Seb spoke, his quiet voice searing through the room. “What I want to know is, what is this ‘vital business for all angelkind’ that they’re up to?”

“No idea,” said Alex. “But for now, I’m only concerned about it if it affects the attack.” As he kept his gaze on the TV screen, he looked relaxed enough – but taking in the faint lines on his forehead, I knew he wasn’t.

“Hopefully it won’t,” I said.

Alex glanced down at me and I could almost see his tension ease; for a second, we were the only two people in the room. With a small smile, he briefly touched my back, his fingers warm through my shirt. “Yeah, hopefully,” he said.

Things became even tenser after that, more determined: the team had actually seen who they were going to be fighting. Alex was still taking them out on daily hunts – which made me curse my inability to disguise my aura more than ever. I hated just staying at home when the danger was increasing with each day that passed – because the angels had to be aware by now that there were AKs in the city. I could never really relax until everyone was back again. Alex was careful to never fall into a predictable routine, though. He always took the team to different places, and at different times; they even went at night sometimes. And the AKs were improving by leaps and bounds. I knew Alex thought that if we could just get the security information, we’d have a real chance against the Council now.

When asked, all he would say was that he had a plan to get us into the Torre Mayor, but he was working out the details.

“Do you have a plan?” I whispered one morning when we were alone in his bedroom. I was lying in his arms, savouring the feel of his skin against mine. I’d slipped into his room while the others were having breakfast – I knew Alex would already have had his; he was an early riser. When I timed things right, we could sometimes have almost half an hour alone together. It was incredibly precious to us both – and not just as a time to talk. Now I stroked his bare chest. “Or are you just trying to keep morale up or something?”

Alex sighed. Keeping an arm around my shoulders, he stretched up a hand to bat at the dust motes that were drifting past. “Yes, I’ve got a plan – but I don’t like it very much,” he admitted. “I don’t want to say anything to the team until after we get the security information. I’m hoping we’ll find out something that’ll improve on it.”