Текст книги "Angel Fever"

Автор книги: L. A. Weatherly

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

He found a sweater in his size. The only jacket to be had was of Italian leather, dyed forest green – so fine and thin it was nearly worthless, despite its price tag.

“You look like a model,” said one of the girls when he tried it on, her strained giggle striving for normalcy. Seb had never cared much about his looks; now he almost hated them.

As they started back towards the food court, he stopped short – Meghan was coming out of a nearby store with another girl. Their eyes met. Seb stood motionless.

“Seb?” said one of the girls he was with.

“Go back to the trucks – I’ll meet you there,” he said, not taking his gaze off Meghan.

She’d hesitated when she first saw him, then said something to the other girl and came over alone. She still wore the black T-shirt she’d had on for the simulation, now with an oversize sweater on top.

“Hi,” she said faintly when she reached him.

Seeing her bright, buoyant aura so cowed made Seb ache inside. “Are you all right?” he asked. He barely stopped himself from calling her chiquita.

Meghan crossed her arms tight and stared down at the shopping level below, where AKs stood talking in huddled groups. “I guess. As okay as any of us.” Her blue eyes were anxious as she looked back at him. “What about you, though? You were right there when Sam…when…” Her voice faltered.

Without thinking Seb moved closer, ready to take her in his arms. She stepped back, wiping her eyes. “No, don’t,” she ordered softly. “Nothing’s changed. It just makes it harder.”

“You’re right,” he said after an awkward pause. “I’m sorry. But, Meggie, I…” He trailed off. Everything had already been said a hundred times. Meghan knew how much he cared about her. It wasn’t enough.

From her expression, she knew that he had nothing new to say…and wasn’t surprised. “I’ll see you later, Seb,” she said quietly. She turned and walked away.

Seb stood looking after her as she started down the stilled escalators, graceful even in her too-large clothes. A memory came of Meghan lying on his bed, watching him dress. “What’s this from?” she’d asked, reaching out to touch the raised, twisting scar on his stomach.

“From when I was a pirate,” he’d said with a grin. “I was very bad; they had to punish me with the whip.”

“Ooh, a rebel pirate…sexy.” Her auburn hair had been half falling over her face, her generous mouth smiling. Her finger traced the scar, following its curves. “What’s it from really?”

When girls in the past had asked about his scars, he’d spun stories until they gave up. But as always with Meghan, Seb had found himself telling the truth: his mother’s boyfriend had beaten him with a belt when he was small; the buckle had ripped open his skin. Without stitches, the wound had healed badly.

Her face had become very still. When he finished, she said nothing – but leaned over and pressed gentle lips against the scar.

“Meggie, it’s all right,” he’d said, crouching down and touching her hair. “I haven’t thought about it for a long time.” It was true, yet the tenderness of her gesture had touched him deeply.

Still gazing after Meghan, Seb took in the stray auburn tendrils curling lightly against her neck – knew by heart the smell of her shampoo, the feel of her hair as he curled a fiery strand around a finger. Pain touched him, and he looked away. Why couldn’t he have fallen in love with her? It should have been so easy. But, no, it was Willow, always Willow – no matter what the hell he did, like a sickness he could never get rid of.

He started back to the food court, fists buried in his jacket pockets. He’d been lonely most of his life; you’d think he’d have gotten used to it by now. But these last few months, he’d reached a whole new level. Meghan had taken the sunshine with her, leaving him more taunted than ever by what he couldn’t have.

It would have been better for her if she’d never met me, he told himself harshly. Meghan, of all people, deserved someone who was in love with her.

Yet it filled Seb with bitterness, somehow, to imagine anyone else having the right to hold her – to wake up next to her and see her smile.

When everyone had gathered back at the trucks, Kara passed out military-issue meals. Seb sat eating listlessly with some of his students. People ate without conversation, huddled into themselves.

Willow sat with Liz, and though he deliberately wasn’t looking, Seb was aware of her – knew she was still worried about whatever had been bothering her in the truck. Even now, he wanted to go to her, do whatever he could to help.

His capacity for idiocy was apparently limitless. He shoved his half-finished meal aside.

Kara had managed to grab the shortwave radio from the base. She tuned into the Voice of Freedom, and the low voice wrapped around them: “If soldiers come to your dark town, hide, run away, fight – do anything you can to avoid being taken to an Eden. The angels are deadly. Whatever you do, don’t trust them…”

As if they really needed to be told that, after today. Aware that people were finding comfort in the familiar voice, Seb kept his cynicism to himself. And as the broadcast continued, the thought came to him that at least one angel had shown he could be trusted.

