'The problem with Rome,' Ethan said, 'apart from the overpriced coffee, the ruthless pick-pockets and the vicious gangs of zealous tourists, is that there's so many Watchers here that the worm-holes can only be used to travel short distances. They're just big enough to get over or under the next trip-wire, before we have to switch and find another route. It's not easy, but it's doable.'

He fiddled with his hair as he looked in the mirror, brushing it one way, before frowning and brushing it in the opposite direction.

'Of course, that's not taking into consideration the possibility that any of the worm-holes could have been discovered.'

'And if they have?' I asked, leaning against the bathroom doorway, my gaze coveting the firm lines of his shoulders and the nape of his neck, curling one lock of my own hair around my finger as I watched him. My hair was still slightly damp from the shower I had taken, starting out as hot as I could bear, only to give myself a blast of cold when I'd glanced over at the basin and remembered us standing there the night before, his body pressed against mine.

'Worst case scenario, game over,' he replied, grimly. 'At best, I kill the Watcher before it has a chance to alert anyone to our whereabouts.'

'What are the odds?' I said, not liking where this was going.

He turned and crossed the small bathroom to the doorway where I was standing, closing the gap between us that might as well have been a mile wide for the lack of warmth emanating from him. There was a stiffness to his frame, a tightness in his jawline and a stony obstinacy in his eyes that reminded me of that first night in his apartment. The guard was back up, whether because of the night before or because of what we were about to undertake, I wasn't sure, but this felt like a different Ethan. This was the Ethan who killed Watchers and disfigured Powers, this was the Ethan who didn't crack jokes to lighten the mood, this was the Ethan who could make the shadows converge and the light fade.

'Slim,' he admitted. 'Think of the lower-level angels like a CCTV network, all connected up to one another. As they're seeing you, processing what you are and what kind of threat you pose, those images are then being transmitted back to the other Watchers, and in turn, to the Powers and Dominions above them. I have a matter of seconds in which to end a Watcher's life before all Hell breaks loose and half the Council's agents are on their way. I'm using the word Hell there figuratively, of course, seeing as it technically doesn't exist.'

'Right,' I murmured, as he turned abruptly and walked into the lounge. From where I stood, I heard the distinct click of his lighter and I hesitantly followed him into the room, where he was looking out at the city, the smoke swirling around his head. He wafted it away with his hand as I approached.

'Aren't we better off doing this at night?' I asked, following his gaze out to where the city sat shrouded under a blanket of early morning mist which clung to the towers and domes, the double statues of the goddess Victoria resplendent on her chariots, rising through the fog.

He took and drag and blew the smoke out the side of his mouth. 'Rome's the third most visited city in Europe, after London and Paris. Where there's crowds, there's the possibility of confusion. Always the best form of defence when it comes to Watchers. Breakfast?'

He motioned to the table, where a bag of croissants sat waiting.

I eyed them dubiously. 'I'm not really much of a breakfast person.'

A large coffee and two lines of coke maybe, but not food and definitely not bloody croissants.

'When did you get these anyway?' I asked, as I sat at the table, pulling the bag towards me, the scent of chocolate and pastry seeming strangely tempting at this time of day. 'I didn't hear you go out.'

Ethan raised a brow at me and said nothing.

'Oh, right,' I said, gingerly poking one croissant, before tearing at the corner and breaking off a sizeable chunk. 'You did your thing. I get it. Is that when you got the clothes too?'

I'd woken to find a pile of clothes - jeans, a shirt, jacket, underwear, socks - neatly-folded outside my bedroom door, still with the tags attached. Italian-made, all had been expensive and nothing like anything in my wardrobe back at home. To be fair, Davey had always been pretty generous when it came to my clothes – after all, I'd had to look the part – but Italian-made clobber was definitely a cut above my usual garb.

