When you've lived with liars all your life, it's easy to become something of an expert.

Whether they look you dead in the eye or try to avoid your gaze, whether they stay completely still or shift around as if bugs are crawling under their skin, whether their voice hitches up an octave or stays exactly the same. I knew liars. I'd seen liars bare-face fake it to authorities to cover up their dirty crimes. I'd had liars tell me they loved me, while opening the door to monsters. I'd had monsters tell me everything would be okay, as they pushed my face into the pillow.

And I stared at a liar every day in the mirror.

So yeah, I definitely knew liars, alright.

In fact, they only person in my life who never lied, was Davey. He was everything Claire said about him, and more, but the one thing he wasn't, was a liar. Davey told it to you straight. Davey was upfront about everything. If you pissed him off, he'd make sure you knew about it. If he wanted to shag someone else, he was blatantly confessional. There was no lie there, and yeah, maybe those were the things most people wanted someone to lie to them about, but not me. I wasn't interested in fake platitudes. I wasn't interested in people who smiled to your face then fucked you over behind your back. Davey was the only one who ever gave me the truth.

Even Addi lied to me. There'd been this one crazy, drug-fuelled night when Addi and I had both been partying hard, and we'd left the basement club where Davey was on the decks to sit outside and cool off, watching the sun come up as we went down. The buzz was starting to fade and sometimes when it does, when you feel it loosening its grip, there's this honesty, a truthfulness that just hits you straight in the heart, when you're almost ready to say what you never dared admit. Dark stuff. Deep shit you've kept locked way down inside where you think you've buried it just enough to keep it there, shoving mud and dirt into its mouth in the hope you can suffocate it into silence forever. And then you have this moment – a connection, I suppose – with that one person who is feeling the start of the comedown just as you are. I'd looked at Addi then, as he sat with his head back and eyes closed, the first light of the morning highlighting his dark skin and full lips that I often thought about kissing.

'We could leave, you know,' I'd whispered. 'Pack a couple of bags, take off... I don't know... anywhere.'

Anywhere had seemed good right then. Anywhere had seemed better than being where I was.

Beside me, Addi had chuckled warmly. 'Yeah, man,' he'd said with a long, drawn-out sigh, his eyes still closed. 'Ibiza, right? We need to go back there and party our arses off. You, me, Davey, it'll be like the old days, babe.'

From somewhere far off, a car horn had screamed into the night, tyres screeching against asphalt. The urge to do it, to go, to flee, was stronger than it had ever been.

'Not Davey. Me and you.'

When I'd turned to look at him, his eyes were open, staring straight upwards. He'd swallowed, cheek muscles twitching with tension. I thought then that if I touched him, if I had lain one finger on him, he'd have shattered like glass.

'What about Davey?' His voice had been low, shaky, like he was desperately trying to control it. I'd hated myself a little then for doing it to him, but I'd said it and it was too late to take it back.

'What about him?' I'd shrugged. 'Anyway, I don't want to go to Ibiza. I want to go somewhere I can breathe.'

'You can breathe in Ibiza, baby girl.'

'No, I can't. I can't breathe there... or here. I want somewhere where you and me can do this every day. Sit outside and watch the sun rise. Just... breathing.'

He'd stared at me, and if I'd hated myself before, I fucking despised myself seeing the look in his eyes. It was like watching someone's life flash in front of them, only I knew Addi was seeing it all, the stupid crazy fantasy that he'd never dared to admit he wanted, because of what it meant for him and Davey, because of what it would have meant for all of us.

'So what do you think?'

'You're not being serious?' he'd said. 'You don't really wanna go, right?'

'Yeah, I do. So? Do you want to come with me?'

He'd looked for the truth in my eyes then, but like I said, I was a liar too and bloody good at it when I wanted to be.

'Come on, why would I ever want to leave this, eh?' he'd said. His grin was small, fuelled by an anxiety that seeped from his pores like nervous sweat. 'I got my crew, I got my boy Davey, I got these sweet club nights, all the pills I want. I got everything I need right here.'

'Really? Everything?' I'd said, turning my body slightly towards him and resting my hand on his knee. His gaze had flickered to where my hand was. I'd had the urge to trail it up his thigh, just to see what he'd do but somewhere inside I knew that would be too much for Addi.

The laugh he gave had been as fake as his smile. But it was the few seconds of hesitation that told me he was still seeing that fantasy play out in front of him.

