Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mrs Potts had a problem. It was a problem no-one had really had for several hundred years, and one which the modern world was ill-equipped to solve. She clutched the telephone handset nervously.

"It's our Neville," she told the nice young man on the phone.

Mrs Potts was not an imaginative woman, which is why she had first called the police, the doctor, and her MP, but after their responses, even she felt a tremor of trepidation as she continued:

"He's turned into a frog."

"Ah," said the nice young man with an air of resignation. "That sounds more like my colleague's department, please wait just a moment while I transfer you..."

There followed the sounds of someone trying - and failing - to transfer the call, interspersed with occasional muttering about too many buttons and look, just do it you stupid machine, he's right there and never had this sort of trouble before they made things so complicated...

"Oh just give it here," came another voice in the background. The receiver was handed over. The new speaker did not sound like a nice young man. He sounded like he'd be out behind the bike sheds smoking if you took your eyes off him for two seconds. "What's up?"

"It's our Neville," Mrs Potts said again. "He's a frog."

There was a groan from the other end of the line, and Mrs Potts braced herself to be hung up on for the fourth time in one morning.

"Another one?" said the man on the phone. "Lemme guess, you're in Norwich?"

"Well, yes--"

"Bit of frog problem, Norwich has at the moment. We're looking into it. My colleague'll get your details, we'll be in touch."

Mrs Potts heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, someone was doing things properly. She glanced over at the large, green frog sitting in Neville's favourite chair. It was wearing an expression of deep disgruntlement, but then, that was normal both for frogs and for Neville.

The phone was handed back to the nice young man. Mrs Potts thought she barely caught a sotto voce, "I don't see why you can't write it down yourself--"

"You're the one who always complains about my handwriting, angel," came the drawled response.

"Ah, yes, madam, if I could take your name and address, contact number, and some details of when the event occurred..."

The Agency didn't advertise. It didn't need to. When people needed it, they found it, whether as a column in their daily newspaper, a poster at the bus stop, or the top result in their internet search. Some of the people who called the Agency were looking for a private detective, and some were looking for spiritual assistance, and some really had no idea what they were looking for, only that they'd like to find it in a hurry before things got any stranger.

Crowley was already sticking a pin into the map of Norwich he'd tacked up on the wall. He'd tried using online maps for this sort of thing, but there was something very satisfying about hammering a sharp point into a geographical location that was annoying him, and Google hadn't managed to replicate that yet.

"That's three frogs this morning," he said as Aziraphale hung up the phone. "Seven this week. Eight if you count that geezer with the accent--"

"Mr Richardson," Aziraphale put in reproachfully.

"-- right, him, though I'm not sure he knows the difference between his wife and a frog on the best of days--"

"Nevertheless, we'd better look into it." Aziraphale handed Crowley the neatly written index card with Mrs Potts's details. Crowley tossed it onto his desk. "Really, why do your lot always go straight to frogs, anyway?"

"Frogs're easy. Satisfying, too. The look on their faces when they realise what's happened. Plus, if they really piss you off, you can just take one big step forward..."

Crowley held up his hands defensively at Aziraphale's horrified expression.

"Not me, I was never a frog sort of person, me. And they're not my lot. Not any more."

He eyed the map of Norwich from behind his sunglasses. The pins he'd stuck in it so far were clustered around the city centre. There was a certain pattern to the victims, as well. Shop clerks, baristas, a traffic warden... the kind of people who were likely to be on the receiving end of other people's frustration. Especially if the other people were new to this whole people thing.

"Another one got curious, is my guess," he said. "Came up to see what all the fuss was about, someone spilled coffee on their new body, and boom, frogs everywhere."

"You'd think they'd have learned by now..."

"Yeah? And whose side made all the ATMs on Oxford Street spit twenties because they couldn't figure out how a chip and pin works?"

"They're not my side either," Aziraphale replied primly. "And I told Nanael just to write a cheque."

"No-one uses cheques anymore."

"Really? They always seem to accept mine."

Crowley considered pointing out that this was, in fact, entirely down to Aziraphale's unshakable belief that it would be so, but decided against it. Ever since the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't, Aziraphale would get terribly upset when he realised he was bending reality around him without meaning to. It was exactly the sort of thing the Agency was supposed to prevent.

It had been Adam's idea. Well, strictly speaking, Adam's idea had involved a lot more secret underground bases and solemn people in black suits, but Crowley had pointed out that a) getting Aziraphale to dress like that would be a minor miracle in itself, b) all the really good underground bases had been converted into server farms these days, and c) as far as recruitment went, there were really only two of them qualified for the job.

Heaven and Hell had long watched the Earth from afar, treating it as a disposable battleground. Humans were little more than temporary pieces in the great game - until Adam changed the rules. Now Earth, it seemed, was going to be around for the foreseeable future, and humans were apparently far, far more dangerous than either the celestial or infernal realms had suspected. And so, after a period of confusion and milling around, the fact-finding forays had begun.

An angel came to Islington, and promptly started a riot by turning water to wine in the recently installed eco-friendly drinking fountains. A devil went down to Georgia, and every violin in the state mysteriously became something nasty overnight. Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale had managed to identify which side had been responsible for the Bognor Incident, but seven hundred angry flamingos and a sentient beach umbrella had occupied their full attention for nearly a week.

Given that they were immortal beings, both angels and demons were remarkably lacking in patience, at least when confronted with the baffling idiosyncrasies of the mortal world. Even the ones who weren't trying to cause trouble had a tendency to leave a trail of weirdness in their wake.

As for the others...

There were maps on every wall of the office now. Most of them were from the UK, presumably because it had been the centrepiece of the abortive Heaven/Hell rematch, but a few enterprising entities had branched out to other parts of the world. Aziraphale had rushed off to Australia just last month to chastise a pair of cherubim for attempting to fix the platypus.

("Though I must say," he'd confided on his return, "the poor thing does seem in dire need of some adjustments. I can't believe nobody spotted it during testing."

"Always said seven days wasn't long enough to catch all the bugs."

"Well, it's true we did go rather overboard on beetles....")

Some of the maps had pieces of string indicating other maps that were relevant to the incident in question, or newspaper clippings, or scrawled notes. The office was a big, old room in a big, old building in Mayfair, with high ceilings and elegant plaster moulding. The maps went right up to the ceiling, filling spaces that shouldn't, technically speaking, be reachable without a ladder, which they did not have. Even so, they were running out of space.

The whole office was the same. It had started out rather stylish, with its impressive mahogany desks, leather seats, and air of quiet authority. Crowley had brought along the world's most over-engineered coffee machine and a spider plant with PTSD; Aziraphale had contributed a shelf of impressive-looking leather-bound books and a rack containing more kinds of tea than Crowley had even known existed in the world.

It was all lost now under a sea of paper. It didn't help that both of them had a tendency to assume they would just find what they needed when they needed it - a bad habit, like paying by cheque or believing firmly that one-way streets were for other people. Aziraphale's desk was at least sorted into piles of varying sizes. Crowley's was where post-it notes went to die.

"It's no good," he said. Aziraphale peered at him over a teetering stack of cardboard folders. "We need a computer."

"We have a computer," Aziraphale protested. "Two of them. They were quite expensive."

Crowley looking meaningfully at the flat-screen monitor on Aziraphale's desk. He'd taken to using it like a bulletin board: the screen was almost lost behind little bits of paper with torn edges and hastily scribbled notes. Crowley's own sleek laptop hadn't been seen in weeks. He assumed it was still under there somewhere.

"We need someone who knows how to use a computer," he corrected.

"I know how to use a computer."

"Yes, and the accounts are looking great, and your eBay business is doing wonderfully," Crowley said soothingly, "but what we really need is one of those programs everyone has these days. With little... clicky things... stuff where you can go, 'Aha! This is how it all fits together!' and press a button and a box pops up to say, match found. You know. Like on CSI."

"I think," said Aziraphale, in the cautious tones of one who had been caught out before by the scurrilous lies told on television, "that some of that is, shall we say, narrative convenience."

"Okay, fine, but there's got to be a better way than this."

Crowley gestured at the serried ranks of paper well on their way to forming a new geological stratum. Aziraphale nodded reluctantly.

"Perhaps we could ask Mr Pulsifer--"

"Or," Crowley said hastily, "we could put an ad up somewhere."

"Is that a good idea? Getting a normal human involved..."

Aziraphale glanced at a set of photographs Crowley had taped to the wall. Most of them were of demons in various disastrous attempts at disguise, and all of them were peppered with pinpricks from the ballpoint pens that Crowley liked to lob across the room at them like darts.

"About time they pulled their own weight, if you ask me," Crowley retorted. "It's been, what, nearly a year? We were supposed to be done with following orders, and look at us now!"

This time his gesture was so wide that it created a draft, which in turn caused a sheaf of paper to waft over the edge of his desk. The slight movement set off something like an avalanche, which only stopped when Crowley's chair had been buried up to its armrests.

Aziraphale was frowning at him.

"We're not exactly following orders, are we?" he said. "Adam isn't--"

"Adam might as well be," Crowley snapped. "He doesn't have to say it, does he? We know how he feels about Heaven and Hell messin' around with humans. And it doesn't get messier than Bognor."

"And how many messes have we made?" Aziraphale retorted. "How many times have we intervened over the centuries? It's only just that we should be the ones helping to put it right--"

"Jussst?" Crowley couldn't keep the hiss out of his voice. He felt it again: the heat of hellfire dancing on his skin, the malice of angels beating on his soul. "What's just about you and me babysitting seven billion humans who don't even say thank you?"

"Sometimes they do. I had a nice card from Mrs Anderson just this morning." Aziraphale's frown had become concerned. "Whatever has got into you, Crowley? I thought you liked working together like this."

Crowley bit his tongue - not difficult, he had a lot of tongue - rather than say something he'd regret, one way or another.

"I do," he muttered, turning away. There was a narrow path to the door; he began to pick his way along it. "Just in a bad mood. Frogs. Norwich. You know how it is."

"Where are you going?"

"Out for a walk. Need to remember what things that aren't paper look like."

"Shall I--"

"No, no, you carry on." He didn't dare glance over his shoulder, but he didn't need to. He could picture the hurt expression on Aziraphale's face. He tossed an olive branch as he opened the door. "I'll bring you back a pistachio cream cruffin."

He had no idea who'd invented that particular crime against decency (except that they probably worked in Chelsea). What was wrong with sticking to a croissant or a muffin? But he could almost hear Aziraphale brightening up.

"The kind with sugar on top?"

"Extra sugar. See you later, angel. Be good."

Sometime after Crowley had shut the door, Aziraphale found he was still staring at it. He shook himself. After six thousand years, he should be used to Crowley's strange moods. It did seem like there were more of them than there used to be, though. Or perhaps it was just that they saw more of each other.

Or perhaps, he worried, Crowley was regretting this whole arrangement. Aziraphale had thought it a fine idea of Adam's, to turn their talents from meddling with humanity's destiny to preventing others from doing the same thing. He'd had the stationery printed before they'd even picked out an office. It would give them a purpose, he'd said to Crowley, something to get on with, it might even be fun...

He'd thought he'd won Crowley over, but lately he seemed to simmer constantly with something close to resentment, and Aziraphale was at a loss for how to address it.

Well, perhaps he could start by tidying the office. It was rather a mess. And perhaps Crowley was right about getting someone in to use the computers. It wasn't that Aziraphale couldn't do it if he tried, it was just that he preferred to think with a pen than a keyboard. But if they had someone who could transcribe his notes...

All around him, the piles of paper had begun to shift and move themselves into a more orderly arrangement. Aziraphale put a stop to that with a glare. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it the hard way. He stood up from his desk, inched his way along the narrow path to the kettle, and set it boiling with a flick of a switch. While he waited, he surveyed the room with the practised eye of someone who was always looking for a way to fit just one more book on a shelf already stuffed to bursting.

The kettle made a sad, squeaky noise that was as close as you could get to a proper whistle these days. He selected a strong black tea with hints of bergamot that promised to energise and inspire, and set to work.

The worst part about going for a walk without Aziraphale was that his feet kept trying to automatically take him to the places where they normally went together.

Well, no. The worst part about going for a walk without Aziraphale was the lack of Aziraphale.

Crowley scowled at passersby who couldn't see his expression behind the sunglasses, but hurried out of the way regardless, driven by an indefinable sense that this was not the moment to try his patience. He forced his rebellious feet away from St James's Park and slouched moodily through Belgravia.

The thing was... the thing was, he did like working with Aziraphale. That part wasn't the problem. He didn't even dislike what they did. It was the best fun he'd ever had, outwitting minor angels and lesser demons, solving strange little puzzles, putting things back the way they should be. He especially enjoyed confronting the demons. That moment when they recognised him and were consumed by sheer, pants-wetting terror: oh shit, it's him, it's Crowley, even Beelzebub doesn't mess with him, they say he carries a water pistol...

(He did, in fact, carry a water pistol for the look of the thing, but it was never filled with anything more dangerous than London tap water, which hadn't killed anyone for at least a hundred years. He'd bought Aziraphale a fancy metal lighter with an extremely stylish snake engraved on it, but Aziraphale never seemed to have it to hand when Crowley pointedly asked him for a light in front of his angelic compatriots.)

No, even with the creeping suspicion that Aziraphale and Adam had somehow tricked him into doing good on a regular basis, it wasn't the work itself that kept winding him up so tight he'd suddenly find himself snapping, lashing out at whatever target presented itself.

Crowley crossed the road without looking. A number of cars swerved to avoid him, to the considerable surprise of their drivers, who in traditional London style had been perfectly prepared to run him down and blame it on natural selection. Even more miraculously, no-one collided with anybody else, and apart from all the blasting horns, the traffic resumed its flow with barely a hitch.

The thing was... the thing was, he couldn't stand the way Aziraphale had thrown himself into this new set of duties like he'd rather do anything in the world than think for himself. The way he seemed to see it as penance, a debt he needed to work off. The way he tried to carry on as if nothing had changed.

But everything had changed. Everything. They were persona non gratis in both Heaven and Hell, free to do as they liked, free to make their own choices. For the first time in six thousand years, they didn't have to worry about who was watching them. They didn't have to meet in secret, snatch a few hours amidst decades of careful distance, find an excuse to be in the same place at the same time. They could spend all day together, and all evening together, and often did.

And it wasn't enough.

Crowley drifted to a halt, grimacing. He could feel it. The panic, trying to bubble up from his bones. The terror that was always lurking when he was away from Aziraphale for too long. The fear of coming back to an empty office - or worse, another building in flames.

How could Aziraphale just brush it all away like it had been a big misunderstanding? Crowley had looked into Gabriel's eyes as he commanded Aziraphale to die with a relish that even Hastur might have thought unseemly. He'd always known angels were cold bastards - Aziraphale excepted - but he'd thought they were above such petty, spiteful revenge.

He'd stood there, at the edge of the fire, and he'd looked at them, and he'd waited, for just a split second, because he had been so sure, so sure that for this, they must Fall...

But no. 'Course not. God moved in mysterious ways, et cetera, and apparently that included tacit approval of extra-judicial executions.

Crowley was angry. He was angry almost all the time now, and it was an unfamiliar sensation. He'd spent the majority of his existence on Earth finding new and exciting ways to not give a shit. He'd always been the cynic, but it had been a cynicism of amusement, a healthy distance from topics that might lead, if he thought about them too hard, to dangerous places.

Didn't get much more dangerous than the apocalypse. Or being hauled off for a nice long soak in a tub of holy water. If they hadn't figured out that final prophecy...

His traitor feet had turned him around and were rushing him back towards the office like they thought he was running the London Marathon. Crowley made himself slow down. There was no reason to think Aziraphale was in danger. There was no reason to think he could lose him. No reason, except the memory of flames, which danced madly in his dreams until sleep stopped being a pleasure and became a nightly gauntlet.

He sighed, and went in search of a bakery that would sell him Aziraphale's current favourite pastry monstrosity.

He got lucky on the first try. It said a lot for his state of mind that he didn't even notice he'd walked into an organic butcher's shop. Its proprietor was extremely surprised to find his tray of spare ribs replaced by a neat arrangement of pistachio cream cruffins with extra sugar.

Aziraphale was making good headway with the filing, helped by the discovery that a full quarter of the papers in the office consisted of old issues of the Metro, which had a tendency to breed in overlooked corners. He had also found and rehabilitated somewhere in the region of seventy ballpoint pens. Crowley would be thrilled to have more ammunition.

There was a knock at the door.

Aziraphale gave it a disapproving look. The office signs were quite clear: no tradespeople, no political canvassing, and definitely no Jehovah's Witnesses, mostly because Crowley would always insist on inviting them in for tea and awkward questions, which Aziraphale found distracting. He was tempted to ignore it, but then, perhaps it was one of those nervous-looking gentlemen who were about to be very disappointed by the contents of the pawn shop they'd heard was in this building...

The knock came again. Aziraphale made his way to the door and opened it with a smile that he hoped conveyed both polite friendliness and a complete lack of interest in hearing the word of our lord and saviour (he'd been there for the original performance and had never much taken to the later re-imaginings).

The smile froze. He took a step backwards before he could help himself.

The man outside the door was what Renaissance painters had thought all angels looked like: flowing blond hair, perfect features, alabaster skin. There was a reason for that. He'd modelled for most of them.

"R-Raphael?"

"Aziraphale!" Raphael was beaming like the sun bursting through the clouds. "Found you at last! How long has it been--?"

Aziraphale took another step back, struggling to stay calm even as he wished desperately that Crowley were here, but his face must have given away his shock and alarm, because Raphael paused, uncertainty furrowing his brow.

"Aziraphale? What's wrong?"

Aziraphale's hands clenched into fists. He hid them behind his back, striving for the attitude of cold disdain he'd been practising for this very moment. If it had been Gabriel, he might have managed it, but he'd always liked Raphael. He was the only other angel Aziraphale knew who'd spent more than a cursory amount of time on Earth, though Raphael was always on the move when he came to visit. He'd invented the roadtrip before anyone had even invented roads. He also seemed to have a soft spot for humans. For the eleven years leading up to Armageddon, Aziraphale had rather hoped he might be in favour of cancelling it, and had tried to track him down for a quiet word, but he'd been nowhere to be found.

"Given my last interaction with the Archangels," Aziraphale said stiffly, "you'll forgive me if I don't invite you in."

Raphael stared at him.

"What? What are you talking about?"

It was Aziraphale's turn to stare. Raphael had a face like glass: if there was a word that meant the opposite of inscrutable, his picture would be in the dictionary next to it. As far as Aziraphale could tell, he was genuinely confused.

"You know," Aziraphale went on, the faintest thread of uncertainty working its way under the words, "all that 'traitor' business. The hellfire and so on."

"The-- the what?" Raphael's expression had turned to bewildered concern. "Look, Aziraphale, I just got back, turns out I missed the Apocalypse, can you believe it? I was supposed to blow the trumpet, I'd been looking forward to it for ages-- anyway, the point is, no-one seems to want to talk about it, half of Heaven's popping down here for a nose around, apparently the whole thing's been called off-- and well, I heard you were down here permanently now, some sort of new department, and I thought, if anyone's going to give me a straight answer about all this, it's good old Aziraphale."

He took a breath that was, strictly speaking, unnecessary, but a welcome opportunity for Aziraphale's brain to catch up with his ears.

"You missed the Apocalypse?"

"I know, I know, it's my own fault, just, the band was doing so well, it was always one more tour, you know? And then we went platinum, and then Marv got sick, and we needed a new keyboard player, and there was never a good moment..."

"You were in a band," Aziraphale said weakly.

"I'm still in a band!" Raphael proudly whipped out a smartphone and held it out. Its lock screen was an album cover: All That Jazz by The Post-Raphaelites. "Marv's doing great, and we're thinking of breaking into the European market--"

"Raphael," Aziraphale managed to interject, "you really don't know what-- what they tried to do to me? No-one told you?"

