I'd never been special. Not once.

I'd been told I was, but only by those who couldn't look me in the eye as they hurt me. They stroked my hair and told me I was special, that I was a good girl, that I was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen and then they covered my eyes from it all, as if covering my eyes would make a difference. As if covering my eyes numbed the pain. As if covering my eyes would make me believe them.

But I never did, because I knew I wasn't special. I knew.

Being Davey's top girl had made other people think I was special, but I'd never believed that either. I just took another pill, snorted another line and smiled as I covered my own eyes.

That Ethan could believe there was anything remotely remarkable about me was insane. I was a nobody. Nothing. But he was looking at me like no one ever had, like he was seeing beyond the façade, beyond the Casey Brogan that everyone else saw and he wasn't just seeing the layers of dirt and filth underneath. He was seeing something else, something that made me think of catching snowflakes on my tongue and dancing in the woods at midnight.

'You're looking at me like you think I have the answers,' I said to him, my voice shaking, wishing I could step out of the spotlight and slide back into the shade. 'I don't. All I know is that my boyfriend and his friends are dead, and the only other friend I have is out there somewhere, on his own, probably terrified out of his mind and you won't let me help him.'

He was just inches away now and I could smell the whiskey and cigarettes on his breath and the faint scent of something musky, maybe shower gel or deodorant. He continued to stare at me, his gaze travelling over my face as if he expected the answers he was looking for to magically appear as tattoos etched on my skin.

'It was a rhetorical question, Casey,' he replied, as if talking to a child. 'I don't expect you to have the answers. How can I possibly expect someone who's refused to believe everything she's experienced recently to give me any answers? And if I were you, I'd worry more about myself than some friend who's as good as dead anyway. After all, it's not him that the Cherubim are seeking. You're the one who's been bestowed that particular honour. They'll send some bottom-rung angel after him.'

'Meaning what?'

'The same, ultimately. But probably quicker. They're too busy to waste time making art out of death.'

I bit back the rage at his flippancy, chewed it, swallowed it down, felt it drop like a stone in the pit of my stomach.

'And what if your friends have found him first?' I said. 'What will they have done to him?'

'They're not my friends...' he began.

'Juliette seemed to think you were friends.'

He rolled his eyes. 'Old friends, and we were never that. I used to fuck her. That's it. I'd hardly call it a meaningful friendship, she knows that as well as I do.'

'Well, whatever she is to you, what will she have done to Addi?'

'If they've got to him first, he would have been collected.'

'Collected?' I echoed. 'I heard Juliette say that. What is it?'

'It's what we do,' he said, walking back to the table and picking up the glass. 'We collect the cursed. People like you. People who can see our world.'

'I'm cursed?' I said.

'Do you feel blessed?' he replied, glancing at me, the corners of his mouth turned up in a smirk.

Angry heat rushed to my face. 'Is this a bloody game to you?'

Ethan looked down, running his thumb around the rim of the tumbler and seeming to find something more interesting within the pale brown liquid. 'No, Casey,' he said quietly. 'This is anything but a game to me.' He took another swig, draining the glass. 'This is a war. One that's been raging far longer than you can possibly imagine.'

With a sniff, he put the glass down and walked away, heading towards the kitchenette.

'Hungry?' he called over his shoulder. 'I've got some chow-mein in the fridge if you want to share?'

I gaped after him. 'W-what?'

'Don't worry, I'll give it a good nuke-ing in the microwave,' I heard him say.

Wars, cherubim and chow-mein. Was he actually being fucking serious?

I followed him into the kitchenette, feeling like this was a dream and a bloody bad one at that. I couldn't believe we could go from discussing Cherubim ripping Davey apart, to sticking chow-mein in the microwave.

Stopping in the doorway, I watched him, wide-eyed in disbelief, as he busied himself taking a large plastic take-out container of noodles from the skinniest fridge I'd ever seen and chucking it into a small microwave. Selecting the time on the digital display, he hit the start button and the microwave whirred into life.

