Chapter Text
London
February 19th, 1908
Soho was just as Crowley remembered it. It wasn’t a patch on New York City, but it was home.
Or, more precisely, it was the home of a rather friendly enemy, which made it a sort of home for Crowley too.
Though the rows of grey stone terraces seemed almost squat in comparison with the mind-bogglingly tall buildings with which Crowley had so recently become acquainted, there was certainly one thing Soho and New York City had in common: the absolute racket.
Horses clopped by on the cobbled road only a metre away, carriages bouncing loudly along after them. The hawking of the street vendors preempted the possibility of carrying out a conversation with anyone standing even directly beside you, though there were certainly enough people trying to anyway. The shouts of a policeman attempting to clear the street for a motor car were only barely audible above the clamour of the masses of people parading along the pavement.
Crowley slowed his pace as he spotted the motor car, craning his head into the street to see around the shoulder of the man in front of him. It was a fine-looking vehicle, of the touring type with an elegant brass-trimmed grille and a handsome coat of blue paint. Crowley would have happily continued watching the fascinating contraption as it trundled past, except whoever was walking directly behind him, evidently as unimpressed by the automobile as by Crowley’s slowed pace, stepped on the back of his heel.
Whoever it was didn’t even have the good grace to mumble an apology, so, as Crowley picked up the pace and strode past where a particularly large puddle of slushy snow hugged the kerb, he loosened one of the kerb bricks with a thought. Crowley had barely taken another step before he heard a scrape and a splash from behind him, quickly followed by a yelp, a much larger splash, and a great deal of alarmed, irritated voices. Crowley allowed himself a small smile as he tugged the brim of his silk top hat down slightly and kept walking.
A few minutes later, Crowley peeled away from the main flow of traffic to pad down a side street, shoes eliciting small splashes from the puddles they encountered. This road was narrower and darker than the well-travelled Oxford Street, but despite the shadow reaching across the road it was still far too early to light the gas lanterns hanging above every door. The shopfronts were of an older style and marked with age and dirt, and small piles of half-melted snow sat heaped against the buildings.
Crowley took another corner onto an ever narrower street, leaving most of the traffic behind. Here, half of the people in the street were lounging against door and window frames, necklines riding low and morals even lower.
A few eyed Crowley up as he passed, noting his expensive suit and solitary nature. Normally, the demon would have stopped to strike up a conversation or perhaps offer his coat during the chillier months, but he had more pressing business today.
A few drunken men staggered out of a tavern in front of him, and Crowley veered to avoid them. He watched without comment as a passing pickpocket made off with one of their wallets without a single one of them turning their heads. Soho really was a marvellous place.
Crowley strode past another brothel, this one masquerading rather poorly as a tavern, making sure to tip his hat to the two young women twirling strands of dirty hair in his direction. He felt his feet slow as he approached the threshold of the next shop in the row, a small pebble skipping away from him across the cobbles.
A. Z. Fell, Rare Books and Antiquities, read the stencilled writing along the shop’s facade. The letters appeared freshly painted—no earlier than the previous autumn, judging from the wear—but the shop looked decidedly abandoned. The interior of one of the decorative bay windows had been plastered over with large sheets of brown packaging paper, and the other one looked like it had had a plank of wood propped up against it from the inside, the end leaning against the glass. The interior of the shop was dark, though there was enough reflected sunlight entering from the street to illuminate the first of a row of bookcases, the mismatched leather spines of the books still meticulously lined up.
Aziraphale was known for taking unusual measures to deter the public from entering his shop, but this seemed a little extreme.
Frowning to himself, Crowley approached the door and tried the handle. It was locked, but Crowley only blinked and the lock obediently retracted its objection to his entrance. Crowley pushed the door open and took a tentative step inside, trying to gauge how long the shop had laid empty by the taste of the dust in the air.
“Aziraphale?” he called just in case, extending his senses in the hopes of detecting the hint of a familiar, divine aura.
There was no response or indication of another presence, so Crowley moved all the way inside the shop and carefully closed the door behind him, the action muting the street noise slightly. He turned back to the body of the shop and waved his hand. A soft ball of light appeared near the ceiling, casting a clean, white brightness over the rows of bookcases.
Crowley strode forward, pausing to glance behind himself at the floor as he did so. He couldn’t see his footprints, and even the bookcases he passed looked fairly dust-free. Aziraphale must not have been gone for long, then.