Go – leave, Zaran had said. Why had the cabrón saved them?

Yet Seb knew exactly why; it was something he himself might have done. He’d never paid much attention to the rules, and it looked like his father didn’t either. The thought wasn’t pleasant. He didn’t want anything in common with the being who’d killed his mother – so many of his friends.

Then as his gaze fell on Meghan again, Seb realized the similarity went even deeper. I started to really care about her. I tried to leave her alone. His father, too, had caused pain to a woman he claimed to care about. Zaran had known that Seb’s mother was in love with him, known that every time they touched he was hurting her – yet still hadn’t kept away.

Was his son really so much better?

20

WHEN IT FINALLY GOT TOO dark to see, people had started curling up to sleep on the food court floor, using clothes as pillows. Now their slumbering shapes were dark huddles around me – no one had moved for hours. I lay gazing at the skylights in the mall’s high ceiling. I could see bright stars, wisps of cloud.

It all looked so pretty. It didn’t seem right.

Sam. The deaths of the others hurt too – but Sam. He’d been like a big brother to me. He’d been there when Alex died, held me as we cried together – forced me to see reason and keep on living.

I swallowed, remembering all our long conversations. The way he’d sometimes dropped a casual arm around my shoulders as we walked down the corridor. The keenness of his blue eyes as he’d studied me during lunch a few days ago. “You’re gettin’ too thin, angel chick. You gonna eat that stew, or what?” In his solid, blunt way, he’d shown me how much he cared a million different times this last year.

I’ll miss you, Sam, I thought bleakly.

Him, and all the others. An all-too-familiar sorrow knifed through me. Heather. Eric. The girls who gave me the picture of Alex. That picture was gone now, along with the poem Alex had given me and the photo of myself as a little girl. I felt a pang for them, but they were only things – nothing compared to the people who had died.

I hugged myself as I studied the stars. And now Pawntucket would soon be destroyed too.

My muscles tensed; I thought again of fighting the female angel in the corridor. As my wings had brushed against hers, a rush of images and knowledge had come – because when she’d seen who I was, thoughts she couldn’t control had popped into her mind.

The wide, quiet streets of my hometown. A sense of danger there for the angels – something they hadn’t expected. Raziel would be there on the tenth, in just two weeks, and he’d crush everyone in town.

As I lay on the cold mall floor, I pictured my father smirking as he strode through the streets of my childhood – pictured everyone I’d known there being killed. Nina, my best friend. All my old classmates.

Suddenly I couldn’t stand it; I had to get some fresh air. I quietly pulled on my shoes, then grabbed up the horrible pink parka I’d found, which I’d been using as a blanket. As silently as I could, I got up and slipped away from the food court and its sleeping forms.

When I reached the mall’s main entrance, I breathed deeply, feeling the cold night breeze brush my face. I pulled on the parka and leaned against the frame of a shattered window as I stared out at the parking lot.

And out of all the chaos and grief of the last twenty-four hours – no, the last year – only one thing was clear to me.

I was going to Pawntucket.

There were only twelve of us left. We had no base, no supplies. The teams we’d sent out had probably already been captured; it was how Raziel must have found us. Maybe the few of us left could keep on recruiting and even still train people somehow, but it wouldn’t make any difference.

It was over…and I saw now that it always had been, from the second that Raziel unlinked the angels. No wonder Alex had felt compelled to take an insane risk.

I let out a shuddering breath. Raziel had destroyed everything in the world that I cared about. Everything. Alex, blown to pieces. My mother, drifting for ever in her dreams. Sam and all my other friends. The hope I’d had, even if it had been pointless.

He wasn’t going to destroy my hometown too. I’d die first.

I stiffened as I heard someone behind me. I spun and winced, throwing up my arm as light blasted me full in the face. A shadowy figure lowered the flashlight, then switched it off.

“What are you doing out here?” Kara demanded.

My shoulders sagged. “You scared me.”

Kara shook her head crossly, her exotic features just visible in the moonlight. “Well, you scared me too – I woke up and heard footsteps in the mall and didn’t know whose they were.”

