Liss flinched. Her shoulders pulled toward her chest, and she looked away. “I understand,” she said.

“There’s a good slave.”

He ripped the curtain down on his way out. I helped Liss gather it up. She was shaking, physically shaking.

“Who was that?”

“Suhail Chertan. The Overseer’s always a bit tense under all that greasepaint—he answers to Suhail if we do something wrong.” She dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. “15 is the one that got sleep dep. Jordan. He’s the other contortionist.”

I took the curtain from her hands. Her sleeve was dark with blood. “You cut yourself?”

“It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s not.” Blood was never nothing.

“It’s okay.” She wiped her face, leaving red smears below her eyes. “He just took a bit of my glow.”

“He what?”

“He fed on me.”

I was sure I’d misheard her. “He fed on you,” I repeated.

Liss smiled. “Did they forget to mention that Rephs feed on aura? That always slips their mind.”

Her face was streaked with blood. My stomach clenched. “That’s impossible. Aura doesn’t sustain life,” I said. “It sustains voyance. Not—”

“It sustains their life.”

“But that would mean they weren’t just clairvoyant. They would have to be the æther incarnate.”

“Maybe they are.” Liss pulled a threadbare blanket around her shoulders. “That’s what we harlies are here for. We’re just aura machines. Reph fodder. But you jackets—you don’t get fed on. That’s your privilege.” She looked at the stove. “Unless you fail your tests.”

I was silent for a while. The idea that the Rephaim fed on aura just didn’t compute. It was a link to the æther, unique to each voyant. I couldn’t imagine how they could use it for survival.

But the news was like a light on Sheol I. That was why they took voyants into their fold. That was why the performers weren’t bumped off if they couldn’t fight the Emim. They didn’t just want them to dance—why should they? Those were asinine distractions, to stop them getting bored with all their power. We weren’t only their slaves; we were their food source. That was why we were paying for human error, not the amaurotics.

And to think I’d been in London a few days before this, living my life in Seven Dials, not knowing that this colony existed.

“Someone has to stop them,” I said. “This is insane.”

“They’ve been here for two hundred years. Don’t you think someone would have stopped them by now?”

I turned away, my head pounding.

“I’m sorry.” Liss glanced at me. “I don’t want to scare you, but I’ve been here ten years. I’ve seen people fight, people who wanted to go back to their old lives, and they’ve all wound up dead. In the end you’ll just stop trying.”

“Are you a seer?” I knew she wasn’t, but I wondered if she’d lie.

“Broadsider.” It was an old word for a cartomancer, street slang of a decade past. “The very first time I read the cards, they knew.”