Page 6 of The Bone Season

‘No spirit sight,’ he stated. ‘An oracle, I’d say.’

‘I haven’t seen an oracle in years,’ said the backup. ‘We’ll make a killing from this.’

Most voyants mistook me for an oracle. The auras were the same colour.

All at once, Linwood made a break for the door. He threw a spirit at the Underguards – not just any spirit, but a guardian angel. The backup shouted as the angel crunched into him, sending him to the floor in a heap.

The summoner was fast. Before anyone could move, he had mustered a spool of poltergeists. I backed away, my heart pounding.

‘Don’t move,’ the summoner warned us.

Linwood stared him down. He was in his forties, small and wiry, brown hair greying at the temples.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘why did a summoner of your talent turn on his own kind?’

The Underguard said nothing. I wished I could ask the same question, but my voice was still caught in my throat, my nerves unravelling.

Eleven years of hiding in plain sight, and it could end right here.

‘That helmet can’t hide what you are,’ Linwood said. ‘Those poltergeists certainly know.’

Their presence raised goosebumps all over me. I had rarely seen anyone controlonepoltergeist, let alone a trio. Linwood was right – the syndicate would have snatched this man up.

Which meant he was an Underguard because helikedeating his own.

As the angel rallied for a second attack, the poltergeists circled their Underguard. I could hardly breathe, with so much pressure in the æther.

‘Come with us quietly,’ the Underguard said, ‘and they might not torture you.’

‘Let them try.’ Linwood raised a hand. ‘I fear no man with angels at my side.’

He flung his angel back down the carriage. The poltergeists flew to meet it, the collision scalding my sixth sense. I broke out in a cold sweat.

Linwood had some mettle, for a seer in a crumpled suit. The other Underguard, recovered from the shock, was now reciting the threnody – a series of words that compelled spirits to leave. The angel turned. They would need to know its name to banish it, but so long as that chant went on, it would be distracted.

Spirit, be gone into the æther. All is settled. All debts are paid …

If Linwood lost this battle, I would be detained as well. I saw myself in the Tower, on the waterboard, ascending the gallows …

As the poltergeists converged on Linwood, my vision trembled at the edges. I homed in on the Underguards – on their dreamscapes, close to mine; on the spirits within those dreamscapes, two flames inside a pair of lanterns.

A black tide overwhelmed me. I heard my body hit the ground.

That was the last thing I heard.

The summoner never saw it coming. Before I knew what I was doing, I was in his dreamscape, and my spirit was charging straight into his, and then I was hurling it into the æther. I followed it into the dark. Before his crony could draw breath, I had slammed into him as well.

I snapped back into my own skin.

A moment passed. I drew one slow breath, realising I was on the floor. My ears rang, and I tasted metal. Swallowing, I tried to sit up.

Pain erupted in my head. I had never felt anything like it in my life; it was hot knives through both eye sockets, fire in the very nerves of my brain, leaving me heaving in panic. Even my vision crackled, laced with shivering white light. I clamped my fists on both sides of my skull.

Whatever I had just done, I was never doing it again.

The train must be getting near the next station. Little by little, I managed to get on to my hands and knees. Every finger and limb felt loose.

‘Linwood—’

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