She propped herself against the window frame across from me, looking out at the parking lot. A large men’s shirt hung open over her tight T-shirt; she glanced down and fiddled with one of its sleeves. “So I guess you couldn’t sleep either, huh?” she said finally. “Took me for ever to drop off.”

I hadn’t expected sympathy. “I couldn’t drop off at all,” I admitted after a pause. “I just kept seeing…all of it.”

“At least you were there for it,” she said bitterly. “Running away wasn’t exactly my plan.”

“Sam was right, though,” I said, seeing again the moment when he fell. My throat closed, and I touched a shard of glass that hadn’t fallen from the windowpane. “Kara, listen – something’s happened.”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked sharply at me. “Why do I have this really bad feeling that you mean besides angels attacking and the base getting blown up?”

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing that matters, probably,” I said. “Except to me.”

I told her what I’d seen. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. When I’d finished, she just stood there looking at me.

“Pawntucket,” she said finally. “As in, Pawntucket, New York. Pawntucket, almost three thousand miles away. That Pawntucket?”

“Yeah, that one,” I said. “I’m going there to stop Raziel.”

“Oh, great plan. Do you have any idea how much danger that puts the rest of us in? I’ve got ten other people to think of here, in case you haven’t noticed!”

“Sounds like you’re the new lead,” I said after a pause.

Kara’s face was set. “Yeah. I guess I am. And you know where we’re going. I can’t allow this, Willow. If anyone caught you—”

“I won’t let myself be captured,” I interrupted.

“Oh, right. And do you really think you’d hold up against torture if the angels got hold of you? Want to look at my hand again, and see some of the things they’re capable of? Some of the things dear old dad got off on?” Her voice shook a little.

A cloud drifted over the moon, chasing shadows over the parking lot. “Maybe I’d hold up against torture, and maybe I wouldn’t,” I said quietly. “That’s not what I meant, Kara. I’ll say it again: I will not let myself be captured.”

I saw realization flicker in her eyes. For a long moment we regarded each other – and then, her expression hard, she reached for her holster.

In the old AK house, Kara had locked us in the basement workout room to keep us away from the Council attack – had shoved us down the stairs and slammed the door shut without thinking twice.

My pulse skipped. I took a step backwards, ready to send my angel flying out at her. “Do not try and stop me, Kara. I mean it.”

She raised a sardonic eyebrow and pulled out her pistol. She handed it to me butt-first. “Here,” she said.

I stared down and took it in slow motion. Kara delved into her pocket for a spare magazine and gave me that too.

“Leave,” she said intently. “Right now. The others can’t know why you’ve gone – or where. If there’s even the slightest chance that I can still do some good, keep Alex’s plan going, then I’ve got to do it. I do not want them tempted into leaving with you – I won’t let them be put into danger over this…vendetta against Raziel.” Her eyes met mine, dark and burning. “But it’s my vendetta too. Kill the bastard.”

I nodded, my chest too tight to speak. For a second I wanted to hug her, but I knew from her expression that she wouldn’t welcome it. “Thank you,” I whispered.

I stuck the pistol into the back of my jeans and stepped out through the broken window. I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked quickly away across the moonlit parking lot.

I didn’t look back.

I didn’t have a plan; it had all happened so fast. I needed a car, as soon as possible, and I broke into a jog as I left the parking lot, swinging onto the dark, wide strip of Highway 50. I was about to send my angel out past the abandoned restaurants and furniture stores in search of a residential area – and then came to a Shell station and the dark hulks of abandoned cars. Bingo.

I walked briskly across the station forecourt, looking the vehicles over in the moonlight. One was a nineties-model Toyota, just like the car I’d had back home – old enough that I could hotwire it. Except that its fuel gauge had to be on empty, or it wouldn’t have been abandoned. My gaze flicked to the pumps, their digital screens blank.

Okay, there had to be a tank under the pumps. Almost the second I’d thought it, I spotted the heavy metal plate that covered the filling point. I could siphon gas out from there, I thought – and then realized that, no, of course I couldn’t; not unless I had lungs of steel.

There was a garage attached to the station; someone had forced open one of its doors. And suddenly I recalled doing maintenance on my Toyota – how I’d topped up the engine with oil.

I ducked inside, bringing out my angel for light. As she hovered, I quickly found an old oil dispensing drum and unscrewed its hand crank pump. Then I found some rubber tubing and attached it to the end with duct tape. There – that should do it, if I was lucky.