After taking the shower, I'd dressed and stood in front of the mirror, looking a little less like the Casey I'd known all these years and unsure how to feel about that. There was some comfort in holding onto Casey Brogan, Davey's top girl, part of the Hackney elite and all that came with it, yet looking at my reflection in the glass, I felt a strange kind of freedom, almost as if I was seeing myself for the first time. A fresh canvas. Something to work with.

'Are they okay?' he said, his face marred by a small frown.

'Yeah,' I mumbled, with a mouth full of pastry, that I quickly swallowed. 'They're good. Did you steal them?'

'No, I left the money with a letter of apology for being so impatient that I couldn't wait until the store opened to purchase them in the usual manner.' He shook his head. 'How else did you think I got them?'

'Okay, smartarse, stupid question, I know.' I grinned as I shoved another piece of pastry into my mouth.

'What's so amusing?' he said, looking even more irritated than he had before.

I wiped the pastry crumbs from my chin. 'Sorry, I'm just imagining you skulking about the women's lingerie department in the dark, trying to work out my size.'

'Skulking?' His voice shot up an octave. 'Demons don't skulk.'

'No, you move shit using the air, push people's faces inside walls when it pleases you, eat a lot of take-out food and apparently, steal women's underwear. I'm learning new things about Demons every day and it's really not anything like what I expected.'

'And what did you expect?' He walked over to the coffee table and stubbed out the last of the cigarette in the ashtray. 'Oh wait, let me take a wild guess: horns, forked tails, hooves, the whole fucking Halloween costume, right? Or maybe demonic possession and little girls who spew up green vomit, spin their heads three-hundred-and-sixty degrees and who do unmentionable things with crucifixes. Am I getting closer?'

I stared at him, suddenly alarmed. 'You can't do that, right? The whole possession thing?'

'For fucks sake, Casey.'

He sighed, but I swear I saw a glimmer of a smile pulling on the corners of his mouth.

'If you must know,' he said, sitting down on the sofa and reaching for his boots which he began to pull on. 'Possession is a thing, just not one of ours. Most supposed demonic possessions are bullshit hoaxes, either set up by the Council to scaremonger humans into believing their lies, or by your people out to find their five minutes of fame. Originally, of course, it was the first of those two. Council agents would possess the person in question, and make people believe it was the work of the Devil or his demons, and when the Church, in all its many forms was established, it was only too happy to corroborate those lies. The more people feared the Devil, the more the Church could control and oppress. Exorcists can come and do their Godly work and cast out the Beast, but it's the Angel who chooses to leave once the job is done and everyone is pissing in their mortal pants that demons supposedly exist and mean them harm. God the Father commands you, God the Son commands you, God the Holy Ghost commands you, etcetera, etcetera.'

With his laces now fastened, he stood up and grabbed his jacket which was draped over the arm of the sofa. 'So, has the person who doesn't usually eat breakfast finished her breakfast? Can we go now?'

'You're not going to have any?' I stared forlornly at the one slightly-squashed croissant I'd left for him.

'I don't eat breakfast. Apparently, I just eat take-out.'

He held out his hand to me.

'Come on,' he said. 'We have an appointment with the Vatican bank manager. I'd hate to keep him waiting.'

*

First stop was a narrow back street, where terracotta pots housing sad-looking plants trying desperately to survive the final attack of winter lined one side of the road, and on the other side, cars and scooters were crammed bumper to bumper against a wall of roughly-hewn brick.

A street sign just behind Ethan read Vicolo Della Frusta. Thick coverings of ivy choked the muted-apricot walls, only giving way to wooden doors ensconced behind iron gates and patches of crumbling brickwork daubed in faded graffiti.

Grabbing my hand, Ethan led us up the street, only to take a sharp turn into the Vicolo Del Cedro, a road that seemed to double-back on the direction we had just taken. On the corner, an old woman stood outside a house, hanging brightly-coloured towels on a wooden drying rack in front of her door. She stopped to watch us approach, nodding to Ethan as we passed.

'Buongiorno,' he said and took a left down another side street. As I looked back, the woman was peering around the corner, her unabashed curiosity leaving goose-bumps on my skin.