'Yeah, of course. Everything,' he'd said, avoiding my gaze and fidgeting, moving his leg on purpose so I'd have to remove my hand. 'Baby girl, I swear you must be tripping or something, all this talk about leaving. What's wrong with you? Damn.'

I'd not been surprised by the lie. I'd known it was coming long before I even asked the question, but I was surprised by how much it hurt to hear him say it.

I'd wanted him to tell the truth, I'd wanted his honesty, I'd wanted him to say he wanted to be with me. If he'd said it, if he'd just have said it out loud, I think I would have said yes. Of course, I'd have fucked up the Good Life at some point, because that's what I always did, but the idea of it, just the thought of being able to breathe had me climbing the ladder again – one last high before the fall. 

When he lied, I just knew the fall was going to hurt like fuck.

***

The light that streamed into the warehouse was warm on my face as I looked up through the ravaged hole in the roof. It had already begun to dull a little since we'd arrived and I knew it wouldn't be long before it was dark and the warmth on my skin faded. I was already feeling a coldness in my bones, but it was more to do with the man who stood close by, watching me as I leant my back against the car trying hard to appear casual and yet feeling anything but. 

The lie about his name had hit me hard, but I hadn't wanted him to realise that I knew he'd lied, so instead I'd nodded and then got out of the car, claiming I needed some air.

I hadn't really been lying about needing the air. The lie had ballooned as soon as he'd said it, the words pushing outwards, filling the small confines of the car until I thought I would suffocate, but I didn't feel any better now I was standing outside of it and he was just standing there, his eyes scrutinising my every reaction.

The crazy thing was that for some reason, I wanted to believe him, but if even just his name was a lie, how was I meant to process anything else he might tell me? I needed answers and suddenly I wasn't sure he was going to give me them.

Ethan – I was going to have to call him that, seeing as it was the only name he'd given – reached into his jacket pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes, raising a brow in amusement when I declined the one he offered.

'You surprise me,' he said, after lighting his own and taking a long drag, exhaling the smoke in the other direction, as if he thought it might bother me. I'd just watched some unseen force blow strip-lights from a ceiling and toss cars up in the air like they were toys, cigarette smoke was hardly at the top of my Things That Were Highly Fucking Dangerous list.

'I do? Why?'

'You consume all sorts of shit every single day and yet you don't smoke?'

'I never said I didn't, I just don't want one.'

The truth was I'd started when I was a teenager, snagging them off older kids at school, swapping fags for tongue kisses and sly gropes behind the science block, but they'd soon lost their appeal, as had the spotty boys with their nicotine breath, sweaty palms and unimpressive hard-ons.

'From me? Or you just don't fancy one? After what you've just seen, I'm surprised you don't want a whole packet.' He took another drag, the exhale sounding like a weary sigh in the quiet of the warehouse.

'They don't really do anything for me to be honest.'

Ethan nodded in mock agreement. 'Oh yeah, that's right, you prefer the harder stuff, don't you? Do you even know how they make cocaine by the way? I watched a programme on it the other day. Blew my fucking mind. Petrol. Battery acid. Cement powder. I mean, fucking Hell. I'd take the cigs any day to that bloody concoction. Then they cut it with all sorts of shit when it makes it over here. You all think you're off your heads on Grade A coke, when actually you're getting high on insecticides and worming tablets.'

I glared at him. 'Sorry, but did you bring me here to lecture me on the dangers of drugs, or did you bring me here to tell me what the fuck is going on?'

He chuckled, the laughter drifting up in the smoke. God, I wanted to smack him one. After everything that had happened, the train, the hospital, dragging me across the car park with god-knows-what on our heels and now after all that, he was laughing at me. Actually bloody laughing at me.

'You think this is funny? You think any of this is funny?' I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms, angry heat rising to my cheeks.

Taking one last drag, he dropped the half-finished cigarette to the ground, stubbing it out under the toe of his boot as he coolly assessed me from narrowed eyes. I swallowed, sensing the air around him change, almost as if the sun had finally dropped out of the sky and the night had come to claim its throne. It hadn't. The light was still there, weaker, but nothing had changed.

Nothing apart from him.

His hard, steady gaze broke away and whatever it was lifted, the pressure easing.

'I don't think any of this is funny, Casey,' he said, softly. 'And actually I didn't bring you here to tell you what's going on. I just brought you here so we could get off the streets. Telling you anything wasn't really part of the plan.'

