Jenny is an echo of Lester, not that striking blue-tinged columbine violet, but rather a satiny lavender, like the thin clouds at sunrise, pale and beautiful.

She carries that same hard edge, though hers is steel blue rather than ice. Very similar hues, but still entirely different from each other. She isn't one to be trifled with either, that Connor knows, because he sees how quickly her soft lavender can grow sharp and spiny, steel edges snapping. He isn't afraid of her, but he knows not to tread on her toes, too. He doesn't want to find out how indigo will hold up against lavender.

There's also that edge of wily daisy-yellow in her colours, swirls of sly quicksilver that dance through the lavender. When she spins some clever, ingenious spiel to hapless witnesses, Connor can watch as her quicksilver and daisy slides across the other person's colours, insidiously working their way in, coaxing and soothing, reassuring them that no, they did not see what they think they saw, it was an escaped exotic pet from a private zoo and would they please step this way? He appreciates her more than anything, sometimes, knowing how dangerous their job can be for unsuspecting people.

Cutter can make her turn scarlet faster than anyone else. It's almost a magic trick. Sometimes he doesn't even say anything, merely looks at her, and Connor sees the scarlet flush rising across her lavender. With everyone, anyone else, she is a wellspring of jade patience and relaxed gold, but one sideways look from the professor, and she's flaring up like bloody magnesium. Connor finds it hilarious, especially when she vents on him and then Cutter turns straw-yellow and pale tan in confusion, baffled as to what he did wrong. It is his own private amusement, the Jenny and Cutter show, episodes daily. People sometimes think he's a wee bit mad when he starts giggling over something they can't see.

But Cutter doesn't just make her turn scarlet. Sometimes, her steely edges soften away just as his own spiny crimson ones do, lavender and maroon tentatively interacting with each other, mingling almost shyly. And then Connor can see a flush of pale fuchsia swell up in both of them, hesitant curls of butter yellow and fern green appearing in them. He doesn't say anything about it, it isn't his place and it has always been his unspoken rule that what the colours tell him is a secret between him and the colours. But he notices that a small spot of maroon has taken up residence in Jenny's colour, suspiciously close to her heart and that Cutter bears the same bit of lavender in himself, and it makes him smile.

Connor hopes that the ghost-echo of amber will no longer be in the way.

A/N: now, excluding the prologue, "Seeing the Spectrum", look at the first letter of every chapter.