“Depends. What are you cooking?”
“Whatever you want.”
Noam tipped his head back, pretending to consider. “Pancakes.”
“Pancakes it is.”
Lehrer left Noam there to throw on fresh clothes from the selection he kept in Lehrer’s bottom dresser drawer. He wasn’t sure precisely when that had happened—when Noam started storing clothes here, a spare toothbrush in Lehrer’s medicine cabinet and his laundry mixed with Lehrer’s in the hamper. They’d started sleeping together two months after Dara disappeared into the quarantined zone—right around the time Noam realized that Dara was probably dead. Dara’s fevermadness had already been advanced, inflaming more organs than just his brain. So for all Noam gave Dara what he wanted by helping him leave, Noam had killed him in the same stroke.
Lehrer was the only person who understood that guilt.
Lehrer had lost Dara too.
Noam sat at the kitchen table as Lehrer cooked. Lehrer had rolled his sleeves up to the elbows; every time he tossed the pan’s contents, the muscles in his forearms shifted and drew taut. If Lehrer were to activate his power now, the handle of the cast-iron skillet would crumple in his grip easy as scrap paper. Noam’s gut twisted into a warm knot.
“Here you go,” Lehrer said, nudging a stack of pancakes onto Noam’s plate. “And butter.”
The pat of butter he smeared on top melted fast, leaving a slimy trail as it slipped off the pancake and onto the platter. Noam tried to feel hungry.
Lehrer took the seat adjacent to Noam’s, legs long enough his knee unavoidably bumped against Noam’s thigh beneath the table. He folded his hands and fixed Noam with an even look. “I’m going to ask you a question,” he said, “and I want you to tell me the truth.”
Noam picked up his knife. “All right.”
“Why can’t I read your mind anymore?”
Noam had just put a bite of pancake into his mouth. He practically choked, grabbing onto the table edge with one white-knuckled hand as he forced himself to chew once, twice. Swallow. “You can—what?”
Lehrer tapped one finger against the back of his hand. “No dramatics. Answer me. What happened to make you feel so distant from me that your mind would block itself off from my telepathy?”
Noam stared at him, wide eyed.
Well. Thank god for no dramatics, anyway. He’d never been very good at faking surprise.
Even so. It had been a month now since Noam figured out the second secret of Faraday. Since Noam managed to create an electromagnetic shield around his own mind, sustained by magic, preventing Lehrer’s persuasion from influencing the electrical signals inside his brain just as Sacha’s crown had protected Sacha. Noam had developed the shield after a fight with Lehrer. They’d been out in public, arguing over something inconsequential, and Lehrer had used his power to make Noam stop talking. He’d apologized later, of course, but the damage was done. And that night Noam had sat cross-legged on his barracks bed and wondered if he’d made a mistake, if he had gotten in over his head, if Lehrer was too powerful to be trusted.
Trying the Faraday shield had been impulsive, a flash-fire effort to keep Lehrer from persuading him again. Only then it had worked.
Using the shield had other, unanticipated effects as well.
A whole month, and Lehrer never asked him why Noam’s mind had gone silent. Not once.
“I don’t know,” Noam said, trying to look stunned all the same. Even if Noam didn’t have a Faraday shield—even if Lehrer’s persuasion still worked on him—no dramatics wouldn’t mean don’t act surprised. “I’ve been thinking a lot about . . . what happened.”
“What happened with what?” Lehrer pressed.
“With Brennan. When I . . . killed. Him.”
“You did what was necessary. What was right.”
Noam had prepared this response the night he made the shield, shaking and terrified on the bathroom floor. Now the excuse felt stale in his mouth . . . outdated, unlikely.
“I’m not so sure anymore,” Noam said and finally let his gaze slide down toward the pancakes. The dough was starting to look soggy from the syrup. “I’m reconsidering things. I’m starting to wonder if I would have done that if you didn’t . . . if you hadn’t asked me. I keep thinking about your power and how you said it wasn’t mind control—that it’s persuasion—and . . . that scares me.” A soft breath. “You’ve used persuasion on me once already, at least that I know of. You broke your promise. You . . . lied to me.”
“I see,” Lehrer said. When Noam stole a glance up, Lehrer had one hand propped against his chin, assessing Noam almost musingly—as if Noam were a work of art he considered purchasing.
Noam wasn’t an idiot. So far, Lehrer hadn’t realized Noam was using a Faraday shield to keep him out. But if Lehrer knew he couldn’t control Noam, if he knew Noam had taken efforts to make it that way . . . Lehrer seemed to like Noam well enough now, but all this—the mentorship, the sex, the soft smiles and lingering touches—was provisional.
“Very well,” Lehrer said at last and sighed. He reached for his water glass and took a small sip. “Forget we discussed this.”
The shock and confusion faded from Noam’s face in a single instant, closed away behind a neutral mask. He picked up his fork and cut into his pancakes. “What’s the plan for Sunday?” he asked and popped a fresh bite into his mouth.
Lehrer leaned back in his chair, gazing fondly at Noam as if he hadn’t just tried to wipe Noam’s memory. “We’ll need to leave for the quarantined zone no later than four thirty or five. You might as well sleep here Saturday night.”
“Do you really think it’ll take that long?”
“I’m attending a gala that evening, and I can’t be late. It’s hosted by the Keats family. You remember the Keatses; they were one of my campaign’s biggest donors.”
Noam did remember. Everyone in that family was a witching—in the same suspicious way that everyone left alive in Ames’s family had been a witching.
Lehrer sat forward again and began cutting into his pancakes. “I’d like you to accompany me.”
Noam blinked. Lehrer’s attention was on his food, his fingers warm around the steel handle of the fork as he speared a piece of turkey sausage.
“Aren’t I a bit young to be your date?”
It was deeply gratifying to watch the way Lehrer’s expression changed, a ripple of something unreadable flickering beneath his eyes as Lehrer looked up. He put down the fork. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he started, very slowly, as if testing the words on the tip of his tongue before saying them.
Sleeping with a 124-year-old immortal was the very least of what made Noam uncomfortable nowadays. “No, it’s fine. There is a problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t have anything to wear.” Noam pressed a smirk to one corner of his mouth and picked up his water. He watched Lehrer over the rim of the glass as he took a sip, then added, “Unless you’re telling me you prefer the cadet uniform.”
“My tailor will make you something.” Lehrer’s gaze didn’t waver from his. “Are you coming?”