'What?'

My chest ached with the flaring panic. He'd wanted to bring me somewhere no one could see us. He had a plan for me which didn't involve telling me the truth. My gaze casually swept the warehouse behind him, wondering if I could make it to the entrance before he could catch hold of me.

'You said you would tell me,' I said, edging along the car. It was closer to where he was standing, but it was also one step closer to the doorway. 'I've been seeing all kinds of weird shit for days now. I was attacked outside Oscar's club; I was attacked on a train and now I find I'm not even safe at a bloody hospital. Every time something has happened, you've been there, and yet telling me why isn't apparently on your agenda? Don't you think I deserve to know the truth?'

'I told you that you wouldn't believe me.' He shrugged. I couldn't believe how calm he was, how utterly controlled he was when we'd just been through Hell, when I felt like I could just start screaming and never stop.

'Why don't you try me, yeah?' I said. 'Is this something to do with the drugs? Is that why you were talking about what goes into them? Are you working for Oscar? Is he cutting them with a hallucinogenic or something?'

'You think you're taking hallucinogenics?' Ethan replied.

He was giving nothing away but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. He was here talking to me about what went into the powder, I was seeing shit I couldn't explain, Ethan had been outside the club and Oscar was slap bang in the middle of it all, the sleazy spider weaving his web of dirty drugs.

'Well, it would explain a Hell of a lot,' I said, pushing myself away from the car and a little further towards the door. 'All the things I've been seeing are just insane. Then what happened on the Tube today, that guy was saying the same thing over and over and nobody was helping, nobody did a damn thing! If Oscar is cutting the drugs with something else, that would make a lot of bloody sense. I must have hallucinated the whole thing, because somebody would have done something.'

'Okay,' he said, tilting his head to one side. 'Let's say you're right. If this Oscar of yours is cutting the supply, why isn't anyone else being effected by it? Why are you the only one having these episodes, as the nurse put it?'

'For a start, he's not my Oscar,' I snapped. 'Secondly, I don't know if anyone else is experiencing the same thing. Half of East London's underground club scene probably buys from Oscar. You think I'm going to ring them all up and see if they've been seeing any crazy shit recently?'

Another step. I was getting closer. I could feel the chill from outside tickling the back of my neck.

'But you'd have heard about it,' Ethan said. 'That kind of news gets around. Kids freaking out. Ending up in hospital like you did today. The police would already be investigating and what do you think they'd find out if they did? That the people experiencing drug-related episodes all went to one of your boyfriend's club nights. The boyfriend who happens to be closely associated with local gangster and poster-boy of the old school network, Oscar Turnbull. Trust me, if this was down to Oscar and his drugs, your boyfriend would have had his balls ripped off by now and shoved so far up his arse that no surgeon in the land would be able to extract them. And you?'

He smiled and I froze.

'All the thigh-skimming dresses in the world wouldn't help you, Casey. You'd find yourself in a filthy, back street club in Kiev within days, drugged up to your eyeballs, wearing nothing but your knickers and turning tricks just to stay alive.'

Suddenly, I realised just how stupid I'd been. How could I have been so foolish? A few fucked-up moments that had sent me reeling and I'd opened my big mouth and let it all gush out in a torrent. Ethan had been there every time something had happened and I thought he'd been saving me. I'd been on my own my whole life. No one had ever saved me before. No one had ever stepped in and come to my rescue and then somehow this guy had saved me twice within a matter of days.

This guy who seemed to know a heck of a lot about Oscar and the drugs. This guy who knew a lot about Davey. This guy who seemed to know too much about me.

'Look,' I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice and failing miserably. 'Whatever this is, whatever Oscar thinks, I would never betray him. I would never betray Davey. I know I fucked up on New Year's Eve, I know I've been fucking up a lot lately, but I'll calm down. I promise I will. I'm not about to screw things up for them. Just tell Oscar that, yeah? Tell him he can trust me.'

Ethan frowned. 'You think I work for Oscar?'

'Don't you?'

This was getting worse by the second. If he didn't work for Oscar, that meant he was either working for one of the other gangs or he was a copper. Either way, I was well and truly screwed.

'Then what do you want?'

He did sigh then and it did sound exhausted as he scratched at his beard, reaching up to rub the back of his own neck as if to ease an ache in his tired muscles.

'I'll tell you what I don't want,' he said, wearily, as if resigning himself to some fate I had no idea about. 'I don't want you to run.'

