The Bone Season

13 His Picture

I first met Nick Nygård when I was nine years old. When I saw him next, I was sixteen.

It was the summer term of 2056 and at the III-5 School for Girls of Quality, we Year Elevens had entered the most important period of our lives. We could stay at school for another two years, during which we would be doing University prep, or leave and find a job. In an effort to convert the undecided, the Schoolmistress had organized a series of lectures from inspirational speakers: SVD agents, media raconteurs—even an Archon politician, the Minister of Migration. That day was geared toward medical science. All two hundred of us were herded into the lecture hall, dressed in our black suits, red ribbons, and white blouses. Miss Briskin, the chemistry mistress, stepped up to the lectern.

“Good morning, girls,” she said. “Good to see you all so bright and early. Many of you have expressed an interest in scientific research as a career path”—I hadn’t—“so this should be one of our most thought-provoking lectures.” A smattering of applause. “Our speaker has already had a terribly exciting career.” I wasn’t convinced. “He transferred from the University of Scion Stockholm in 2046, completed his studies in London, and now works for SciSORS, the largest research facility in the central cohort. We’re truly honored to have him here today.” There was a shiver of excitement from the front. “Please put your hands together and welcome our speaker—Dr. Nicklas Nygård.”

My head snapped up. It was him.

Nick.

He hadn’t changed a bit. He was exactly as I remembered him: tall, soft-featured, handsome. Still young, though his eyes bore the burden of a hectic adult life. He wore a black suit and a red tie, like all Scion officials. His hair was smoothed back with pomade, a style popular in Stockholm. When he smiled, the prefects sat up straighter.

“Good morning, ladies.”

“Good morning, Dr. Nygård.”

“Thank you for having me here today.” He stuffed his papers with the same hands that had stitched my injured arm when I was nine. He looked right at me, and he smiled. Behind my ribs, my heart flickered. “I hope this talk is enlightening, but I won’t take offense if you fall asleep.”

Laughter. Most officials weren’t so jocular. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Seven years of wondering where he might be, and he’d walked into my school. A picture from my memory. He talked about his research into the causes of unnaturalness, and about his experiences as a student in two different Scion citadels. He made jokes and encouraged audience participation, asking questions as often as he answered them. He even had the Schoolmistress smiling. When the bell rang, I was first out of the lecture hall, heading for the corridor at the back of the lecture theater.

I had to find him. For seven years I’d tried to understand what had happened in the poppy field. There had been no dog. He was the only one who could tell me what had left the cold scars on my hand. The only one who could give me answers.

I headed down the corridor, buffeting past chattering Year Eights. There he was, outside the staff room, shaking the hand of the Schoolmistress. When he saw me, his eyes brightened.

“Hello,” he said.

“Dr. Nygård—” I could hardly get the words out. “Your speech was—very inspiring.”

“Thank you.” He smiled again, and his eyes pierced mine. He knew. He remembered. “What’s your name?”

Yes, he knew. My palms tingled.

“This is Paige Mahoney,” the Schoolmistress said, putting emphasis on my surname. My very Irish surname. She looked me up and down, taking in my loose bow and unbuttoned blazer. “You ought to get to class, Paige. Miss Anville has been very disappointed with your attendance of late.”

Warmth rose to my cheeks.

“I’m sure Miss Anville can spare Paige for a few minutes.” Nick gave her a winning smile. “I’d love to spend some time with her.”

“That’s very kind of you, Dr. Nygård, but Paige has been with the nurse a great deal recently. She needs to attend all her classes.” She turned to him, lowering her voice. “Irish girl. These brogues often make up their own minds as to how much work is necessary.”

My vision tunneled. A pressure pushed at the inside of my skull, as if it were about to explode. A trail of blood crept from the Schoolmistress’s nose.

“You’re bleeding, Miss,” I said.

“What?” When she looked down, blood dripped onto her shirt. “Oh, for—now look what I’ve done.” She covered her nose. “Don’t just stand there gawking, Paige. Get me a handkerchief.”

My head gave a throb. A gray web pulled across my eyes, tightening my vision. Nick stared at me as he handed her a packet of tissues. “Perhaps you should sit down, Schoolmistress.” He placed a hand on her back. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

As soon as the Schoolmistress was gone, Nick turned to face me.

“Do people often have nosebleeds around you?”

His voice was quiet. After a moment, I nodded.

“Have they noticed?”

“I’ve never been called unnatural yet.” I sought his gaze. “Do you know why it happens?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “I might,” he said.

“Tell me. Please.”

“Dr. Nygård?” Miss Briskin put her head around the staff room door. “The governors would like to speak to you.”

“On my way.” As soon as she was gone, Nick said against my ear, “I’ll come back in a few days. Do not sign up for the University, Paige. Not yet. Trust me.”