Raphael stilled, his green eyes shifting slowly from the colour of a rainforest to the hue of a troubled sea.

"Told me what?"

It would, Aziraphale knew, be wiser to send him away. Let him ask Gabriel about it. Let him hear the official line. Raphael was an Archangel, one of the originals, part of the Establishment. A yawning chasm had opened between Aziraphale and the Establishment, in the moment he'd stood with Crowley to defy the word of Heaven and Hell both.

And it had been hurting him, no matter how much he tried to bury himself in paperwork, no matter how much he tried to share Crowley's glee at their newfound freedom.

"Perhaps you'd better come in after all," he said.

Chapter Text

Crowley took the stairs two at a time, the tray of pastries balanced easily on one hand. Buying the whole lot was extravagant, he knew, but the baker had seemed strangely eager to get rid of them, and it wasn't as though Aziraphale would complain...

He heard voices from inside the office as he approached. He slowed, frowning. They hadn't been expecting anyone today, and besides, they'd taken to having their client meetings in nearby cafes ever since they'd lost sight of the sofa. He paused outside the door.

"-- back to Heaven, by any means necessary," a voice was saying, a voice with harmonics that set off five thousand alarms in Crowley's brain.

"Aziraphale!" He shouldered open the door, tray weaving wildly through the air, heart hammering. "Get away from him, you--"

His foot came down on a stack of paper that shouldn't have been there. There was a frozen moment in which Crowley saw, very clearly, frame by frame, exactly what was about to happen: the stranger on the sofa, Aziraphale jumping to his feet in alarm, Crowley's legs going out from under him, the tray of cruffins sailing through the air like a vengeful swan...

Crowley faceplanted into a neatly stacked pile of paper that promptly exploded in all directions. From the direction of the sofa, there was a splat, and a startled yelp, cut off very much as if the mouth it had come from had suddenly been filled with pistachio cream.

"Crowley!" No-one but Aziraphale had ever managed to put that much scandalised outrage into saying his name. "What are you doing--"

Crowley staggered to his feet - slithered, if he were honest, in a way that wasn't strictly compatible with normal human leg joints - and lunged toward the stranger, who was trying to wipe his face and mostly succeeding in smearing cream over his sleeves.

"You even think about hurting him, you basssstard," he hissed, "I'll make you wish you'd Fallen--"

"Crowley!" Aziraphale grabbed his arm with a strength Crowley had never known he possessed. The effect was rather like running into an iron bar. Crowley hung there for a moment, bewildered and winded, before Aziraphale dragged him back. "Calm down, for heaven's sake!"

And then the angel on the sofa began to laugh through his mask of pistachio cream and powdered sugar.

"This is your demon, then?" he said. "He certainly knows how to make an entrance."

Crowley blinked, something he almost never did, while beside him Aziraphale sputtered, "Well, I mean, he's not my demon, as such, you know, he's his own demon, er--"

The stranger waved a hand. The scattered papers drifted back to their neat stacks. The mess that had covered his Armani suit vanished. His hair settled back into golden waves a shampoo manufacturer would kill to get on camera. Without the patina of pistachio, Crowley finally recognised that aquiline nose and chiselled jaw.

"Raphael," he said through gritted teeth. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"He's been, er, out of town," Aziraphale said. He hadn't let go of Crowley's arm, and his fingers were gripping tighter than a vice. "We were just catching up--"

"On what, the next lot of torture they've got set up for you?" Crowley was shaking with rage and he knew Aziraphale could feel it. "No-one," he spat, "is being taken back to Heaven by any means necessary--"

"Oh, no, I see-- I see the misunderstanding-- Crowley, he wasn't talking about me..."

Crowley turned and, for the first time, looked at Aziraphale's face. There was no fear there, no indication that he felt himself in danger. If anything, he seemed deeply put out by Crowley's sudden entrance. Crowley stared at him for long enough that Aziraphale began to frown a question. Crowley ignored it and pointedly shook himself free of the angel's grasp.

Raphael was watching him, eyes the colour of a spring meadow, head slightly cocked.

"Well, Aziraphale, it's good to know you have someone watching your wings," he said. Then, with a beatific smile, he lifted a tray of perfect cruffins and handed it back to Crowley. "Pastries and all."

Crowley was pretty sure he'd never hated anyone, including Hastur, as much as he hated Raphael just then. Smug, sarcastic, holier-than-thou asshole--

"I'd better get going," Raphael went on, glancing at his wrist, though Crowley couldn't see a watch there. "Don't want to bring any undue attention your way. You'll be in touch?"

"Yes, of course."

"Thank you." Raphael smiled broadly, clapped Aziraphale on the shoulder, and nodded to Crowley as he stepped fluidly around them. "Good luck with the frogs!"

The door swung shut behind him. Crowley stared at it, stared at the tray in his hands, and then stared at Aziraphale with a mixture of accusation and bewilderment.

"You told him about the frogs?"

Aziraphale sighed. He took the tray from Crowley's hands and set it down on the coffee table, newly excavated from the paper dunes. The whole office was looking tidier, in fact. Crowley could see the spider plant, though he was pretty sure it wished he couldn't. He threw himself onto the sofa, unsure if he was still angry or merely working up to his biggest sulk of the twenty-first century. Aziraphale sat down beside him and peered at him anxiously.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"What?"

"When you fell?"

"No, 's fine, nothing broken. Not even the sunglasses." He would have jumped into Beelzebub's bath of holy water before he mentioned the bruises he could feel coming up on his bicep. He couldn't keep the edge out of his voice as he went on, "Since when are you taking orders from Heaven again?"

"I'm not," Aziraphale protested. "Raphael's... he's not like the other Archangels. Did you ever meet him? Before?"

Crowley shrugged, never comfortable with that particular topic.

"I wasn't important enough to hang out with the Archangels," he said.

"Neither was I, but after the whole, you know, Earth thing got started, I bumped into him a few times. You see, he's always liked humans. He thinks they're clever. I always thought you'd get on rather well with him, actually, apart from, well--"

"Him being an Archangel and me being a fiend from the pit of Hell?"

"Yes, that."

"Fine, so he likes humans. Where was he when the Almighty decided to wipe them all out?"

"Headlining the Portland Jazz Festival, apparently."

"... what?"

"The point is," Aziraphale went on, "he had nothing to do with any of it. Armageddon, or what-- what happened after."

Fire licking his borrowed skin, Gabriel's unholy hatred naked in violet eyes--

"So he says." Crowley studied Aziraphale in mounting disbelief. "You're not saying you believe him--"

"Yes, actually, I do." Aziraphale's back had straightened in that prissy way that meant he was preparing to be extraordinarily stubborn. "I-- what's the phrase-- filled him in on the details. He was horrified."

Crowley slumped back into the depths of the sofa with a groan that felt like it had been building for several centuries.

"Aziraphale--"

"I'm not an idiot, Crowley," Aziraphale insisted, despite what was, in Crowley's opinion, mounting evidence to the contrary. "I'm not going to let my guard down. But think what it would mean to have an ally in Heaven--"

"What did he want?" Crowley yanked off his sunglasses and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Why did he come here?"

"He needs our help."

Crowley peered through his fingers quizzically.

"Our help? Raphael does? The Archangel Raphael?"

"Yes." There was the tiniest hint of self-satisfaction in Aziraphale's voice. "He's misplaced something, and he wants us to find it."

"So put an ad in 'Lost and Found'--"

"It's not that simple. It's a powerful heavenly artefact."

Crowley considered that for a moment, then began to smirk.

"Flaming sword, was it?"

"Oh, hush." Aziraphale fussed with his sleeves rather than look at Crowley's face. "No, he was never a sword sort of person. It's a staff. His staff. He put it somewhere extremely safe while he was off touring, but when he came back, it was gone, and obviously he doesn't want to report it to Heaven just yet..."

Despite his best efforts, Crowley's sullen suspicion was fraying at the edges in the face of sheer devilish glee.

"So what you're saying... what you're saying is, you angels are really terrible at hanging onto your stuff, is that it?"

"It's really not the same thing at all, I gave that sword away quite intentionally--"

"And Raphael, what, left his walking stick on a bus? Where was this extremely safe location, anyway? Bank vault? Safety deposit box? Tower of London?"

"It was a church, if you must know."

"A church," said Crowley flatly. "Big church? Lots of security?"

"Well... no... it's more of a small chapel, really. On the edge of Dartmoor. It's the only one in the country dedicated to Raphael himself, so he has a certain influence over it. Should have been impossible for anyone from your-- from the other side to enter."

"Impossible. Right. And if, just for example, some completely ordinary human being decided to help themselves to a powerful heavenly artefact stashed in the broom closet or whatever, would there be anything to stop them? Burglar alarm? CCTV? Does it even have locks on the doors?"

Aziraphale brushed an invisible piece of lint off his jacket.

"It has an elderly rector, I believe. And a dog. But he's been having terrible trouble with his gout lately..."

"The rector or the dog? Never mind." Crowley leaned forward. "So what you're saying is, Raphael left his staff of office in some poky little local church that pretty much anyone could have just wandered into?"

Aziraphale sighed.

"That does seem to be the gist of it, yes."

"And now he wants us to find it for him."

"He asked very nicely."

"Oh, well then, that's fine, obviously, nothing more to say--"

"And he's going to try and find out what Heaven has in mind for what comes next. In general. But also, specifically, for me."

Crowley hesitated. There was a fragile hope in Aziraphale's downturned face. Even after everything, Crowley thought bitterly, he still wanted something from them. Some sort of acknowledgement. Some sort of forgiveness. It was too easy, far too easy for them to reel him back in, far too easy to trick him into trusting--

-- but at the same time, if Raphael was on the level - and Crowley had to admit, angels were not the best at subterfuge, to put it mildly - this might be a way to keep Aziraphale safe. And if he wasn't on the level... well, making an example of him might be another way to achieve the same goal. Assuming, of course, that Crowley could figure out some way to make an example of an Archangel.

"Fine," he said. "We'll look for his stupid stick. Any idea where we start?"

Aziraphale's head came up sharply, surprise shading into a grateful delight that was like staring into the sun. Crowley didn't like to think too hard about how many of his actions over the last few centuries had been attempts to elicit that reaction. He was a like a sky-starved plant - or a snake who'd hibernated too long - craving that warmth like it was oxygen, like it was life.

He slipped his sunglasses back on hurriedly.

"We'd better go to Dartmoor, I suppose," said Aziraphale. "Lovely part of the country, especially at this time of year." He paused. "Thank you, Crowley."

"Don't thank me yet," Crowley muttered, surging to his feet and stalking over to a map that showed approximately the right part of England. "I'm still not convinced this isn't a trap. I'll be keeping my eye on Raphael, I can tell you that."

"Well, it's a pleasant view, at least."

Crowley blinked for the second time in one day. "What?"

Aziraphale had leaned forward and was intently examining the tray of cruffins.

"These look marvellous, wherever did you find them?"

"Er... little place on a... road... somewhere..." Crowley shook himself. "Look, before we go rushing blindly off into the countryside, I want to know a bit more about what we're getting into. I'm going to call Anathema."

"Oh, yes, good idea!" Aziraphale had selected a particularly plump pastry and was eyeing it with blissful anticipation. "Do ask her how things are going with the website."

They'd dropped the Army part. The website - and its accompanying mobile app and weekly newsletter - was just called Witchfinder. Anathema had initially pitched it to Newt as Craigslist for occult practitioners, only for him to ask her who Craig was.

She settled for, "It'll help people find witches when they need them."

"Is that a good idea?" Newt asked cautiously. "I mean, if they're anything like Shadwell..."

"I'm quite certain there is no-one in the world quite like Shadwell," Anathema had replied with some feeling. "Most people don't believe in witches, and the ones that do want a tarot reading, not a bonfire."

"Well," Newt said, "I suppose now he's retired... maybe it's time to take it in a new direction..."

"Exactly!"

"But a website? I don't know how to run a website--"

"We don't have to run the website," Anathema said quickly, before he could get any wild ideas about getting near a computer. "We can hire someone to run the website. We'll be doing all the hard work - finding witches and vetting them."

"How do we do that?"

"I thought we'd start with a few advertisements in the newspaper. And you've got all your clippings, we could get in touch with a few of those, the ones who aren't obvious frauds."

"Which was most of them," Newt pointed out, but he seemed to be warming to the idea. "I mean, I suppose it couldn't hurt to have a go, could it?"

That had been six months ago, and to even Anathema's surprise, the site had taken off rapidly. People had, apparently, just been waiting for a reliable way to contact those who could help them contact the other side. Witches loved it too; it gave them somewhere to swap homebrew potion recipes that didn't run the risk of someone mistaking them for a set of cocktail instructions, and the forum's book club was taking off nicely. Anathema was even toying with the idea of starting a dating service on the side.

She wondered, sometimes, how much of that success was thanks to Adam. It was impossible to tell if he was truly, fully human now, or if he'd kept some fragment of his power. Things seemed to go well for him and his friends, but even under extreme provocation (like the time an anti-vaxxer had come to speak at the village school, or the week the village council had decided that this climate change thing was all a big excuse to take their cars away, or when his father had refused to let him take up skateboarding) she'd seen no evidence that he was anything more than a pre-teen with a lot of opinions and a big heart.

(The fact that the anti-vaxxer had been chased out of the school by booing children, and the village council had all woken up one morning to find their cars covered in glue-soaked pages from the UN's latest climate report, had more, she suspected, to do with Adam's natural charisma and leadership than anything supernatural. Though she had noticed an awful lot of articles in the papers about the merits of skateboarding for building the character of young people, at least until Adam had decided that he'd rather get a mountain bike.)

The phone rang. They'd had a separate landline installed in Jasmine Cottage for the business. Tadfield's mobile signal was spotty, something which Anathema had also once suspected to be the work of the Antichrist, but had turned out instead to be down to the village council's stubborn refusal grant any planning permission for the towers.

"Good morning, you've reached the offices of Witchfinder--"

"Offices? That's a very grand name for your kitchen table."

Anathema sighed.

"Hi Crowley. What do you want?"

"Want? Me?"

"You only ever call when you want something."

"That's not true, Aziraphale rings you up for a chat--"

"Yes," Anathema said pointedly, "Aziraphale does."

She was never quite sure how she felt about Crowley. About either of them, if she was honest: they'd never exactly explained why they'd been at the airbase that day, or why the representatives of Heaven and Hell had listened to them. She had her suspicions, although their auras were... surprisingly normal, for what she assumed they were. She'd also been surprised to find that they were quite willing to keep funding the Witchfinder Army, in whatever new form it took, on the condition that she and Newt help them out with what Aziraphale kept referring to as our discreet services (until Crowley made him stop).

Aziraphale, at least, was kind and intelligent and the best Words With Friends opponent she'd ever played against. Crowley was sarcastic and cynical and treated being thanked like a curse. The first time he'd tried to speak to her in 18th-century European Spanish, she'd laughed until she cried, which had apparently stung his pride and sent him off to brush up, because the next time he tried it, he stunned her by talking like he'd just wandered in from Puerto Rico.

And he worried her, the same way that she might worry about a house without a fire alarm or a ship without a lifeboat: it probably wouldn't all go terribly wrong, but if it did, she wasn't sure he even knew how to swim.

"Well, anyway," Crowley was saying, "we need some information. About anyone who might have robbed a church recently."

"That sounds more like a question for the police--"

"We'll ask them too. But this person stole something... important. Important, but not valuable-looking. Sort of thing an ordinary burglar wouldn't touch."

Anathema frowned and reached for a notebook. "Okay. What do you know?"

She jotted down the details. Dartmoor, Chapel of St Raphael, something about a dog with gout, a walking stick--

"A staff," she heard Aziraphale say loudly in the background.

"Oh, fine, a staff," Crowley corrected grouchily. "Big wooden thing, probably about seven feet high, going by the pictures..."

"You have photos? That might help if I could circulate them--"

"Er, not photos, not exactly. Couple of oil paintings, some woodcuts, bit of stained glass... point is, someone's nicked it and there's no reason they'd do that if they didn't know a bit about the occult."

"Hmm. I can think of a few people I could ask." Anathema tapped her pen against the paper. "There's a small coven in Plymouth, they might know something."

"Great, send me a text if you find anything, we might be out of town for a bit--"

Aziraphale said something else Anathema didn't catch.

"Oh, right, don't suppose you know any witches who do computers, do you? Or at least, someone who's not going to faint at the sight of a demon? We need one of those clicky programs with the search box and the, you know, it tells you which things are related to the other things--"

"You mean a database?"

"I dunno, do I? One of them, anyway. Better than all this paper."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Amazing, okay, gotta go, adios--"

The line went dead. Anathema slowly replaced the receiver as something tugged at the back of her mind.

She'd never thought she had any particular talent for seeing the future, but then, she'd never needed it: she'd always had Agnes to guide her. A year of living without the Nice and Accurate Prophecies had taught her a lot about self-determination, fear of the unknown, and the importance of researching consumer electronics before purchasing. And lately she'd started to get these... twinges. Little flickers. A sense of something not quite in focus, like deja vu before the fact.

It was probably nothing. Most of those moments had turned out to be utterly mundane. A bad feeling before her bike got a puncture. A slight euphoria when she was about to find a really good book. A vague itchiness that had let her catch the aphid infestation on the roses before it got out of hand.

But this was... different. Darker. A bit like looking over the edge of a tall building, or down a deep, deep hole. A feeling of falling, or being about to fall. A feeling of danger.

It passed, as ephemeral as all the others. Anathema frowned at the phone and made a mental note to get someone to check the plugs, just in case there was a problem with the electrical wiring. Then she turned her attention to the Witchfinder forums, and a particularly interesting discussion about the best way to attune crystals, which she was almost certain was going to end with at least three people never speaking to each other again.

Crowley was quiet for the rest of the day, which usually meant he was plotting to do something mildly inconvenient to someone, but on this occasion Aziraphale kept catching him staring into space, eyes unfathomable behind the dark glasses, expression taut. Twice he had to resist the urge to stand up, walk over to the other desk, and take the damn things off Crowley's face.

"You'd better come back to my place," Crowley said, apropos of nothing, just as Aziraphale was thinking about where to go for dinner.

"What?" He hadn't been to Crowley's flat since the night after the end of the world. He didn't especially want to go there now, and he didn't care to examine the reasons too closely. "No, I don't think so, I've just received a package of remarkably well-preserved manuscripts and they'll take most of the night to catalogue--"

"Bring them with you," said Crowley, with the easy dismissal of someone who had no idea how to properly handle antique documents. "I'm not letting you out of my sight, not after today."

"Really, Crowley, you're being ridiculous to think--"

"That they'd come for you again? Am I?"

"-- that you could do anything to stop them if they did," Aziraphale finished quietly. "And frankly, my dear, in those circumstances, I would rather you were far away."

Crowley's head jerked towards him, but Aziraphale busied himself tidying his desk, neatly lining up his pens, and turning off the lamp, before rising to his feet.

"If it will make you feel better, you're welcome to join me at the bookshop."

"What, and sleep in that abomination you call a bed? No thanks."

"What's wrong with it?" Aziraphale asked, stung. "I paid a good deal for that bed--"

"-- in 1827, and you haven't changed the mattress since," Crowley replied sourly. "The springs on that thing could skewer a moose."

Aziraphale opened his mouth to argue, then realised he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually used the bed. There were so many books to read, sleep always seemed such a waste of a long, quiet night. Crowley might well be the only person who'd slept in it for a hundred years, that one night during the Great Storm of 1987 when his basement flat had flooded and he'd turned up dripping and furious on Aziraphale's doorstep.

"Perhaps it could do with being spruced up," he conceded.