Crowley reached the spotless shopkeeper’s counter in the rear of the space and frowned at his reflection in the large mirror set into the wall behind it. While he was at it, he adjusted his coat slightly and brushed a speck of something white off his shoulder. Then he turned, exhaled, and surveyed the empty shop again. This time, his eyes fell on the hatstand standing near the door. The angel had put it there the last time Crowley had been here, about four years ago. Even then, it had begun to accumulate quite the collection of hats, coats, and ascots, and it didn’t look like much had changed. As Crowley crossed to it, he saw that there was, however, a single prong for a hat and another single one for a coat that were conspicuously empty, all the other spots taken by one or two garments.
Crowley reached the hatstand and paused next to it, resting a finger briefly on the tip of the coat prong, the painted wood cool against his skin.
“Hm,” Crowley said to himself, and left the shop. The door locked itself behind him as Crowley approached the adjacent brothel, directing his feet towards the two young women lounging out the open window.
One, a brunette who looked to have barely left girlhood, tittered at him and leaned forward, the neckline of her dress pitching even lower.
“Looking for a good time, mister?” she asked invitingly, her south London accent unmistakable.
“Actually,” Crowley said politely, giving her an apologetic smile, “I’m looking for the madam of the house. I believe her name is Constance?”
The brunette leaned back slightly and exchanged a glance with the second woman, who looked a little older, makeup applied liberally to hide the lines under her eyes.
“She knows me,” Crowley explained. “I’m a friend of the bookseller’s.” He nodded in the direction of Aziraphale’s shop.
The older woman eyed Crowley for a moment, evidently debating whether he was telling the truth.
“It’ll just take a moment,” Crowley added.
She frowned at Crowley for a moment more and then turned to the brunette. “I’ll get her,” she said and disappeared from the window.
The brunette looked back at Crowley, and within a second she had melted back into her sales persona, draping a hand languidly over the window frame. “Sure I can’t do anything for you, sweetie?”
Crowley gave her a faint smile. “I’m afraid not.”
She nodded and shifted her gaze to something over Crowley’s shoulder, eyes panning back and forth. Evidently not seeing any easy customers, after a moment she turned her gaze back to Crowley.
“Between the two of us, I don’t think your friend has a very good head for business,” she commented, her voice dropping half an octave into what Crowley recognised as her normal speaking voice. “I mean…a rare books shop in the middle of Soho? This area’s not exactly know for its literacy.”
Crowley smirked slightly. “Where better would you suggest?”
She shrugged and adjusted a strip of faded lace on the sleeve of her dress. “Charing Cross Road seems to be doing a brisk trade.”
Crowley, who knew from personal experience that Charing Cross Road was in fact the most bookseller-congested street in London, was impressed. Perhaps Aziraphale had been trying to instil the virtues of reading in his neighbours again.
“Ah,” Crowley said, tapping the side of his nose with a finger. “But that implies one wants to sell one’s books, doesn’t it?”
The brunette frowned at him and opened her mouth to respond, but before she had the opportunity the nearby door swung open to reveal a woman in a high-collared dress. She held herself with confidence, and though her face showed the marks of middle age and a hard-fought life, her hair was swept up and hidden under a fashionable burgundy velvet hat and her dress could have been worn by a matron in any middling family.
“Mr Crowley, isn’t it?” the madam of the house said with a welcoming smile, gesturing for him to come closer. “It’s been a few years, hasn’t it? Here, come in out of the cold.”
Crowley followed her as instructed, pulling off his top hat as he did so.
“Mr Fell speaks of you often…I understand you were visiting America?”
“That’s right,” Crowley confirmed, glancing around as Constance led him through a mostly-empty front room and through another door into a private room near the back. She stepped around a small circular table, her lace-trimmed skirt sweeping over the floorboards with a sound like rushes over stone. She pulled a crystal decanter from a sideboard and glanced back at him. “Brandy?”
“Ah, no thanks,” Crowley said, slowly moving the brim of his hat through his fingers. “I was really just wondering if you knew where Azir—Mr Fell was? It looks like he’s been gone for a while.”
She gave a snort of amusement. “If you think that because his shop is dark, you should know that he leaves it like that half the time when he is there.”
“I know,” Crowley said, “but he doesn’t straighten up unless he’s going somewhere. Didn’t even have an open book on the counter. And he never gets off his arse unless he has a good reason to.”
Constance made an expression that indicated that she thought Crowley’s point was fair. If she had put together that Crowley had basically just admitted to breaking and entering into her neighbour’s shop, she didn’t comment on it.
“So…” Crowley pressed, “do you know where’s he’s got to, or when he’ll be back?”
“He left about two weeks ago, didn’t say when he’d be back,” Constance said, leaning back against the sideboard, “but he did say where he was going. One of the girls managed to tease it from him, and it was all they were talking about for days. It seemed very romantic, you understand. Enchanted.”
Crowley gave her a puzzled smile. “Where, then?”
Constance’s eyes sparkled. “Egypt.”