'Ethan, what are you doing?'

'Dinner,' he said, removing two bowls from a cupboard near the sink unit. 'You've got to be hungry.'

'I'm not bloody hungry,' I snapped. 'What's wrong with you? My friend is out there in trouble and you're expecting me to sit down and have dinner with you?'

He took two plastic-handled forks from a revolving cutlery holder on the unit. 'You don't have to have dinner with me,' he said, shooting me a maddeningly calm look. 'You can go eat it in one of the bedrooms if you'd prefer, or the bathroom or in here, I don't care where to be honest, but you are going to eat something. No one can live on pills and attitude, Casey, not even you.'

'Fuck you.'

Opening the microwave, he stirred the noodles with one of the forks and closed the door, pushing the power button again.

'Are you always like this?' he asked, leaning back against the unit, crossing his arms in front of him. 'I save your life and I feed you, and you're acting like I'm doing something wrong?'

I stared at him, unsure how to form the words, but feeling the pain cut deep when the images refused to go away.

'They died, Ethan,' I croaked. 'I watched them die. I watched that thing rip Davey apart right in front of my eyes.' Tears stung my vision again and I hated myself for losing it in front of him.

He said nothing, the infuriating buzz of the microwave filling the silence between us.

'I'm sorry if that hurts you, really I am,' he said finally, showing not one scrap of the sympathy he claimed to feel.

I snorted with derision and looked away, wiping my eyes.

'But my main priority is you,' he continued, his voice firm. 'And maybe that sounds cold and uncaring, but you can't expect me to give a shit about a bunch of drug-dealers who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I set out to save you and you only, and now you are safe, for the time-being anyway, we need to work out just why the Cherubim want you. Now I don't expect any gratitude from you, but I do expect you to at least meet me halfway and fucking eat something.'

As if on cue, the microwave pinged and without another word, Ethan took out the plastic container and shared the noodles between the two bowls, shoving a fork in each. He held out one of the bowls towards me and when I didn't take it, he tutted and shook his head, slamming the bowl back down so the fork clattered out onto the side.

'Suit yourself,' he said and taking his bowl, he walked right past me into the living room, leaving me to stand there staring at the steaming noodles and cursing my traitorous stomach for growling at the sight of them.

After a while, I reluctantly picked up the bowl.

Ethan was back in his armchair, shovelling forkfuls of noodles and chicken into his mouth, when I entered the living room. I took up my perch again on the edge of the sofa, resting the bowl in my lap. The heat radiated through to my thighs and I relished it for a moment, and yet felt strangely disconnected – this odd, fractured moment of normality feeling like an out of body experience. I was sure that if I looked up, I'd see myself floating above, watching my body carrying on without me, eating, watching TV, doing all kinds of normal shit I shouldn't be doing, because nothing was normal anymore.

Numbly, I twirled some noodles around the fork, raising it to my mouth. They were still too hot, but I chewed them anyway, knowing that my tongue and the roof of my mouth would probably pay for it later. The first mouthful was hard to swallow, the second and third, not so much and all was gratefully received by my stomach. Ethan was finished before I was even half-done and I stopped as he discarded his bowl on the table.

'Can I ask you something?' I said.

He looked at me warily, but nodded.

'This place,' I said, glancing around. 'You said it's all under the surface, like, I don't know, another dimension or something. So how did it come to be here? Was it already here? In this building?'

Ethan slicked a tongue across his teeth, picking at something caught there with his thumbnail. 'The world beneath yours has always been here, although you've all been led to believe it was made for us. The Underworld. Hell. Whatever you want to call it. Most of you – well, the ones that believe anyway – think it's all fire and torment and yes, it's fucking full of torment sometimes, but there's no fire, no everlasting burning pits of Hell and it sure as fuck wasn't made by anyone but us. We fashion it how and where we choose. What you see here is just a pocket, nothing more, like a rip in the fabric of reality. When we group together, we can make larger pockets, using our unified powers to protect what we've made and uphold stronger dimensional shields.'

