“I don’t know!” she burst out. “I haven’t asked him.”

“So give me your best guess,” he gritted out. “Yes or no – can he do this too, with you?”

There was only one screw left on the cover; Willow shoved it on. Her hand on the screwdriver was unsteady, her jaw tense. “I don’t want to talk to you about this now. You’re too upset.”

“Oh, man, you haven’t even seen upset. This is a ‘yes’, isn’t it? You’re telling me that all he has to do is think about you, and he can see you, no matter what you’re doing.”

She looked close to tears, but also angrier than he’d ever seen her. “It’s not like that! You’re making it sound really sleazy or something.”

“Yeah, sorry – this is just a pure friendship thing, isn’t it? So if you thought about Seb right now, in the shower—”

She jammed the tools away in the toolbox and jumped to her feet. “Stop it,” she snapped. “You’re acting like a lunatic. Which part of we are just friends do you not understand?”

He rose too; he could feel the blood beating at his brain. “Oh yeah, because it’s really my comprehension skills that are the problem here – I just don’t get it, do I? You know what? Maybe I get way more than I want to.”

Her face went white. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Alex gripped her arms. “It means he is in love with you,” he hissed into her face. “And now you’re telling me you think about him even when you’re alone with me, and the two of you share this amazing psychic bond that means he can picture whatever you’re doing, whenever he wants – and I’m supposed to be happy with that? I’m supposed to go, ‘Oh yeah, I guess all that’s just normal when you’ve got a half-angel girlfriend’.”

Willow was struggling against tears. “Alex—” She took a breath. “Look – please, please, can we talk about this later, when we’ve both calmed down? I promise you, it isn’t like what you’re thinking.”

Alex stared at her for a moment, and then swore and started out of the range. She caught up with him, grabbed his arm. “Wait – where are you going?”

He pulled away from her. “Where the hell do you think? To throw him out of the house.”

“No! Alex, stop.”

“What? Are you saying you don’t want me to?”

“Of course I don’t want you to!”

He could not remember ever having been this angry; it was like a fire raging through him, sizzling his thoughts. The rarely-used front door was nearby, he grabbed her hand and pulled her along to it with him; got it open and them both outside, slamming it shut behind him.