Stupidly, the pump was the easy part. It took me for ever to find a rusting Stanley knife, even longer to find an empty gallon jug to put gas in. With every second I was so conscious of the others only half a mile away. I had a feeling that Kara would be the only one who’d agree with my plan. If I didn’t get out of here, there’d be endless arguments, explanations.

Back outside, the metal disc in the asphalt was so heavy that I’d have broken every bone in my hand if it had slipped – but when I started pumping, I was rewarded with a thin stream of gasoline. Yes! If my hands hadn’t been full, I’d have punched the air.

Once the Toyota’s tank was full, I slid hurriedly into the driver’s seat; I put the jug with extra fuel in the passenger footwell, along with the precious pump. Then I groped under the steering column for the wires I knew were there and stripped them from their casings.

Have you considered a life of crime? A hot day in Texas. Alex, grinning over his shoulder at me as he kept watch on the road. “Believe me, I’m considering it,” I muttered to his ghost.

There. I twisted the wires together and touched my foot to the gas.

Nothing happened.

When it finally hit me, I scrambled out and ran back to the garage. After the fastest battery change in history, I got back behind the wheel and shut my eyes. “Please,” I whispered. I twisted the wires again.

The engine fired into life. It was the most wonderful sound in the world.

I manoeuvred my way out of the forecourt, pulled out onto the main road, and floored it. The traffic lights hung from their wires with blank, dead eyes, not even trying to hold me back – I raced through empty intersection after empty intersection.

Dawn was just streaking across the east as I left Fallon behind. All I saw in the rear-view mirror was a small cluster of buildings on the horizon – and then they winked from view. God, what were the others going to think, when they woke up and found me gone? I wished that I could have said goodbye – to Liz, especially. And Seb.

Suddenly I realized that he was the one I was running from…and when I thought of the look that would be in his hazel eyes, something unexpectedly painful stirred.

But he’d wanted to leave the base; he’d only stayed because of his promise to Alex. If he still felt he should keep it, then he’d go to Idaho with the others. If not, he’d go his own way – maybe back to Mexico.

The knowledge made me feel better; our lives had diverged a long time ago. I slid my hands back and forth on the wheel. Okay, I had to start heading east as soon as possible. Then find a road atlas and scavenge for food and water.

At the moment I was travelling towards the interstate – and thinking of Seb again, I realized this was way too obvious. I took the first exit I saw and made my way instead to Route 50 East. Perfect. I’d stay on this for a while first; then once I had a map, I’d start travelling on back roads.

As I drove down the old state highway with the dawn slowly lighting the sky, an unexpected feeling of freedom came over me. It hit me that this was the first time I’d been alone, really alone, in…god, years.

The heartache over what had happened would always be with me. But at the same time, to be driving alone on an empty road, watching pink fingers of dawn reach slowly across the desert – to not have to answer to anyone for anything; to know that all my choices were mine, and mine alone…

It felt as if I could breathe again.

Kara’s pistol was still tucked in the back of my jeans. As I drove, I reached behind me and rested it on the passenger seat. Once I’d been so leery of guns, I could barely touch one. I still didn’t like them, but they were useful sometimes. Remembering what I’d promised Kara, I glanced down, briefly noting the pistol’s hard metal casing, the safety switch that was flicked on.

And as I thought about what I’d have to do if I were captured, I felt no fear at all – only an iron resolve.

21

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE a white blur. Snow flurries had followed me from Nevada into Utah, and I crossed the Rockies with trepidation, tapping the brakes and eyeing the poles, some seven feet tall, that would measure the drifts when the time came. It was almost December; the first big snowfall was already late. If it came now, I’d be stuck here until spring.

I was so tired that my head felt weighted, but I kept on through the mountains. When at last the Rockies loomed up in the mirror behind me, I felt as if I could relax a little.

As I pressed on, I stopped only for quick naps under the pink parka, grateful for it despite its lurid colour. Before I drifted off, I always reached out to my mother, just like I had so many times this last year – needing to sense her presence even if she never responded.

Mom, I don’t know what’s happening in Pawntucket, but I promise I’ll stop it, I thought, staring up at the car’s ceiling. There was no answer, but her warm energy seemed to wrap around me – and I sent a silent thank you to whoever was keeping her safe.

I had veered north around Salt Lake City Eden and headed up into Wyoming, rather than risk Colorado, my father’s state. The sky soared around me. Out here, there’d been little earthquake damage, plus I had some idea where I was going now – on the second day, I’d found a road atlas in an abandoned car.

