“Yes.” He wasn’t ashamed of it. “I suspected your gift was activated by strong emotions: anger, loathing, sadness—and fear. Fear is your real trigger. By forcing you to the absolute limit of mental terror, I forced you to possess Nuala, making you think she was the Buzzer that had stalked you through the woods. But I would never have endangered your life.”
“It could have killed me.”
“I took certain precautions. I repeat: you were never in any immediate danger.”
“That’s a flam. If you think a circle of salt is a precaution, you’re off the cot.” I was slipping into street slang, but I didn’t care. “You must have loved that—seeing me dance—”
“No, Paige. I am trying to help you.”
“Go to hell.”
“I already exist on a level of hell.”
“Exist on one that isn’t near mine.”
“No. You and I made a deal, and I do not break deals.” He held my gaze. “I expect you in ten minutes. You owe me an hour of pleasant conversation.”
I could have spat at him, but the line had been drawn. I left the room and went up to the second floor.
I would not tell him anything more about myself. He already knew too much about my personal life—and he could discover nothing about my involvement with Jax. Nashira was already looking for the gang. If she found out I was one of his closest allies, she’d probably make me arrest him myself. I’d just pretend to be traumatized by the Buzzer, pretend I could hardly talk.
I could hear it again, the breath sawing its throat. I closed my eyes. The memory subsided.
A thin robe hung over my filthy clothes. They smelled of sweat and death. I went through to the bathroom and tore them off. A fresh pink uniform was waiting. I scrubbed at my skin with soap and steaming water. I wanted to remove even the faintest memory of that smell.
When I glanced into the mirror, I realized I was still wearing the pendant. I pulled it off. A fat lot of good it had done me.
When I returned to the chamber, Warden was sitting in his favored armchair. He gestured toward the opposite seat. “Please.”
I sat. The chair seemed enormous. “Did you sedate me?”
“You had a kind of seizure after the possession.” He watched me. “Did you try to possess the Emite?”
“I wanted to see its dreamscape.”
“I see.” He reached for his goblet. “A drink?”
I was tempted to ask for something illegal—real wine, perhaps—but I didn’t have the energy to keep pushing him. “Coffee,” I said.
He tugged on a scarlet tassel. It was connected to an old-fashioned bell pull. “Someone will bring it shortly,” he said.
“An amaurotic?”
“Yes.”
“So you treat them as your butlers.”
“Slaves, Paige. Let us not be delicate.”
“But their blood is valuable.”
He took a sip from his goblet. I sat with my arms crossed, waiting for him to start the conversation.
The gramophone was on again. I recognized the song—“I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You,’’ the Sinatra version. It was on the Scion blacklist simply because it had the word ghost in its title, even though it had little or nothing to do with ghosts. Oh, how I’d missed Ol’ Blue Eyes.
“Do all the blacklisted records come to you?” I asked, making a supreme effort to sound casual.
“No, they go to the House. I go there occasionally and take one or two for my gramophone.”
“Do you like our music?”
“Some. Mostly from the twentieth century. I find your languages interesting, but I dislike most modern music productions.”
“Blame the censor. If not for you, there wouldn’t be one.”
He raised his goblet. “Touché.”
I had to ask. “What is that?”
“Essence of the amaranth flower, mixed with red wine.”
“I haven’t heard of amaranth.”
“This variety does not grow on Earth. It heals most spiritual injuries. Had you taken amaranth after your encounter with the poltergeist, the wound might not have scarred so deeply. It would also heal some of the damage done to your brain, should you use your spirit too often without life support.”
Well, well. A cure for my brain. Jaxon would never let me sleep again if he got wind of amaranth. “Why do you drink it?”
“Old wounds. Amaranth eases the pain.”
There was a brief silence. My turn to speak. “This is yours.” I held out the pendant.
“Keep it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“I insist. It may not repel the Emim, but it could save your life against a poltergeist.”
I placed it on the arm of the chair. Warden glanced at it, then flicked his gaze up to catch mine.
There was a light knock on the door. A boy came in, about my age, maybe older. He wore a gray tunic, and his eyes were bloodshot. Despite that, he was beautiful, like something out of a painting. His hair was a fine gold, cut around his chiseled face, and his lips and cheeks were pink as petals. Past the redness, his eyes were a clear, liquid blue. I thought I could detect the shaky traces of an aura around him.
“Coffee, please, Michael,” Warden said to him. “Do you take sugar, Paige?”
“No, thank you,” I said. Michael bowed and left. “So he’s your personal slave, is he?”
“Michael was a gift from the blood-sovereign.”
“How romantic.”
“Not particularly.” Warden glanced at the windows. “There is little to be done with Nashira when she wants something. Or someone.”
“I can imagine.”
“Can you?”
“I know she has five angels.”
“Yes, she does. But they are as much her weakness as her strength.” He took another sip of his drink. “The blood-sovereign suffers under the influence of her so-called angels.”
“I’m sure the angels are sorry.”
“They despise her.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do.” He was clearly amused by my disdain. “We have only been speaking for two minutes, Paige. Try not to waste all your sarcasm in one breath.”
