I held back a shudder. For a weird second, it had felt as if he was looking right at me, as if he could actually see me through the screen somehow. As usual now, that slight sense of my angel shifting within me was there, and I tried to push it away, suddenly sickly aware of how not human I was – with this thing inside me and Raziel for a dad. I’d thought all of this was something I’d gotten used to. It so wasn’t.

At least the manhunt for us seemed to have calmed down, though our pictures still flashed on the screen occasionally. I stared at my photo whenever it appeared, wondering who that blonde girl with the bright smile was. Kara always teased Alex about the terrible drawing that made him look like an aging football player – and whenever he managed to unwind a little he teased her too, with stories from their life back at the old camp. I could see the real affection between them, but it seemed so totally brother/sister on both sides that I thought I must have been insane to have imagined how soft and shining Kara’s eyes had become as she watched him that day.

Except I didn’t really believe I was.

After what Alex had told them, none of the AKs gave me a hard time – but none of them spoke to me much either. And this was not exactly a quiet group. They were always talking, arguing, bantering. Brendan was from Portland and like a terrier, all wiry hair and hyper energy. The only thing he and Sam agreed on was the need to rid the world of angels; they’d bicker about politics for hours, with Brendan clawing at his head and practically shrieking with frustration – “Man, how can you think that? Are you even listening to how ignorant you sound?”

Eventually Trish would step in and try to defuse things in her gentle way. Everyone liked her so much that Brendan might subside for a while, grumbling, and then Sam would make another drawling comment and they’d be off again. Liz was just as bad, dropping biting little remarks into the conversation and goading things along.

She was also the self-designated cook, which was something I loved to do too – but when I’d suggested that maybe we could take turns, she’d stiffened as if I planned to sprinkle poison in the food. So I dropped it. It wasn’t worth it. Even with the others, “prickly” seemed to be Liz’s default setting, though she and Trish got along really well. Once I walked into the girls’ dorm to find them talking earnestly together. “I don’t think you should blame yourself,” Trish was saying. “Everyone’s family has issues.”