Fuck. He knew.

I did it anyway. With nothing to lose and my heart screaming out the beats in a panicked frenzy, I turned on my heels and ran for the warehouse entrance, somehow knowing it was futile but needing to at least try, one last ditch attempt to save myself because I knew nobody else would.

I didn't get far when I felt the pull.

I'd expected his hands to grab me roughly, expected him to swing me around to face him, to throw me across the warehouse. I'd expected to find myself face-down on the ground, eating dirt and feeling the cold, biting pressure of a knife held against my throat, feel his body pressed against my back. That was the reality for girls like me. I'd heard about it too many times to know those stories were real. Not make-believe. Not fiction. Real. This was going to be it. This was going to be the fall I'd always known was coming. The ultimate comedown.

It took me a couple of seconds to realise that not only had Ethan not done any of those things, but that he wasn't touching me at all.

I was stuck. Immobilised.

Gritting my teeth with exertion, I managed to tilt my head to look down, gasping to see that my body was seemingly frozen mid-step, one leg bent at the knee and raised off the floor, my torso leaning slightly forward, one arm outstretched.

I felt the pull again, a tug that jolted me backwards and I forced my head to turn and look behind me, an action that felt like I was pushing against stone with everything I had. My neck shrieked with the effort, muscles resisting, pain rippling down my spine.

Ethan hadn't moved an inch.

He stood exactly where he had been, his feet braced against the ground, one arm reaching out, his palm held out towards me and in between us the air undulated in great juddering waves. Closing his fist, he pulled and I felt it, like my whole body was being sucked into the space where the air rippled and shook, a great moving beast waiting to consume me. With his other arm, he made a slicing gesture, his hand flat, and then curling up his fingers, he began moving his arms, one after the other, drawing the air towards him, drawing me towards him.

I cried out as my feet dragged along the ground, furrowing tracks in the thick dust.

'No,' I whimpered. 'No, stop, please.' I tried to struggle against it, but he just kept tugging, rolling the air again and again in his hands, until finally I was within arms-reach where he grabbed me, spinning me around and pinning me against the car.

My breath came in short, desperate gasps as his body pressed against mine, his fingers curling tightly around the lapels of my jacket.

'Still think you're hallucinating?' he said, one brow raised in question.

I shook my head. 'N-no,' I stammered.

'Good. Now let's get a few things crystal clear, okay? I do not work for Oscar; I don't work for anyone and this is all very, very fucking real. What you've seen. What you've experienced. It's all real, Casey.'

I stared into his eyes and prayed for the shutters to come down like they used to when I was a kid. Back then, when the monsters came, I would hide in the wardrobe, pushing my way through the fur coats, until I felt the gentle touch of snowflakes falling on my face and I'd stay there, dancing with Mr. Tumnus, our feet making patterns in the snow. I'd get cold, but it didn't matter because I needed that numbness. I needed to make sure I didn't feel anything. With my face pressed into the pillow, dancing with Mr. Tumnus was the only way to numb the pain.

These days, drugs were my Narnia, only I couldn't escape there this time. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide from the monsters. Especially when one was staring at me in the face with his body pressed against mine, holding me firmly in his grasp, his breath hot on my skin.

'Y-you said you weren't one of them. You said that.'

'I wasn't lying,' he said. 'I'm not one of them and right now, you should be very fucking thankful that I'm not, otherwise things would be very different.'

I swallowed. 'What are they?'

'The ones you saw on New Year's Eve. The ones you saw on the train today. They're Watchers. Put here on Earth to watch for people like you. People who see too much.'

You see too much. You shouldn't see.

'I don't understand.' My throat felt raw, my eyes misting up in fear. 'That guy on the train, he said the same thing. He said I see too much. What does that even mean?'

His gaze travelled over my face. 'You see the truth, of course.'

'What's the truth? You're not making any sense.'

A tear spilled over and Ethan touched his fingers to my skin, catching the droplet just under my eye, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger like he'd never seen a tear before.

'You see them,' he said. 'You see the Angels, Casey. And now they know that you see them, they won't rest until they've found you and ripped you from this world.'

'And what are you?' I whispered. I was falling; falling faster and harder than I had ever fallen in my life.

'Me? Oh, I'm a Demon.'

I sucked in a breath and he cocked his head to one side, detecting the small whisper of sound.

'See? Told you that you wouldn't believe me,' he said, with a smile. 'No one ever does.'