The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(5)

It was only after he’d been settled in a new bed that he managed to get his thick tongue working again. “Is this . . . hospital?”

“Yes it is, sweetheart,” someone said.

Noam opened his sluggish eyes. Not a space suit, this time—a regular woman wearing scrubs. Nurse, his mind provided helpfully, if a beat too late.

“How much do you remember?” the woman asked.

His thoughts slogged along like heavy boots trudging through mud. “Nothing.”

Only, that wasn’t true. He remembered the dead girl. He remembered how she smelled.

They’d left her there with him. They’d left her with him because they had no reason to think he would live.

He gagged, and the woman made a soft noise in the back of her throat, dabbing his sweaty brow with a cloth. “You had the virus, sugar. Magic. There was a bad outbreak in west Durham.”

Magic. That’s right. The electricity in his hands. The blood on his father’s face.

Noam rubbed chilly fingers against his temple and squeezed his eyes shut. There—he got sick, they all got sick, there was—he’d survived. That meant—

“Where’s my father?” The words were sandpaper scraping against his throat.

“You need to rest,” the nurse said. “The doctor’ll be in later. He’ll answer any questions.”

Tar oozed through Noam’s stomach. Dead. He’s dead. My father’s dead. “Where is he?” It wasn’t a question anymore. “He’s alive.” He’s not alive. “He’s okay.”

The nurse couldn’t look him in the eye. Noam pushed himself upright. This time, she didn’t try to stop him. He was falling, falling toward a ground that kept getting farther away.

“Tell me!”

She pressed him back against the pillows with one hand. “I’m sorry, Noam. You’re the only one who made it.”

Noam didn’t hear what she said after that. The words were a language he’d abruptly ceased to understand, ears filled with the beep of his heart monitor and the shallow heave of his own breaths. The noise from the oxygen machine was a distant roar.

If once he’d hoped his father might get better, might wake up from that catatonia one day, might read the books Noam gave him, kiss Noam’s cheek on early mornings and say, “Te amo, mijo”—that future had crumbled to dust.

The nurse said something else as Noam pushed himself farther down in the bed and put his back to her, closing his eyes. That made her stop talking. She just cut off midsentence and left, though not before patting him twice on the shoulder.

Something clawed at his chest, leaving long gouges in its wake. The wounds were bloodless. Nothing rushed in to fill them, not even the relief he’d feel if he believed the dead went to a better world.

He only realized later what that really meant—later, after he’d let an endless stream of doctors run tests and draw blood, after they’d put little objects on the table and asked him to levitate them. After they’d shined lights in his eyes and interrogated him: What can you feel? Anything unusual? Anything useful?

Magic killed his father and left Noam alive.

His body had fought magic and conquered it.

That made him a witching.

Witching. The word was practically synonymous with power, but Noam had none of that. His body was fragile, spun-sugar bone and translucent skin. If magic swam through his blood, he couldn’t feel it. He held a hand over his head and stared at the greenish veins snaking along his fingers and down toward his wrist. The virus was still in there, wild and alive. He imagined it as blue ink, bleeding into every cell.

He tried summoning that storm again.

Nothing.

Maybe he’d be the first. A medical mystery. A witching without the witch.

Fuck witchings, anyway. Noam’d rather have his dad back.

Two days later, after he was off fluids and able to walk around, someone knocked at the door. Noam tilted his book down, realizing only then that he’d lost his place, had been turning pages without really reading them. The thought of another doctor prodding and poking him was unbearable.

“Come in,” Noam said anyway. Apparently the manners his mother’d instilled in him were stronger than resentment.

The door swung open, and a man stepped in. He was taller than anyone Noam had ever seen, swallowing up the length of the doorway, his angular face as artful as if sculpted from marble. The creases of his suit could have cut Noam to ribbons. “Noam álvaro?”

“Yes?”

The man shut the door. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. Do you have a moment?”

There was something strange about his voice, though perhaps it was just the accent. Noam couldn’t place it. European, maybe.

Noam folded down the corner of his page and set the book aside. “I have lots of moments.”

The man didn’t take off his coat or gloves, just advanced into the room, his movements as precise and measured as everything else about him. Noam couldn’t stop looking at him—like he was the center of gravity around which all things must orbit.

Why did he seem so familiar?

The man took the chair opposite Noam. He was far too long for the seat but didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m told,” the man said, elbows perched on his thighs, “your dynamics are quite impressive. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen antibody titers as low as yours. I wanted to meet you myself.”