Chapter 1

According to her late grandmother's stories, Annie should have been able to wipe every last March fly from the face of the planet with a simple word or two. Pity no one had ever been able to teach her the right words. Every time she'd asked, her grandmother had assured her that the words were already inside her bones, sleeping until they were needed. With those words, she had the authority to move mountains. Power limited only by need. Her mother, in turn, had nodded, with a look that warned Annie not to disrespect the older woman by challenging the truth of her stories. Not that her grandmother had been losing her mind, or lying, just that her stories tended to contain a lot of allegories designed to teach moral lessons. When you face your biggest challenge, you will unlock your hidden strength, was a common tag line to those tales.

When yet another needle of pain jabbed into Annie's shoulder blade, her reflexive smack dislodged the March fly, but also sent her book spinning from her lap.

'Stupid feral torture beasts,' she complained to her best friend. 'Why do they even exist?'

Kelly ignored her, humming her favourite Hunters & Collectors song as she continued to squint at the surfers out past the breakers. Annie wished she'd pick another tune. 'When The River Runs Dry' had made her cry ever since its release two years earlier, and she could never get the words out to explain to Kelly why.

A fat black March fly hovered above Kelly's elbow, and Annie seriously considered using it as an excuse to slap her friend to stop her humming. Land. Go on. I dare you, she challenged. The insect flew towards her, hovering right in front of her face, as if it was preparing to fight back.

Her grandmother had insisted that all she needed to do to wake the sleeping words was to believe the right excuse. Cunning critters. They probably had a hive mentality. Controlled by a super-intelligent Queen Fly. With a plan. A diabolical strategy to sneak into the Garden of Eden and annoy the people there so much that they lost their temper and . Okay, no. Not even March flies could ever make that happen, but surely there had to be some way to justify wiping the creatures out. They weren't that important to the ecological balance, were they? She bared her teeth at the blood-sucker, and it flew off.

'Bloody things!' Annie smacked at a second fly that had started to feed on her foot while its colleague had distracted her.

Kelly spread her auburn hair around her shoulders like a silken fly-proof cape. 'You could always go for a swim if the flies bother you,' she suggested. Annie raised an eyebrow at her. 'At least stop swearing. It doesn't sound right coming from you.'

'I wouldn't swear if I wasn't being attacked by a squadron of demonic March flies. And anyway, it's not swearing. They drink blood, so they're bloody,' Annie said, burying her feet into the sand to cool them down and protect as much skin as possible from being stung. A sharp gust of wind blew a spray of fine sand into her face as she tried to dust off her book.

Kelly leant back on her elbows as if to invite a full-body sand-blasting. 'It comes with the territory, Slaps: beach, sand, flies, surf, boys. You get all or nothing. It's not a perfect world.'

Not a perfect world. The words bumped around inside the hole in Annie's chest. The hole that was only ever filled when she was on the other side of the hidden gateway. As a Cherub born into a human body, charged to protect the secret existence of the Garden of Eden, Annie knew a thing or two about perfect worlds, but she couldn't tell her best friend any of it. Besides, Kelly was having the time of her life. Growing up in Nalong seemed about as far from the beach as you could get, so naturally, Kelly craved it, pestering her dad to take her whenever possible, and the four-day weekend at the start of November was a welcome escape from school. The last break before exams.