'Protection from... the Angels?'

'Yeah, from the Angels. They look for cracks in the shields. Weak spots. Ripples on the surface that could betray our whereabouts.'

I frowned. 'So, you made this place? On your own?'

His eyes narrowed as he watched me glance around again, my gaze sweeping over the drab interior.

'Not to your liking?' he said.

'It's just...' I trailed off, then straightened my back a little as he arched a dark brow at me in question. 'I don't know, I was just wondering, if you made this place, why you didn't make it a bit... nicer?'

Ethan snorted. 'Says the girl who lived in a dodgy-as-fuck drug den with a bunch of scumbag dealers? Are you kidding me? Sorry, I'm not much for interior design. If I'd known you were going to be that prissy about it, I'd have changed the colour scheme maybe. Thrown in a few scatter cushions and some nice rugs for your princess feet to walk on.' He sucked in an irritated breath. 'It is what it is, Casey. I hardly need to create a bloody mansion just for me.'

'Why are you on your own?' I shot back.

'Because I fucking choose to be, that's why,' he sneered, clearly riled, although that hadn't been my intention.

'Jesus, okay, I was just asking.' The noodles had gone cold quickly and were now sticking to the fork like glue. Even my stomach no longer begged for stodgy mess.

'Ever heard the phrase too many cooks spoil the broth?' he asked, not waiting for me to reply. 'Well that's how it is with us. Too many separate factions with their own leaders, all desperate to grasp onto power any way they can, which is ridiculous considering they should all be working for the same purpose. I grew tired of their shit a very long time ago.'

'So why is this Blake guy looking for you?'

'Oh,' he said, feigning surprise. 'You do listen sometimes? Shame it had to be Juliette you paid attention to. If she wasn't such a mad bitch, I would have drafted her in ages ago to talk some sense into you.'

'That mad bitch of yours was out to get me.'

He hissed out a curse. 'One, like I said, she's not mine. Two, she wasn't out to get you. It wasn't personal. She was going to collect you. There's a difference.'

'Oh really? Well, fuck, I feel loads better knowing that. Thanks so much for clearing it up.'

I looked away at the TV screen, biting my lip in frustration and failing miserably to suppress the anger that was threatening to boil over. The first serving of the evening soap operas was just starting and I stared at it, not really taking it in, because I knew he hadn't taken his eyes off me. When I heard him chuckling, a low throaty crackle that seemed to bring colour to the dreary room, I couldn't help but glance his way. He'd settled back into the chair again, slipping down slightly on the seat, his body more relaxed.

'It's good to know I amuse you so much,' I said, haughtily, glaring at him.

'I'm not laughing at you, Casey. I'm laughing because you know full well I could force you through that wall over there if I wanted to and drop you five storeys to the ground,' he said, gesturing to the wall by the window. 'Yet you still come at me with more balls than a whole football team.'

'I doubt very much you'd go to the trouble of saving me and feeding me, just to drop me out of your window,' I said.

'True, of course, but you're not entirely sure I wouldn't do it, are you?' He grinned. 'And just for the record, I wouldn't throw you out the window. I'd force you through the wall. Being chucked out of a window is nothing compared to having your atoms physically pushed through brick. A few seconds of that and you'd be begging me to hurl you out of the window instead.'

'You know something?' I said, standing up, the bowl still in my hands. 'I don't think you're on your own because you choose to be. I reckon you're on your own because no one could stand to be in your company for more than five minutes without wanting to chuck themselves out the window.'

I walked away, but not before I saw his eyes widen a little and his head tilt to one side.

In the kitchenette, I looked around for a bin and ended up forking the rest of the cold noodles into the discarded container, before putting the bowl in the sink and turning on the hot tap. Water gushed out, soon followed by a cloud of steam that drifted up from the rising level.