'How do you know if someone is a Watcher?' I whispered to him as I tried to keep up with his relentless pace. I could still feel the woman's gaze burning a hole in my back.

'Oh, trust me, I know,' he said. 'I see them for what they are. There's no hiding from me, just as I can't hide what I am to them. Unfortunately, that's now also the case for you. Once cursed, always cursed. Their true form might not reveal itself to you straight away, but there'll be something in the way they move, their posture, the way they look at you, that'll be unmistakable. That woman, thankfully, isn't one. She's just wondering what two foreigners are doing at this time of morning, charging like bulls past her house.'

Halfway down the next road, Ethan stopped in front of an archway of weathered grey brick, protected behind a barrier of more potted plants of varying sizes. Two tall, red candles flickered tiny flames underneath a framed image of the Madonna.

'What is that?' I asked.

'It's a street shrine,' Ethan replied, his voice low as he stared up at the picture. 'These Marian Shrines, or Little Madonna's as they call them, can be found throughout Rome and were used at one time as landmarks for travellers to navigate their way through the city. They were also the only form of lighting before streetlights were introduced. Bow your head, Casey.'

'What?' I said, surprised by his instruction.

'Pause passer-by and bow your head to the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven.'

I stared at him as he did just that, inclining his head in a reverential way.

'But...' I began, confused as to why he would do this after everything he'd told me.

'She's still looking,' Ethan whispered, and it took me a moment to realise he meant the old woman at the corner of the street, and not the Madonna. 'She might not be a Watcher,' he continued. 'But if she doesn't lose interest in us, we're going to have to find another way.'

My gaze shot to the shrine. 'There's a worm-hole here?'

'Yes, so bow your bloody head, because as beautiful as the back streets of Rome can be, I don't fancy being out in the open for longer than necessary.'

I did as he said, bowing my head and resisting the urge to glance towards the woman and see if her curiosity had finally abated.

'Thank fuck for that,' Ethan said after a few long, uncomfortable seconds and I turned to see the woman had disappeared from view. Glancing around the T-junction where we stood, he raised his hands and pulled at the air in front of the shrine. Brickwork rippled, undulating like it was water and not solid stone. The candlelight flickered furiously. As the surface of reality peeled apart, revealing a gaping black tunnel beyond, Ethan grabbed my hand, and with one final glance, he stepped into the worm-hole, pulling me with him into the darkness.

*

The conversation faded as we travelled from one worm-hole to the next, and with each step accomplished, I felt Ethan's tension increase. His grip on my hand and on my waist tightened, his focus became all-consuming and his whole body seemed to take on a soldier-like stance, to the point where I was starting to feel like we were on a covert military mission. I knew he was taking in everything he saw and every single move he made was considered, while seemingly acting like he was constantly unbothered by our surroundings and by who might be watching as we traversed through the city.

We'd travelled from our base on Gianicolo Hill, to the Marian Shrine in the Vicolo dei Panieri, to a bathroom in an already-crowded coffee shop on the Via della Pelliccia where the coffee machines hissed, and people gathered to sip espressos and talk loudly, and where no one seemed to notice the man and woman who'd exited from the toilets together and left, without ordering a single thing from the menu.

From there, Ethan led us into an empty building framed by scaffolding, where the air was so thick with dust and the cloying stench of damp cement that I couldn't help but cough, alerting the attention of a lone construction worker who gestured furiously at us and shouted what was clearly colourful curses in Italian. Unperturbed, Ethan ignored him, and we slipped out the back entrance into the terraced garden beyond. The worm-hole there, hidden down what looked like an impossibly narrow gap between the tall buildings, seemed hungrier than the rest and I closed my eyes and held tightly onto Ethan as the air sucked on my skin and made a strange high-pitching keening sound in my ears, as if begging me to let go and succumb to the waiting darkness.

