We’d been sitting on the rattling train car without saying very much, which wasn’t unusual now. Sometimes over these last few days, it had been all I could do to make conversation with Seb at all, when before there hadn’t been enough hours in the day for us to talk. As he sat beside me, I could sense the depth of his sadness over this; that he’d do anything in the world to have our friendship back the way it was. I couldn’t help him. I knew it was me who had changed, but I felt too battered inside to try to figure out why, or how I might be able to fix it. All I could see was the look of stunned hurt that had been in Alex’s blue-grey eyes. It made my heart feel like some small, wounded creature that had curled up, whimpering, in the corner.

The attack was in less than two hours.

We’d gone shopping earlier, with what was almost the last of our money, so that we could blend in with the others at the reception. I looked down at the clothes I had on: black trousers with a turquoise top. It was weirdly reminiscent of what Beth Hartley had been wearing a lifetime ago back in Pawntucket, when I’d given her a reading and seen an angel, its radiance reflected in the shimmering water of a stream. That was what had started all this, so it was sort of fitting I was wearing almost the same thing now.

Our plan, such as it was, was to go back to the house and join the team as they left for the attack; it was where we were going now. I had no idea how Alex would react when he saw us. But regardless of how agonizing all this was between him and me, he must know that he’d need every single person he could get to help in the attack; he was too good a leader not to. Imagining seeing him again made my veins turn to ice. If the hatred was still in his eyes, I thought it might kill me to see it.

Trying not to think about it, I stared at the grimy Metro map on the wall. Since leaving the AK house, Seb and I had been hanging out at the bridge in Chapultepec Park a lot, watching the Torre Mayor. I’m not really sure what we hoped to achieve by it; mostly it was just something to do that might be vaguely useful.