"It could do with being sold for scrap," Crowley muttered. "Just come home with me, angel. Please."

It was the please that did it. He could count the number of times Crowley had said please - and meant it - on the fingers of one hand. Aziraphale sighed.

"Oh, all right then, but in that case I do want to collect a few books from the shop--"

Crowley leapt to his feet, knocking over one of the recently-tidied piles of paper in his haste.

"Fine, absolutely fine, come on then, I'll run you over in the Bentley."

"Poor choice of words there."

"Oh, you know what I meant." Crowley ushered him towards the door. "We can stop somewhere for dinner, too. My treat."

"I'm fairly certain it's my turn--"

"Just shut up and let me feed you," Crowley insisted, locking the office door with a snap of his fingers. "How about Italian?"

"That would be lovely," Aziraphale managed weakly as he trailed after Crowley down the stairs. "Crowley, are you sure you're all right?"

"Of course I'm all right. Why wouldn't I be?"

Because I've never seen you like this, Aziraphale thought, watching Crowley's back, the frantic energy in his normally laid back walk. Not even when we were counting down to Armageddon.

"Perhaps Lebanese," he said after a moment. "There's a place near Leicester Square that serves the most fabulous falafel."

"What's that, some kind of rodent?"

Aziraphale brightened. It had been a while since he'd had the pleasure of introducing Crowley to a new dish. He quickened his step as they emerged onto the pavement.

"Nothing of the sort. It's made from chickpeas. You'll love it."

Crowley glanced at him with a quirk of a smile that was gone almost before it arrived.

"If you say so."

Chapter Text

Aziraphale put the book down on Crowley's coffee table with a sigh. He couldn't concentrate. Somehow the flat was too quiet. It felt unoccupied, even with Crowley asleep in the next room.

(The last time he was here, Crowley didn't sleep. Neither of them did. They were drunk for a while, and then sober for rather longer, as they puzzled out Agnes's last prophecy, as they took that leap of faith to save each other's skins, and they parted ways before the sun came up, while the darkness still provided some cover for their deception...)

Crowley had never stayed in one place for long. Not that Aziraphale had ever been privy to his living quarters before this, but he knew there had been a string of flats around London, over the decades. Aziraphale had never visited any of them because he'd never really needed to go looking for him. Crowley always just seemed to turn up, at the bookshop or elsewhere, and the question of where he slept at night had seldom entered Aziraphale's head, not least because he wasn't in the habit of doing it himself.

Aziraphale enjoyed a good nap, but he preferred the afternoons, a little golden light falling on a comfortable sofa, the slightest breeze from a half-open window. There was something about lying still in darkness that made him begin to feel as if he were ceasing to exist. As though by closing his eyes, he would sink beneath the waters, never to wake. Before civilisation arose, he used to spend nights above the clouds, where the stars ensured it was never truly dark. Later, he found plenty of humans as eager as he was to push back the night. All-night tavernas, campfires along the Silk Road, cities that never slept... and eventually, his bookshop, its cosy bubble of warmth and light and the wonders of words.

The silence of the flat held traces of that terror. He unfolded himself from the comfortable armchair - which hadn't been here last time, and which he had assumed was a convenient miracle, until he sat down in it and discovered that Crowley had forgotten to remove the fire safety label - and padded softly into the kitchen.

There was a jar of cocoa on the counter, at odds with the sleek chrome Coffee and Tea tins that matched the toaster and the kettle. Crowley hadn't mentioned it when they arrived. He'd just left it there for Aziraphale to find. There was milk in the fridge, sugar in a dish, a mug and teaspoon left casually on the drying rack, even though Aziraphale was almost certain Crowley never ate or drank in this place. He shook his head, smiling. Then his eyes fell on the empty tartan-patterned thermos flask sitting half hidden at the back of a shelf.

(The mess on the floor was frightful, and Aziraphale was barely able to conceal his horror.

"You used it? On a demon?"

"It was kill or be killed, what else was I supposed to do?"

Aziraphale had no answer for that, no answer that could break through the pounding of his heart as he stared at the oily puddle and thought about Crowley taking the flask from him all those years ago. He'd known, he'd always known, in theory, what holy water would do to demons, but he'd never seen it, never smelt the acrid stench still hanging in the air, never understood fully what it would mean, how it could render down a living being to little more than a sulphurous stain...)

He left the jar of cocoa untouched and made his way to the office. The stain was gone--

(Aziraphale cleaned it up himself, refusing to let Crowley get near it, both of them too tired for miracles.)

-- and yet, if he half closed his eyes, he thought he could still see it, an irregular ring of discolouration like a scar on the brutally minimalist concrete floor. All that was left of Ligur, whom Aziraphale could not bring himself to mourn, but whose fate was now screaming across his thoughts as loud as it had that night almost a year ago, when he'd suddenly realised what Agnes was trying to tell them.

It could have been Crowley. It would have been Crowley. That bath, that farce of a trial... and then nothing but oil and brimstone on the water's surface...

And there it was again, that roaring, shrieking whirlwind, that storm in the desert, that hurricane that threatened to burst his heart. Those feelings that he refused to even name, because they weren't in his nature, because angels should not rage, nor hate, nor crave revenge...

(Crowley held out his hand as the sky began to lighten.

"Ready to do this?"

"Not really. What if it all goes wrong and we both end up discorporated?"

"Then we'd better hope Madame Tracy's still feeling friendly towards us, hadn't we?"

Aziraphale looked at him for a long moment.

"Take off your glasses."

"What?"

"Please. I want... I'd like to... I just want to see your face, properly."

He didn't add, in case it all goes wrong, and I never see it again. He didn't need to. Crowley reached up slowly, took off the sunglasses, and without breaking eye contact, dropped them on a nearby table. Then he held out his hand again.

This time, Aziraphale took it. Kept his eyes on Crowley's, as they each relaxed their grip on their corporeal forms and allowed their shapes to flow into one another.

In all their centuries, they had seldom touched, not more than the absent, unintended contact of two people walking or sitting side by side. Aziraphale was reminded vividly of the night eleven years ago when Crowley had offered to shake on the deal they'd made. Taking his hand then had been like touching a live wire, a shock going through him as he realised the enormity of what they were attempting. Taking his hand now was like grasping lightning. Letting his very essence mingle with Crowley's was like baring himself to the storm. Terrifying, exhilarating, tantalising, and in those crackling depths he'd felt the first stirrings of his own answering fury, something he'd never known was buried there, awakened to wrath and ruin by the questions he'd never dared ask.

Why? Why? Why should his soul be damned when in it is such light and breath and joy...

He snatched his hand back the second it was over, heart racing, convinced Crowley must have felt it, but Crowley only looked down at himself and said, in Aziraphale's voice, "This is pretty weird, isn't it."

And Aziraphale agreed hastily, turning away as if to study his altered reflection in the still-dark window, and told himself it was only a moment of strangeness from the switch. It would go away, of course. It would go away. Surely.)

Aziraphale pressed a hand to his eyes. For what seemed an eternity, he teetered in the teeth of the gale, poised in the eye of the hurricane. And then, as always, he let the ocean of his soul swallow it all, drown it deep until not even a ripple remained.

He turned and left the office. He went to the kitchen, made himself cocoa, returned to his chair and his book. He spent the rest of the night there, and when morning finally came, it was easy to make himself believe that nothing more than a light breeze had troubled his thoughts.

They hadn't heard anything from Anathema by the following afternoon, and Crowley was getting antsy. Aziraphale suggested finding someone to 'hack' the police records for the area (you could hear the inverted commas). Crowley smirked at him, grabbed the phone, and told him to watch and learn.

Thirty minutes later, a helpful IT professional had reset the password of Officer Banks, who was in a terrible hurry and couldn't get at his email right now, so would it be all right to tell him the new login over the phone, just this once? Yes, thank you so much, you're a hero, etc.

"What if that poor man gets into trouble?" Aziraphale demanded, scandalised.

"Teach him an important lesson about information security," Crowley replied, typing Officer Banks's username and password into the police database. It opened up with with a cheery reminder that he had 76 unread messages. "I invented phishing, you know."

"Now I know that's not true, I was there when they came up with it in the fourth millennium BC--"

"Not fishing, angel, phishing, with a-- oh, never mind." Crowley scrolled through incident reports looking for anything interesting from Dartmoor. "Most of these are about sheep."

"Criminal sheep?"

"Sheep going missing, sheep turning up where they shouldn't be, this one's got a sheep in the bath..." Crowley pulled up the search box and typed in a query. "Nothing's coming up for the chapel. When did it happen, anyway?"

"The rector told Raphael it was definitely still there at Christmas. He used it in their nativity play."

"... he what?"

"Well, you know, Joseph needed a staff--"

"So they broke out the divine relic and handed it to the kids?" Crowley demanded incredulously. "How do we know one of them didn't wander off with it?"

"It's seven feet long, Crowley, I don't think a five-year-old tucked it into a pocket."

"Fine, so it was still there in December. So it must have been taken sometime in the last six months."

He altered the search string and tried again.

"The rector didn't notice it was gone until Raphael came back for it," Aziraphale went on. "So I doubt there'll be any sort of police involvement--"

"Right, that's why I'm not searching for stolen heavenly artefact, just for anything odd in the area in the last six months..." Crowley frowned at the screen. "Like that. That sort of thing."

Aziraphale got up from his desk and came over. Crowley turned the laptop so he could see the report. It was from April that year, and involved complaints from the residents of a small village on the moor about the number of flies in the vicinity of an unoccupied house. The police had investigated, expecting the worst, and had opened the front door onto a roiling cloud of insects so dense they'd at first thought it was smoke. Two of the attending officers had needed some time with the station counsellor afterwards, and one still shrieked when he heard something buzzing against a window. Pest control had been called in, but strangely, they hadn't been able to find any evidence of a body or other rotting matter that might have created such a swarm.

"Beelzebub?" Aziraphale hazarded.

"Maybe. Beelzebub's not the only one with a thing for flies, though." Crowley jotted down the address. "I'll text Anathema, her friends in Plymouth might have heard something."

"Right." Aziraphale leaned in to study the blurry picture attached to the report. "It's a rather sweet little cottage, isn't it?"

"Apart from the buzzing and the biting, you mean?"

"Well, if they've cleared the place out--"

"You want to look at quaint country properties, you can do it on your own time," said Crowley, closing the report and returning to his list of search results. "I'm not a cottage sort of person."

"No, I suppose not."

Aziraphale's phone rang. Technically they each had a line, but somehow when people were looking for the Agency's contact details, they always found Aziraphale's number first. Aziraphale hurried back over to his desk and picked up the receiver.

"Good morning, how may I help you?"

There was a babble of urgent explanation, made tinny by distance. Aziraphale shot him a long-suffering look, then said, "Ah, frogs is it? Yes, that's-- that's been going around lately. I'll just hand you over to my colleague--"

"Bloody Norwich," Crowley muttered, already out of his seat and holding out his hand for the receiver. "Never been the same since the Vikings buggered off. Hello!" he went on brightly into the phone. "Tell me about your frog."

Adam had homework, and he didn't like it.

Tadfield Primary School hadn't been a homework sort of place, at least, not proper homework. The teachers had believed in letting kids write stories and draw pictures and make stuff out of pipe-cleaners rather than doing sums or ticking boxes. Adam wondered now how much of that had been because he, personally, could spend all evening on a good pipe-cleaner tarantula, and had no interest in discovering what happened when you divided bigger numbers by smaller ones.

But the world didn't work like that anymore, and anyway since last September he and the others had been taking the bus to the big secondary school at Norton, where they believed very firmly in things like sums, spelling tests, and a weekly history quiz. Adam was currently staring moodily at a textbook about the Battle of Hastings that somehow managed to make what seemed like a gloriously bloody mess into something with as much life and interest as his father's favourite tweed jacket.

There was a bwoop bwoop noise. His father had finally let him have a mobile phone, but in keeping with Arthur Young's general outlook on the world, it was so out of date it could run approximately three apps, occasionally got hot enough to use as a hand-warmer, and had the battery life of something out of a Christmas cracker. And Adam wasn't allowed to make phone calls except in emergencies. Still, it was better than nothing. He checked the screen.

omg he got an arrow thru the EYE?? Pepper had sent to their group chat.

Adam perked up, suddenly interested in the textbook. Homework was always more bearable with friends, but he wasn't currently allowed out of the house after the whole thing with Mrs Lawson's knitting and Mr Barrow's cat, which was, as ever, completely unfair, it wasn't like he'd known the cat was supposed to be hairless...

have you seen this tapestry? came Wensleydale's response. Wensleydale did like homework. He had taken to it like a very nerdy fish to extremely boring water, had a top-of-the-range smartphone with an unlimited data plan, and had usually googled everything in the assignment before they even got off the bus. look at this bit, there's dead people EVERYWHERE

There followed several pictures of some surprisingly hardcore embroidery. Adam was impressed. His sister Sarah - who was ten years older than him and therefore practically another species - had been to see that one in France, but she'd never mentioned the severed heads.

He looked thoughtfully at the homework assignment, which was "Write a report about the battle and explain who you think should have won". He took a picture of it (after waiting patiently for several seconds for his phone camera to remember what a zoom was) and sent it to Aziraphale with a series of question marks.

The response was swift and predictable: I'm not going to do your homework for you.

Adam rolled his eyes. He could try asking Crowley, but he'd quickly discovered that Crowley had both a) missed a surprising number of important historical events given how long he'd been hanging around England, and b) would lie through his teeth about it given the slightest chance. Aziraphale's answers were usually accurate, and fairly interesting, as long as you didn't mind learning more about what was on the menu than what had happened on the battlefield.

Adam wasn't technically supposed to know about those two, not anymore. It should have faded out with all the other things he'd seen and felt and known for that brief period when his power had been at its height, and the world had been at his feet, and he could have been something more than Adam Young. But some things were too interesting to forget. Like how an angel and a demon had taken his hands and told him that being human was better than anything either of them could come up with. Like how he'd seen it all laid out between them, six thousand years of wandering the Earth, six thousand years bumping up against humanity and each other until all their edges were rounded like pebbles rolling in the sea, six thousand years of becoming something different, something of neither Heaven nor Hell, and they didn't even properly realise it yet.

No, that was far too interesting to forget. And besides, someone had to deal with the frogs. Adam had too much homework to sort that sort of thing out.

His phone lit up again. Adam grinned. Aziraphale could be very predictable sometimes.

Although I must say, the text read, they were really all quite dreadful, when you got right down to it...

Suddenly the phone screen blurred in front of his eyes. The world shook, but it only shook inside his head, and for a moment Adam saw stars. Quite literally: billions of them, bright points of light in the void, far more stars than he'd ever seen at night, far more stars than anyone could see with a telescope.

One by one, they began to fall.

Adam jolted upright, staring at the door like he expected it to burst open. Dog, who had been fast asleep at the end of the bed, one leg kicking as he chased imaginary rabbits, leapt up with a growl so long and low that for a moment, his eyes glowed red.

Adam waited, but nothing else happened. Outside, a magpie was making a noise like an angry pair of castanets. He could hear his mother humming as she watered the plants on the patio. It was barely four o'clock, and this close to the summer solstice it wouldn't get dark until almost ten. There were no stars to be seen in the cloudless blue sky. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

He looked at Dog. Dog whined and put his ears back. Adam nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "I think so too."

He looked down at his phone, still gradually filling up with Aziraphale's thoughts on the Norman Conquest and what it had done to the local nightlife.

"Think I should tell them?"

Dog lay back down, chin on his paws, watchful but no longer alarmed. His tail thumped once.

"No, I s'pose not. They'll only get worried. They've got enough things to worry about." He paused, staring out at the sky again, brow furrowed. "S'pose we'll just see what happens, then."

Aziraphale was typing frantically on his phone, which meant he was texting Adam. Probably doing the boy's history homework for him again. Crowley leaned back in his chair and watched in silence. Did Aziraphale know that he furrowed his brow in that particular way when he was trying to remember if something had happened at noon or at midnight? That he tutted to himself whenever he made a typo, carefully erasing the mistake and retyping it, no matter how many times Crowley tried to explain the autocorrect function? That he'd forgotten about his cup of tea, and it was cooling forlornly at his elbow even as he answered whatever question Adam had today?

In moments like these, quiet moments when Aziraphale was utterly absorbed in something, Crowley felt like a thief, stealing something precious. Drinking in the sight of him, fussily leaning over to type with two index fingers instead of holding the phone in one hand like normal people. Every crease and twitch in his face, the ghost of a smile, the flicker of a frown. Moments like these made Crowley ache, made him feel like there was something in his chest that had been crammed too small for the space, that it would burst his ribs apart unless he found a way to let it out.

He hadn't wanted the world to end. He liked the world. He liked humans. He liked seeing what they did next. But when it had come down to the wire, when he'd been convinced that their chance to prevent Armageddon had slipped away, all he'd been able to think about was protecting Aziraphale from what was to come. And when he'd stumbled through the burning bookshop, knowing that whatever had happened, there was no way to fix it in time, he'd found himself hoping that Heaven would win the final battle. Better to perish and sink into grateful oblivion than to spend eternity without Aziraphale.

There was a word for this, for what he felt when Aziraphale laughed, or when he shot Crowley one of those sideways looks, as warm as a stray sunbeam. Thousands of words, really: humans had translated it into every language they'd invented, sometimes more than once. But not one of those words belonged on the tongue of a demon, and so Crowley had learned long ago - oh, so long ago now - to wrap his arms tight around his ribs and keep that feeling caged in darkness.

The knock on the door startled him so badly he almost tipped over backwards, momentarily becoming a flailing mess of limbs that made Aziraphale look up from his phone with a concerned expression.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine, peachy, all good!" Crowley rocketed to his feet and headed for the door. "I'll just see who that is, shall I?"

"Perhaps it's the new stapler I ordered--"

The person on the other side of the door didn't look like someone who was delivering a stapler. She was a young woman with brown skin and black, wavy hair that just touched her shoulders. She was dressed in a slightly worn business suit, the kind that someone might keep in their wardrobe for interviews. When Crowley opened the door she gave him a careful, assessing look like she was adding up points in her head.

"Er... yes?" Crowley said, disconcerted. "Can I help you?"

"I came about the job," said the young woman.

"Job?"

She held out a phone. Crowley peered at the screen, lifting his sunglasses just enough to see it clearly. It was definitely a job advertisement, and it definitely listed the Agency's address. Anathema was far too efficient for her own good, Crowley thought. He'd expected this to take a couple of weeks at least.

"Right, right, the job," he said, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. "Why don't you come in, Miss, er--"

"White. Lily White. And it's Ms." She stepped past him into the office, looking around at the stacks of paper with that same cool assessment she'd turned on Crowley. "Anathema wasn't kidding about this place."

"Oh, you're a friend of Anathema's?" Aziraphale had abandoned his phone and was hurrying forward, hand extended. "Lovely to meet you, I'm, er, Mr Fell--"

Crowley tried not to sigh. Aziraphale had never quite caught up with the modern necessity of having a first name to offer as an introduction. At least he'd stopped handing out gold-edged calling cards.

"Anthony Crowley," Crowley said. He did not offer a handshake, and Lily White didn't seem to expect one. "So you're a database expert?"

She hesitated, then said with a very British caution, "I don't know if I'd call myself an expert. But I can do what you need."

Crowley sauntered over to the nearest wall and lounged carelessly against it as he tried to remember what you were supposed to ask in job interviews. There was all that nonsense about manhole covers and how many tennis balls you could fit into a plane, but he'd invented that purely to mess with humans. It didn't have any actual informational value.

"What do you do at the moment?" he tried.

"Sit at home and look at job postings, mostly," Lily replied with a shrug. "I'm between roles right now."

"Oh? Got fired, did we?"

She glared at him.

