcoming corner to block them in.
“Not your place,” Dara said. “Go to . . . Holloway. Go to Holloway’s.”
Holloway was a government official—Noam had been right about that—but it was the best choice they had. They couldn’t check into a hotel, not with Noam in this condition.
Ames nodded in the rearview mirror, and Dara turned his attention back to Noam, whose chest rose and fell more slowly now, the slightest of motions. Leo dabbed at the blood on Noam’s face with the bar towel, not that it did much good.
“Stay with me,” Dara murmured, knowing Noam couldn’t hear him. He wished he dared text Bethany, but he couldn’t guarantee Lehrer didn’t already have someone watching her phone. Watching her.
All Dara could do now was tangle his fingers around Noam’s clammy palm and hold on tight.
Holloway lived in Forest Hills, in a house not far from the one Ames had grown u
p in.
In comparison, though, Holloway’s home was more subdued: a white clapboard front, colonial-style, with black shutters and a painted-blue door. Holloway’s butler was already out on the front step by the time Ames managed to coax the vintage car up his drive and put it in park.
Ames ran up the gravel to talk to the butler, explaining the situation far better than Dara could have right now, no doubt. He and Leo carried Noam between them, up the steps and into Holloway’s wood-floored foyer. Holloway himself met them in the sitting room, sweeping newspapers off a chaise so they could set Noam down.
“He needs a healer,” said Holloway, crouched down on the floor with one pale hand gripping the corner of the seat cushion. “This doesn’t look good. Can I ask what happened to him?”
“Lehrer happened,” Ames said grimly. She paced back and forth in front of Holloway’s tall windows, arms crossed tight over her chest. “He’ll probably be here any minute, looking for us.”
“I’ll call around for a discreet hotel,” Holloway said, rising to his feet. “For the time being, my personal physician can examine him. He’s well compensated for his discretion.”
Dara and Ames exchanged looks.
“Fine,” Dara said at last, looking back to Holloway. “If he can get here fast.”
“We’re so fucked,” Ames muttered after Holloway had left the room. She was chewing on her thumbnail, all the way down to the quick. “Once Lehrer realizes we aren’t at yours or my dad’s house, this is the next place he’ll check.”
“We shouldn’t move Noam again too quickly,” Leo said. He’d taken a seat on the ottoman, legs bunched up to fit between that and the armchair. “He’s in shock.”
All their gazes swung back round to Noam again, who’d gone the same taupe color as the upholstery beneath him.
For better or for worse, Leo was right.
Holloway returned soon with a sachet of ice and pillows to prop up Noam’s head. The ice went on Noam’s wrist—and his ribs, which were bruised and contorted beneath his skin when they lifted up Noam’s shirt. But that was all they could do until the physician arrived, a thin older man carrying an antique black bag that must have been bigger on the inside, judging from all the equipment he pulled out of it.
The doctor kicked the rest of them out of the sitting room while he worked. Holloway had his cook make up a cheese board for them to snack on as they waited—although for his part all Dara could manage was to peel the leaves off one of the little wild strawberries and swallow hard against his rising nausea. Ames rummaged through Holloway’s cabinets and pulled out a bottle of tequila, stared at it for a solid five minutes, then put it back unopened. They all waited in silence.
The doctor emerged after an hour or so, peeling latex gloves off his hands and dropping them in Holloway’s kitchen trash. He drew Holloway into a separate room—that in itself was enough to make Dara’s heart knot—but Holloway returned quickly enough.
“Noam’s spleen has ruptured. It will probably heal on its own, but for now . . . he needs a blood transfusion,” Holloway told them. “Dara, Leo . . . are either of you AB negative?”
Leo shook his head. “A positive.”
“I’m O negative,” said Dara.
“Perfect. Do you object to . . . ?”
Dara dropped his demolished strawberry. “Let’s go.”
Holloway led him back into the front room, where his physician rolled up Dara’s sleeve and tied off the tourniquet, instructing Dara to squeeze his fist tight as he slid the needle in.
Afterward, Dara dropped down into his seat at the kitchen table with the others, a bandage wrapped thrice round his elbow and a low dizziness coursing through his head. He dropped his brow into his hands.
“Should’ve eaten something first,” Ames said archly, and Dara kicked her under the table.
He found Holloway in his study later that night, the room lit only by a single lamp atop Holloway’s desk. Holloway lifted his head when Dara came in—he’d been hunched over some papers on his desk, reading glasses perched on his long nose.
“Did you need something?” Holloway said.
“No. I wanted to say . . . thank you.” Dara stood in the center of Holloway’s rug, trying hard not to twist his hands in front of him like a nervous child.
He’d known Holloway since he was a child, of course, although Dara wasn’t sure he’d ever been nervous. He wasn’t raised to be nervous.
Holloway was elected attorney general when Dara was twelve. He’d been so young when Dara met him—was still young, in truth; had grown a mustache in an effort to look more dignified.
Holloway’s mind had been an interesting place.
“Of course,” Holloway said, drawing off his glasses and setting them aside. “Might I offer you a drink?”
Dara shook his head. “No. Thank you.”