Beach meant fun. Everyone said so. Every TV show seemed to include glorious montages of sexy girls eating Gelati and mumbling to each other about which clock direction had the best view, as cute boys with surfboards jogged past them. Somehow Annie had imagined that just sitting on their oversized towels out in the sun would magically give them golden glowing skin, shiny sun-bleached hair and enormous boobs. Instead they got dry peeling skin, tangled salt-encrusted hair and itchy insect bites that were big enough to have their own boobs. Even so, Annie could have ignored all that, except for one overshadowing problem. Beach, sand, flies, surf, boys, Kelly had said. The first four were in abundant supply. It was the 'boys' part that was making Annie nervous. Ever since she was little, her parents had assured her that one day she would meet her perfect match. He would be drawn to her, they'd said. He would protect her, no matter what. He would always know where she was. He could well be someone she had known for a long time and not taken much notice of. Even a fellow student, but maybe not. Someone local, because he wouldn't be able to live too far away from her without being sick all the time-although her father's bond with her mum had only started to kick in when he'd moved to Nalong at the age of twelve, so that wasn't a reliable thing to go on. Especially since Annie had already tested every boy within a hundred-kilometre radius of their small town. The test was pretty straightforward. If her Guardian was compelled to protect her from all physical harm, then a game of Slaps would surely reveal that quirk. The childhood game involved taking turns at smacking each other's hands, and you were only allowed to flinch away if your own hands were under genuine attack. Not one of Annie's opponents had ever hesitated to slap her hands, or even so much as pulled a sour face when she'd played with them. Not a single one had ever let her win, either. Okay, so maybe one. Dean Evans had stupidly assumed that losing on purpose might have made her more inclined to go out with him. Needless to say, it'd had the reverse effect. To her intense relief, a tiny nick on her fingertip with her compass during maths class had ruled him out before things had become too awkward.

Almost obsessively, she'd continued to challenge every new or visiting male student who so much as showed his face in town. It had earned her a stupid nickname, but not a Guardian.

She almost felt like she could pretend to be a normal girl. At least for a while. A girl who could indulge in letting boys flirt with her, and could flirt back without feeling guilty. How long could this freedom last before she was locked into a binding relationship? Binding, bonded. Bound, unable to breathe.

So now, squinting across the water at the three guys Kelly was ogling, who were straddling their surfboards and looking like they were arguing about something, Annie considered her options. They were surely not for her. Not here, over four hundred kilometres from home. Did that mean it would be okay to play a little? It was risky. What if she hit it off with someone, only to have to break his heart when her Guardian turned up to claim her? It would have been much easier if she'd known whom she was destined for-the person she had to avoid at all costs. That was the whole point of this trip, after all. It was the plan that her partner Cherub, Harry, had come up with. Leave town. Go far away. Let him scout around and see who got sick while she was gone. Then after Christmas she would return the favour. It wasn't the kindest of plans, but she was getting tired of being called 'Slaps'.

The boys were drifting back to shore, throwing glances their way, trying to be subtle. One guy-whose build reminded Annie of a Paddle Pop stick with legs-leant towards his friend with the shaggy golden curls and made some comment that caused them both to laugh, and the third guy to leap from his board and attack him. Much splashing and dunking ensued.

Kelly raised one knee, which by some bio-mechanical miracle seemed to enhance the outline of her already ample chest. 'If it was a perfect world,' she mused, 'they'd decide that the next set of waves weren't worth waiting for, and choose to paddle across in front of us to show off their tight abs to their best advantage.'

Annie smiled at her friend's self-confidence.

'Then,' she continued, 'they'd come ashore and pretend to be surprised that they'd drifted so far across the beach from where they left their gear. Of course, that would mean they'd be forced to carry their boards back past where we are sitting, giving them the perfect opportunity to show us how easily they can carry such long manly surfboards with their strong manly arms.' Her smile looked dreamy, accentuating the softness of her face.

'A perfect world, Kel? I'm not so sure. If it was a perfect world, we would already be in there with them, playing in the perfect surf, riding the waves with the dolphins and turtles, and no one would need to worry about showing off just to get noticed. The right person would notice straight away, no matter how rat-tailey your hair .' Her voice trailed away as one of the boys turned and stared at her, his frown barely visible under his scruffy fringe. Was his frown grumpy or confused? She could usually tell. Emotions were easy to judge. Usually. Perhaps he was too far away.

He flicked his pale hair out of his eyes and looked back out to sea, saying something to his companions. Their shoulders slumped, but whatever he'd said, they weren't...