Gasping for breath under the bridge where we'd next appeared, the pungent odour of the waters of the Tiber was a strangely-welcome smell and even the slick sheen of bird shit under my feet from the army of pigeons nestled in the rafters above didn't repulse me. By then, I think even Oscar's casting couch would have been a blessed relief from the horrors of the worm-holes and from how exhausting our travels through them already felt.

Everything was moving so fast, and each road with its matching graffiti-infected walls, breath-taking architecture, coffee shops, rows of mopeds and bicycles, and growing number of pedestrians and tourists, soon melded into one never-changing scene, as if we weren't moving at all and each worm-hole was bringing us back to the exact same spot. My head was spinning, my palms were damp with sweat and my legs were starting to ache with a mixture of exertion and tension that stiffened my muscles and dug its claws deep into my bones.

At some point, we'd made it back over the other side of the Tiber again and now, in the distance, I could see the collonades bordering St. Peter's Square and rising above them, the grand dome of the Basilica itself.

I sucked in a breath when I saw it, unable to resist the feeling of awe it inspired.

The mist had long since cleared, making way for a clear blue sky and a crisp, chill in the air that ruddied Italian and foreign cheeks alike and right then, there seemed no better backdrop to the Basilica than this, with the bright, winter sun highlighting the stark, bleached stone of the dome. It was beautiful, everything I had always hoped it would be, but I couldn't help but feel cheated by it somehow, as if I were looking at a fake and not the real thing.

Almost hypnotised by the sight of it, a blur of black smeared the edge of my vision, and I glanced across the road to see a priest crossing in front of a gelato parlour, a tan leather satchel clutched under his arm, his heavy, dark robes swishing behind him as he walked. I gasped and pushed myself instinctively closer to Ethan, who squeezed my hand in return, barely even giving the priest a second look.

'Not all priests are agents of the Council,' he said, as we continued to walk, and I glanced furtively back over my shoulder. 'Most of them genuinely believe that what they have dedicated their lives to, is the truth. They know no better.'

'You sound almost sorry for them,' I remarked.

Ethan chuckled. 'No. No sympathy from me, I'm afraid. I couldn't give two fucks about the sheep who choose to follow the flock. I've seen too many of them use their faith to manipulate others. Why should I care that they've been manipulated themselves? I'm just saying that they're not all figurative cogs in the conspiracy wheel. You'll find those among the Cardinals and Vatican Curia, but the majority of the clergy are just following instruction.'

Tugging on my hand, Ethan led us down a narrow flight of stone steps, but instead of following the street, he took a sharp left and pulled us into a darkened alley behind a restaurant, where black bin-bags of rubbish overflowed from mountainous piles of trash on top of a row of dumpsters.

'The term worm-hole is starting to have a whole new meaning,' I said, dryly, as I wrinkled my nose in distaste and tried to avoid a treacherous path of rotten vegetable peelings and crushed tin cans. 'It's like burying through ten tons of shit.'

'Oh, I'm sorry,' Ethan said with a grunt, as he seemed to use considerable effort to open up a new chasm behind one of the dumpsters. 'Next time, I'll make sure I plan a route more to your liking. A perfumery, maybe? Or what about a patisserie where you can grab a few more of those croissants that you claim to hate so much, yet have no trouble shovelling into your gob?'

'I never said I hated them,' I said, haughtily, as he pulled me against him with a wry grin plastering his face, before throwing us into the dark void once more.

The next location was steeped in shadow and for a moment, as I clung to Ethan in the dark, I wasn't even certain we had exited the worm-hole, until my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I looked around.

We appeared to be inside what looked and felt like a boiler room. The heat was instantly claustrophobic, and I felt the sweat dampen my back as we weaved our way through the network of pipes that snaked up to the ceiling. Ascending a short flight of steps, Ethan opened a door, only to shut it again when we heard the sound of footsteps and voices coming towards us, which stopped right outside the room. Laughter peeled through the cracks, coming from what sounded like two men.