I was managing several hundred miles a day, which I prayed would be enough. The cattlemen out here were all in Raziel’s pocket; they’d turn me in to the angels in a second. So I stayed on little-used roads where I saw no other people at all. Sometimes, though, I’d pass rough signs – Green River Eden 36 mi., turn L on Hwy 191. The angels love you! – and my skin would prickle.

Once I passed one of the old posters of myself – and realized, startled, that even if I cut my hair short and dyed it red again, I wouldn’t look anything like that smiling girl. The Willow in the visor mirror had a thinner face – eyes that had known great sorrow. In fact, I didn’t really look like a girl at all any more. I looked like a woman.

The idea was a little unsettling…then it shifted, became part of me.

With no radio stations, the time passed in silence. Sometimes I sang as I drove, belting out all my old favourite songs; sometimes I just listened to the sound of the wheels trundling over snow.

Food wasn’t too difficult. Every abandoned store I came to had at least a few canned goods left – though always things like kidney beans or stewed prunes. Never any junk food; the Cheetos and Funyuns had probably been the first things to go.

Gasoline wasn’t really a problem either; it was just time-consuming. Crouching on frozen, abandoned forecourts to fiddle with a home-made pump should probably have been my least favourite thing to do as the days passed – but, actually, it gave me a feeling of satisfaction every time I did it.

After replacing a filler tank lid one morning in central Wyoming, I straightened up and gazed over snow-dusted plains. A flock of geese were flying south in a V-shape, and I watched for a moment, wondering why they’d waited so long to migrate.

And somehow, despite everything that had happened, and everything that might still be to come, I realized that I felt…peaceful.

Sun gleamed on the snowy plains. The geese grew smaller against the clear sky, and my body felt lighter suddenly, as if I could take off and fly through the air after them.

“I’ll always love you, Alex,” I murmured. “But I think I’m going to be all right without you. And I can’t tell you how glad I am.”

“Okay, this was not a good idea,” I muttered as the tyres jolted over snow-covered ruts.

It was the third day. I’d been eyeing the smooth grey sky and getting more and more worried about a serious snowstorm – and then some intuition had made me turn off the rural highway I was on, onto this unmarked dirt road.

God, I was going to break an axle out here. But for some reason I kept on going – and after about five minutes, I saw the house. It was set well back, with a paved drive that ended abruptly where it touched the road.

I stopped the car and took in a sprawling brick ranch house with a three-car garage; a twiggy tree in the front yard looked as if it hadn’t had a chance to grow yet. I did a quick scan. No one.

Making up my mind, I got out of the Toyota and checked my pistol, then stuck it in the pocket of my parka. As I shut the car door, it sounded like a bomb going off. I walked up the drive, my footsteps the only noise. Why am I here? I thought.

I studied the grassless front yard: the tangled, untamed lot across the road. And then I stopped, frowning.

For a second, it had felt as if the earth’s energy was reaching towards me – as if everything in the whole world was straining towards me, without even realizing. It was a bizarre sensation; then it was gone.

I stood very still, waiting – almost holding my breath – but nothing else happened. Finally I shook my head and turned back to the house. Right. Obviously I was lonelier than I’d thought.

Though I could have just sent my angel in to open up the place from the inside, I didn’t – it felt like an intrusion somehow. Instead I tried the front door, and when that was predictably locked, walked around the side of the house, testing windows. Finally one slid open.

I don’t know why climbing in through a window seemed less like breaking in, but it did – as if the house itself had granted me entry. I ducked past gold-coloured curtains and stepped down onto a hardwood floor. Then I stood staring as I tapped the snow from my shoes.

I was in a study, with a computer on a desk and a soft-looking leather sofa in one corner. I gazed at a pair of reading glasses. It felt as if I’d entered Tutankhamen’s tomb. Dust lay thickly on all surfaces, and everything was undisturbed, as if whoever had lived here had just stepped out and not come back.

What had happened to them? Had soldiers taken them to an Eden?

I shivered and made my way down the shadowy, carpeted hallway until I found the kitchen: a room with a bay window looking out to a large backyard. On the counter was a coffee machine, half-full and green with mould – there was even a mug with a red lipstick print. I didn’t go near it; instead I found the pantry and swung open the door.