With my hands braced against the side of the sink unit, I knew Ethan was behind me without even looking around. I wasn't going to turn, even though every hair on my neck was practically begging me to.

'You forgot my bowl,' he said.

'Wash it yourself.' I turned off the hot tap and gave it a blast of cold water. 'You must be used to it by now.'

I stiffened as he appeared at my side and dropped his bowl into the water. Turning off the tap, he grabbed my wrist before I could plunge my hands into the sink and pulled me out of the way, taking my place at the basin. I took a step back, folding my arms across my chest and leant against the wall, watching as he scrubbed at the bowls and cutlery with a sponge.

Struggling to equate this idea of him as a demon with someone who also washed his own dishes, I let my eyes wander, taking in the dingy, narrow room. It reminded me of the same type of kitchen often found in social housing, something I was quite used to having grown up in a few similar places. Standard issue tiles. Standard issue paint. Standard issue borderline squalor. Standard issue couldn't-give-a-shit- about-the-tenants.

Ethan had been wrong. I couldn't have given a toss whether or not the place was decked out like the inside of an interior design magazine, I just couldn't understand why he would choose to make it look like this when he could have had the home department of Harrods if he'd wanted.

Beside my head was a small pinboard, layers of take-out menus tacked to the cork, their corners well dog-eared and paper yellowed and grease-stained. As I studied them I realised some were old – really bloody old – and I looked back at him, examining his profile in the same curious way, looking for something, anything, that would indicate he was as old as he claimed to be. He looked early thirties at the most, faint laughter lines like barely-there creases at the corners of his eyes.

When he finished, leaving the bowls to dry on the drainer, he wiped his hands with a towel and leant back against the unit, folding his arms across his chest in a gesture clearly meant to mirror my own stance when I saw the glimmer of challenge in his eyes.

'Blake wants me to join him,' he said, in answer to my earlier question. 'He wants me to work for him, in the same way that Juliette works for him, albeit with less time on my knees with his cöck in my mouth. The more collectors he has, the stronger they are, the stronger they are, the closer he gets to obtaining what he wants.'

'Which is what?' I asked.

'Power, of course,' he said. 'But as usual, he's fighting for something he can never have, because without the others backing him, he doesn't stand a chance in Hell – pardon the pun – of ever defeating the Angels.'

'You don't sound as if you like him very much.'

Ethan grimaced and scratched at his beard. 'Blake is descended from the original line of the Grigori – the Watcher Angels who were cast out for daring to defy the Divine Council. The Grigori were meant to watch and observe, report back, a bit like the Watchers you've met, but they got involved with humans, started causing dissent in the ranks and the humans began to doubt what they'd been led to believe. The Grigori were put on trial and those convicted were cast out. They started to see themselves as revolutionaries, trail blazers if you like, the ones that were going to change everything but every time the Angels got wind of their plans they crushed them. Blake's got a high opinion of himself, too fucking high as far as I'm concerned. I don't like his methods, I don't like his self-imposed laws and I don't like him. Never have.'

'So why hide from him? Why not just tell him to stick his job offer up his arse?'

He gave a small, wry smile which quickly morphed into something more serious, a dark solemnity in his expression. 'Oh, I told him that a very long time ago. Let's just say it didn't go down too well and he had every demon under his rule in the northern hemisphere looking for me. I sent a lot of them back in pieces, the few that managed to find me anyway. And, I'm not hiding. I just don't care to be found, by him or anyone.'

'Isn't that the same thing?'

'No, it's not the same thing at all,' he said, his nose crinkling with irritation. 'Hiding denotes fear and cowardice, like I'm cowering in here every day, too scared to go outside the dimensional shield just in case. I'm not scared of any of them. I just don't fucking like them.'

'You liked Juliette enough to fuck her?'

