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had calmed down considerably but still needed further observation.”
    “Wrack began keeping away the ghosts. They don’t mean any harm but there are so many of them, all trying to talk at once. It’s bedlam in here, sometimes.”
    “I’m going to get you out. You can come and live with me.”
    “With you?” Julie gave a bark of laughter. “You’d hate me after five minutes.”
     

 
    Chapter 9
     
    Felicia ran along the hospital paths, past the rose beds and the shrubbery, the privet hedges and the sculpted yews. She’d always used running as a means of clearing her head and discarding what was unimportant. Her father had taught her as much when she still lived at home. “Exercise clears the mind,” he used to say. “Keep up, Felicia.” Now her head was spinning with Julie’s revelations. What was a Changed and why had it happened to her? She wanted to go back to when life was ordinary.
    The matron at the hospital had been unsympathetic about getting her sister discharged. There was a lot of paperwork involved, and she was not in a position to help her fill out forms. Felicia would have to make an appointment with Julie’s consultant, who wasn’t available on a Sunday. Even doctors, apparently, had homes and families.
    By the time she’d finished, all the talk of release forms and care procedures had given Felicia a headache. The scar on her shoulder throbbed.
    So she ran, ignoring Julie on the bench, to the poplar trees at the edge of the grounds. It had all started with the sex on Friday night. The girl with the broken tooth had infected her.
    She reached the trees. Running was cathartic and her thoughts were running faster than she. What was the girl’s name? Gemma?
    Felicia tripped and fell, sprawling onto the hard ground with the full weight of her body. “Damn.” She spat blood onto the baked earth and put a hand to her bruised lip. She stood, wincing at the pain from her cut leg. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to go running in a long skirt.
    She had no warning of the branch that hit her in the face. She fell backward, smacking the ground and narrowly missing a stone that would have cracked her head in two. The world went gray again as her anger flared and a man appeared right where she’d been standing.
    “What the hell?” Felicia stumbled back, raising her fists, but the man laughed and dropped the branch.
    “Hold it!” His voice had a melodic timbre. “I had to provoke your gift.”
    “Who the hell are you?” Felicia stood, her heart pumping, ready to run.
    The figure stepped closer. He was taller than Felicia by several inches and had one of those faces that looked anywhere between forty and sixty, full of crow’s feet and laughter lines. His gray hair was cut short in a tonsure and she was put in mind of Derek Jacobi wearing a fifties-style suit. “Someone amused by your repetitive speech. I thought you possessed of more education.”
    “You still haven’t said who you are.” Felicia’s hands clenched.
    “Have a guess.” He stretched his arms and white wings unfolded from its shoulder blades.
    Felicia gaped. “You’re an angel?”
    “Perhaps.” The white feathers changed to dark membrane stretched over a skeletal frame. “Or a demon.” The wings turned gray, then brown. “Or something in between. I am Taliel. Your grandmother called me Tally.”
    “You knew my grandmother?”
    “Intimately.” Taliel stepped closer, his form shifting into that of a young man. “We were lovers, once, a long time ago. She had my child.”
    “Aunty Glad? That explains a lot.”
    “No.” Taliel looked toward the hospital. “Your mother. Your mother is nephilim, which means a child of the elohim, the host of God.”
    Felicia frowned. “What does that make me? Is what’s happening to me your fault?”
    Taliel shrugged. “Genetically, yes, though the child of a nephilim can remain mundane. Something triggered your change.”
    “Someone.”
    Taliel nodded. “Or someone, yes.