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She unhooks my fingers from her arm and kisses my forehead lightly. ‘You need your rest. I’ll be back this
evening.’ At the door she turns. ‘Now that you’re awake, the police are going to want to interview you. I’ll stall for as long as I can.’

‘Thanks, Lillie,’ I mumble, growing drowsy quickly now.

The sound of voices entering my room wakes me. For a moment I freeze, but it’s soon obvious the voices don’t belong to angels. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. It’s Danny, and Sophie’s here too.

I have no idea how long it’s been since Lillie left, but I didn’t return to
that
dream, and the further it slips away the easier it is to believe the drug-induced-hallucination theory.

So maybe now I can enjoy the fact that I’m alive and don’t have to go on a stupid heroic quest to find a stupid abducted angel and return her to … What was the name the younger one had called the dimension where angels live?

Avena
.

Man, how quick did that come back to me?

Shoving that thought aside, I welcome my visitors by plastering a grin on my face. ‘How’s it going, guys?’

‘It must be the drugs,’ Danny remarks drily. ‘He’s never this happy.’

Sophie giggles and kisses my forehead, her lips lingering a moment longer than normal for friends. But we are, of course, just friends. ‘It’s a relief to see you awake,’ she says through glossy red lips. ‘You look great, by the way.’ She whispers this near enough to my ear to be just between her and me, and the shudder that courses down my spine is nobody’s business.

‘It’s good to be alive, hey?’ Danny says with a wink, and
plonks himself down in my visitor’s armchair. ‘Man, did you have us going for a while.’

Sitting near my feet, Sophie points at Danny with her chin. ‘He was so scared you were going to die, he dragged me to the hospital chapel.’

My eyebrows shoot up. ‘You
prayed
?
Dude!
’

He smirks at Sophie like an old friend. ‘So what?’

Having Sophie here reminds me of the reason Skinner shredded my guts in the first place. ‘Anyone know what’s happened to –’ I glance at Danny first, then Sophie. She slides off the bed and goes and studies a machine attached to a drip pumping fluids into my arm.

Danny blows out a lungful of hot air. ‘The murderous coward pissed off.’

‘Are you telling me the cops don’t have him in custody yet?’

‘They’ll find him,’ Sophie says. ‘They won’t stop until they do.’ She sits on the arm of Danny’s chair. ‘He’s a wanted criminal now.’

‘They’re keeping an eye on Sophie too,’ Danny adds, glancing up at her. ‘They think he might try to contact her.’

Sophie pulls a face, scrunching up her nose. It’s a cute look I’ve seen her do in class a few times when she’s thinking hard. ‘He won’t contact me because he doesn’t trust me. Apparently, he never did.’

‘You’re better off without him, you know.’

Her eyes shoot straight to mine. ‘After what he did to you, I
know
I am. How can anyone hold on to so much hatred?’

Danny says, ‘He only showed you what he wanted you to
see. He kept his dark side hidden.’ He pats her arm. ‘Don’t worry – the cops will catch him.’

‘I wonder what they’ll charge him with.’ Her eyes mist up.

Clearly Sophie loves the guy still, and love is an emotion that can’t be turned on or off at will. It’s probably her first big love. ‘It’s all right to still love him, Sophie,’ I tell her.

Danny scoffs and I glare at him to make him shut up.

‘You don’t have to feel bad about anything. Skinner makes his own decisions.’

‘I
can’t
love him any more, not after what he did to you.’

It’s what she says, but her watery eyes are telling another story.

‘I hope he gets charged with attempted
murder
,’ Danny says.

Weirdly, I don’t feel the same way. And I’m the one in the hospital bed. Skinner’s anger has long roots, and I can never forget my part.

I don’t know how Lillie manages it, but the cops don’t hassle me until Saturday morning, my seventh day in hospital. Two detectives walk in, one in a brown suit, the other in grey, and pull up chairs at the side of my bed. I know then it’s going to be a long session. The brown suit asks most of the questions while they both jot down notes. They want to know whether my relationship with Sophie was more than platonic. ‘We weren’t even friends until that night,’ I explain. They can tell the questions are starting to annoy me.

‘We need to hear everything you can tell us to help us make our case,’ the brown suit says.

They have an eyewitness in Sophie, Adam’s prints are on the bottle – what more do they need?