Food. Suddenly I was ravenous – I’d only eaten odds and ends for days. Cans of soup faced me; spaghetti, stew, peanut butter, crackers. I found some plastic bags in a drawer and helped myself, plucking everything still edible off the shelves. There were whole shrink-wrapped cartons of bottled water. And Cokes – I could chill them in snow.

As I placed my “groceries” by what I assumed was the garage door, my heart skipped: there was a set of car keys hanging from a wooden pegboard.

I rose slowly, staring at them. Hardly daring to hope, I opened the door to the garage…and there, like a present for a lucky high school graduate, stood a midnight-blue Ford 4 × 4.

I swallowed, positive that this was all about to go spectacularly wrong. But when I pressed the button on the keys, the truck’s locks snicked obediently open.

Yes! My worries about the snow vanished. There were even snow chains on the wall and a real fuel can sitting on a counter. Grinning like a loon, I loaded up the truck; it still had that new-car smell. But hanging from the rear-view mirror was a laminated school photo of a boy with a brown cowlick…along with a tiny plastic angel.

“You can stay, Timmy,” I said to the boy. He looked like a “Timmy”, as if Lassie were lurking just out of view. “Not you, though,” I went on, detaching the angel – and wondering if this was the answer to what had happened here.

I went back in and set the angel gently on the table. I was just about to leave when I glanced down the hallway. Wait, the bathroom – I hadn’t seen so much as a box of Band-Aids in the abandoned stores.

I found a lot more than that. New packets of toothbrushes, toothpaste – oh, yes; I’d hadn’t brushed my teeth in days. Suddenly very aware of the silence in the house, I quickly bagged up everything that might be useful. Then I glanced under the sink, and found a glossy cardboard box.

My pulse started pounding. It was even the right colour. Maybe I shouldn’t; maybe it was a stupid, dangerous idea. Yet I knew there was no way I was leaving the box behind.

Definitely, I thought, adding it to my bag. But not here.

On my way out, I checked a hall closet and was rewarded with a sleeping bag in a nylon case; I tucked it gratefully under one arm. Okay, time to go. If I were smart I’d probably start looting through all the closets for warmer clothes, but that seemed way too personal – and I had enough.

The garage door swung open when I tugged at it, and the 4 × 4 started on the first try. I backed it down the drive and grabbed what I needed from the Toyota. “Thank you, whoever you were,” I murmured once I was back in the truck. The house gave no response.

I let out a breath and glanced at the boy in the photo. “Ready, Timmy?”

And Timmy said he was.

When the snow came an hour later it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared; the 4 × 4 took the inch or so of white easily. It was a relief to feel how solid and reliable it was as I travelled down the main street of the next dark town: Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

A Payless ShoeSource gaped vacantly. Festive Flowers had pots of dead plants in the window. I couldn’t sense any people – this time of year, they’d probably headed south, or given up and gone to Omaha Eden.

I knew exactly what I was looking for. When I saw it, I smiled and turned right onto First, and then right again. There was a small parking lot at the back; I pulled in.

Stray snowflakes fell softly in my hair as I swung open the truck’s rear door. I got out the cardboard box and one of the cartons of bottled water – and then, with my pistol safe in the pocket of my parka, I locked the truck and walked up the short flight of concrete steps to the back door.

The fading gold letters read: IMAGES SALON.

The door was locked, but this time I had no compunction about sending my angel in. In seconds, I was standing inside a supply room; through an open door was a room filled with mirrors and black curving sinks.

I found a bottle on one of the shelves: Peroxide for hair. The memory of Alex’s reaction when I’d dressed his gunshot wound came back, and I almost smiled. “Different peroxide,” I told his ghost in my head. “And it was the right thing to do, you know.”

I stripped off my parka and V-necked top, and put on a black plastic cape. Then I settled into one of the swivelling chairs and started applying peroxide to my long, dyed brown hair, combing it through. My angel hovered overhead, casting a gentle light.

Twenty minutes, the bottle said. I watched in the mirror, observing with satisfaction as my hair grew lighter by the second. I’d hated the brown so much – it had never felt like me. When the timer went off, I rinsed out the peroxide with bottled water in one of the sinks, and then opened up the box of Clairol Summer Blonde.

Less than an hour later, I was a blonde again.

I smiled at myself in the mirror as I combed my hair out. A little darker than my natural shade, but only slightly. Oh god, the relief – I felt like myself again. This was how I wanted to be when I faced Raziel: exactly who I really was. No more hiding.