“Yes.” I paused. “Am I fired?”

“Fired? By the zeitgeist, dolly, of course not! I’ve been waiting years for you to put your talents to good use. You’ve bloomed like the ambrosial flower you are, my winsome wunderkind.” I pictured him taking a celebratory puff of his cigar. “Well, well, my dreamwalker has finally entered another dreamscape. And it only took three years. Now, tell me—were you able to save the voyant?”

“No.”

“No?”

“They had three ’geists.”

“Oh, come now. No medium could control three poltergeists.”

“Well, this medium managed. He thought I was an oracle.”

His laugh was soft. “Amateurs.”

I looked out of the window at the tower. A new message had appeared: PLEASE BE AWARE OF UNEXPECTED UNDERGROUND DELAYS. “They’ve closed the Underground,” I said. “They’re trying to find me.”

“Try not to panic, Paige. It’s unbecoming.”

“Well, you’d better have a plan. The whole network’s in lockdown. I need to get out of here.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Even if they try and extract his memories, that Underguard’s brain is nought but a hashed brown. Are you certain you pushed him all the way to his hadal zone?”

“Yes.”

“Then it will take them at least twelve hours to extract his memories. I’m surprised the hapless chap was still alive.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you should sit tight before you run headfirst into a manhunt. You’re safer with your Scion daddy than you are here.”

“They have this address. I can’t sit here and wait to be detained.”

“You won’t be detained, O my lovely. Trust in my schmooze. Stay home, sleep away your troubles, and I’ll send Nick with the car in the ante meridiem. How does that sound?”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it. Just get your beauty sleep. Not that you need it,” he added. “By the way, could you do me a favor? Pop into Grub Street tomorrow and pick up those Donne elegies from Minty, will you? I can’t believe his spirit is back, it’s absolutely—”

I hung up.

Jax was a bastard. A genius, yes—but still a sycophantic, tight-fisted, coldhearted bastard, like all mime-lords. But where else could I turn? I’d be vulnerable alone with a gift like mine. Jax was just the lesser of two evils.

I had to smile at that thought. It said a lot about the world when Jaxon Hall was the lesser of two evils.

I couldn’t sleep. I had to prepare. There was a palm pistol in one of the drawers, concealed under a stack of spare clothes. With it was a first edition of one of Jaxon’s pamphlets, On the Merits of Unnaturalness. It listed every major voyant type, according to his research. My copy was covered in his annotations—new ideas, voyant contact numbers. Once the pistol was loaded, I dragged a backpack out from under the bed. My emergency pack, stored here for two years, ready for the day I’d have to run. I stuffed the pamphlet into the front pocket. They couldn’t find it in my father’s home.