With his head cocked to one side, intently listening, Ethan suddenly stepped in front of the door, holding his hand a couple of inches from the door handle and I watched, enthralled, as the air around it pulsed and juddered.

One of the men was trying the handle. I could see it moving, as if he was furiously trying to turn it on the other side. After a few tense seconds, the door shook in its frame with a loud thud, the man clearly having aimed a kick at it in frustration, only for them to then walk away, their footsteps echoing their departure.

'Quick,' Ethan said. 'They've gone to look for the keys.'

Opening the door, he glanced out before gesturing for me to follow him as he walked down a short corridor towards another door marked uscita di sicurezza.

'How did you know they'd gone for the keys?' I said, glancing at him, as we crossed the car park outside. Looking back at the building, I figured it was an apartment block and the wormhole had been in the basement. 'You speak Italian?'

'I'm fluent in most languages,' he replied, with a shrug. 'Comes with the job, you know?'

It was amazing how quickly I was becoming accustomed to all the new little things I was learning about Ethan. Demon. Dimensional teleportation. Air manipulation. And now fluent in most languages known to man apparently. None of it seemed like a jolt to the system anymore and the more he told me, the more I wanted to know about him. I suddenly had the urge to ask him to say something to me in Italian. Or French. Yeah, French was always good. Davey had a French mate once, every time he opened his mouth, I'd wanted to jump his bones. Addi had hated him, of course. Said he was a baguette-eating prick, or something to that effect. I smiled at the thought of him now, the way his nose had crinkled as he'd said it, how he'd throw total shade at him every time he was in the room, or insisted on calling him Pierre, even know he knew his name was Paul.

Fucking Hell, Addi.

I swallowed down the memory and held it there in my gut.

Pulling me against the wall by the car park entrance, Ethan peered out. We were barely thirty metres now from the semi-circular row of huge columns marking the border of the Piazza and the square beyond was already crowded. Cars congested the road and filled the air with beeping horns and growling engines, and cyclists dodged the traffic, ringing their bells as they attempted to find their way through the maze of tourists who seemed oblivious to anything but the majesty of the Piazza and Basilica beyond.

'Okay,' Ethan said, finally, after spending a few seconds scanning the columns. 'We have three more jumps to make to get inside the Vaults, but they're the most difficult ones unfortunately.'

I groaned. 'How did I know you were going to say that?'

'First, we have to go into the Piazza and get into the restrooms in the Charlemagne Wing. From there, we have to get into the apostolic sacristy, and then into St. Peter's Tomb from where we'll be able to get into the Vaults.'

'What?' I squeaked. 'A tomb? You're taking me into a fucking tomb? With dead bodies and shit?'

Ethan shifted his body closer and rested one hand on my shoulder, looking me in the eyes.

'Casey, I'm about to walk us across a very open space, where Watchers have a tendency to hang out in the crowds in the hope they find someone just like you. Then I'm going to take us into the sacristy, where Council agents masquerade as Holy Sisters and from there, we'll go into the Necropolis, where you're only meant to be by special permission of the Vatican office and where we'll have to somehow slip from the tour party unseen. That's all before I get us into the Vaults, where we'll have to contend with the Erelim and an army of Powers out to stop us, and you're worried about a few old bones of people who died a long time ago?'

I took a deep breath. 'Okay, okay, point taken.'

'Good,' he said. 'Right, let's go. Stick close to me, don't make a big deal about searching out the Watchers, I'll be doing that. Think like a tourist. Walk with the crowds. Try not to be too annoying.'

'Because tourists are annoying?'

Ethan smiled. 'Sure,' he said. 'That's right. The tourists.'

Without waiting for my indignant protest, he grabbed my hand and we walked out into the road, finding a gap in between cars and scooters and bicycles and joining the crowds streaming into St. Peter's Square.

