I stood with his fingers gripping mine as we stared at each other. I should pull away, I thought...but instead I was holding onto him tightly too. I could sense his energy again, and now it all made sense. It felt so warm and familiar, because, for the first time ever, I was touching one of my own kind. The sensation of like touching like was indescribable, something I knew now that every human being on the planet took for granted. But to have never experienced this at all, and then to suddenly find it, after seventeen years...oh god, it was like sinking into a warm bath and not knowing where my skin ended and the water began.

Seb’s eyes were so full of wonder that he looked almost frightened, and I knew he was feeling exactly the same thing. Other knowledge came too: snapshots from his life, swirling through my head. The orphanage he’d been abandoned in, life on the streets, a young offenders’ place that was so horrific I found myself wincing in pity. More than that, I got a sense of him. His inner strength. The teasing sense of humour he’d somehow hung onto, the charm that hid the utter loneliness he felt sometimes. He’d known he was half-angel since he was a small child – had felt alone for most of his life. He’d searched for so many years. So many.

And underneath everything, steady as a heartbeat, was an emotion so intense it took my breath away.

No, I have to be wrong about that, I thought in confusion. He couldn’t feel that way about me – it didn’t make any sense. We’d only just met each other.

“How did you find me?” I asked finally.

Seb looked down at our hands together; his fingers tightened. “You dreamed about me,” he said huskily. I stiffened. Oh my god, how did he know that? “You dreamed we were in a park in el DF, so I came here,” he went on. “I’ve been coming to Chapultepec for weeks, trying to find you.”

“But—”

“I’ve got your shirt, your picture. I saw it was you, and I—” His hazel eyes rose again, and my chest clenched at the expression in them, so that other questions suddenly seemed meaningless. He swallowed; in slow motion, he reached out and touched my hair, as if it were something fragile and precious. “Willow, I’ve been looking for you for so long. I can’t tell you how I felt when I saw your picture for the first time – what it meant to me. I—”

The sound of running footsteps came from the path behind us. “Willow!” called Alex’s voice, and suddenly I was hotly aware that I was standing there holding a stranger’s hand, staring into his eyes. I pulled away from Seb as Alex came jogging up, but I knew that he’d seen.