He squeezed my hand. Then, just as quickly as he’d come, he was gone. I was left to cradle my books to my pounding heart, my cheeks hot and my hands clammy. A day hadn’t gone by when I hadn’t thought of Nick, and now he had returned. I gathered my composure and walked to my class, still struggling to see or think. He’d remembered my name. He knew I was that little girl he’d saved.

I didn’t think he’d come back. I couldn’t be that important to him, not now that he’d made his fortune in the world. But two days later, he was waiting for me outside the school gates. Something strange had happened that morning: I’d daydreamed about a silver car. The picture had come to me during French, leaving me nauseated. Now the same car was outside, and Nick was in the driver’s seat, wearing sunglasses. I sleepwalked to the window, away from the other girls. He leaned out of it.

“Paige?”

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” I said.

“Because of the nosebleed.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why I’m here.” He pushed his shades to the end of his nose, so I could see his tired eyes. “If you want to know more, I can tell you, but it can’t be here. Will you come with me?”

I glanced over my shoulder. None of the students were paying attention. “All right,” I said.

“Thank you.”

Nick took me away from the school. As he drove toward the central cohort, he shot me little glances. I stayed quiet. When I caught sight of myself in the side-mirror, I realized I was flushed. I wanted so much to talk to him, but I couldn’t wrap my tongue around a coherent sentence. After a few minutes, Nick spoke: “Did you ever tell your father what happened in the field?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You told me not to.”

“Good. That’s a start.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “I’m going to tell you a lot of things you won’t understand, Paige. You’re not like you were before that day, and you need to know why.”

I kept my eyes on the road. He didn’t have to tell me. I’d known I was different well before the poppy field; even as a child I’d been sensitive to people. Sometimes I’d felt tremors when they passed me, like my fingers had brushed a live wire. But things had changed since that day. Now I couldn’t just sense people—I could hurt them. I could make people bleed, make their heads ache and their eyes blur. I would fall asleep in class, only to wake up with my skin drenched in cold sweat. The nurse knew me better than anyone else at the school.

Something was emerging from inside me, pushing out into the world. In the end, the world was going to see it.

“I can help you control it,” he said. “I can keep you safe.”

He’d kept me safe once before. “Can I still trust you?” I watched his face, the face I’d never forgotten. Nick looked at me.

“Always,” he said.

We went to a greasy spoon on Silk Street and sipped coffee. It was the first time I’d ever tried it, and I secretly thought it tasted like mud. We talked for a while about my life. I told him about school, about my father’s job, but that wasn’t why we were there, and we both knew it.

“Paige,” he said, “you’ve heard about unnaturalness. I don’t want to frighten you, but you’re showing signs of it.”

My throat closed. He did work for Scion.

“Don’t worry.” He placed his hand over mine. My pulse warmed. “I’m not going to turn you in. I’m going to help you.”

“How?”

“I’d like you to come and talk to a friend of mine.”

“Who is it?”

“Someone I trust. Someone who’s very interested in you.”

“Is he—?”

“Yes. So am I.” He squeezed my hand. “You had a daydream earlier. You saw my car.” I stared at him, perplexed. “That’s my gift, Paige. I can send pictures. I can make people see things.”

“I—” My mouth was dry. “I’ll see him.”

I left a message with my father’s secretary, telling him I would be home late. Nick drove me to a small French restaurant in Vauxhall. Waiting for us was a tall, fine-boned man, probably in his late thirties. His eyes were alive with a sort of agitated intelligence. He had candle-white skin and a head of rich, dark hair, and his lips were pale and petulant. You could have sharpened pencils on his cheekbones. He wore a gold cravat and a black embroidered waistcoat with a pocket watch.

“You must be Paige,” he said, in a deep, slightly amused voice. “Jaxon Hall.”

He offered a bony hand. I took it.

“Hello,” I said.

His grip was cold and firm. I sat down. Nick sat beside me.

When the waitron came, Jaxon Hall ordered no food; just a glass of mecks, or nonalcoholic wine. Expensive stuff. He had fine tastes.

“I have a proposition for you, Miss Mahoney.” Jaxon Hall swilled his mecks. “Dr. Nygård came to speak to me yesterday. He informed me that you can inflict certain . . . medical abnormalities on other people. Is that correct?”

I glanced at Nick.

“Go on.” He gave me a smile. “He’s not from Scion.”

“Don’t insult me.” Jaxon took a sip of mecks. “Further from the Archon than the cradle from the grave. Not that those two states are all that far apart, but you understand my meaning.”

I wasn’t sure I did. He certainly didn’t act like a Scion official.

“You mean the nosebleeds,” I said.