The smirk came back in play. 'You don't have to like someone to fuck them, Casey.' He held my gaze a little too long, almost knowingly, his lips slightly parted as if he wanted to follow it up with some smart-arse quip, but in the end, he just sighed. 'Look, I stay away from them, because it's better this way, trust me. And the Juliette thing was a trick, or at least their failed attempt at one, because I knew from the beginning that he'd sent her, trying to reel me in. I fucked her because I wanted her to think their plan had worked and quite frankly, it was an interesting way to pass the time. I let her believe she'd won me over and then just when she thought she finally had me where she wanted me, I hung her and her little plan out to dry.' He run his fingers through his hair and gave a sheepish grin. 'To be fair, I did actually hang her from a bridge. Dangled her off it and threatened to drop her into the river. Naked. So, I guess it's no surprise she ditched us yesterday when the Cherubim turned up.'

'You hung her off a bridge?'

'Naked. Don't forget the naked. And it was winter.' Catching my horrified stare, he laughed. 'Come on, Casey, please don't tell me you feel remotely sorry for her? After what she was going to do to you?'

He had a point, although I wasn't sure I was feeling any more comfortable around him knowing he had no qualms about attempting to throw women off bridges.

'I still don't understand what you mean by collecting? What is it?' I said, changing the subject.

'Humans like you, ones that can see, are very valuable to us,' he said. 'The power of extrasensory perception enhances your soul, gives you a touch of the divine, if you like. You become more than human and as soon as that happens, your soul emits a kind of energy that, when absorbed, makes us stronger, individually and collectively. By collecting you, Juliette would have become a more powerful demon, although I suspect she's collecting exclusively for Blake and then reaping the benefits.'

'Does it hurt? Being collected? Juliette said it did.'

'Yes. She lies about a lot of things, but not about that. Having one of us reach into your heart and tear out your soul hurts like a motherfucker,' he said, making a crushing gesture with his fist. 'The only positive is that when you're dead, you don't feel a thing anymore.'

'So, it kills us?' I frowned, replaying Juliette's words in my head. 'She made it seem as if afterwards we just, I don't know, forget the pain or something?'

Ethan chuckled, but his eyes were dark, cold. 'Casey, we rip your souls from your bodies and eat them. Do you think you'd forget a pain like that if you were still alive afterwards? Juliette meant that you forget the pain because you're dead. That's it. The end. Finis. Morte aeternam.'

'Right. Okay,' I said.

But it wasn't okay because I was standing in a kitchen with a demon who had freely admitted his kind ate human souls. Human souls like mine. I wrapped my arms tighter around my chest, wishing that I could somehow push myself through the brick to get away from him, even though that stupidly curious part of me couldn't help but open her big mouth.

'Why were you at the gig on New Year's Eve? And why have you been saving me ever since? Because this isn't what you do, is it? You don't save people like me. You kill us.'

He sucked at his lower lip, before running his tongue over his teeth. 'I was there because I was asked to go there.'

'So, you are working for this Samuel guy?' I asked.

'Samuel is even less effective than Blake,' he said, clearly disgusted by my suggestion. 'I wouldn't waste my time talking to him, let alone work for him. I'm not working for anyone.'

'Yet you went to the gig because someone asked you to go,' I persisted. 'Who asked you to go? You choose to live on your own, you won't work for any of the other demons, you don't seem to like anyone but yourself, so why would you do something because someone else asked you to? Unless there was something in it for you? Or you're lying and you are working for someone?'

'For fuck's sake,' he said, shaking his head. 'I saved you, Casey. Isn't that enough?'

'No, it's bloody not,' I snapped. 'Yeah, okay, you saved me and I'm grateful, really I am, but there's something you're not telling me and I think I have a right to know.'

'Oh, so now you want to know? Just the other day you didn't want to listen to anything I had to say and now you're demanding I tell you everything? Christ, I need a cigarette.'

He stalked from the kitchenette, but I wasn't letting this go. Not now. It was like staring into the darkness, knowing that following the White Rabbit down the hole was going to lead to some seriously fucked-up shit, but feeling compelled to jump in anyway.