When the session finally draws to a close, brown suit proceeds to warn me that, even though they have every man, woman and canine on the job, they’ve yet to apprehend Adam Skinner.

This makes Lillie furious, especially when they say the police protection she demands for me is unwarranted but in their next breath tell me it would be best to get out of town
for a couple of weeks. ‘Fat chance of that happening,’ I tell them, ‘unless my father has a spare bunk in his cell.’

Lillie looks uncomfortable when I say this, like she’s embarrassed for me. But apparently it’s because she has an idea. ‘Actually, sergeant, since police protection is not being offered, I might be able to organise something for Jordan myself,’ she says as she leads the detectives to the door.

Adam Skinner’s had it in for me for four years but I never lived in fear of him, and I’m not about to start now. When Lillie sits down in the chair next to my bed, I try to reassure her. ‘I’m not worried about Skinner, Lillie.’

‘We can’t dismiss the possibility he might come after you, Jordan. How do you propose to defend yourself when you can hardly dress yourself yet?’

‘The doctors tell me I’m doing better than they expected.’

She’s nodding. ‘I know, and that’s great.’

‘Lillie, I promise you, I
can
dress myself.’

She gives me a look I’ve seen her give her two-year-old nephew. She pats my hand, all motherly like. ‘Everything will work out just fine, Jordan, especially since I have a surprise for you.’

‘Yeah? What?’

‘I’ll come back tomorrow and tell you all about it.’ She gets up and moves towards the door.

‘Hey, can’t you tell me now?’

‘I still have a few things to arrange. Sleep well, Jordan. I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early.’

True to her word, Lillie arrives right at the start of visiting hours. Smiling at me, she only just sits down when Nurse
Aimee pops her head around the door. ‘Papers are ready for signing, Lillie.’ Glancing at me, Nurse Aimee winks and says, ‘I hear you’re leaving us today.’

This is news. ‘Yeah?’ I swing my head around to Lillie. ‘Is this true? I’m going home a week earlier than expected? Aw, Lillie, this is a brilliant surprise!’

She gets up. ‘Going home is not your surprise, Jordan. Sit tight, I’ll be right back. But in the meantime I brought you some things from home. I thought you might want to change out of those pyjamas.’ She brings in my gym bag and lifts it on to the bed before she follows Nurse Aimee out the door.

I check inside the bag to find a couple of pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts, socks, boxers, joggers, my black baseball cap, my wallet, sunglasses and, man, I don’t believe it, a brand-new brown suede jacket. She didn’t have to do that.

I dress slowly because, even though I’m making a remarkable recovery, I’m still in heaps of pain. Every movement smacks at my wound. When I finish, I sit in my armchair breathing hard with the effort. Moments later the door swings open and Lillie walks in again. My surprise, apparently, is a tall, well-built, fair-haired dude a few years older than me.

I take in his clothing: white T-shirt under a black jacket, really well-fitting across a massive chest, black jeans. It clicks and I shake my head. She’s done this because she’s so worried Skinner will come after me.

But, really, what was she thinking? ‘Lillie, you hired me a
bodyguard
?’

Lillie’s excitement dissolves. Her pink cheeks brighten to
crimson. ‘Heavens, no, Jordan!’ She quickly says, ‘I should start at the beginning.’

The dude steps closer to where I’m sitting and his silent look says I should know him, and I should know the reason he’s here. A shiver, cold as the blue ice of Antarctica, melts my spine. The long hair is gone, but the trigger is his eyes – potent as bright blue paint squeezed straight from the tube.

‘Hello, Jordan,’ he says, and there’s no mistaking that calm voice.

‘Thane.’

Lillie’s excitement just falls short of clapping hands and jumping up and down. I’ve never seen her like this before. ‘So you
do
remember each other!’

‘We were … younger,’ Nathaneal says with a wisp of a smile.

Lillie beams. ‘This makes everything so much easier.’

‘How do you mean, Lillie?’ My voice comes out sounding as dead as my heart feels.

Nathaneal steps back and crosses his arms over his broad chest while Lillie explains, ‘You don’t know this, Jordan, but for the two years I’ve been your caseworker I’ve been looking for your relatives, and just when you really need family around you, I locate your cousin. Or, I should say, he locates me.’

