Tennal raised his hands in front of him, fingers spread. “I’m unarmed. Promise. Unless you count three tissues and a pack of soothers—and honestly, I’d have to get very inventive.”

She gave him a thin, unimpressed stare. Flint ear studs glinted under her short hair. “I’ve seen you before.”

A jolt went through Tennal. She couldn’t know. Could she?

Tennal’s mind was always a little too open to the universe. He wasn’t an architect, because that would have made life too easy. No, he’d ended up with the unacceptable kind of powers. He nudged his senses further open, just a fraction, and read her mind.

The instant he opened himself up, a dozen minds flared in his perception. The party was crowded; each person moved in a haze of their own moods like a shimmer of light. And if architects were faint stars, pulsing with intention and influence, Tennal was the opposite. Nobody had ever told him what his mind looked like from the outside, but he had his suspicions: an unsettling void, a black hole.

As far back as he could remember, Tennal had always been aware of a low-level drone from the minds around him. It was like an indecent form of tinnitus. Random impressions drifted in his direction, and if he actively tried, he could read them: vague emotions, nonspecific intentions, nothing particularly helpful. People’s surface thoughts were seldom interesting, in any case—right now, from the crowd in the room, Tennal could feel hunger, irritation, interest, boredom. All standard.

Reading that kind of background mental drone wasn’t illegal. Not quite. After all, it was only a step above watching people’s body language; he wasn’t going any deeper. Tennal focused on the bodyguard, looking for threat.

Nothing. She wasn’t interested in threatening him, and there was none of the prurient interest that would suggest she knew who his family was. She was just fed up with her long shift, overdue for a break, and Tennal was paranoid.

“I’m just here to ask a favor from the boss,” Tennal said, leaning back against the bar. “Is that a crime?”

He could have tried announcing the reader thing, but he needed to save that for when it would make an impact. Being a reader—they were rarities—made him just scandalous enough to be interesting, and Lights knew nobody was inviting him anywhere because of his delightful personality.

She gave him one of the most unimpressed looks he’d seen in his life, and Tennal was a connoisseur of unimpressed looks. “Ask the boss for what? Three square meals and a job?” She slapped a hand on the bar to get the bartender’s attention. “You should clean up and get out of here. I hate the ones who get in over their heads.”