I shook my head as I ran my fingers over my undamaged skin, half-sure I was going to encounter glass sticking out. I could feel it in there – no, it was being pulled out. I gritted my teeth at the sliding sensation, the warm rush of blood. A sink that was a stylish white slab. Pink water swirling down the drain. Good thing it’ll stop soon – wouldn’t do to look less than perfect when the Council dies, now would it? After all, it might be my first moment as the new Seraphic Head.

The images and the internal voice faded, leaving me reeling. Raziel.

“Willow, what’s wrong? What are you seeing?” Seb’s voice had turned urgent over the noise of the train; he started to reach for my arm and then pulled back.

“Wait,” I murmured. “I just have to...” Jumbled thoughts were sweeping over me: the energy stream my first night in Mexico City, so strong and pulsing that I’d been afraid it might drown me – how it had trickled to nothing seconds later. That sense of being watched sometimes. My angel’s distress, and the way whatever had been bothering her had just vanished, the moment both Seb and I went looking.

The train, the people, had all taken on a surreal edge. I closed my eyes and searched fervently once more, feeling my frustration mount with every second. There was nothing there. But I’d felt Raziel – what he was doing, what he was thinking. He was in there somehow, he had to be.

And then it came to me. If I couldn’t find him inside of me...then maybe I was inside of him.

I flicked my consciousness from within to without and tried to sense my own energy, the same way I looked for Alex’s – drifting, searching, letting it come. After a moment, a silver and lavender flutter appeared. I swallowed as I took in its gentle light, wondering if my hunch was true. Instinctively, I knew that I had to be very, very careful.

With only the tiniest nudge of my thoughts, I touched the grain of energy...and found myself in Raziel’s mind. A world with tall towers and robed beings; an amphitheatre where lectures were given psychically, and it was all so boring, boring; the wall between worlds where he’d slipped through thousands of times to indulge himself on humanity.

Knowledge flowed into me like water pouring into a glass. I caught my breath, cold with shock. Oh my god, it wasn’t just that there was a spark of me in Raziel; there was a spark of him in me, too. Nausea rose in my throat as I realized he’d been spying on me all along – taking in all my private thoughts, my feelings. Knowing all our plans. And now I could see his. Sophie, a memory stick. False directions for escape.