I wanted to kill him. As it happened, I couldn’t.
The boy returned with a pot of coffee. He placed the tray on the table with a generous plate of baked chestnuts, dusted with cinnamon. Their sweet smell made my mouth water. There was a vendor near the Blackfriars Bridge that sold them in the winter months. These ones looked even better than his, with cracked brown shells and velvety white insides. There was fruit, too: segments of pear, glossy cherries, soft smiles of red apple.
Michael made a sign, and Warden shook his head. “Thank you, Michael. That will be all.”
He bowed again before he left. I found myself wanting to scream at him. He was so submissive.
“When you say ‘so-called’ angels,” I said, forcing myself to be calm, “what exactly do you mean?”
Warden paused.
“Eat,” he said. “Please.”
I plucked a chestnut from the plate, still hot from the oven. It tasted like warmth and winter.
“I am sure you know what an angel is: a soul that returns to this plane to protect the person they died to save,” he said. “We know of angels and archangels, and I assume the voyants of the street do, too.” I nodded. “Nashira can command a third level of angel.”
“Oh?”
“She can trap certain kinds of spirits.”
“So she’s a binder.”
“More than merely a binder, Paige. If she chooses to kill a clairvoyant, she can not only trap its spirit, but use it. So long as that spirit is bound to her, its presence affects her aura. It is that corruption that allows her to have several gifts at once.”
My coffee slopped into my lap. “She has to kill them herself?”
“Yes. We call them ‘fallen angels.’” He watched me. “And they are bound to stay forever with their murderer.”
/> I stood.
“You’re evil.” The cup smashed at my feet. “How do you ever expect me to talk to you, to treat you like you’re human, when your fiancée can do something like that? When you can look her in the face?”
“Did I say I had ever summoned a fallen angel myself?”
“But you’ve killed people.”
“So have you.”
“That’s not the point.”
Warden’s expression had changed. Now there was no trace of mockery.
“I do not know what I can do for this world,” he said, “but I will not let any harm come to you.”
“I don’t need you to protect me. Just get rid of me. Palm me off on someone else. I don’t want to be your student anymore. I want to switch keepers. I want to be with Thuban. Send me to Thuban.”
“You do not want a Sargas keeper, Paige.”
“Don’t tell me what I want. I want—”
“You want to feel safe again.” He stood, keeping the coffee table between us. “You want me to treat you as Thuban and the others treat their humans, because then you would feel that you had every right to hate the Rephaim. But because I do not harm you, and because I try to understand you, you run away. I know why, of course. You do not understand my motives. You ask yourself time and time again why I want to help you, and you come to no conclusions. But that does not mean there is no conclusion, Paige. It means you have yet to discover it.”
I sank back into the armchair. The scalding coffee had soaked straight through my trousers. Seeing it, he said, “I will find you something else.”
He walked to the armoire. My eyes were hot with anger. I could almost hear Jax scolding me. You really are a silly thing. Look at you, with dewdrops in your shiners. Raise your head, O my lovely! What do you want—sympathy? Pity? You won’t find that from him, just like you didn’t find it from me. The world is an abattoir, my mollisher. Raise those barking irons, now. Let me see you give him hell.
Warden presented me with a long black tunic. “I hope this fits.” He handed it to me. “It seems a little too large, but it should keep you warm.”
I nodded. Warden turned his back. I pulled the tunic over my head. He was right: it came to my knees. “Done,” I said.
“Will you sit down?”
“Like I have a choice.”
“I am giving you the choice.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Ideally, I would like you to tell me who has been so cruel to you in the past as to make you think that you can trust nobody.” Warden returned to his seat. “But I know you will not tell me that. You want to protect these friends of yours.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not.”
I cracked. “Fine, yes, I have voyant friends. Doesn’t every voyant have voyant friends?”
“No. The London syndicate has grown stronger over the years. The ones we capture are mostly outsiders—those that live alone, or on the streets, because they are unable to control their powers. Or their families have evicted them. That is why so many of them are happy to serve us: they have been mistreated by their own kind. And while the Rephaim treat them as second-class citizens, they still give them the chance to indulge in the æther. We put them in groups, make them belong to a social structure again.” He motioned to the door. “Michael was a polyglot—I think your people call them ‘julkers.’ His parents were so frightened of his locution that they tried to exorcise him. His dreamscape collapsed. After that he could hardly speak.”
My voice was gone. I had heard of dreamscapes collapsing; it was what had happened to one of the boys in the gang, Zeke. That was how you became unreadable. The dreamscape would grow back with layer upon layer of armor, preventing all spiritual attack.
“The red-jackets picked him up two years ago. He was living rough on the streets of Southwark—an unreadable with no money or food. They put him in the Tower as a suspected unnatural, but I had him brought here prematurely. Though he is treated as an amaurotic, he still has an aura. I taught him how to speak again. I hope that he will find the æther one day, and that he can sing in the way he once did. With the voices of the dead.”
