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stop until we’re outside and breathing in fresh air. In the late afternoon the winter sun is perfect to warm up my chilled blood. We sit on a bench and Amber pats my hands. ‘Hon, you’re as pale as a ghost. Are you sure I can’t get the nurse?’
    I don’t want to lie to Amber. She’s my best friend. She knows about the angels. But what am I supposed to say? How do I explain that the last time I saw that teacher he was standing in the burnt-out shell of my house? ‘It’s been a long day. I just want to go home.’
    She pulls her phone from her skirt pocket. ‘Mum will take you.’
    ‘No, don’t call your mum. Dawn’s been so wonderful; I don’t want to inconvenience her more than I already have. Jordan has Biology in Mr Dawson’s lab. It’s last period. He won’t mind.’
    ‘OK.’ She selects a digit on her phone and lifts it to her ear. ‘Hey, moron, don’t ask, too complicated to explain on the phone but she needs to go home – now.’
    He says one word. I hear it clearly. ‘Where?’
    ‘Out front of the Science Block.’
    I hear his footsteps bounding down the corridor before Amber puts her phone away. Running straight over without breaking his stride, he gets down on his haunches in front of me. ‘What happened?’
    Amber fills him in. ‘We had a substitute teacher in Physics. Ebony recognised him and she didn’t feel like going in.’
    He swings his eyes back to me with a furrowed brow. ‘Who is this dude?’
    I take a deep breath. ‘He says he’s my uncle. As in my real , flesh-and-blood uncle.’
    ‘You’re adopted. How’s that possible? How much does he know about your origins? Does he know you’re an angel?’
    Amber shrugs. ‘That depends on whether he’s been lying to Ebony, or not.’
    ‘Lying about what?’
    ‘My birth,’ I tell Jordan. ‘Amber and I checked his house out during our last semester break for proof that I was born there – like he’d told me.’
    ‘So you’ve met him before?’ Jordan asks, looking confused.
    ‘He came to my house after the fire,’ I explain. ‘It was the first time I could walk through the remains.’
    ‘I didn’t see him there,’ Amber says.
    ‘He didn’t stay long. By the time you came back from checking the barn, he was gone.’
    I pluck at an invisible thread on Amber’s blazer sleeve as memories of the day of the fire fill my head, how I went searching room by blazing room for Mum and Dad without finding a sign of them.
    ‘You OK?’ Amber asks, noticing my sudden withdrawal, and my watery eyes.
    I nod and remember what I was about to say: ‘I think Mr Zavier might work for Prince Luca.’
    Jordan’s eyes open wide. ‘Then he would know your origins. He would know whether you’re human or angel.’
    Amber scolds him, ‘But we already know Ebony is an angel. Why would you doubt that?’
    ‘I only meant for certain – that’s all.’ He looks at me and shrugs his shoulders with a sheepish grin. ‘I’m just saying, you know?’
    ‘Well, I suppose you’re right, if anyone knows the truth, it would be Mr Zavier,’ I tell him.
    ‘How sure are you that he’s working for Prince Luca?’
    ‘I have no tangible evidence, but when we met at my house he said some weird things.’
    ‘Like what?’ Jordan frowns.
    ‘He wanted to know which one of my parents “cracked” first. He said it was important that he know whether it was Mum or Dad who admitted they had lied about my birth.’
    ‘Oh my God,’ Amber exclaims.
    ‘And he wouldn’t give me a straight answer to any of my questions. But there is something that proves . . .’ I glance at Amber. ‘Well, that I lived in his house when I was little.’
    Jordan looks from me to her. ‘What?’
    She says, ‘Ever since Ebony was a kid she dreamed of a big white house with shiny floors, fancy paintings, a polished timber staircase, a beautiful piano, that sort of thing. And when she saw Mr Zavier’s mansion, she recognised it as the house from her dreams.’
    ‘