“I see.” His eyes roved over my face. They were cool and analytical, and they seemed to see beyond me. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” I said.

“Almost time for you to leave school. Unless,” he added, “you are asked to attend the University.”

“Not likely.”

“Excellent. But young people do struggle to find work in the citadel.” His fingers drummed on the table. “I’d like to offer you a job for life.”

I frowned. “What kind of job?”

“The sort that pays well. The sort that will protect you.” Jaxon examined me. “Do you have any idea what clairvoyance means?”

Clairvoyance. The forbidden word. I glanced around the restaurant, but nobody was looking. Or listening, it seemed.

“Unnaturalness,” I said.

Jaxon smiled thinly. “So the Archon calls it. But do you know what the word means? From the French.”

“Clear vision. A kind of extrasensory perception. Knowing things that are hidden.”

“And where are they hidden?”

I hesitated. “In the subconscious?”

“Sometimes, yes. Or sometimes”—he blew out the candle in the middle of the table—“in the æther.”

I looked into the smoke, drawn to it. A chill spread through my chest. “What’s the æther?”

“The infinite. We come from it, we live within it, and when we die, we pass back into it. But not all of us are willing to part ways with the physical world.”

“Jax,” Nick said, keeping his voice low, “this is meant to be an introduction, not a lecture series. She’s sixteen.”

“I want to know,” I pressed.

“Paige—”

“Please.” I had to know.

His expression softened. He sat back in his seat and sipped his water. “Your choice.”

Jaxon, who was looking at us with raised eyebrows, pursed his lips before continuing. “The æther is a higher plane of existence,” he said. “It exists alongside the corporeal plane. Clairvoyants—people like us—have the ability to draw on the æther.”

I was sitting in a restaurant with two unnaturals. “How?” I said.

“Oh, there are an infinite number of ways. I’ve spent fifteen years trying to categorize them.”

“But what does it mean to ‘draw on the æther’?” Asking questions about clairvoyance gave me a sinful little thrill.

“It means you can commune with spirits,” Nick clarified. “The dead. Different voyants can do it in different ways.”

“So the æther is like the afterlife?”

“Purgatory,” Jaxon said.

“Afterlife,” Nick said.

“Excuse Dr. Nygård—he’s trying to be delicate.” Jaxon sipped his mecks. “Unfortunately, death is not delicate. I would like to educate you about what clairvoyance truly is, in preference to Scion’s sadly warped perspective of the condition. It is a miracle, not a perversion. You must understand that, my dear, or they will snuff that lovely glow out.”

They both fell silent when the waitron brought my salad. I looked back at Jax.

“Tell me more.”

Jaxon smiled.