“Very well. If you wish to learn.” Warden started to walk. “Most rhabdomancers think that when their numa fall, they are pointing toward home, toward buried treasure—toward whatever they seek to find. In the end it makes them mad. Because what their numa point toward is not gold, but the epicenter of the nearest cold spot. Sometimes they walk for miles, and they do not find what they seek. But they do find something: a secret door. What they do not know is how to open it.”

He stopped. I was shivering. The air was thin and cold. I breathed deeper, harder. “It is hard for the living to bear a cold spot,” he said. “Here.”

He handed me a silver canteen with a screw cap. I looked down at it.

“It is only water, Paige.”

I drank. I was too thirsty to refuse. He took the canteen back and tucked it away. The water cleared my head.

The ground we stood beside was frozen solid, as if it were deep winter. I clenched my chattering teeth together. The spirit responsible for the cold spot was drifting nearby. When it didn’t approach us, Warden crouched at the edge of the ice, took out a knife and held it against his arm. I stepped forward. “What are you doing?”

“Opening the door.”

He cut into his wrist. Three drops of ectoplasm fell onto the ice. The cold spot cracked down the middle and the air turned white. Shapes gathered around me. Voices. Dreamer, dreamer. I put my hands over my ears, but it didn’t block them. Dreamer, do not go beyond. Turn back. Then I looked up, and the darkness surrounded me again.

“Paige?”

“What happened?” My head was light and sore.

“I opened the cold spot.”

“With your blood.”

“Yes.”

His wrist had stopped dripping already. Red lingered in his eyes. My aura was still working on his wounds. “So you can ‘open’ a cold spot?” I said.

“You can’t. I can.”

“Because cold spots lead to the æther.” I paused. “Can you use them to reach the Netherworld?”

“Yes. That is how we got here. Imagine there are two veils standing between the æther and your world—the world of life. Between those veils is the Netherworld, a medial state between life and death. When rhabdomancers find a cold spot, they find the means to move between the veils. To enter my home, the realm of the Rephaim.”

“Can humans go there?”

“Try.”

I looked up at him. When he nodded to the cold spot, I took a step onto the ice. Nothing happened.

“No corporeal matter can survive beyond the veil,” Warden said. “Your body cannot pass beyond the gate.”

“What about rhabdomancers?”

“They are still flesh.”

“Why open it now, then?”

The sun had disappeared. “Because the time is right,” he said, “for you to face the Netherworld. You will not go in. But you will see.”