Even amongst the throng of moving, bustling tourists, I felt exposed in the Piazza and half-expected a sunbeam to strike down from the skies above, putting a spotlight on the Most Wanted Maledicti. Despite Ethan's instructions, I couldn't help but glance at faces, fearful that any one of them could be a Watcher and I wouldn't know until it was too late, and I was looking into the blank eyes of the monsters sent to hunt me down.

I stayed close to his side, gripping his hand firmly as he darted through the crowd, his pace quick, but not so fast that it would arouse the suspicion of any Watcher that happened to be nearby, or any policeman or Swiss Guard for that matter. Slipping between the columns, we passed behind one of the large screens and down the side of the Charlemagne Wing. A couple of times I thought I saw flashes of waxen, scarred skin pulled tight over cheekbones, wide mouths with needle-sharp spindle teeth, but I averted my gaze quickly and kept my focus on Ethan and on not losing my footing in the chaos.

Ethan nodded to a door on the left, the symbols indicating this was the bathroom he'd been talking about and I breathed a sigh of relief to get off the Piazza, only for him to shove me to one side as soon as we entered and pull me roughly towards the back of a queue for the ladies toilets, hunkering down slightly behind a group of excitable American women.

He nodded towards the communal washbasins in the centre and I followed his gaze to see the unmistakable face of a Watcher reflected in the mirror.

She looked to be in her mid-fifties, with greying hair long enough to curl where it rested on her shoulders. She was slightly pudgy, the seams of her pink cotton shirt grinning slightly around her waist and she'd finished off her outfit with beige trousers and sensible, tasselled loafers on her feet. Hung on the crook of one arm was a leather handbag, with her rain jacket draped over it. Her head was inclined slightly so she could bend to wash her hands, but even as she did so, I could see her eyes glancing up to look in the mirror, coveting the room in the glass. Everything about her just screamed normal, but strangely even without seeing her monstrous face in the mirror, I could see what she was.

Ethan was right. There really was something different about the way they stood, the way they moved, a slight juddering to their limbs and the turn of their head that looked out of sync with the rest of their body.

I held my breath, my heart hammering hard in my chest.

The Watcher was taking a ridiculously long time to wash her hands as she kept glancing up into the mirror, her white, colourless eyes, that only Ethan and I could see, scanning the people who joined her side at the many basins. As she moved towards the hand-dryers in a way that made me feel a little sick to see it, Ethan took the opportunity of having her back to us and no mirror in which to check out the rest of the bathroom behind her, and he tugged me further along the side of the queue, slipping into a short corridor where a door was marked passaggio di servizio and underneath it, in English, staff only.

Opening the door, he pushed me inside, closing it behind us and pulling on the light cord just inside the small room.

A dull light flickered on above us, a single bulb dangling from the ceiling.

We were in a store cupboard, shelves crammed with bottles of bleach and cleaning supplies, stacks of toilet rolls, mops, and buckets covering every available floor space and leaving little room in which for us to move.

We stood close together under the light. The voices of those in the bathroom outside filtered through the door, but my nervous breathing sounded loudest of all in the tiny confines of the storeroom.

Ethan clenched and unclenched his fists, before holding out his hands, palms flat to the floor either side of him. I swallowed hard as the tiles rippled, as if something was bubbling up from the ground beneath us, quicksand getting ready to clutch at our feet and pull us into the mire.

'Wait,' I said, grabbing at his wrist, before he could continue to open up the worm-hole.

His brows arched darkly. 'You did see what was out there, right? We really don't have time to wait.'

'I know,' I said, wishing I could steady my breathing so not to make my voice sound so shaky. I needed to be strong now. Firm. Resolute. I swallowed again. 'But I'm not going one step further with you unless you agree to what I want.'

'What you want?' he said, his eyes narrowing dangerously. 'I would have thought staying alive would be want you want. I would have thought keeping out of the clutches of the Watchers would be what you want. You're telling me you want something else now too?'

'Yes,' I said, lifting my chin with a bravado that felt false with my heart still banging out a frantic tune against my ribcage. 'I want you to help find Addi. I know you know where he is. I know you can save him. I want you to find him, and I want you to save him and if you don't, then I'm not coming with you.'