Inhale. Snort. Swallow. Jump.

He had gone in search of his cigarettes and was already lighting one as I followed him into the room.

'Why were you there, Ethan?' I asked again.

He exhaled tersely, a thick plume of smoke clouding from his nostrils and mouth. 'When the Divine Council detect the presence of a maledicti – a cursed one – they send their soldiers out to find whoever it is.'

'Why do the Angels want... people like me? Do they want our souls too?'

'The Angels have no need for the souls of the maledicti, Casey. I told you, they think you're an abomination. They just want to destroy you to stop the demons from finding you first. Every soul consumed makes a demon stronger and the last thing the Angels want is for the demons to gain power, so they send the Watchers out to find the cursed before the demons do. But something's going on. Something big. There's been an unusually high level of Angel activity. They've tripled, quadrupled the number of Watchers out there and I'm talking on levels that are practically unheard of. I was asked to go along, check things out, see if I could spot the maledicti they were all looking for.'

He took a long drag on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out the side of his mouth as he stared at me, his eyes saying everything.

My heart was racing, a frantic bassline that vibrated deep into my bones. I knew that if I looked down, I'd see my hands trembling by my sides, hanging from limbs so heavy that I wasn't sure how much longer I could stop myself from collapsing. I wanted a hit so bad. One big fucking hit that would pull me under, anchoring me into unconsciousness so I wouldn't have to face this anymore.

'That night,' I whispered. 'You knew it was me. You were watching. You saw me fall.'

'Yes. I saw you.'

'If you knew, why didn't you do something then?'

He inhaled again, dismissing my question.

'Why, Ethan?'

'Because I had to be sure that's why!'

'You had to be sure? You watched me flip out on the dancefloor. You watched me go through all that and you had to be sure? Are you fucking kidding me?'

He stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, his face twisting with anger. 'Just because I saw you were a maledicti, doesn't mean you were the maledicti they were looking for. Do you know how many of your kind there are, Casey? If I'd stepped in then and taken you, and you weren't the one, then I would have blown my cover and fucked it all up, so yes, I had to be sure it was you.'

'Blown your cover? You're acting like you were on some super covert mission or something.'

'Don't you get it?' he said, deep angry furrows wrinkling his forehead. 'I've been off radar for a long fucking time. Going topside was a big risk for me. I had to get it right.'

'Then, why do it? Why risk everything just because this person, whoever they are, asked you to get involved?'

'Because I had to, okay?' he said, raising his voice. 'I owed a favour from a very long time ago and he called it in. I had no choice.'

'Who was it, Ethan?'

He closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing at his temples with the pads of his thumbs as if warding off a headache, and then he groaned, a pained strangled sound.

'Okay, look, the only reason I'm telling you this is because things have gone from 0-60 really bloody fast and the fact the Cherubim are involved is a total game-changer. I was meant to find the maledicti and deliver them to him so he could work out what to do with them. He said having all the Angels around was fucking with his business. They've left him alone for years and then one day, one of them turns up at Seventh Heaven, kills two of his men and threatens to boil his eyeballs in their sockets and turn him inside out if he doesn't help them.'

My stomach rolled. 'Wait, Seventh Heaven? But that's Oscar's club...'

Ethan stepped closer. 'He had no idea it was you, okay? None whatsoever. You were showing no signs of being a maledicti. Even after that first night, I don't know what you did or how you managed to hide it, but it was like something inside you was fighting against it. So, when he met with you at the club, he didn't see it, he didn't know. He's been out of the game for years, which is why he asked me to help find the one they were all looking for.'

I shook my head. Swayed on the balls of my feet. 'No, this is madness. Are you bloody high or something? How much whiskey did you drink? What the Hell has Oscar bloody Turnbull got to do with any of this?'

'Because, Casey, Oscar bloody Turnbull is a demon,' he said. 'And I'm meant to deliver you right to him. By tomorrow.'