"There was a difference of opinion," she said, "about some policy decisions, and it seemed like perhaps it was time for me to move on."

"A difference of opinion?"

"I may have called my boss an idiot," Lily admitted. There was a pause. "And put a curse on him."

"A curse? Oh, right, you're a witch, like Anathema. What sort of curse?"

A small, satisfied smile flickered over Lily's face and was gone.

"He's never going to be able to find a parking space in central London again."

Crowley grinned. Aziraphale shook his head and tutted.

"Did Anathema tell you what we do here?" Aziraphale asked, before Crowley could find out what other delightfully petty revenge Lily was capable of. "The sort of... ins and outs of the Agency?"

"You deal with all the weird shit," Lily replied. "Right? You're like the weird shit police or something. Did you know that Norwich--"

"-- has a frog problem, yes, we're aware," Aziraphale said wearily. "We'll get to it just as soon as we can, we're rather busy, you know--"

"Which is where you come in," said Crowley. "See all this paper? Make it go away."

"But preserve the information on the computer," Aziraphale added hurriedly.

Lily blinked.

"You're hiring me? Just like that?"

"Sure, why not?" Crowley shrugged. "You obviously know what you're doing." He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of her head. "It's right there in your thoughts. Lots of stuff about... tables and links and clicky boxes. I like clicky boxes."

"You can read my mind? That's creepy!"

"Nah, not, you know, the whole thing. Just the bits that are right up front and centre." Crowley paused and smirked for effect. "And by the way, yes, I am the sort of prick who never takes off his sunglasses. Thanks for noticing."

A red flush crept under her tan skin, but she tossed her hair back and shrugged.

"Fine. What about pay, holidays, all that sort of thing?"

Crowley pointed at Aziraphale. "That's his department."

"Ah... yes, well, I hadn't quite worked out the details..." Aziraphale looked flustered. "Perhaps if you could give me your email address, I'll send something through tomorrow?"

Lily produced a plastic slip-case containing a single sheet of paper and held it out.

"Here's my CV. It's got everything on it you'll need."

"Wonderful!" Aziraphale took the paper and beamed at her. "Well, thank you so much for coming by, we'll be in touch--"

A few minutes later, after Lily had been ushered out of the office and Aziraphale was scribbling numbers on a scrap of paper and muttering about overtime, Crowley was still leaning against the wall and looking thoughtfully at the door.

"She's got to be a plant, right?" he said.

Aziraphale blinked at him.

"I beg your pardon?"

And Crowley knew, just knew, that the next words out of Aziraphale's mouth were going to be something about foliage or photosynthesis. He spared them both the embarrassment.

"I mean, that was all a bit convenient, wasn't it?" He pushed himself off from the wall and wandered over to Aziraphale's desk, picking up the CV lying at his elbow. "I reckon someone's sent her to keep an eye on us. Maybe upstairs, maybe downstairs... though, Lily White, that's a truly angelic lack of imagination, that is..."

"She said she knew Anathema," Aziraphale pointed out with a frown.

"She didn't, actually. You assumed. She didn't correct you."

"If you think she isn't what she says she is, why did you agree to hire her?"

"Because I'd rather keep her where I can see her. And it's not like there's anything in this lot--" he waved at the paperwork, "--that either side doesn't already know about. If we get some free filing out of it, all the better."

"Not free," Aziraphale protested. "We'll be paying her a decent wage--"

"You know what I mean."

"Hmm." Aziraphale tapped one finger thoughtfully on the desk. "I suppose it was all a bit... fast. She didn't seem anything other than human, though."

"Maybe Gabriel's started recruiting mortals to do his dirty work for him."

"And all she was thinking about was getting the job, paying her rent, and what you'd look like without a shirt on--"

Crowley choked.

"She what? When did she--"

"About when you draped yourself all over that wall," Aziraphale replied with prim amusement.

"Hmmph. Well. Anyway. Maybe they told her to think about other things. Or maybe they didn't tell her exactly what was going on."

"Or maybe she's just looking for a job," Aziraphale pointed out gently. "It doesn't do to be too paranoid, you know."

"You can never be too paranoid," Crowley groused as he glanced out of the window at the golden evening light highlighting the edges of the buildings. "Not when Heaven and Hell are out to get you."

Aziraphale sighed.

"I suppose you're right," he said quietly. "I rather liked her, though."

Crowley grimaced.

"Me too," he admitted reluctantly. "That's why I don't trust her."

Chapter Text

In theory, the fastest way to get to Devon from London was via Salisbury. In practice, since Crowley tended to drive at whatever speed suited his mood, regardless of the type of road or density of traffic, they took the scenic route along the south coast, and Aziraphale tried very hard not to notice how fast said scenery was zipping past them. At one point there was nearly an unfortunate incident with a deer, but Crowley's reflexes were considerably faster than human, and the Bentley capable of manoeuvres that occasionally defied the laws of physics, so the deer continued on its very startled way, and Aziraphale mostly stifled his small shriek of horror.

"Oh, relax," Crowley said, shooting him an exasperated look. "Have I ever actually hit anything?"

"Well, there was Anathema--"

"She hit me! It doesn't count!"

"I suppose that might have been some sort of destiny," Aziraphale mused. "After all, I wouldn't have found the book otherwise..."

"I don't believe in destiny."

"It was either destiny or your driving, pick one."

"Fine," Crowley grumbled. "Destiny it is then."

"Given how fond you are of this car," Aziraphale went on, wincing as they made the intimate acquaintance of a hedge while overtaking a slow-moving caravan, "I'd have thought you'd be more cautious. Last time anything happened to it you cried."

"I did not cry!" Crowley replied in a scandalised tone. "I never cried, okay, I just had a moment, it's perfectly okay to have a moment after your car explodes--"

Aziraphale thought back to when he'd managed to find his way to Crowley while discorporated. He hadn't been able to see Crowley's face or surroundings, but he'd swear to the end of eternity that his voice had been ragged with tears. It had made Aziraphale's non-existent heart stop, panic threatening to overwhelm his slender control of his manifestation, until Crowley had said, "I lost my best friend," and it all clicked into place: something had happened to the Bentley. He couldn't judge Crowley too harshly for mourning the car like a brother-in-arms. He'd never forget the disbelief and heartache that had come seconds later when Crowley had told him about the bookshop.

We're as ridiculous as each other, allowing ourselves to become so attached to material things.

Aziraphale decided not to tease Crowley any more on that particular subject. He'd sounded so broken... Aziraphale suspected there had been more to that grief than just the Bentley going up in flames, that Crowley's pain had been as much for the world they were about to lose and the war they had failed to prevent. They'd never talked about it. Crowley didn't take well to being reminded of his vulnerabilities.

"Where shall we stop for lunch?" Aziraphale asked instead. "Bridport, perhaps? I remember a nice little tea room there..."

"You do, do you?" said Crowley, in an entirely too knowing tone. "And when was that?"

"Er..." Aziraphale frowned. "... oh. Around 1927. You're right, it's probably not there anymore."

Crowley took in his disappointed expression.

"I'm sure we'll find another one. Can't move for tea rooms along this bit of the coast. They spring up like mushrooms." He looked thoughtful. "Maybe that's why they're called tea rooms?"

"I'm fairly certain they're called tea rooms because they are rooms in which tea is served."

"Yes, obviously, I know that, but you know, tea rooms, mushrooms..."

"Just drive the car, Crowley."

There were, it turned out, still tea rooms in Bridport, and Aziraphale was able to order a truly decadent spread of scones and cakes. Crowley contented himself with scooping up the clotted cream with a finger when Aziraphale wasn't looking. He never felt completely right about chewing food, but it tended to cause consternation if he unhinged his jaw and swallowed an entire crumpet. He liked it when they went to places that served soup, or things that could be savoured in the mouth and then swallowed with minimal mastication. The modern craze for smoothies had been a bonus, since biting into whole fruit always held uncomfortable associations. He usually did try to make an effort when he was out with Aziraphale, but in general most of the pleasure he took from food came from watching Aziraphale enjoy it.

They were on their way again by two o'clock, just in time for a large bank of clouds to start rolling ominously towards them out of the west.

"What were you saying about it being lovely this time of year?" Crowley asked as the first raindrops hit the windscreen.

"I'm sure it will clear up later," Aziraphale replied with an undue optimism for someone who'd lived in England for the entirety of the Little Ice Age. "If not, I have my umbrella."

Crowley made a face. Aziraphale's umbrella was as outdated as his bed, and possibly engineered by the same person. It was patterned in tartan, had a solid wooden pole that weighed as much as a small table, and always, always managed to nip Crowley's fingers if he dared to try and fold it up.

By the time they reached the edge of the moor, the downpour was so intense that Crowley was looking nervously around for any sign of impromptu boat construction, but the only animals he could see were sheep, and they were in soggy clumps rather than pairs.

Aziraphale was examining a map that he'd unfolded over his knees. Crowley had tried getting a satnav once when they first came out, but after two weeks it became convinced it was in a rocket ship on the way to Mars and started giving interplanetary directions in the voice of Freddy Mercury, so he'd thrown it out.

"Ah, yes, this should be straightforward enough," Aziraphale said.

Thirty minutes later they were lost, of course.

"I think maybe we should have turned left by that field of sheep."

"You're going to have to be more specific," Crowley said, peering through the gloom. "Aren't we a bit high up?"

"It's a moor, it's all high up, that's how they work."

"Right, but the villages are usually in the valleys, and we're going up a bloody big hill right now."

"It's called a tor," Aziraphale replied absently. "Outcroppings of granite left behind while the rest of the terrain weathers away."

"It's got ominous rocks on top of it."

"That's just the granite poking through the topsoil. Nothing particularly ominous about it."

With perfect timing, there was a flash of lightning behind the tor, illuminating its craggy, looming crown of grey stones. The wiry moor grass was so green in the rain it was almost unnatural, and the rising wind was driving it into ripples that reminded Crowley of the sea. It looked like exactly the sort of place where you'd sacrifice a virgin or two if you were that way inclined.

He pulled the Bentley into a convenient turn-off with a very optimistic sign about enjoying the view, which currently consisted of a grey haze and, wouldn't you know it, sheep.

"Give me the map."

"Actually if we keep on going over this shoulder of land, I think we'll find we rejoin the main route--"

Crowley snatched the map out of Aziraphale's hands with an ill-concealed glare. Aziraphale huffed at him, but Crowley ignored it, letting just a trickle of his awareness drift out of the car into the growing storm. He'd always been good at knowing where he was. You had to have a knack for it, to lay the stars out so they didn't all just crash into each other straight away, or go flying off to the edges of the universe before anyone could come up with pretty names for them...

He laid a finger on the map to mark their current position, eyes flicking quickly to the name of the hill they were in the process of skirting around. Hound Tor. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He studied the roads around them and sighed.

"You couldn't be more wrong, angel," he said, thrusting the map over to Aziraphale and throwing the Bentley into a three-point-turn that, strictly speaking, there was no room for. "Let's get out of here."

"I thought you liked spooky places?" Aziraphale asked petulantly, struggling to smooth the map out.

"There's spooky and there's asking for trouble," Crowley muttered, glancing at the granite-crowned hill in the rear-view mirror. "Something's not right up there."

St Raphael's Chapel was a small, plain building alongside a quiet, narrow road overhung with trees. It looked rather lovely in the rain, Aziraphale thought. Its windows glowed faintly and its grey stone walls were dark with moisture, like some homely refuge for the weary traveller. No wonder Raphael was so fond of it. He'd never been one for cathedrals, and he knew the value of a warm hearth.

Crowley pulled the Bentley onto the verge just as another rumble of thunder split the sky.

"Think I'll stay in the car," he said. "Consecrated ground and all that."

"Oh, of course." Aziraphale reached into the back seat to retrieve his umbrella. "I shan't be long, I suppose. I can't imagine there's much ground to cover."

Crowley tipped the driver's seat back and stretched, not bothering to hide a yawn.

"Might have a nap," he said, idly slipping his sunglasses off and turning his head to look at the curtain of rain cascading down the window. "Been a long drive."

There was a certain kind of light that you saw only rarely, on the cusp of a storm, when the sky was heavy with black clouds but there was still sunlight in the spot where you were standing. A deep, golden, unearthly light, made all the more vivid for its contrast with the steel-grey sky and the darkness sweeping in to claim it. Crowley's eyes seemed that colour as they reflected the low-hanging storm clouds, and Aziraphale's breath caught. He'd always thought Crowley's eyes were so beautiful, and Crowley kept them hidden so often, even when they were alone...

Crowley shot him a questioning glance. Aziraphale hurriedly seized his umbrella and opened the car door.

"Back in a bit, then," he said, plunging out into the rain.

The umbrella fought back as he tried to get it open, and in the end it seemed easier to scurry through the gate and follow the path around to the chapel door without protection from the elements. The door was, as Crowley had predicted, unlocked. Aziraphale stepped inside and called out, "Hello?"

There was no reply. The rector was probably safely at home with a nice cup of tea. Aziraphale spared a moment to envy him, then carefully propped the umbrella beside the door, and began to look around.

There wasn't much to see. The chapel had been built as a schoolhouse for the children of the moor, and the pews still had a certain desk-ish quality to them. There were fresh flowers carefully arranged throughout the space, a blackboard explaining the history of the chapel, and the usual church notices about services, coffee mornings, and whose turn it was to take collection. Aziraphale found himself smiling as he walked towards the altar. This place was loved very much by the people who took care of it, and underneath all those generations of human affection, he could feel the bright, steady pulse of Raphael's power. The parishioners probably had no idea how holy this site was, how potent its divinity. It was a good thing Crowley had stayed in the car: it would have scorched him at fifty paces.

Aziraphale's smile faltered at the thought. It was so... unfair that a place as lovely as this should cause him pain...

He shook himself. The altar was plain beneath a stained-glass window that glowed with colour against the storm. The altar cloth had been hand-embroidered, and the candlesticks were polished every week. Aziraphale's eyes went to the image of Christ on the cross, and as always, he inclined his head briefly in acknowledgement.

He laid his fingertips on the altar, closed his eyes, and tried to feel the shape of the place, not just now, but stretching back in time. All its services moulded into one glowing act of reverence, all its mornings and evenings blending into gentle twilight, all its comings and goings laid out like a dance with overlapping steps.

There was something there, a misstep, a wrong note. Someone moving with a different intent, cutting through the curve of the chapel's rhythms, a straight line of cool purpose. Human, as Crowley had guessed, but a human whose shadow trailed too long, whose steps were marked with malice...

Aziraphale shivered and opened his eyes. The chapel seemed darker; the rain outside louder. He took one more look around before reclaiming his umbrella and stepping back out into the storm.

"Crowley," he was saying as he hurriedly opened the passenger door of the Bentley, "you're not going to believe this, but--"

He stopped. The driver's seat was empty. Crowley's sunglasses were still on top of the steering wheel. Aziraphale jumped out of the car again and looked around wildly. There was no sign of Crowley.

"For heaven's sake," Aziraphale muttered, ducking back into shelter and pulling the door shut behind him. "Where has he gone off to now?"

A nap had sounded like a good idea when he said it, but Crowley found it hard to relax with the rain battering on the roof of the Bentley. Chalk it up to millennia before humanity had figured out how to make really good, waterproof houses, when rain in the night meant you might wake up soggy and miserable (or, on one memorable occasion, halfway to the sea). Crowley didn't do well with damp. He'd often asked himself why he'd gravitated to this particularly wet corner of the world, but he knew the answer, even if he'd never admit it to anyone. Of course Aziraphale had fallen in love with a country with more bogs than beaches. Couldn't have settled down in the south of France, now, could he? Or some lovely hot, dry Greek island with warm winters?

A good solid bit of forked lightning came snaking down from the sky, striking some distant hilltop in eerie silence, before the earth-shaking crash caught up with it. Crowley blinked away the afterimages, and found that one of them refused to be banished.

He froze. The dark shape on the top of the nearest ridge was almost indistinguishable from the shadows around it, but shadows didn't generally have glowing red eyes. Crowley hissed at it before he could stop himself. If the shadow was aware of his displeasure from that distance, it gave no sign, but he was certain it was watching him. Crowley considered his options, came to the conclusion that he was, once again, about to get extremely damp, and clambered out of the Bentley with a snarl.

It was further away than it looked, and the fields on the way were absolutely sodden. By the time Crowley reached the ridge and started to climb, his shoes were more mud than leather, and his hair was plastered down over his head in that way he particularly hated.

"All right, what's your game?" he demanded as he crested the ridge. "Do you know who I am?"

The hellhound was black and hulking and its eyes were like embers, but its ears twitched back nervously, which made Crowley feel a lot better about things.

The demon Crowley, it said, its voice coming from the air rather than the slavering jaws. I mean you no ill-will.

"It was you lurking up there on that hill, wasn't it? Hound Tor, should've known. How long have you been terrorising the locals?"

What century is this?

"Twenty-first."

Some three hundred years and more, then.

Crowley was taken aback. "You've been hanging around here all that time?"

I like this moor, said the hound, turning its head to gaze out over the rain-cloaked landscape. I know the rocks, I know the sky, I know the hidden paths. I hunt and I stalk and I watch. It is my home.

Crowley felt an unexpected and unwelcome twinge of sympathy.

"Aren't you supposed to have a master? Isn't that how it works for hellhounds?"

I did, once. After he died, I remained, bound by the stone he'd carved and buried on the tor. Eventually the soil was washed away and it rolled into a stream and I was free to depart, but by then, Hell seemed to have forgotten about me.

"Lucky bastard," Crowley muttered. "And you've been here ever since? Didn't anyone notice?"

Many have sought me. The hound bared its fangs in a red, gaping grin. I let them catch a glimpse, so they may tell tales of me at night in their homes.

"Wait," Crowley said, struck by a thought, "did you ever meet a guy called Conan Doyle?"

The hound tilted its head to one side.

I do not recall the names of humans.

"Right, it's just, I think he wrote a book about you..." Crowley shook himself. "Anyway. Why'd you follow us here?"

The hound growled, a low, terrifying sound that Crowley tried very hard not to acknowledge.

You travel with an angel.

"Yeah, that's, uh, that's a thing I do." It was dawning on him that a hellhound who hadn't been back to Hell for over three hundred years was unlikely to have heard any of the rumours that had been providing Crowley with slender protection from his fellow demons. And that perhaps he should not have allowed himself to be drawn so far away from the car. "He's not a bad sort, though, for an angel--"

There is a sickness on my moor, the hound said, turning its head again to glare north into the gloom. Perhaps the angel can heal it.

Crowley stared at the hellhound until it turned back to meet his eyes with a small, questioning growl.

"You want him to help you? Shouldn't you, you know, be trying to attack him or something?"

Shouldn't you? asked the hellhound pointedly.

"... fair point, I suppose." Crowley shook his head. "What sort of sickness?"

An unnatural one. Humans meddling with things they should not. There is a house of secrets, and a woman who walks like a queen, and an item of great power put to use for petty gain...

"Oh? Big wooden staff, is it?"

I do not know. I only know that its wielder smote my moor and cracked it open in a wound that has yet to heal.

"We came here to look for something like that," Crowley said. "I suppose there could be two 'items of great power' knocking around in this part of the world, but I'm not putting any money on it. Where's this house?"

I will show you.

The hellhound stepped closer. Crowley extended his hand and lightly touched the top of the night-black head. It was softer than he'd expected, sleeker. A hound not so much of Hell, this one, as of the twilight and the storm and the joy of the chase.

The images flashed through his mind, along with a sense of direction, distance, and a deep unease, the fear of losing something loved.

"Got it," Crowley said, struck by the mad urge to pet the hellhound's ears. He withdrew his hand quickly before he could do anything that would get it bitten off. "What's your name, anyway?"

I am Wist. The hound turned and began to pad silently away through the bushes. Call for me and I will come.