“Wait,” I said. “You taught him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Silence filled every crevice of the room. Warden reached for his goblet.
“Who are you?” I said. He glanced up at me. “You’re the blood-consort of a Sargas sovereign. You’ve been puppeteering a government since 1859. You’ve supported voyant trafficking, watched a whole system develop around it. You’ve helped them spread lies and hatred and fear. Why are you helping humans?”
“That, I cannot tell you. Just as you will not tell me who your friends are, I will not tell you my ulterior motives.”
“Would you tell me if you found out who my friends were?”
“Perhaps.”
“Have you told Michael?”
“A little. Michael has great loyalty toward me, but I cannot fully trust him in his fragile mental state.”
“Do you think the same about me?”
“I know too little about you to trust you, Paige. But that does not mean you cannot earn my trust. In fact”—he sat back in his chair—“the opportunity will present itself today.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will see.”
“Let me guess. You killed a soothsayer and stole his power, and now you think you can see my future.”
“I am no theif of gifts. But I do know Nashira very well, well enough to guess her moves. I know when she likes to strike.”
The grandfather clock chimed once. Warden glanced at it. “Well, that is one hour,” he said. “You are free to go. Perhaps you should visit your friend, the cartomancer.”
“Liss is in spirit shock,” I said.
He glanced up.
“The red-jackets chucked her cards on the fire.” My throat was tight. “I haven’t seen her since.”
Ask for his help. I struggled with myself. Ask him if he can replace her cards. He’ll do it. He helped Michael.
“A pity,” he said. “She is a gifted performer.”
I forced out the words: “Will you help her?”
“I have no cards. She must have her link to the æther.” He met my eyes. “Amaranth would also be necessary.”
I stayed where I was, watching as he reached for a small box on the coffee table. It looked like an old-fashioned snuff box, made with mother-of-pearl and slivers of gold. In the center of the lid was the eight-petaled flower, like one of his boxes of vials. He flipped it open and withdrew a tiny bottle of oil, tinged with blue dye.
“That’s aster extract,” I said.
“Very good.”
“Why do you have it?”
“I use small doses of the star-flower to assist Michael. It helps him remember his dreamscape.”
“Star-flower?”
“It is the Rephaite name for aster. A literal translation from our language—Glossolalia, or Gloss.”
“Is that what julkers speak?”
“Yes. The ancient language of the æther. Michael can no longer speak it, but he understands. So do whisperers.”
So julkers could eavesdrop on the Rephaim. Interesting. “Are you planning to give him aster . . . now?”
“No. I simply wished to organize my collection of requisitioned drugs,” he said. I had no idea if he was being funny or not. Probably not. “Some of them, such as the poppy anemone, can be used to harm us.” He took a single red flower from the box. “Certain poisons must be kept out of human hands.” His eyes were fixed on mine. “We would not want them used to, say, infiltrate the House. That would put our most secret supplies in jeopardy.”
Red flower. I remembered David’s note. The sole method.
The sole method of killing Rephaim?
“No,” I said. “We wouldn’t want that.”
It was quiet in the Rookery, I hadn’t seen Liss sinc
e Suhail had escorted me to Magdalen; I’d had no chance to check on her, to see if she’d survived the loss of her deck.
She was conscious, but not present. Her lips were pale, and her eyes wandered, unfocused. She was in the throes of spirit shock.
Julian and the bespectacled performer from the first day—Cyril—had made it their mission to look after her. They fed her, brushed her hair, treated her burned hands, and talked to her. She just lay there, stiff and clammy, murmuring about the æther. Now she could no longer connect with it, her natural urge was to abandon her body and join with it. It was up to us to quell that urge. To keep her with us.
I swapped two pills for a Sterno, some matches, and a tin of beans at Duckett’s jerryshop. There were no cards at his stall. They’d all been confiscated by a red-jacket: Kathryn, making sure Liss suffered. She was lucky Warden had prevented her from seeing me.
When I returned to the shack, Julian looked up, his eyes red with exhaustion. His pink tunic was gone, replaced by a ragged shirt and cloth trousers.
“Paige, you’ve been gone a while.”
“I’ve been away. Explain later.” I knelt beside Liss. “Is she eating?”
“I got her to eat a bit of skilly yesterday, but she threw it all back up.”
“And the burns?”
“Bad. We need Silvadene.”
“We’ll try and feed her again.” I stroked her damp ringlets, pinched her cheek. “Liss?”
Her eyes were open, but she didn’t respond. I lit the Sterno. Cyril drummed his fingers on his knee. “Come on, Rymore,” he said to her, irritated. “You can’t be off the silks for this long.”
“A little sympathy wouldn’t go amiss,” Julian said.
“No time for sympathy. Suhail will be after her soon. She’s supposed to be performing with me.”
“Haven’t they found out yet?”
“Nell’s been filling in for her. They look similar in costume, with masks—same height, same hair color. But Nell isn’t as good. She falls.” Cyril gazed at Liss. “Rymore never falls.”
Julian put the beans on the can. I found a spoon and wrapped an arm around Liss. She shook her head.