The house felt so still around us. I could see it all clearly – the angry young half-angel who’d been so badly hurt, in every way. Seb’s expression was thoughtful; his body relaxed. I could tell that he had understanding for his thirteen-year-old self, but no real connection to him any more.

“Then my angel came to me,” he went on. “He wasn’t happy, because I’d been acting so stupid that I’d almost gotten killed. He helped me up—”

“Wait – he helped you up?” I stared. “Can they do that? Touch you, I mean, so that you feel them?”

“It only happened that one time,” said Seb. “I don’t know, I think he—” He broke off, frowning, and finally sighed in frustration. “No. I can’t say what I mean in English.”

“Wait, I think I know,” I said slowly, remembering how the angels of the Second Wave had wanted to be seen by the masses when they first arrived, even though angels can’t usually be seen except by those they’re feeding from. “You mean he...changed his frequency, somehow. Slowed himself down so that he was closer to the human plane, and could touch you.”

Seb lightly slapped the sofa arm. “Yes! That’s exactly what I was thinking. You read my mind.”

“Yeah, I guess we’re both sort of good at that,” I said, playing with the ring pull of my Coke. As we smiled at each other, warmth curled through me.

“So, my angel helped me up, and...” Seb paused as he remembered. “He showed me what might happen if I didn’t change. Like, pictures in my head, you know? He showed me I would die – that someone would knife me in a fight, or maybe shoot me when I stole from them. But what would really kill me would be the anger. It was eating me up inside.”

“You mean you saw your own future? I’ve never been able to do that!”

“No, I can’t, either. This was just a warning.” Seb fell quiet, his eyes still in that other time. He took another sip of his Coke; put it back on the table. “And so I looked at these pictures of how I might die, and then I knew – the only thing I wanted was to find another of my kind. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, my whole life. When I was a young boy on the streets I was always looking, but after I escaped from the reformatorio I hated the world so much that I forgot. So then I thought, to hell with humans; I don’t care about them enough even to be angry at them any more – I’m going to find someone like me, no matter what.”