"Er, thanks-- I think?"

Wist vanished into the gloom, leaving Crowley to realise that if he thought he'd been wet before, he'd been laughably overoptimistic about just how drenched you could get from standing on top of a moor talking to a demon dog. When he turned around to head back to the car, he squelched.

It took longer to get back than he'd expected. He hadn't realised how far he'd come over the fields. Or how much time had passed. Even allowing for the high probability that Aziraphale had been drawn into extended conversation with the rector (and his dog), he'd be done by now. Crowley picked up the pace, jogging grimly over the sodden fields until finally he saw the chapel and the Bentley through the trees. A white smudge within the rain-dotted glass told him that Aziraphale was waiting for him.

"Where have you been?" Aziraphale demanded as Crowley opened the driver's door. "I was starting to--" He got a good look at Crowley for the first time and his eyebrows shot up. "Good heavens, my dear, what have you been doing? You look like the wrong end of a mop."

Crowley's hair and clothes dried before he could even snap his fingers. He ducked into the car and pulled the door shut with a sigh of relief. It always felt different when Aziraphale miracled something like that for him. Warmer, somehow. A lingering softness that he savoured and would never, ever ask for.

"Following a lead," he said. "Did you get anything from the chapel?"

Aziraphale pressed his lips together and nodded.

"I can hardly believe it," he said, "but I think we're dealing with a warlock."

Crowley stared at him, then grabbed his sunglasses and put them on.

"We're not talking about the kid we made a pig's ear of raising, I take it?"

"No, Crowley," Aziraphale said with a disapproving frown. "And I think we did the best we could with him in the circumstances." For a moment his eyes were far away. "We should check up on him, you know, see how he's doing in America--"

"Right, yes, of course, just rock up and say 'hey kid, how's not being the Antichrist working out for you?'" Crowley shook his head at Aziraphale's disappointed look. "Never mind. You're sure it was a warlock?"

"It was definitely someone with a good deal of dark magic at their disposal. Nasty stuff. I'm certain they took the staff."

Crowley put the car into gear and swung them back onto the road.

"What about your lead?" Aziraphale asked. "What did you find?"

"The Hound of the Baskervilles, I think."

"I beg your pardon?"

Crowley laughed at his expression.

"Come on, let's find somewhere to hole up until this weather passes. I've got an idea where to look for your warlock, but I've had enough rain for one day."

"We passed a nice little inn on the way here. En-suite bedrooms, scenic views, full English breakfast..."

"Unexpected cancellation?" Crowley asked, glancing slyly at Aziraphale as he drove.

"I have no idea," Aziraphale replied reprovingly. "We'll just have to rely on luck, won't we?"

Crowley looked at the wipers trying their best to keep the windscreen clear, still feeling the faint chill of being wet down to the skin.

"Oh, I'm feeling pretty lucky," he said.

The rain was still rattling against the windows long after midnight. The proprietor of the pub (lovely woman, Aziraphale was sure she would be able to make things up with her sister soon) had said it would clear by morning. Aziraphale hoped that pronouncement was born of some particular knowledge of the weather on the moor, and not just wishful thinking. Crowley was asleep in the double bed - at least, Aziraphale assumed he was still in there somewhere. He'd formed a sort of blanket sausage around himself, like a grumpy moth weaving a light-proof cocoon, and there had been no movement in some hours.

For the second night in a row, Aziraphale was having trouble concentrating on his book, but this time it was because his mind was racing through the implications of what they'd learned so far. That, and the armchair squeezed into the corner of the charming little bedroom wasn't particularly comfortable.

A warlock. Contrary to popular belief, the difference between witches and warlocks had never been about gender. Witches could be men; warlocks could be women. The difference lay in the power they drew on. Witches built water wheels in the flow of the world, channelling ley lines, sifting through auras, weaving the strands of reality together. Warlocks built dams, and hoped to trap something large, angry, and with too many teeth, and force it to do all the hard work for them.

It had been a long time since Aziraphale had run across anyone wielding that sort of sorcery. Heaven had sent him after one or two, of course, but he'd rarely needed to do much: warlocks were generally self-defeating. Their ambitions were usually so venal and selfish that they quickly destroyed themselves with the infernal power they'd been channelling.

But every so often you got one who was truly dangerous. Someone with self-control. Someone who'd sold their soul not because they didn't understand what they were doing, but because they understood all too well. Aziraphale had spent centuries thinking about the look he'd seen in the eyes of the last one he'd encountered. Trying to imagine standing on the edge of that precipice, and willingly throwing oneself over it, knowing every single fraction of the cost. Trying to imagine choosing damnation with open eyes.

He had no way of knowing, of course, what sort of person they were dealing with. There were certainly plenty of greedy, foolish souls in the world. But some instinct told him to beware.

The blanket cocoon on the bed made a disgruntled noise, wriggled around for a moment, and then unravelled slightly to reveal tousled red hair and a face twisted into a frown. Crowley didn't seem to actually be awake, but he flung out an arm as if looking for something, fingers scrabbling urgently across the sheet before he subsided. He made a tiny noise, something Aziraphale couldn't have put a name to, but that twisted in his chest unexpectedly. It was a sound he'd never heard Crowley make, something vulnerable and afraid.

Did Crowley dream? He'd never thought to ask. Aziraphale supposed he must; it came with the whole sleeping thing, after all. He'd had some hazy experiences of his own, dozing on the couch in the bookshop, but on the few occasions when he'd truly slept deeply, he had no memory of dreams. Or of nightmares.

He quietly got out of the armchair, stepping closer to the bed. Crowley was all lines and angles, even in sleep, even bundled up in more blankets than Aziraphale thought had been in the room when they arrived. And yet, without the dark glasses, without his constant stream of sarcastic remarks and skeptical expressions, there was a softness to him, something that in someone else might be called gentleness. Just as there always was, if you knew where to look, even though he tried so hard to hide it from a world that would punish him for it...

... and there it was again, the gale, the storm, the fury rising up so fast and hard that Aziraphale swayed on his feet, knuckles white as he clutched his book like a talisman. Why? Why was he ever cast out? Why would the Almighty do something so wrong--

There were some questions you didn't ask. At least, that's what he'd always believed...

Crowley mumbled and flinched again, trying to burrow into his blankets as if for shelter. Aziraphale took a shaky breath and forced himself to relax his grip on the book. Let the storm sink down again. Bury it deep. It was all these nights away from his bookshop, he thought. He didn't like being in an unfamiliar environment.

He intended to go and sit back down in his chair, so he was surprised to find himself instead circling the bed, and tentatively settling onto the free half of the mattress. Some half-formed thought about comforting Crowley with his presence: ridiculous, really.

Except it seemed to work. Crowley relaxed as soon as Aziraphale settled in, the hand that had been grasping vaguely at the sheets going limp. One thick lock of hair had fallen over his eyes, tickling the bridge of his nose and making his face twitch endearingly.

Well, the bed was more comfortable than the chair anyway. Aziraphale might as well stay here until morning. It had nothing to do with the little sigh that escaped Crowley's lips when Aziraphale brushed aside that stray lock of hair. Nothing at all.

Chapter Text

Crowley got his phone out while Aziraphale was enjoying his second slice of toast and homemade jam. Then he pulled out the map and spread it over his half of the table. Aziraphale gave him a look of mild disapproval, which Crowley ignored. Aziraphale sighed. He supposed they were here on business, after all. He finished up the toast and moved his chair around next to Crowley's.

"Now there's a surprise," Crowley said. He sounded anything but surprised. "Here's that house with the fly problem--" He tapped a spot on the map. "--and here's the place Wist told us to go."

He moved his finger barely a centimetre to indicate a location just up the road.

"I suppose we'd better get on, then," said Aziraphale, casting one last longing look at the dish of jam. "Which should we visit first?"

"The village is on the way to the other place." Crowley was jabbing at his phone, trying to zoom in on one of those electronic maps that Aziraphale could never get the hang of. "Looks like a big house of some kind."

Aziraphale reached for his tea to finish it off. Crowley caught his eye, a flash of all-too-knowing yellow over the rim of his sunglasses.

"You've got time for another piece of toast, angel."

When they reached the village, the rain had stopped, but the sky was still heavy and grey, making everything look sullen, especially the sheep. The place would probably have been very picturesque on a sunny day, but in this weather the grey stone houses looked like they were hunkering down for protection.

They found the cottage easily enough: it was the only one with a 'to let' sign outside. The climbing rose on the front wall needed a good prune, and no-one had mowed the grass in a while. Crowley miracled the lock and led the way inside. Aziraphale shivered as he stepped over the threshold.

"Still think it's sweet?" Crowley asked.

"Perhaps not. There's a definite air of... something." Aziraphale walked down the small hallway, peering into the rooms that led off it. "Why are all the lights on?"

"Good question."

Every light in every room was blazing, even though it was the middle of the day. All the curtains were drawn. Every wardrobe and cupboard had its doors propped open, except for the cupboard under the stairs, where someone had plugged in an electric lantern using a long extension cable.

"What a terrible waste of electricity," Aziraphale said. He could still feel that unpleasantness in the air, the memory of something foul.

"Hmm." Crowley drifted over to the back door and leaned down to examine the lock. "Thought so. This has been forced, more than once by the look of it. Someone's broken in here fairly recently."

"Broken in? Have they stolen anything?"

"How would I know?"

"There are still valuables here." Aziraphale peered through a doorway into a sitting room that had been kitted out with a widescreen television and various other electronics. "You'd think a burglar would take those."

They went through the rooms again, but there were no obvious clues as to what had happened, except that lingering feeling of rot.

"We'd better find someone to ask about it," Aziraphale said as they headed back out the front door. "Maybe if we--"

Crowley shushed him, his head going up in the way that meant someone was watching them. He cast around briefly, then stared at a house across the road. When Aziraphale looked, he spotted a twitching net curtain in a downstairs window.

"Aha," said Crowley. "Found us a witness."

The garden of the other cottage was extremely neat and tidy, almost to the point of sterility, and featured a distressing number of garden gnomes. Crowley paused halfway up the path to peer suspiciously at one of them. Aziraphale followed his gaze. The gnome was oddly familiar.

"Good heavens, is that Hastur?"

"Does look like him, doesn't it?" Crowley lifted his sunglasses for just long enough to glare at the squat little figure. "Just as long as it doesn't try anything."

There was a long delay after they knocked, even though the owner of the house must have been watching them approach. When the woman did finally open the door, there was a wariness in her face that went beyond rural mistrust of outsiders and into something like real fear.

"Can I help you?"

"Who do we talk to about renting that place over the road?" Crowley asked.

She flinched.

"It's not available right now."

"Really? The sign says it's to let. Why are all the lights on?"

Her expression hardened. "Did the agency give you the keys? I'd thought they understood the situation--"

"Which is?"

"It's... in need of... renovation," she said, groping for words. "Now, if you'll excuse me--"

Crowley sighed and snapped his fingers. Her face went blank. Aziraphale tutted, but let it slide. They were here to help, after all. And humans could be so stubborn about admitting they'd seen something unnatural.

"What's really going on with that house?" Crowley asked.

"It's not just that one," the woman said, quiet and dreamy. "It's the whole village."

"The whole village doing what?"

"It's the flies," she explained peacefully. "If you leave a place dark for too long, it all fills up with flies. Thousands of them. Like the darkness itself turns into flies. Nobody turns their lights off now. And that's the only house with no-one living in it. We had to do something."

"So you broke in?" Aziraphale asked.

"Not me. Mr Jenkins. He checks it every few days. We don't know what else to do."

"When did this start?"

"Just after the earthquake."

"Earthquake?" Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. "In Devon?"

"Woke us all up in the night, around Easter time. It was almost more like an explosion than anything. We thought something had happened at the manor house up on the hill, but we never heard anything else about it. After that the flies started coming." Even in her mesmerised state, a note of distress crept into her voice. "They just keep coming."

"Oh, you poor things," Aziraphale murmured. "You should have called us-- well, never mind, we'll sort it out for you, don't worry."

"Don't make promises before we know what we're dealing with--"

"We will," Aziraphale said firmly.

Crowley sighed.

"Who lives in the manor house?" he asked.

"No-one, really. Someone bought it about... oh, last year, I think, before Christmas... but we hardly ever see anyone. There's a woman. I don't know who she is, no-one does, except she must be very rich. She comes down in her fancy car sometimes for a few days and goes away again. She hasn't been back since the earthquake."

"Right. We'd better get up there and have a look then," Crowley said, turning to go.

"Thank you so much," Aziraphale told the woman, "and please don't worry, everything is going to be all right."

Ten minutes later they were pulling up outside the manor house. It was large, grey, and imposing, its grounds surrounded by a high wall, and the wind was whining through crevices in a distinctly spooky fashion. The house's many windows were dark and brooding, the gate padlocked. Crowley had to reluctantly give it points for style.

"Listen, if we run into anyone called Heathcliff, I say we hit him on the head first and ask questions later."

"That's Yorkshire, not--" Aziraphale paused halfway through getting out of the Bentley to shoot him an incredulous look over the roof. "Hold on, you've read Wuthering Heights?"

"Er-- no, 'course not, you know me and books, couldn't have read it." Crowley slammed the driver's door and started towards the gate, forcing Aziraphale to hurry to keep up. "Just-- heard the song."

"Song? Did someone write a ballad about it?"

"Not one you'd enjoy."

He didn't know when it had become such a thing, this idea that he didn't read. He'd started it as another way to needle Aziraphale, sometime back when papyrus was in vogue, and over the centuries it had become as much a part of his, sort of, look as the dark glasses: here's Crowley, never picked up a book in his life-- well, existence-- but somehow knows just enough about literature to properly infuriate Aziraphale with well-timed questions about whether or not Dracula sparkles. For the most part, it wasn't an act; Crowley was good at picking up on the cultural zeitgeist, and had only found it easier once television and radio were invented. You hardly needed books when people never stopped talking about the good bits.

But the truth was, he did read, sometimes. There were things that humans did with words that very occasionally left him shaken and shattered and silent, and he had a very small, very secret collection of books that had left a particular mark on him.

Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

He shivered, and shook himself, and snapped his fingers impatiently. The padlock hit the ground and the gate swung open.

"Shouldn't we at least knock?" Aziraphale asked peevishly.

"There's no-one home, can't you tell?"

"This whole place is giving me a most unpleasant sensation," Aziraphale replied with a little shudder. "It's hard to say what is or isn't inside, except I feel strongly I'd rather not find out."

"D'you want to stay out here?"

"No," Aziraphale said flatly. "You're not going in there alone."

Crowley shot him a startled glance, pace slowing involuntarily, but Aziraphale had obviously made up his mind that they were doing this, and strode on up the drive. It was Crowley's turn to scurry after him, after a brief pause to sniff the air. He wasn't as sensitive to the feeling of a place as Aziraphale, but he caught the unmistakable acrid scent of dark magic.

"This is the place, all right," he muttered. "Aziraphale, wait. Maybe we should go around the back..."

He trailed off as they reached the front door. The steps leading up to it were cracked: a long, jagged fault that ran from the top to the bottom. The door itself was split in two, and had been hastily propped up in its frame. Through the gap, Crowley could see only darkness.

They exchanged a look, then reached out at the same time, each giving one half of the door a good shove. The heavy wooden pieces toppled over with almost comical slowness, and hit the ground with a crash so loud it shook the whole house.

The hallway beyond looked like an earthquake had hit it. The crack continued, widening and deepening into a fissure and running right through the next wall, splitting the stones themselves in half. Antique furniture was strewn on all sides, some of it now only fit for firewood, and the flagstone floor glittered with glass shards.

"Oh dear," Aziraphale said. "You don't suppose--"

"That the idiot who took the staff has managed to blow themselves up with it?" Crowley began picking his way through the debris, heading for a closed door several feet away from the crack in the wall. "Let's find out, shall we?"

"Crowley." Aziraphale hadn't moved. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"I'm not sure you should open that door--"

It would have been nice, Crowley thought, if Aziraphale had got the words out before his fingers had already closed on the handle and twisted.

Flies burst out in a rolling wave like they'd been packed into a ghoulish jack-in-the-box. Crowley barely managed to stifle a yelp as he staggered backwards, waving his arms frantically to keep them away from his face. There were so many that he could feel the pressure of them buffeting him like a strong wind, and they were swarming frantically, barely able to stay aloft in the chaos. Any second now they were going to start landing on him, crawling over him, thank Satan he didn't need to breathe or they'd be in his mouth already--

He didn't hear exactly what Aziraphale said, but suddenly the buzzing was gone, and he was standing in the middle of a gentle rain of something soft and white. Snow? No, he realised, feathers. The tiny, soft ones you got in a really good eiderdown. They were settling in his hair, on his shoulders, and in drifts on the floor around him. One tickled his nose and made him sneeze.

He turned a long, pointed look on Aziraphale.

"It was the first thing I thought of," Aziraphale replied crossly. "You could at least say thank you."

Crowley made a show of trying to brush the clingy little things off his jacket. He was fairly sure he must look like he'd suffered an attack of really weird dandruff, or possibly been in a pillow fight, neither of which bestowed a lot of dignity. Aziraphale huffed past him, kicking up feathers like autumn leaves, and paused in the open door.

"Let there be light," Crowley heard him say, followed immediately by, "Oh dear."

The thing about oh dear was that Aziraphale tended to use it for everything from my tea has gone cold to the world is doomed, but the thing about Aziraphale was that he somehow managed to convey that entire range of meaning via inflection. This oh dear was at least an eight out of ten, and Crowley abandoned his attempts to clean himself up and hurried to look over Aziraphale's shoulder.

"That's quite a big pit," he said after a moment.

"It is rather, isn't it."

"How far down do you think it goes?"

Aziraphale edged further into the room, stooped to pick up a piece of debris, and tossed it cautiously into the crevasse that occupied most of the floor. They waited a very long time before reluctantly accepting that it probably wasn't going to hit the bottom.

"The dog wasn't kidding about the gaping wound bit," Crowley muttered. "That's a hell of a hole."

"You don't suppose it actually goes all the way down there, do you?"

Crowley inched over to the lip of the pit and peered down. After a moment, he took his sunglasses off so he could squint into the depths.

"If it does, someone's going to be really pissed off when that stone hits them on the head."

"Oh dear."

Crowley sniffed the air, checked Aziraphale wasn't watching, and then rather self-consciously darted his tongue out to get a clearer scent. He wrinkled his nose at the result.

"Not Hell," he said after a moment. "Not enough sulphur. Definitely something occult going on though. It's not just bedrock and bats down there. Not sure where we'd end up if we jumped in."

"Let's not try it, shall we?" Aziraphale was moving carefully around the edges of the room, examining the wreckage that hadn't fallen into the pit. He nudged aside half a splintered table and crouched down to look more closely at the floor. "There's the edge of a ritual circle of some kind here."

"Any idea what it was supposed to do? I mean," Crowley gave the pit a considering look, "assuming this wasn't the intended outcome. Suppose it could have been someone trying to excavate a new cellar."

"Not sure. I'll see if I can find any more of it, make a note of the runes..."

Crowley kept half an eye on him, not convinced Aziraphale wouldn't become so engrossed that he'd walk right into the pit, and idly scanned the rest of the room. His gaze alighted on something in the far corner that sent a jolt of recognition through him.

It took some careful stepping to get around the pit, but when he reached it, Crowley found he hadn't been mistaken. Even charred black, the goat's skull was unmistakable. He picked it up gingerly, looked into the hollow eyesockets, and resisted the urge to stick his hand inside and make it talk.

"What have you got over there?" Aziraphale called.

Crowley rubbed away the soot between the goat's horns, revealing a five pointed star drawn in something that he very much doubted was red ink.

"Someone's doing things the old-fashioned way," Crowley replied. "Burnt offering, this is."

