Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the angel select its victim and land, so dazzling with radiance that the marketplace seemed to fade away. The man stared at the being in wonder as it reached towards him. Smiling gently, it rested its gleaming hands in his aura and began to feed.

Seb led the girls to another jewellery stand. While they stood laughing, trying on rings, he found his gaze drawn back to the angel as it finally flew away in a shudder of light. Though he no longer wanted to be pure angel himself, he couldn’t completely hold back his old longing for their strength and power, which had seemed so desperately appealing to him at thirteen. When it came to the creatures’ feeding, he had never quite decided what he felt about it. The angels hurt people and he wished they didn’t – but they also made them genuinely happy. From the readings he’d given to people with angel burn, he knew this happiness was real, even if their health was damaged. When humans hurt other humans, there was no happiness at all – just pain and misery. At least the angels gave something back. Then Seb sighed as he wondered how the man was damaged now. The issue wasn’t an easy one; he’d never resolved it in his mind.

The girls were trying on necklaces now, admiring themselves in a small mirror.

“I like the turquoise one,” said Amanda, her dark hair beside Lucy’s red.

“Really?” Lucy cocked her head to one side as she inspected herself. “I can’t decide; I like the shell one, too. Wait, are there matching earrings?”

Seb drifted to the next stall. It sold a mishmash of things: clothes, old paperbacks, CDs. He took his cigarettes from his knapsack and lit one as he started looking over the books, arranged spine-up in long, battered rows. He’d first started reading for pleasure in the measly library of the orphanage, while checking every book they had to try and find out about others like him. There’d been nothing, of course, but he’d stumbled across a story about a boy and a horse, and been hooked ever since.

Now he found a popular science title that he hadn’t read, and propped an elbow on a shelf to his side as he flipped to its opening page. Soon he was immersed.

“I’ve got some stuff to sell,” said a voice. “You buy clothes and things, right?”

Seb didn’t look up, distantly aware that the stall owner was going through a pile of goods with someone, the two of them haggling over prices. “Man, you’ve got to be kidding – this shirt alone is worth fifty pesos—”