He titled his head to one side, his jaw tightening as he looked at me.

'You're serious,' he whispered. 'You're actually fucking serious.'

'So, you'll do it.'

It wasn't a question. It wasn't a choice. It was a deal. A finality he had to accept whether he liked it or not.

'Casey, now really isn't the time for you to start issuing ultimatums.'

I rolled my shoulders back, defiant. 'On the contrary, now is the best time for me to issue an ultimatum, because I've worked something out.' I smiled. 'You can't do this without me. You said it yourself last night. You need me with you.'

Ethan smirked, but I saw the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. A nervous glint that told me everything I needed to know.

'And you thought that meant I can't do it without you?' he scoffed. 'I'm just making sure you don't get into any trouble. I'm keeping an eye on you. That's why I need you here.'

'You're a bloody liar.' I shrugged, folding my arms in front of my chest. 'But okay, if that's the way you want to play it, that's fine by me. Good luck getting into those Vaults.'

'So, what? You're just going to hang around here, go get a coffee and take in some sights maybe? You'll be collected within seconds, Casey. Don't be so fucking stupid.'

'You can take me back to the apartment.'

'I'm not taking you back. You're coming with me.' His face twisted wickedly. 'You know I can make you, don't you?'

'Oh, spare me your little threats, Ethan. Yeah, I know you can force me to come with you. Yeah, I know you can use your powers to make me do what you want. But I can also scream my bloody head off and bring that Watcher in here right now. You'll be forced to defend me and this little adventure of yours will be over.'

It was his turn to shrug. 'You're in Rome. People scream in Rome all the time. Some out of fake religious hysteria and because they get way too excited over yet another fresco or old piece of brick. Some because they've wandered down a back alley and are getting stabbed for their iPhone and cash. Some because they're being ripped from this world by Angels. This city was built on screams. One more won't make any difference.'

I raised a brow and edged closer to him.

'But you don't want that, do you? You need to get into that Vault. You want something in there and it's not the Gospel of Lucifer that you're after. You already knew that it was there, and you've left it there all these years without bothering to try and get it back. I remember what Oscar said to you, about how it was a dishonour to pretend it didn't exist, but that's not what you've been doing, is it? You wanted it to remain in the Vaults. For some reason, it's safer in the hands of your enemies, kept hidden away from your own kind. Which means, you've got no intention of stealing it. You're going to steal something else.'

Ethan said nothing for a moment and the silence enveloped us, tinged with a cold anger that pressed down upon me and I prayed my legs wouldn't start to shake under the weight of the tension.

'Fuck,' he whispered, finally. 'How is it that all that coke and pills you've been consuming all these years hasn't screwed up your head?'

'Would you prefer it if it had?'

He smiled. 'No. Believe it or not, I like you sharp as a tack, even if your intuitiveness is highly irritating and inconvenient at times.' He sighed wearily. 'Okay, Casey, you're right. I do need your help to get into the Vault.'

'Why me? What can I possibly do to help you break in?'

He raised his fingertips to my cheek, trailing them lightly down my face, making my skin tingle under his touch.

'Oh, you'd be surprised,' he said. 'The Erelim - the ones who guard the Vault - they're captivated by maledicti. You're their drug. Their côcaine. They can't get enough of you. Once they see a maledicti, they forget about the Vaults. They forget their sacred duty. They don't even remember why they're there in the first place. They fall completely under your spell.'

I gasped. 'That's how your father got into the Vault to steal the Grail. He took your mother with him. She was a maledicti.'

He whistled out a breath. 'Well, well, you've got it all worked out, haven't you?'

'I guess I have,' I said. 'The question is, just how badly do you want this thing the Angels have hidden away? Enough to make a deal for?'

Ethan's steady gaze dropped to my hand, which I now held out between us.

'Will you do it, Ethan? Will you help save Addi?'