He frowned as something else caught his eye, crumpled up underneath where the skull had been. It was a large shopping bag, torn and dirtied, covered in wax drippings and smudges of charcoal. Underneath the mess, he could just make out the logo of a famous brand of cosmetics. He tossed the skull aside and nudged the bag with his foot, but it was empty. Probably just as well. People who sacrificed goats tended to do funny things with entrails given half a chance...

He looked back up to see that Aziraphale was standing alarmingly close to the edge of the pit, looking at the shattered remains of a bookshelf.

"Aziraphale--"

"Nothing worth saving, I'm afraid." Aziraphale prodded gingerly at a sad mound of shredded paper. "Pity, some of these look interesting..."

"Just... watch where you're going."

Aziraphale glanced at the pit, gave Crowley a look that clearly said stop fussing, and began to pick his way carefully back over to the door.

"You said the hellhound-- what was his name?"

"Wist."

"Thank you, yes. You said he wanted us to fix this somehow? Heal it?"

"That was the idea."

Aziraphale pursed his lips and gave the pit in the floor a dubious look.

"Do you have any ideas as to how we would go about it?"

"Nope. Was hoping you would."

Aziraphale sighed.

"I suppose we'd better look around the rest of the house," he said. "Perhaps there'll be a note."

"What, you mean like, 'to whom it may concern, here's my sinister plan, don't tell anyone'?"

Aziraphale glared at him in the way that only Aziraphale could, and headed for the stairs. Crowley followed, grinning to himself. It never got old.

They found little of interest in the rest of the house. Crowley had secretly been hoping for some sort of occult library, or maybe a lab full of bubbling flasks and ominous jars, but if any such things had existed, they must have been in the room that had been consumed by the pit. Everything else was mundane and rather unloved; a number of dusty bedrooms, a kitchen that seemed barely used, sitting room, conservatory, dining room, and so on. The master bedroom had clearly seen some occupancy, but there were no personal touches, no clothes hanging in the wardrobe, not even a toothbrush left behind.

"Now what?" Aziraphale asked as they returned to the car. "We seem to have reached a dead end."

"Not quite," Crowley said, leaning on the Bentley and looking back at the house. "We can try and find out who owns this place. And Anathema might come through with something."

"What if the warlock destroyed herself?"

"I don't think so. There'd be... stuff left behind, right? Our witness said she had a fancy car, you'd expect there to be some things in the house..."

"Unless someone cleaned up afterwards. We don't even know for sure that this woman is the warlock. She might just be a co-conspirator."

Crowley nodded, conceding the point.

"Should we stay another night?" Aziraphale asked. "Look around some more?"

"Whatever happened, I don't get the feeling she's still in the area, do you?"

"No, not really."

"Might as well head back to London, then." Crowley opened the driver's door and swung down into his seat. "We just need to make one stop along the way."

Aziraphale had to admit, privately, that Hound Tor did have a rather ominous cast to it, even without the rain lashing down. This time they drove as high as they could get, then climbed the rest of the way to the grey, rocky crown.

"Wist?" Crowley shouted as they approached. "Oi, Wist, where are you?"

The shadows shifted and flowed. Aziraphale found himself looking at a pair of glowing red eyes in the darkness between two enormous chunks of stone. He took a nervous step back. He'd never actually seen a hellhound - apart from Dog, who scarcely counted these days - but the number of teeth had not, apparently, been exaggerated.

You found the wound? Wist said, those ember eyes fixed on Aziraphale. Can you heal it?

"Well... not yet," Aziraphale said, shooting Crowley a worried look. "We need to understand what it is, first. What magic was used, and by whom."

Wist growled, low and terrifying, but there was something in the harmonics that spoke more of despair than of anger.

"We will find out," Aziraphale went on quickly. "I promise. We'll come back."

Wist fixed him with a look so intense it burned.

It is against my nature to trust an angel's promise, Wist said after a moment. But so be it. Break faith with me and I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth and beyond.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Aziraphale said indignantly. "I'm a man of my word. Well, not exactly, but you know what I--"

"And anyway," Crowley put in, "the last thing we need is more people out to get us."

The hellhound looked between them.

What strange mirrors you are of one another, he said. Very well. I will await your return.

Wist's smoky outline faded back into the shadows. His eyes were the last to vanish.

"Right," Crowley said after a moment. "We'll be off then."

"We'll be back as soon as we know how to sort out that pit," Aziraphale added, to the empty air.

The whole way back to the car, Aziraphale felt the back of his neck prickling, and had to struggle not to keep looking over his shoulder.

"A little odd, for a hellhound, don't you think?" he said, once they were safely on the road again (for a given value of safely, with Crowley at the wheel).

"Been on Earth too long," Crowley replied, flashing Aziraphale an amused, pointed look. "Gone native."

"Ah. Yes." Aziraphale clutched at the door as Crowley took a bend so fast he was convinced they would fly off the side of the tor. "Good for him."

Crowley took one hand off the wheel to fumble for his phone. Aziraphale briefly closed his eyes and contemplated manifesting himself a bottle of something strong enough to take the edge off his nerves.

"Here." Crowley unlocked the phone and tossed it into Aziraphale's lap. "See if Anathema's emailed, would you?"

Aziraphale peered at the screen, wondering when Crowley had swapped that rather pretty picture of flames for this equally lovely starscape. He found the email icon and tapped it.

"I can't see anything from her," he said after a moment. Then, "Crowley, why do you have an email from Adam entitled re: how to pick locks--"

Crowley snatched the phone back.

"He's got a very enquiring mind, that boy."

Aziraphale gave him a flat look, which Crowley appeared not to notice, being suddenly and uncharacteristically attentive to the road.

"Music?" he suggested innocently, gesturing to the stack of CDs.

"Oh, all right."

Aziraphale flipped through the cases until he found one called London Calling, which seemed appropriate in the circumstances. He slid the CD into the player, and a few moments later a somewhat familiar bass beat kicked in.

... you got mud on your face, you big disgrace, kicking your can all over the place, singing...

"Have you ever noticed," Aziraphale said, "that all this modern music sounds the same?"

"That's because you only ever listen to it in the car, angel," replied Crowley with a sigh.

The dream went like this: he screeched to a halt outside the burning bookshop, threw himself out of the Bentley, and stormed through the door. He was worried, angry, desperate: what trouble had Aziraphale got himself into this time? Would this finally convince him to stop tugging on Heaven's sleeve? They didn't have time for this--

And then he felt the flames on his skin, a heat all too familiar, licking and laughing with infernal potency. Hellfire. One of the very few things that could truly kill an angel. And he was screaming, running through the flames, the end of the world forgotten because the end of his world had already arrived. Aziraphale, Aziraphale, angel, please!

His foot kicked something small and hard that bounced across the floor: Aziraphale's gold signet ring, already softening in the impossible heat. He fell to his knees, unfeeling and feeling too much at the same time. His trembling fingers reached for the ring.

A foot came down hard a hair's breadth from his fingertips, crushing and bending the melting gold into no more than a stain on the bottom of a perfectly polished shoe.

"For Heaven's sake," said Gabriel with that unbearable smile, "we are meant to make examples of traitors."

Sometimes the dream went on after that, with Crowley staggering through an endless, mocking maze of fire in pursuit of figures he couldn't quite catch up to, weeping and cursing and bent entirely on making them pay, and knowing it meant nothing, nothing now...

But this was one of the nights when instead he woke up with his cry of agony still clawing its way out of his throat to echo briefly in the emptiness of his flat.

Crowley bolted upright, half out of bed before he could stop himself, already reaching for his phone. He took a shuddering breath, glanced at the clock - 2 AM - and dropped his head into his hands, willing the shaking to stop. The air was hot and heavy. A bright flash of lightning threw the room into stark relief; thunder followed shortly, a great rolling crack like the breaking of mountains.

Aziraphale had insisted on parting ways after dinner, saying he needed some time with his wretched manuscripts, and Crowley would even have slept in that abomination of a bed if it meant being sure he was safe, but there had been something in Aziraphale's eyes that stopped him. Something that made it clear that the manuscripts were only half of it, that he wanted to be alone. And faced with two warring needs, his own and Aziraphale's, Crowley had made the same choice he always did, and muttered a goodnight, and tried to pretend it didn't matter.

Who the fuck invented nightmares, anyway. Crowley surged to his feet, stormed out of the bedroom, and fetched up staring out of his study window at the lights of London. The rain had followed them from Dartmoor; the lights wavered and danced through the downpour. Was that one of Lucifer's? He always had a nasty streak even Before...

Wasn't the memory of the burning bookshop enough without the embellishments? It hadn't been hellfire, just ordinary flames, but he'd still known that Aziraphale was gone. He would never have allowed the bookshop to burn otherwise. And Crowley had understood something then that, for all his talk of our own side, he'd never fully looked in the face: that his allegiance, his loyalty, his - no, better just call it loyalty - was to Aziraphale and this ridiculous, sprawling, ever-changing planet they called home. That he who'd spent six thousand years avoiding Hell's notice would spit in Beelzebub's face rather than pick up a sword in the final battle.

And where did that leave him now? Heaven didn't want him - not that he'd go back if they begged - and he had no faith that Hell would so easily forgive his defection. And Aziraphale might have finally seen through Gabriel and the others, but he would never turn his back on the core of what he was: a being of goodness, someone driven to change the world for the better, to act on the divine will.

Choose your faces wisely, Agnes had told them, and the trick had worked perfectly, saved both their skins, and yet ever since, Crowley had felt like his own shape didn't fit him properly.

He hadn't asked to be a demon. He wouldn't choose to be an angel again. He'd give up his wings if it meant true freedom. But Aziraphale would never even consider it. He'd never truly give up on Heaven.

And that meant one day, however far away it might be, he would go where Crowley could not follow.

Crowley closed his eyes and leaned his head against the glass. He cursed Gabriel, Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon. He threw Raphael in for good measure. They could at least have been allowed more time, couldn't they? After six thousand years, was it too much to ask a longer breathing space? But then, a thousand thousand mortals had begged a thousand thousand times for just a little more time. He supposed he shouldn't expect a different answer.

He shouldn't expect an answer at all. He glanced briefly upward, then averted his eyes. No help there. Never had been, never would be.

He hadn't meant to Fall. But if you gave him the same choice again? He'd take a running dive.

It was good to be home. Everything was just the way Aziraphale liked it, his cocoa the exact right temperature, his manuscripts carefully laid out for inspection, his chair perfectly comfortable. The night should be flying by like so many others had before it.

Instead, he lost focus on the manuscripts again and again, getting up to check some minor detail or other, distracting himself with frivolous tasks, until at last he found himself wandering through the shelves of the bookshop, not even sure what he was looking for until he found it between a first edition of Pride and Prejudice and a much-read copy of The Divine Comedy. He'd never been a great fan of Wuthering Heights - entirely too much of the plot hinged on a general inability to sit down and have a sensible conversation - but there could be no denying the beauty of the prose. And here and there, a line or a phrase that was almost too raw to bear...

The book fell open in the same place it always did.

Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.

There was a sudden gust of wind outside, the long, low moan of the storm unrolling itself over London. Rain was drumming on the windows like a frantic heartbeat. There was huge crash of thunder. The lights flickered.

I wish Raphael hadn't come, Aziraphale thought, with the awful honesty that only the lonely hours of the early morning could bring. I wish I could have believed that we really were on our own now.

He shut the book with a snap and shoved it back onto the shelf with a carelessness that he rarely displayed with even the least worthy of literature. He went back to his manuscripts, and this time he didn't stir until it was time to meet Crowley for breakfast.

Chapter Text

Anathema was beginning to think she owed Agnes an apology for certain uncharitable thoughts over the years. She stared at the notebook page and tried to decipher her own scrawl.

The devil is in the details, she'd written, and the details are with the devil.

Then, on another line, Good things come in small packages, but so does revenge. Beware of geckos bearing gifts.

And finally, When is a bottomless pit not a bottomless pit?

They'd made sense when she'd written them down. At least, she thought they had. The visions, if that's what they were, felt like something trying to cram itself into her head regardless of whether or not it would fit. They weren't exactly pictures, and they weren't exactly words, and they seemed to exist in more dimensions than she could perceive. When she was in the middle of one of them she felt like she understood it completely, and then when it faded, she found herself trying to understand how something could taste purple and sound like marzipan.

She'd heard snatches of speech, a few words lost on the breeze as you drove past with the hood down, the beginning of a question cut off by a cheering crowd, and she'd thought she was writing them down verbatim, but now she couldn't remember what they'd been, or how they fitted with the cryptic clues on the page.

She'd caught glimpses of figures, but they'd been more like clouds of words than people, an overlapping impossible collection of thoughts and impressions and history and potential. She couldn't see their faces through the haze of everything else they were.

Three times it had happened, like a whole body sneeze that went on for minutes. Three times she'd stumbled to wherever she'd left her notebook and written what felt like pages of explanation. Three times she'd blinked away the after-images and found herself staring at a single, opaque line of text. That last one had been just half an hour ago, while she was catching up on the morning news.

Three times in the last two days. All of them since Crowley had called. Anathema glanced at her laptop screen, where his latest email was still open. He'd sent through some details of what they'd found in Devon. The mention of the gigantic hole had nearly made her spit her coffee out. When is a bottomless pit not a bottomless pit? And when it came to devils, well, that was almost too obvious. The bit about the gecko was more puzzling, but there were certainly people - well, not exactly people - out there who might seek revenge against Crowley and Aziraphale.

With a sigh, she tabbed to another email, one of the replies from the Plymouth coven. At the time it hadn't seemed useful, just local gossip, but Crowley had mentioned a woman with a fancy car...

She copied and pasted the relevant part into her reply, along with a summary of the few details she'd received from the rest of the coven. Then, after some hesitation and an internal struggle with honesty, she wrote, By the way, it seems Agnes left me a few extra prophecies after all. Might be something do with you? See if you can figure them out.

She typed up her three lines and hit send before she could chicken out. There. At least if the visions were connected with those two, she'd done her best to pass on the message. Aziraphale had made sense of the Nice and Accurate Prophecies in ways that generations of Devices had failed to grasp. It might mean something to him. And in the meantime, she supposed she'd better keep a sharp eye out for vengeful lizards.

"Well, that's clear as mud," Crowley muttered.

"What does she mean, Agnes left her some extra prophecies? These weren't in the book, I'd remember!"

"We could call her--"

"No, I want to think about this."

Aziraphale grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down the lines of prophecy. Crowley thought about pointing out that he could just forward on the email, but decided against it. Aziraphale might take decades to catch up to the latest technology but he was a fast learner when he put his mind to it. If he'd wanted to read the thing on his phone, he'd have done that.

Crowley turned his attention to the rest of the email as Aziraphale wandered back to his desk, muttering to himself about geckos. Most of it was simply confirmation of things they'd already discovered: the coven had been sure the earthquake was unnatural in origin, a couple of members had driven through the village recently and been shaken by its aura, and there'd been reports for centuries of a black dog on the moor. The only thing that stood out was the part Anathema had taken directly from one of the emails.

I suppose the only other thing is that I saw Julia Gregory in town a couple of times recently, you wouldn't expect to bump into someone as famous as her in Torquay! I know it's not exactly supernatural, but you said anything unusual...

The name meant nothing to Crowley, but Anathema had added her own note, I think she runs a cosmetics company - car lady? And that rang a bell. A quick Google later and he was looking at the same logo that had been on the bag he found under the goat skull. Crowley grinned. Gotta love the internet. So much information, so much knowledge at the tips of your fingers. Who needed books anymore? Maybe that was why Aziraphale had taken so long to come around to it.

(That and the porn. Crowley wasn't sure how Aziraphale managed to accidentally phrase quite innocuous search queries in such a way as to always land on at least one direct link to hardcore pornography, but he hadn't stopped finding it hilarious yet.)

The cosmetics brand was called Gregorian and the logo resembled a deconstructed clock. It was an odd choice of aesthetic, at least until Crowley saw how many of the taglines and adverts leaned on tenuous chronological references. A new look for every season! chirped a banner ad. Leap into the leap year with our beginner's guide to contouring!

Marketing. He wished he could take credit for marketing. He'd be the one giving Beelzebub orders if he'd only thought to put his name to that before it really took off...

It was an automatic train of thought, one that he hadn't yet managed to reroute, even though it inevitably resulted in a messy screech of brakes when he remembered that he didn't have to do that anymore. Didn't have to find ways to cover up how little he tried to actually mess with the humans, didn't have to come up with elaborate justifications to avoid doing them any significant harm. He could even, if he wanted to, do something nice without fear of reprisal.

But six thousand years of habits weren't going away in a night, or even a year. And he was, if he were honest, a little afraid of what might happen if he started down that road. There were an awful lot of things he'd trained himself not to care about. He didn't like the feeling that they were all beginning to pop up like daisies through the thin layer of turf he'd spread on top of them.

The phone rang. Aziraphale was clearly too absorbed in his muttering and note-taking to even notice the racket right next to him, so Crowley diverted the call to his line and rattled off a greeting. He listened for a few seconds, stifled a groan, and said wearily, "Yes, yes, it's a very amphibious time of year, isn't it? Just make sure she's got a paddling pool to sit in and plenty of flies, we'll be there as soon as we can."

"We've got to do something about Norwich," he added after he'd put the phone down.

Aziraphale made a vague noise that Crowley translated into I am aware that you spoke but have no idea what you said and don't particularly care.

"Aziraphale."

"In a moment," Aziraphale said automatically, like one of those dolls that spoke when you prodded it.

Crowley sighed and went for drastic measures. He swung himself out of his chair, grabbed his jacket, and said, "Well, I'm off to get lunch at that new Thai place down the road then, I'll just leave you to it--"

Aziraphale's head shot up.

"But I wanted to try--"

Crowley grinned, dropped the jacket, and sat back down. Realisation crossed Aziraphale's face, and he glowered at Crowley through the faint blush that rose to his cheeks.

"It's too early for lunch, anyway," Aziraphale grumbled, glancing at the clock. "And I asked Lily to come in this afternoon, so we can't be away too long."

"You did? What for?"

"No time like the present to get started on this database thing." Aziraphale brightened, momentarily forgetting his sulk. "She sent me such an interesting email about it all. It's a catalogue, Crowley, did you know that?"

"I mean... I suppose...?"

"It's rather like the Dewey Decimal System," Aziraphale went on enthusiastically, "except you don't have to remember all the codes for yourself, and you never run out of shelf space, and there are so many extra ways to cross-reference things..."

Crowley did his best to hide his smile, but Aziraphale saw it and turned pink again.

"I'm glad at least one of us knows what we've hired her to do," Crowley said, looking away before Aziraphale could see anything in his eyes that might count as fondness. "Still think she's a plant."

"Oh, really, Crowley. How many of our colleagues on either plane would even know what a database is?"

"You didn't know what a database was until this morning," Crowley countered, "and you're already yammering on about it."

He frowned.

"Besides," he went on, "Raphael seems to be a lot more up to date on things than the rest of them."

"Raphael doesn't need to spy on us."

"Doesn't he?" Crowley spun his chair idly back and forth. "You told him everything, then, did you? Like how you survived hellfire?"

"No, of course not!" Aziraphale said indignantly. "Don't take me for a fool, Crowley--"

"Then Heaven's probably still trying to work it out," Crowley went on. "And the last thing we need is them realising it was, well."

He didn't dare say a trick, even when he was sure there was no-one to hear.

"I know that." Aziraphale was fiddling with his cuffs now, head bowed. "I'm not about to tell anyone what we did, not even the people I trust. But I wish you'd trust my instincts. I'm sure Raphael is telling the truth. And I'm sure he wouldn't send someone to spy on us."