I glance up at the stranger with my gut churning. ‘Cousin, eh?’ He nods. So this is how it’s going to be. He nods again, just a smidgen of movement. He’s hearing my thoughts. Well, that’s going to have to change. He smiles and glances away.

‘Nathaneal has a house up on Mount Bungarra. His property lies inside the grounds of the Holy Cross Monastery.’

I feel my eyebrows lift.
A monastery?

His face remains expressionless as Lillie rattles on. ‘He wants you to stay with him. It’s a beautiful house, and your room has views over the valley.’ She sighs appreciatively. ‘There’s everything you need for your rehabilitation, even a full gymnasium downstairs, and Nathaneal is an experienced trainer –’

‘But living with monks, Lillie?’

‘Brothers,’ Nathaneal says. There’s a difference? ‘The Brothers of the Holy Cross.’

‘In time,’ Lillie says, ‘all going well, Nathaneal will take over your guardianship and you won’t be in the system any more.’

‘What about school, Lillie?’

‘I’ve arranged special dispensation for you to still attend from outside the jurisdiction, so nothing to worry about there.’

She waits expectantly for some show of enthusiasm, but when she doesn’t get it, not even a smile, she puts more effort into her sell. ‘This will be good for you, Jordan.’

A frown forms on her face. She can’t understand my lack of interest and of course I can’t explain it.

Her frown deepens as the silence lengthens. Bullshit, man, this is not Lillie’s fault! She’s as much a pawn in this game these ‘angels’ are playing as I am. There – I flick a look at Nathaneal – stick that.

I take a deep breath. ‘Thank you, Lillie, for finding my …
cousin
. Who would have thought I’d have a relative living so close?’

‘Well,’ Lillie says, patting my shoulder, ‘how about that, hey?’

Fortunately she doesn’t see the withering look I send my ‘cousin’.

‘I think Jordan may have been thinking about you unconsciously,’ she tells him.

‘Lillie, what are you … ?’ But before she replies, it dawns on me. ‘You mean the dream. You think my dream was about my cousin?’

As Nathaneal’s eyes shift back and forth between us, Lillie forms the beginnings of an explanation, but I cut her off with a sharp look. ‘Well what do you know,’ I mutter with a touch of sarcasm not lost on the angel. ‘I must be psychic.’

Understanding my need to change the subject, Lillie says smoothly, ‘Dr Beth has given me a scrip for some painkillers for you to take home. It shouldn’t take long to have it made up, but there might be a queue at the hospital pharmacy. While I attend to that, you two can reacquaint yourselves. It sounds as if it’s been a while.’

She leaves and suddenly the room is silent except for the sound of a basketball thumping away in my chest. ‘I didn’t think you were coming.’

‘I said I would.’

‘Why didn’t you come and see me earlier? You let me think that what happened was all a dream.’

‘There’s no conspiracy, Jordan. I had things to attend to that kept me busy until today.’

I give him a smirk. ‘Like your haircut?’

He runs his hand around the back of his neck. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Nope.’

His voice grows serious. ‘You have the choice of making this easy or hard.’

‘I’ll live my life the way I want.’

He doesn’t say a word, but I know what he’s thinking: I haven’t done well so far. Yeah, well, is that my fault? ‘What if I choose not to go with you? Are you going to kill me?’

‘Angels abhor killing. But your life will be forfeit.’

‘What does that mean exactly?’

‘I would be unable to protect you.’

I scoff at this. ‘When has any angel protected me? They never bothered to protect my mother either, by the way.’

‘Let’s talk about this at home.’

Home?
‘You know, there’s so much weird stuff happening at the moment, it’s not a good time for me to take off on some screwy rescue mission.’

His eyes darken, his pupils dilating until they swallow all the blue, and suddenly the walls, the floor, the whole room shakes.

‘What the … ?’

It’s a display of power.

He turns his head away, closes his eyes and sighs sharply as if he’s pissed at himself. When he turns back, his eyes are their usual colour and the room is still again. ‘Firstly, Jordan, this is
not
a fanciful rescue mission, but I’ll forgive your ignorance this once because you don’t understand the angelic existence. And secondly, it’s all settled with Ms
Fisher and the Department of Child Safety Services for you to recuperate at my home, under my care, on a safe and secure property.’

‘If I choose to go with you, you have to stop reading my mind.’

He nods. ‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll teach you how to protect your thoughts from everyone with mind-linking abilities.’