Meanwhile, Seb had finally forced me to take a break from aura training, and he was right – after hours of no luck, my brain felt limp. Being gentle and offhand sounded like it should be the easiest thing in the world, but the problem was that it mattered so much. My pulse kept skipping the second my aura started to change, which then sent it snapping right back to silver. Frustrating wasn’t the word. How was I supposed to convince myself that I didn’t care about this?

At my question, I was aware of Seb’s mind opening to mine, without him really thinking consciously about it. He shook his head. “No, I never knew my father. I always knew he was an angel though – I’m not sure how. Maybe my mother told me.”

“Did you ever see him in her thoughts, like I saw Raziel in Mom’s?” I’d told Seb about Raziel, and the Church of Angels.

“Not really.” He pulled a wry face as he sprawled back against the sofa, settling himself on the cushions. “I didn’t have much of a...link with my mother, I think is the word.”

I got a sense of isolation; a brief image of a woman in her twenties who looked like him. I wasn’t surprised Seb hadn’t been close to his mother – in all the pieces of memory I’d seen, she’d either been crying while her boyfriend hit him, or shouting that it was Seb’s fault. It was a relief to glance at him now, so healthy and relaxed. I felt my gaze lingering on him, and looked away.

“How badly did your mother have angel burn?” I asked.

Seb propped his wrist under his head as he thought; the firm muscles of his arm flexed slightly. “Very badly,” he said. “It was different from your mother though. I think my mother’s mind was damaged, but she could still talk, still do things.” He knew I’d had to hide my mother’s mental illness from everyone when I was younger. Apart from Alex, he was the only person I’d ever shared that with.

“The main thing was that my mother had cancer,” he went on. “That’s what killed her.”

I nodded. He’d told me before that when he was nine and living on the streets, he’d found out his mother was dead. She hadn’t visited him even once after leaving him at the orphanage – not in all the years he was there. It made my throat tighten whenever I thought of it.

Seb stretched his white-socked foot so that it nudged at my ankle. “Willow, don’t. It’s all right.”

This happened a lot now, so that our half-psychic, half-spoken conversations would have sounded very weird to anyone else. I shook my head. “It so isn’t. I hate that you were in that place.”