"I don't trust your instincts because they take so damned long to catch up with reality," Crowley snapped, harsher than he'd meant to. "Your instinct was that you could stop Armageddon by talking nicely to Heaven--"

"It wasn't, actually," Aziraphale replied, so quietly Crowley had to stop talking to hear him. "My instinct was to go to you. But I had... I had to try." He flashed Crowley a brief, sideways look, full of an emotion Crowley couldn't read. "It was foolish, but I've learned from my mistakes. And to trust my... gut, I suppose." He half-laughed. "At least it's good for something, whatever Gabriel thinks."

Something boiled up in Crowley that he could hardly contain, something that wanted to come out either so vicious it would tear flesh or so tender it would melt a heart, and he threw his whole willpower into covering it up with sarcasm, and to his horror what came out instead, entirely too honest and entirely too raw, was, "I won't let them take you back."

Aziraphale probably looked at him then, but Crowley was already out of his seat and halfway across the room to cover the unbearable feeling that he'd accidentally peeled back his own skin.

"Tea?" he said, glaring at the coffee maker until it produced perfect espresso, but flicking on the kettle to make Aziraphale's tea the hard way. "That stuff with the orange blossoms?"

"Yes, please," said Aziraphale, then, "Crowley--"

The telephone rang. Crowley didn't really have anyone to pray to these days but he offered the chaotic forces of the universe a heartfelt thanks nonetheless as Aziraphale sighed and answered the call.

Raphael's shoes made a loud squeaking sound as he walked through Heaven's polished halls. He could have miracled away the irritating noise. He didn't. Sqreek, sqreek, sqreek, went every step. He was almost certain Uriel was going to snap before they reached Gabriel's office, but sadly they arrived just as the twitch by her eye became noticeable.

Most of the higher ranking angels had offices these days, but Gabriel had had an office before the humans had even come up with them. Oh, he might have called it a chamber or a sept or perhaps a study as the centuries wore on, but in its heart it had always been waiting for the invention of magnolia wall paint, motivational posters, and hard-wearing laminate flooring. If it weren't for Gabriel's distaste for food and drink, there would surely have been a mug on the desk bearing an inscription such as World's Best Boss, and Raphael surely would have struggled not to smash it into a thousand pieces.

As it was, there was a small collection of human knickknacks, including a Newton's Cradle that never stopped gently clacking from side to side, a paperweight reading You don't have to be perfect to work here, but it helps! and a Humorously-Shaped Stress Toy that Raphael looked at for several seconds, trying to decide if he were more disturbed by the possibility that Gabriel had somehow acquired it without understanding its significance, or that he'd chosen it on purpose.

Michael was already seated. To Raphael's surprise, so was Sandalphon.

"I thought this was a meeting of the Archangels?" he said, raising his eyebrows at Gabriel.

Gabriel smiled that megawatt smile of his, all teeth and self-satisfaction.

"Sandalphon's been a huge help while you've been gone," he replied. "Practically one of us now, shame we don't have any vacancies, or he'd be getting a promotion!"

Gabriel was so tactless about everything, it was hard to tell whether the dig was intentional. Probably not, but Raphael didn't miss Uriel's smirk as they took their seats. She certainly hadn't missed him.

"How delightful," Raphael said, studying Sandalphon for a long moment. His expression could be called smug, if it didn't also convey that he was still parsing out the words with more than two syllables. "Well, shall we get down to business then?"

Michael lifted a stack of perfectly printed agendas and passed them around. Raphael glanced through the list, pausing at one item in particular.

"Reconnaissance? On Earth?"

"We'll get to that later," Michael said sternly. "The first matter is--"

"But surely that's what your wonderful new department is for?" Raphael went on, cheerfully oblivious. "Such a brilliant idea, Gabe! You've upped your game while I've been away. However did you come up with it?"

Gabriel's face did something interesting. Raphael didn't think he'd ever seen someone almost choke on their own smile.

"It was a team effort," Gabriel said tightly. "Seemed like the best use of resources that were already in place."

"Right, right, of course, but how on Earth - if you'll pardon the pun - did you persuade an angel and a demon to work together in the first place?"

The mask slipped for a second, a snarl twisting Gabriel's mouth and a flash of pure loathing deepening the violet of his eyes, but Raphael had anticipated the reaction and was already turning away so he could pretend not to notice.

"Your work, Michael?" he asked. "You were always a lot more pragmatic about these things."

Michael's eyes were as cold and hard as stone. Raphael locked gazes with her nonetheless. After a moment, she glanced away.

"We must change with the times, it seems," Michael said. "Our counterparts downstairs are no happier about any of this than we are, and in the absence of further instructions, it only makes sense to pool our resources."

"Absence of--" Raphael turned back to Gabriel, who had composed himself, though his mouth was set in a thin line and his brows were drawn in. "You mean to say She hasn't been in touch since the Apocalypse?"

"Not as of yet," Gabriel replied.

He looked down at his desk, and if Raphael wasn't mistaken, there was a tiny flicker of something in his face that could be called uncertainty.

"I'm sure we'll be hearing from Her soon," Michael added briskly. "The Metatron has been relaying our concerns ever since the... Incident. No doubt She would tell us if we were doing something wrong."

Ah, what a comforting thought. Raphael studied Gabriel's face as it settled back into its usual confidence - some might say arrogance - and brash good humour. What's that saying the humans have, about asking permission and begging forgiveness?

He shot another look at Michael, but she was flicking through the papers she'd taken from a slim manila folder on her lap.

"Anyway, let's move on to our first item," she went on. "A small disciplinary matter amongst the cherubim..."

Raphael sat back and let the meeting proceed without further comment. Uriel favoured him with a look that bordered on contemptuous; she'd have liked to take him to task for his absence during the Apocalypse, that was clear, but with Gabriel and Michael trying their hardest to get away from the subject, her hands were tied.

His gaze flicked to Sandalphon, to find those odd, blank eyes locked on him. Raphael flashed him a disarming smile. Sandalphon bared his teeth in what might, charitably, be called a grin, as long as you'd never met a crocodile. Raphael returned his attention to the agenda, and hoped no-one noticed the shiver that went down his spine.

Aziraphale's head was swimming with new information, but he was determined to keep up. He'd been making use of his computer for decades to do his accounts - and, of late, a spot of online book trading, although trading was perhaps a generous word given that he almost never sold anything - but he was rapidly realising that he'd barely scratched the surface. He'd thought modern technology ingenious and convenient, but he'd never considered how any of it worked. Lily was only skimming over the basic concepts, but Aziraphale already had three pages of notes and a number of things he intended to research further, including the delightful concept of regular expressions, which had made his book collector's heart sit up and beg.

"The only thing I'm not sure about," he said finally, looking at the clever little demonstration Lily had put together on Crowley's laptop, "is this cloud business."

"It's not an actual cloud, angel," Crowley put in without looking up from his phone. He'd said he was conducting research, but from the way he kept tapping frantically at the screen, Aziraphale had a suspicion that what he was researching was the high score on some sort of frivolous colour-matching game. "No-one's going to flutter on over and have a look."

"I know that," Aziraphale retorted. "I've been listening. It still seems... unsafe. To take all of this--" He waved at the office full of paper. "--and put it somewhere else in the world, we won't even know where. What if someone hacks it?"

"Safer than having a server box in here," Lily replied bluntly. "You don't even have basic security in this place. Someone could just walk in and take the whole thing, no hacking necessary."

"It's more secure than it looks," Crowley said, still without looking up. "Don't worry about that."

"All the same, you're way safer using one of these services, trust me," Lily said. "They have to keep their sites secure or they'd lose business. And I can throw in some extra security, really lock everything down tight, especially if you don't need to give access to anyone else."

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, but between the dark glasses and the way he was sprawled over the sofa, it was impossible to tell whether he was truly absorbed in his phone. Trust me. Crowley wasn't wrong about the dangers of obeying that injunction.

On the other hand, he'd been sitting next to Lily for almost two hours, quietly brushing her thoughts as she walked him through the options on offer, and he'd found no hint of deception or ill intent. Most of what went on in her head seemed to involve wondering what she'd got herself into and suppressing an urge towards sarcasm because she wanted to make a good impression. She'd also expected to have to explain things in very small words, and was surprised and rather impressed that Aziraphale had followed along so readily. Aziraphale wasn't sure whether to be slightly offended or pleased with himself.

"If you think that's for the best," he said finally, after receiving no help from Crowley. "How soon can you put it together?"

"If I use the out-of-the-box setup I should be able to have something up and running by the end of the week," Lily said confidently. "After that I can tweak it to meet whatever additional requirements you have."

"Sounds good," Crowley said, suddenly dropping the phone with a clatter and sitting up straight. "But let me ask you one question--"

There was a rapid knocking on the door, which opened before anyone could speak.

"Good, you're here, we don't have long--" Raphael stopped as he spotted Lily. "Who's this?"

Aziraphale saw Crowley look sharply between Raphael and Lily, no doubt checking for any signs of recognition or collusion. All Aziraphale picked up on was Raphael's genuine surprise and Lily's sudden considerable interest in the handsome man who'd just barged into the office. Really, the girl needed to stop mentally undressing people she'd just met, it was rude.

Crowley's smirk implied he thought otherwise. He leaned back on the sofa as bonelessly as if he'd reverted to snake form.

"New member of the team," he said off-handedly. "She does computers."

"Oh. Ah." Raphael turned a slightly confused but friendly smile on Lily. "Lovely to meet you. Raphael Montgomery, you can call me Rafe."

Aziraphale saw Crowley making a face over Montgomery even as he was thinking, Rafe? Really?

"Lily White." She eyed his shoulders in the exquisitely tailored suit appreciatively. "You can call me Lily."

"I think perhaps we've done enough for today," Aziraphale said hurriedly. "Okay for you to come by at nine tomorrow, Lily?"

"We'll get you a desk and everything," Crowley put in.

Lily looked slightly put out, but shrugged and started to shut down the laptop. As she was picking up her bag, she paused to scribble something on a piece of paper.

"See you tomorrow then," she said, heading for the door. As she passed Raphael she grinned at him and handed him the paper. "Bye."

Crowley managed to wait until the door shut behind her before cackling appreciatively.

"Care to share your note with the class?"

Raphael glanced at the paper, then held it up briefly to show the eleven digits of a mobile phone number. He pocketed it absently.

"It happens a lot. Rather flattering really."

There was a total unselfconsciousness about the statement that immediately and visibly spoiled Crowley's fun. He scowled and sat up again, glaring at Raphael over the top of his sunglasses.

"What do you want, anyway? Thought you were going to let us get on with it."

"I'm not sure that you should. Get on with it, I mean."

Raphael cast about for somewhere to sit; Crowley was taking up the entire sofa. Aziraphale politely wheeled his desk chair out and offered it, then moved pointedly in the direction of the sofa. Crowley reluctantly moved his legs.

"You want us to stop looking for the staff?"

"Not especially, but I'm not sure I can in good conscience ask you to continue, either." Raphael sighed, leaning back in the chair and pinching the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. "We had an interesting meeting earlier today."

"Oh?" said Crowley. "Interesting as in a new sub-committee, or interesting as in stabbing each other in the back?"

"Crowley," Aziraphale snapped.

"A little of both," Raphael replied flatly, meeting Crowley's glare without flinching. "Michael's setting up a reconnaissance operation on Earth. Gabriel's pretending it's all just general information gathering, but reading between the lines, it's clear there are two specific goals. One is to spy on you."

"Saw that coming," Crowley muttered, but he seemed disconcerted by Raphael's bluntness. "Is Lily one of theirs?"

Raphael frowned. "Your computer person? I thought she was just a normal human."

"She is, as far as we can tell," Aziraphale said. "We're just... being cautious."

"Good." Raphael glanced at the door. "Probably not one of Michael's, though. She's still putting the team together, at least according to her report."

"Well, that's all right, then." The words fell out of Aziraphale's mouth before he could stop them, bitter and sarcastic and very unlike him. "Obviously we can trust Michael to be upfront and honest about everything."

Crowley shot him a startled look. Raphael raised his eyebrows in surprise. Aziraphale quickly busied himself picking invisible lint off his trousers, shocked by his own venom. It had been the way she poured the water out, that condescending little smile, the way she hadn't even flinched as she looked at him, thinking she saw Crowley, thinking she was ensuring his destruction...

"In this case I'm inclined to believe her," Raphael said after a moment. "If nothing else, because it's an interdepartmental collaboration, as it were."

"You mean--" Aziraphale stared at him, stunned. "They're working with Hell?"

"Damned hypocrites," Crowley snarled. "All that stuff about traitors and fraternising..."

"You haven't heard the best part," Raphael said serenely, but with a faint glint in his eye. "Gabriel's taking full credit for setting you two up as a team here on Earth."

Aziraphale thought Crowley might explode. He reached out blindly and grabbed a handful of jacket before he could leap off the sofa and break something.

"I will hunt Gabriel down," Crowley growled, "and punch him in his stupid face."

"Get in line," Raphael muttered. For the second time, the wind went out of Crowley's sails in spectacular fashion as he stared open-mouthed at Raphael, who didn't appear to notice. "The point is, that's why they can't admit they're spying on you. You're supposedly still working for them."

"I suppose it's only to be expected," Aziraphale managed, loosening his grip on Crowley's sleeve. "They can't have the rest of the Host thinking defying Heaven is an option, can they?"

"Exactly. There's more to it, though," Raphael went on, staring at one of the maps pinned to the wall. Aziraphale didn't think he was seeing it. "It's not just about you. I'm no expert on these things, but it seems clear to me that Michael is looking for something. Something she - and Gabriel, I assume - don't want anyone else to know about, even the other Archangels. Or at least, something she doesn't want me to know about."

"The staff," Aziraphale said.

"I have to assume so. And that's why I'm not sure I can ask you to continue your search. You're likely to run into trouble."

"Sounds like trouble's going to come to us either way," Crowley said. He slid his sunglasses down to regard Raphael through narrowed, ochre eyes. "Why are you telling us this, Raphael?"

"Because something is wrong," Raphael replied quietly, his eyes almost more grey than green, as he glanced between the two of them. "Perhaps I've been away from Heaven for too long. Or perhaps it was being away that made me realise. What they tried to do to you was unforgivable. And Gabriel doesn't see that. Not anymore."

"Gabriel's always been a prick," Crowley retorted.

"But not cruel," Raphael countered. At Crowley's expression, he clarified, "At least, not intentionally. Not spiteful. Not so sensitive to wounded pride that he'd hand out a death sentence to cover his ass..."

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and rested his head in his hands.

"They don't trust me," he went on softly. "And not just because I've been away. I can see it now, how it's been creeping in for centuries. Uriel's never liked me, Gabriel's got fucking Sandalphon running around in my place, and if Michael's looking for my staff, you can be damn sure it's not to do me a favour."

Aziraphale opened his mouth to say something comforting, and found there was nothing on his tongue but ash, and an awful, shameful feeling in the pit of his stomach that was almost like relief. Not to see Raphael so shaken, but to know it wasn't just him, to feel the tiniest, briefest flicker of reassurance that he hadn't simply become blinded by so many millennia living with humans. He hated himself for the thought, pushed it away, and found fear and anger rising up so swiftly in its place that he almost choked on them.

His hand was still on Crowley's arm, and he must have tightened his grip unintentionally, because suddenly Crowley's hand was covering his, a brief, warm touch that grounded him, before Crowley pulled away and got to his feet.

"We'd better find it first, then," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and sauntering over to the coffee maker without looking at Raphael. "Good thing we've got a lead."

Raphael raised his head and turned to look at Crowley's back. "You have?"

"Yeah, we've got an idea who took it, just need to track her down." The smell of espresso filled the office; Crowley appeared to be very busy making the machine work, even though Aziraphale knew he could never resist just miracling it. "Before she makes any more holes."

"Holes?"

"Let me bring you up to date on what we've found so far," Aziraphale said, tearing his eyes from Crowley. "Would you like a cup of-- oh."

Crowley had turned around, an espresso in his hand, which he gave to Raphael without a word. He glanced at Aziraphale.

"Tea?"

Aziraphale could only nod. Crowley turned away again to set the kettle boiling, and definitely not because he was avoiding meeting Aziraphale's eyes.

"You're willing to keep going, then?" Raphael asked, looking from the coffee to Crowley to Aziraphale like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. "Even with everything I've told you?"

"I rather think we are," Aziraphale said. "The Earl Grey, please, Crowley."

Chapter Text

The offices of Gregorian were housed in an impressive modern building with sweeping lines that softened the glass and steel of it into something almost artistic, although the effect was somewhat ruined by the fumigation tents attached to all the ground-floor entrances, and the Pest-B-Gone vans parked outside the premises. Crowley eyed them with distaste. He had a soft spot for the rats of London, and had sprung more than one carefully baited trap to ensure their safety.

"Closed until further notice, all enquiries to be directed to..." Aziraphale was peering at the sign on one of the windows. "Have they really shut down the entire operation? How extraordinary."

"Yeah, that can't be a coincidence," Crowley said. He moved to intercept a man in a Pest-B-Gone uniform who was heading for one of the vans. "What's the problem here? We were supposed to have a meeting."

"Bedbugs," the man said with shrug. "Worst infestation I've seen in years. Nasty little buggers. Should have them all out in a week or so. There's a number to call over on that sign there--"

"Yes, yes, fine," Crowley muttered, and slouched back over to Aziraphale. "Bedbugs, apparently."

Aziraphale shuddered.

"I thought we'd left those behind a century ago. Do you remember how the beds in hostelries used to be?"

"Ugh, I'm never going to forget. Some of those mattresses moved."

"At any rate, this seems like an excellent opportunity to have a look around without alerting this Julia woman," Aziraphale went on. "Lucky for us."

"I dunno," Crowley muttered, looking up at the glass windows that glared down like rows of menacing eyes. "Might be a cover story. Might be something worse in there than bedbugs."

"Well, in that case, we can't let these humans stumble into it, can we?"

Aziraphale began to stride determinedly towards the front door. Crowley sighed, caught up to him, and grabbed his arm to steer him away and around the side of the building.

"Let's maybe try and be a bit sneaky, okay?"

"Sneaky isn't really in my nature," Aziraphale protested.

"Don't I know it."

After a few minutes they located an emergency exit that wasn't supposed to open from the outside, but that found itself doing so anyway when Aziraphale asked it nicely. Inside was a staircase that rose the full height of the building.

"Better start at the top," Crowley said, taking the steps two at a time. "That's where all the big shots will have their offices."

"I don't suppose," Aziraphale said, eyeing the stairs with reluctance, "that we could take the lift?"

"Too risky. Come on, it's not a skyscraper or anything. Only six floors."

"Only," Aziraphale muttered, taking hold of the handrail and beginning to climb with the grim determination of the condemned. "It's all right for you, with your legs."

Crowley shot him a bewildered look from the first turn, where he'd paused to let Aziraphale catch up.

"What about my legs?"

"Well, they're-- long. And bendy."

"Bendy?"

"Bendier than most people's." Aziraphale paused at the landing to catch his breath, gesturing pointedly at the way Crowley had arranged himself half-draped over the handrail. "The way you climb stairs reminds me of one of those children's toys, the one that's a coil of wire--"

"Are you comparing me to a Slinky?"

"Yes, only you go up the steps as well as down."

Seeming to feel he'd made his point, Aziraphale embarked on the next flight. Crowley started to follow, but found himself suddenly self-conscious enough to trip on his own feet and stumble. Aziraphale shot him an amused look.

"Shut up."

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to." Crowley tried to distract himself from overthinking the basics of walking. "You think it was a good idea leaving Lily alone in the office?"

"It was your idea, wasn't it?"

"Well yeah, that's why I'm asking."

Aziraphale paused at the next landing, already rather red in the face.

"I still haven't sensed anything from her to indicate she's not exactly what she appears to be," he replied, a touch breathlessly. "Have you?"

