Though Alex was, obviously, totally on my side, he was often too busy to really notice everything that went on with me and the others: the minor snubs, the sideways looks. It was all so stupid that I hated the fact it even got to me sometimes, and I didn’t blame Alex in the slightest for not always noticing – god, I wouldn’t even have wanted him to. Because, let’s be honest, he had one or two more important things on his mind just then.

But Seb noticed it all. Suddenly there was someone whose gaze I could catch when Trish tensed if I came too close, or Brendan got that deer-in-the-headlights look. Seb’s eyes would be smiling as we glanced at each other, the corner of his mouth lifting almost imperceptibly. If we were near enough, I might even catch what he was thinking, which was always something like, Madre mía – and you look so harmless. Have you got a machete up your sleeve or something? Once or twice I gave in to the laugh tugging at my lips – which then had the others staring at me in alarm, while Seb just quietly stood there, looking innocent. The difference all that made to my sanity was...well, not small.

Just having Seb to talk to helped. There were so many things about my life that made sense now: strange feelings that had always set me apart, but that I hadn’t even known to question until I met him. Like how I’ve always been sensitive to the moods of places, when other people hardly seem to notice them; or the feeling of duality that I now realized I’d had all my life – the certainty that there was more to me than just the “me” I knew, even if I hadn’t been sure before what the rest of it was. These and a hundred other things were just part of being half-angel, it turned out – because Seb had always felt exactly the same way.

“Did you know your father?” I asked.

We were in the TV room, about a week after he’d arrived. The others were out, and as usual when they were on a hunt, frustration nagged at me that I couldn’t be there with them. I kept reaching psychically for Alex, needing to know he was safe. We all had cellphones now, but texts weren’t the same. Every time I found his energy, the familiar feel of it was like an embrace.