One of Holloway’s dark brows went up. “Good. Although surprising, coming from you.”
Holloway gestured for Dara to take one of the chairs near the window of his study and rang for tea instead. “Peppermint,” he specified over the line with a knowing grin for Dara; clearly Holloway still remembered Dara’s tastes.
“How’s he doing?” Holloway asked once they’d both settled in with their drinks, Holloway’s long legs stretched out before the sofa and crossed at the ankles.
“I don’t know.” Dara stared down at his own tea. His reflection was visible on its surface, if only in fractured pieces obscured by the billowing steam. “He hasn’t woken up.”
Holloway hummed. “Perhaps we shouldn’t move him tonight, after all. I haven’t been able to arrange a hotel yet—and if Mr. Álvaro is still so weak . . .”
Dara nodded.
Holloway took a sip of his tea, set the cup down in its saucer with a clink of porcelain on porcelain. “I thought he’d be safe,” he admitted. “Lehrer seemed to . . . care about him, in his own way.”
“That’s not how Lehrer operates.”
“Relatively safe,” Holloway revised. “The real risk, of course, being if Lehrer realized he was being double-crossed.”
“Noam was always at risk.”
The silence that followed that comment was heavy, laden down by implication—although Dara still couldn’t tell if Holloway had realized . . .
Dara curved his hands closer round his teacup, tipping his face down into the steam.
“Did you know?” he asked his tea. “About Lehrer. About what he did to me.”
He’d never checked. He’d been so cautious reading minds, especially in those later years.
He hadn’t wanted to have his fears confirmed—that everyone looked at him and saw his own victimization written on his skin like fresh bruises. Only perhaps that was giving high society too much credit. No one would have thought Calix Lehrer capable of such things.
When he finally dared to glance up again, Holloway watched with wary eyes, his own cup held in hand as if he’d forgotten to take his sip.
“No,” Holloway said at last. “But perhaps I should have guessed. I’m sorry.”
A tight smiled pressed at Dara’s mouth. “It’s fine. No one did.”
And the people he’d told outright hadn’t believed him.
They stayed at Holloway’s that night. With Noam still in poor condition and Holloway playing it safe with the hotels, staying in place was starting to seem increasingly optimal. Lehrer hadn’t shown up yet, after all, and Holloway had plenty of guest rooms—but Dara eschewed his in favor of sitting curled up in a chair in Noam’s room, staring at Noam’s face in the dull moonlight.
He still hadn’t woken up.
A lot of that was sedation, Dara knew. The physician had injected Noam with some pain medication, had left bottles of pills for later—bottles Dara shoved under the bed so he wouldn’t see them and be tempted.
But it still worried him. If Noam would come to for a moment—long enough for Dara to say I love you and it’s okay and I forgive you, then . . . maybe . . .
Selfish,
of course. Noam was asleep for a reason, and here Dara wanted to drag him back to consciousness—to agony—just to get this guilt off his chest.
Leo found him later in the night, long after Dara’s watch had ticked past three a.m. and he’d torn it off his wrist and thrown it across the room—couldn’t stand looking at it anymore, couldn’t keep remembering the day Lehrer gave it to him.
“You okay?” Leo settled down on the floor by Dara’s chair.
“Essentially.”
Dara’s gaze didn’t shift from Noam. He didn’t want to miss the slightest movement.
“Can I get you something? There’s leftovers from dinner. Or even just . . . a coffee, maybe?”
Dara shook his head.
“Maybe some company, then?”
The next shallow breath burned in his lungs, Dara opening his mouth to say no—but he ended up nodding instead, both hands fisting up against his knees.
Leo shifted his position, stretching his legs out along the floor to get comfortable. “Y’all were pretty close, weren’t you?” he asked. “Have you been friends a long time?”
“We hated each other,” Dara said with a low laugh. “For most of the time we’ve known each other, we . . . I couldn’t stand him, actually.”
He could imagine the look on Leo’s face without having to see it.
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t remember now.” Dara sank lower in his chair. “Well. That’s a lie. I do. It’s . . . well, it makes me sound horrible to say it out loud.”
“There’s no judgment here.”
Dara turned his head enough to catch Leo’s gaze. Leo flashed him a small smile, and Dara sighed.
“He showed up during a . . . well, I don’t want to say it was a good point for me and Lehrer. But it was . . . fine. It was okay. I was working with Sacha by then, and I . . . I’d convinced myself I had everything under control—”
I have everything under control, Noam had said in that alley, scant hours before Lehrer nearly killed him. Dara shoved the memory away and shut his eyes, long enough to focus on the rough fabric of the upholstery of the chair he sat on, the way his clothes fell against his own body.
“Anyway,” Dara said, making himself keep going. “Then Lehrer told me one night there was a new student coming to Level IV. A recent survivor, someone with magic dynamics high enough to rival both mine and Lehrer’s—someone clever enough, perhaps, to use it. And Lehrer wouldn’t say a word about him when I asked. He just gave me this pitying smile, like he already knew I was damaged goods.”
THE ELECTRIC HEIR Page 36