“Yes, the nosebleeds. Fascinating.” His hands were clasped on the table. “Anything else?”

“Headaches. Sometimes migraines.”

“And how do you feel when it happens?”

“Tired. Sick.”

“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.

“The æther is the ‘source’ of which Scion occasionally deems to speak,” he said. “The realm of the restless dead. The source which the Bloody King supposedly accessed during a séance, causing him to commit five ghastly murders and bring an epidemic of clairvoyance upon the world. All utter tosh, of course. The æther is simply the spiritual plane, and clairvoyants are those with the ability to access it. There was no epidemic. We have always been there. Some of us are good; others are evil, if there is any such thing as evil—but whatever we are, we are not a disease.”

“So Scion lied.”

“Yes. Harden yourself to the idea.” Jaxon lit a cigar. “Edward might well have been Jack the Ripper, but I highly doubt he was clairvoyant at all. Far too clumsy.”

“We have no idea why they pinned it all on clairvoyance,” Nick said. “It’s a mystery only the Archon understands.”

“How does it work?” My skin was prickling and hot. I could be unnatural. I could be one of them.

“Not all spirits go peacefully into the heart of the æther, where we think some kind of final death is found,” Jaxon said. He was relishing this, I could tell. “Instead they linger, roving between the corporeal and spiritual planes. When they’re in this state, we call them drifters. They still have personality, and most can be contacted. They only have a certain degree of freedom, and are usually happy to assist voyants.”

“You’re talking about real, dead people,” I said. “You can just pull their strings, and they’ll dance?”

“Correct.”

“Why would any of them want that?”

“Because it means they can stay with their loved ones.” He sniffed, like he didn’t understand the concept. “Or with people they’d like to haunt. They sacrifice free will in exchange for a kind of immortality.”

I took a mouthful of salad and chewed. It was like chewing a wad of wet cotton.

“Of course, they don’t start off as spirits.” Jaxon tapped the back of my hand. “You have a flesh body. You can walk on the corporeal plane. But you also have a private connection to the æther. We call it the dreamscape. The scenery of the human mind.”

“Wait, wait. You keep saying ‘we,’” I said. “Who are we, exactly? Clairvoyants?”

“Yes. It’s a very vibrant community.” Nick gave me a warm smile. “But a very secret one.”

“You can identify voyants by their aura. That’s how Nick recognized you,” Jaxon said. My growing interest seemed to animate him. “Everyone has a dreamscape, you see. An illusion of safety, a kind of locus amoenus. You understand.” I wasn’t sure I did. “Voyants have colored dreamscapes. The rest have black-and-white ones. They see their dreamscapes when they dream. Amaurotics, consequently, dream in monochrome. Voyants, conversely—”

“––dream in color?”

“Voyants don’t dream, my dear girl. Not in the same way that amaurotics do. That idle pleasure is for them alone. But the color of a clairvoyant dreamscape shines through his or her corporeal form, creating an aura. People of the same voyant type tend to have very similar auras. You’ll learn to group them.”

“Can I see auras?”

They exchanged glances. Nick reached up and peeled two filmy lenses from his eyes. Chills ran down my back.

“Look at my eyes, Paige.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I remembered those eyes as clearly as if it had been yesterday. That exquisite gray-green, those delicate lines radiating through the iris. What I hadn’t noticed was the small, keyhole-shaped defect in his right pupil.

“Some voyants have a kind of third eye.” He sat back. “They can see auras; they can also see drifters. You can be half-sighted, like me—with just one coloboma—or full-sighted, like Jax.”

Jaxon pulled his eyelids wide open for me. He had the defect in both eyes.

“I don’t have that,” I said. “So I’m clairvoyant, but I don’t have a third eye?”

“Unsightedness is quite common in the higher orders. Your gift doesn’t require you to see spirits.” Jaxon gave me a pleased look. “You can feel auras and drifters, but you don’t perceive them visually.”

“It’s not really a disadvantage.” Nick patted my hand. “Your sixth sense will be much more attuned without the visual aid.”

Though the restaurant was warm, the cold was spreading all over my body. I looked between the two men, their different faces. “What kind of clairvoyant am I?”

“That’s what we want to find out. Over the years I’ve classified seven orders of clairvoyance. I believe you, my dear girl, are of the very highest order, making you one of the rarest clairvoyants in the modern world. If I am proved correct”—he pulled a folder out of his expensive leather satchel—“I’d like you to sign a job contract.” His eyes rested on mine. “I could write an infinite variety of numbers on this check, Paige. What will it take me to keep you?”

My heart thumped at my ribs. “A drink, for starters.”

Jaxon sat back.

“Nick,” he said, “get the young lady some mecks. She’s a keeper.”