"No." Crowley didn't need to rest at the landing, but he stopped anyway, giving Aziraphale time to steel himself for the next floor. "Anyway, I thought if she's up to no good, leaving her alone for a bit might make her slip up. There's enough wards on the place that we'd know if she did anything witchy in there. Besides, it's nice not to have to answer the phone for a bit."

Aziraphale took a deep breath and began the next climb. Crowley watched him with a mixture of sympathy and amusement. Aziraphale no more needed to let the effects of physical exertion cause him so much discomfort than he needed to eat or blink or breathe, but some habits became hard to break after centuries of dwelling within a mortal body. Besides, Crowley had a suspicion it was almost a point of pride for Aziraphale. He'd detested anything that smacked of organised sports since shortly after they were invented, which had been one of the reasons Crowley had always given such pastimes a bit of a boost in popularity now and then. The offside rule had been one of his crowning achievements, and trying to explain it to Aziraphale was one of his fondest memories.

"She thinks we ought to have a website," Aziraphale said.

"We don't need a website, people just know how to get in touch."

"Yes, but perhaps it would nudge them into just knowing they can send us an email instead of all the phone calls? It would mean fewer interruptions."

"I suppose--" Crowley stopped; they'd reached the top of the stairs, and the door in front of them was... interesting. "Well. Would you look at that."

Aziraphale puffed to a stop beside him. His eyes widened as he took in the sight.

"Good heavens. I haven't seen that sort of thing since... I don't know... John Dee, was it?"

Crowley moved closer to inspect the heavy door. All the others they'd passed had been standard office issue, with narrow windows looking onto carpeted hallways and signs warning that they were to be used in emergencies only. This one had no windows, and was considerably heavier-duty than the others, with steel bolts controlled by some sort of electronic system.

More importantly, though, its surface glowed faintly with the sigils and circles of a complex warding spell. Crowley tilted his head and followed the curving lines with a frown.

"Is it me," he said, "or is this--"

"Specifically intended to keep me out?" Aziraphale finished for him. He was keeping his distance from the door. "Or, well, to keep angels out."

"Yeah. Definitely Dee's sort of thing. He figured out pretty quickly that angels got a lot more stroppy about being summoned than demons usually do."

"That man," Aziraphale muttered. "It was like the way Adam's always texting us with questions, except he'd yank you right out of whatever you were doing without so much as a by-your-leave..."

"He got me out of the bath once," Crowley said absently, still studying the runes. "He was a bit more careful after that."

"Oh? Shocked by your state of dishabille, was he?"

"Damp, more like. I brought the water with me." Crowley grinned. "Damn near washed away his circle, too. Thought he was going to have a heart attack right there and then." He turned to cock an eyebrow at Aziraphale. "Sorry, state of dishabille? Seriously?"

Aziraphale sniffed at him and then gestured to the door.

"What do we do now? I can't go near the thing. Can you break it?"

"Probably, but that might alert the warlock." Crowley laid a hand on the doorframe and glared at the bolts securing it. They obediently slid back, and he pushed the door open, which did nothing to disrupt the spell blocking Aziraphale from entering. A strong chemical smell wafted out and made his eyes water. "You'll have to wait out here."

"You mean I climbed all those stairs for nothing?"

"Think of it as building character," Crowley said with a grin, stepping inside. "I'll be back in a--"

"Crowley," Aziraphale interrupted, indignation replaced with a frown of concern. "Do be careful, won't you? If there are other wards--"

"I'll keep an eye out." Crowley looked thoughtfully at the door he was still holding open. "But I reckon they'll be more of the same. Anti-angel, not anti-demon."

"Why?"

"'Cos I think she knows exactly whose staff she took," Crowley said. "She's expecting Raphael, not us. Certainly not me."

"All the same." Aziraphale cast an uneasy look over Crowley's shoulder at the dim hallway beyond. "If anything happens, you must break the ward, I don't care if it gives us away."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Which wasn't a yes, because Crowley liked to keep his options open, but also didn't like lying to Aziraphale. He looked around quickly at the hallway, stuck a foot out to hold the door, and stretched over to where a fire extinguisher was hanging in a bracket on the wall. Two seconds later, he was using it to prop open the door.

"There, now at least we're not completely cut off," he said. "I'll be right back, angel, don't worry."

Aziraphale sighed.

"I'll try not to, my dear."

It was one thing to say he wouldn't worry, quite another to actually follow through on it. Aziraphale fretted, and paced, and glared at the glimmering wards on the door. Really, they were so terribly rude; he quite understood the desire for some privacy, but this sort of thing was like electrifying your front door rather than simply locking it.

Crowley had prowled along the corridor until he found an office with Julia Gregory's name on it, along with another angelic ward. He'd disappeared inside nearly ten minutes ago, and even though he'd left the door open, Aziraphale was trying very hard not to call out and ask for reassurance. On top of that, whatever chemicals were being used to treat the carpets were slowly filling the stairwell with a horrible smell that caught in his throat and made his eyes sting.

To distract himself, he took out his phone. Adam had more history questions, this time about the later reign of William the Conqueror, and whilst Aziraphale absolutely would not help him cheat on his homework, per se, he did also have some strong feelings about the way history was taught in UK schools these days.

Also, he'd done a lot of the legwork on the Domesday Book and had never felt entirely appreciated for it.

He was in the middle of explaining what a demesne was and how to pronounce it when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

"Anything?"

"Sort of." Crowley leaned in the doorway, frowning. "Nothing about the staff, but there's something weird going on here. This isn't just a cosmetics company."

"Oh?"

"Seems Ms Gregory's into a bit of arms dealing on the side. Make-up and missiles." He snorted and shook his head. "What a versatile business model she must have."

Aziraphale frowned. There was something about that... something that rang a distant, dusty bell in his memory.

"Who does she sell weapons to?"

"Oh, basically everyone." Crowley gestured back into the office. "It's all on paper. Maybe she doesn't trust the computers. She's got a hidden cabinet behind the bookshelf for all the extra paperwork. And it looks a lot like she was doing an especially brisk business around this time last year."

Aziraphale stared at him.

"You mean--?"

"She knew it was coming. Armageddon. She was making a tidy profit, too, which is weird when you think that she was expecting the world to end..."

"Yes. You can't take it with you, after all." Aziraphale shook his head. "This doesn't really help us, though, does it? Shall we go?"

"Hold your horses," Crowley said with a half-smile. "I'm not done going through the filing cabinet yet. Just popped out to give you an update."

He turned and disappeared back into the office. Aziraphale stared at the empty doorway for several minutes, hearing the faint rustle of paper beyond it, and then forced himself to return to his thoughts on Norman England. He kept his ears open for any signs of trouble, but all he heard was the traffic outside, the occasional soft slide of a drawer being opened, and the swish of the ventilation system.

Something caught his eye again, a pattern of moving light. Aziraphale looked up, blinking at what turned out to be the display panel for the lift at the other end of the hall. It was creeping smoothly up through the floors. It took Aziraphale a moment to realise that it did not appear to be stopping at any of them.

"Crowley!" he called. "Someone's coming up in the lift!"

"Probably just one of the pest control people."

"All the same, hadn't you better--"

"I'm not finished yet." Crowley poked his head out of the doorway and looked at the lift indicator, which was just hovering on the floor below and about to start rising again. "I'd better shut the door, though. See you in a bit."

He waved his hand. The fire extinguisher flew back to its bracket, and the heavy, warded door began to swing shut. Just then the lift reached the top floor with a soft chime, and Aziraphale sensed its occupant fully, and gasped, taking a step forward before the power of the ward forced him back.

"Crowley!" he cried. "It's not--"

The door swung shut, its bolts thumping into place like they were mocking Aziraphale's horror.

It wasn't one of the pest control people. He knew that trailing shadow of dark magic: he'd felt it in the chapel on Dartmoor. The warlock was here.

Crowley thought he heard Aziraphale say something, but he'd already shut the outer office door and retreated to the inner sanctum. It wasn't so much an office as an entire suite, with its own reception area (and receptionist's desk), then a plush private room further in, plus an en suite bathroom and even a small bedroom, as neat and soulless as a hotel. He didn't think the chances were high that the human would come in here, and if they did, he could just make them forget they'd seen anything out of the ordinary. The latest batch of papers was particularly interesting. All that wealth Julia Gregory had accumulated in the lead-up to the Apocalypse hadn't stayed in her accounts for long, apparently. If only he could find a more detailed breakdown of what those huge sums of money had paid for...

He heard the outer door open, and sighed. He put the papers down, striding to the door of the inner sanctum, ready to deflect the human who'd decided to come poking around. It was only as he reached the threshold that he felt the wave of power rolling in her wake, and by then, it was too late.

She was the tallest woman he'd ever seen, with a face that made him think of the original Egyptian stock - not the Hollywood whitewash version that had become so ubiquitous in modern pop culture, but the real thing, features bold and stern and proud. Her hair was ink-black and must have been quite long, given the complexity of the braided bun pinned up on the top of her head. Her eyes were so dark brown they were almost black, and they showed only a moment of shock before narrowing.

Her hands moved and she spat a sentence that had Crowley ducking and rolling even before the burst of dark power exploded across the room. His sunglasses flew off, and he cursed as he dived behind the desk and frantically considered his options. He heard her cross the outer room and stop at the threshold.

"Julia Gregory, I presume?" He tried for casual. "Didn't expect to run into you here."

"In my office?" Her voice was as powerful as the rest of her. "Who are you, and how did you get in?"

"Er..." Crowley scrambled desperately for an out. "Pest control! Yeah, I was just, uh, checking on the bedbug situation--"

"In the filing cabinet? The concealed filing cabinet? Which only I have the key to?"

"They're crafty little buggers, you know, get everywhere--"

A giant, seven-fingered hand of shadow ripped itself from the floor, seized hold of Crowley, and pulled him out from behind the desk. Crowley didn't even have time to make a noise, which was just as well, because he didn't think he wanted a woman like this to hear his undignified yelp.

Julia Gregory inspected him like he was something she'd found on her shoe, at least, until she got to his eyes. On seeing those, her expression changed to surprise and calculation.

"You're a demon," she said.

Crowley attempted to shrug, no mean feat while suspended two feet above the carpet and pinned in place like a beetle on a board.

"What's a demon doing sniffing around here?" Julia went on, brows lowering into a scowl. "Did Beelzebub send you?"

Crowley laughed despite himself.

"No, course not, like I'd take orders from Beelzebub--"

"You're a very bad liar, for a demon," she said, which was particularly insulting since he'd been telling the absolute truth. "Why did she send you? I thought we had an understanding."

Crowley froze.

"Uh."

Julia's eyes began to glow with a dark energy that made prickles run down Crowley's spine.

"I thought after what I did to the last demon she sent after me--"

"Wait, Beelzebub's sending demons after you? Aren't you, you know. I mean. On the same side?"

Her eyes returned to something like normal, her expression shifting into cautious consideration.

"Beelzebub really didn't send you," she said slowly. "Interesting. Then why are you here? What is your name?"

The command in her voice was so absolute that he almost, almost answered - and not just with his chosen name, but with the true name that was still writ in fire in the depths of his soul. He bit his tongue until he tasted his own brimstone blood.

"I'm not giving a warlock my name," he said after a moment. "Not fond of the whole, y'know. Binding thing. Speaking of, can you let me down already? My legs are going to sleep."

The seven-fingered hand of shadow hoisted him a little higher. Crowley sighed and tried to summon the bluster that had got him through so many awkward performance reviews in Hell.

"Look," he said, "I just got curious, okay? Heard a few rumours about this place. And, I mean, a warlock. Been centuries since I saw a proper warlock. Thought they'd gone out of fashion."

The best way to lie was always to include as much truth as possible, and Crowley couldn't deny a certain fascination with the woman. How had she come into such power? What did she intend to do with it? Why had she used sorcery to drill a pit in the middle of Dartmoor?

"Curious," Julia repeated flatly.

"It's kind of my thing," Crowley replied, attempting another shrug. "Worked out well with the apple, after all."

"You're the Serpent of Eden?" Julia gave him another assessing look. "I would have expected more scales. And fewer limbs."

"You try tempting humans when they run away screaming aaaah a snake! at the sight of you. Much easier when you look like them." He took a breath, and took a gamble. "Easier to look through people's filing cabinets, too."

There was a pause just long enough that Crowley thought, well, it was a worth a try, guess I'd better actually come up with a plan, then - and then Julia laughed, a low, dark sound. The shadowy hand finally lowered Crowley to the floor and its grip slackened, though it didn't entirely let go of him.

Crowley took a moment to straighten his bunched-up jacket and run a hand through his hair, testing the range of movement the shadow fingers would allow him. Enough, he thought. He breathed a little easier.

"I always thought it was cats who had trouble with curiosity, not snakes," Julia said. She turned and surveyed the papers he'd spread out over the floor and furniture. "So what did you find, Serpent?"

"I mean, you've got an admirable work ethic. Not easy running two big operations at once, 'specially when one's secret and highly illegal. Honestly, though, I was more interested in the warlock stuff. How on Earth did you get into that? It's not like they bring it up at careers fairs."

"You might be surprised," Julia replied with a small smirk.

She waved her hand and spoke a few more words of the garbled tongue that Crowley could barely understand. The language used in this sort of dark magic had descended from the First Language of angels and demons via Enochian, a pale imitation on Earth, and then through a centuries-long game of telephone between human generations. Frankly it was amazing anything coherent had survived. A hot, sulphurous wind arose in the office and picked up the scattered papers, ordering them neatly back into their drawer, which then shut itself. The hidden cabinet swung closed.

"Seriously?" Crowley prodded. "Someone turned up at your school and said, hey, have you thought about dark magic?"

"More of a family business." Julia turned to look him over again. "So, you don't take orders from Beelzebub, hmm?"

Crowley attempted to look nonchalant and rebellious.

"Yeah, well, not if I can avoid it, it's not like Hell pays much attention to what goes on up here."

"They didn't used to," Julia replied with a sudden scowl. "For the last year I seem to be tripping over demons wherever I go. Ever since that disaster of an Apocalypse--"

"You, uh. You know about that?"

"Of course." Her lip curled in disgust. "I was there on the day, waiting for the trumpet to sound! I was ready! And then... nothing. The clouds dispersed. The darkness waned. The ground ceased to tremble. Somehow both Heaven and Hell reached such incomprehensible heights of incompetence that I cancelled the milk for nothing--"

I should put that on my CV, Crowley thought, trying not to sweat.

"--but they do say, if you want something done, do it yourself."

Crowley froze.

"Er. What?"

She smiled, broad and calculating.

"How would you like to be the harbinger of Armageddon?" she asked.

Oh, no, not again, Crowley thought with something close to hysteria. "I, uh--"

A sudden, ear-piercing wail filled the office, an electronic scream of protest and distress. Julia flinched and covered her ears, glaring up at an alarm on the ceiling that had started to flash red warning lights. Its siren sound warbled up and down insistently, and Crowley could hear echoes of the same awful noise coming from the other rooms on the top floor.

"Is something on fire?" Crowley yelled over the cacophony.

"If it is, there'll be hell to pay," Julia snarled, turning on her heel and storming out of the office. "Wait here."

"No problem," Crowley said lamely. He craned his neck to peer at the shadow hand still curled over him. "Just you and me then? Okay."

He took a careful breath, trying to block out the awful noise. Very slowly and carefully, he shifted his weight, moving a half inch away from his starting position. As he'd hoped, the hand didn't react to what seemed to be such an insignificant action. Crowley glanced at where the thing had thrust up through the floor. It didn't have a wrist as such: the seven fingers all converged into a kind of convex palm. Not much flexibility, he hoped. And not much reach, either.

He made another small movement, edged another hairsbreadth away. The fingers twitched, and he froze. That alarm was going to drive him insane--

As if in response, the noise suddenly cut out. Crowley swallowed hard. That wasn't necessarily better. If Julia came straight back...

He forced himself to keep moving slowly, inch by inch, incrementally away from the shadow hand. Every second, he was waiting for the door to slam open, the warlock to return and seize him again. Every second it didn't happen, he gained a little ground. How long was it taking? Too long, he couldn't afford to take this long. He took another deep breath, eyed the shadow, braced himself, and then dived forward.

The smoke-like fingers snatched after him, but he'd put just enough distance between them to roll and duck out of the way. The hand scrabbled desperately after him as he flung himself through the door into the outer office. There was no sign of Julia in the corridor. For a horrible moment he thought she must have gone down the fire escape, right towards Aziraphale, but the warded door was still shut and locked. Crowley snapped his fingers and it sprang open.

Aziraphale wasn't there. Crowley swore as he took the steps two at a time, barely remembering to close the door behind him.

"Aziraphale!" he half-shouted, half-whispered, trying to make his voice carry without alerting anyone else. "Where are you?"

No reply. It suddenly occurred to Crowley to wonder why the fire alarm had gone off, and dread hit him like a freight train.

"Get out of there, angel," he muttered desperately, flinging himself around the corner of the staircase in a descent so heedless it was one missed step away from an outright fall. "She's not going to stop and chat to you."

Chapter Text

Aziraphale had been close to panic since the door slammed shut. He tried briefly to break the ward himself, but it repelled him forcefully enough to make him stagger back. He made himself breathe steadily and listen for any sounds from behind the door.

Crowley would have hidden, he told himself. As soon as he sensed the warlock's approach, he'd have made himself scarce. Now it was just a matter of waiting for her to leave, or for Crowley to find a way to sneak out.

What if she didn't leave? For hours? What if Crowley couldn't get away without being seen? Aziraphale paced the short distance across the landing and back, wringing his hands. What if she caught him...

He turned suddenly and hurried down the stairs to the floor below, then the one below that. The door presented no problems, being locked in an ordinary way without wards. On the other side he found conference rooms, a staff lounge, and some storage closets.

The latter were what he was hoping for, particularly the one that was stacked with printer paper. Aziraphale winced slightly at his own intentions, but pulled a few reams of paper out and scattered them around to provide better coverage. Then he fumbled in his inside jacket pocket for the lighter Crowley had given him.

The lighter clicked smoothly and easily, its little flame steady. It caught the jewelled eye of the inlaid snake, as if it was winking at him. Then he knelt, and started setting the corners of the strewn papers alight.

It took some time, even with a bit of an angelic miracle to prod the flames along, but finally, Aziraphale felt confident that the fire wasn't going to put itself out any time soon. He backed away carefully, looking up at the ceiling with desperate anticipation—

The fire alarm began to screech right on cue. Aziraphale breathed a shaky sigh of relief. Hopefully this would give Crowley a chance to slip away. He hovered in the corridor by the storage room, now silently urging the fire to die down. He didn't want it to get out of hand or put anyone at risk, after all...

It didn't occur to him that someone might come to investigate, mostly because Aziraphale was the sort of person who would promptly exit the building as instructed upon hearing the alarm, and he assumed everyone else would do the same thing. He was, therefore, completely unprepared for the lift doors to open and for a tall, dark, furious woman to storm out of them.

You aren't supposed to use the lift when there's a fire! was Aziraphale's first, panicked thought. Followed swiftly by, Oh dear, I may be in a spot of trouble.

"Ah—" he began as Julia Gregory bore down upon him. "Sorry, so sorry, been a, a bit of an accident here, just trying to—"

Her eyes glowed with a dark light that hurt Aziraphale just to look upon. She gestured, and the alarms fell silent.

"I know what you are," she snarled, and then a stream of twisted words fell from her mouth, and chains of tarnished silver sprang from the walls and the floor and wrapped themselves like constrictors around Aziraphale's arms, legs, and neck.

"Wait— wait just a moment—"

The chain around his neck choked him silent and made the blood pound in his head until Aziraphale reminded his body that it didn't actually need either oxygen or circulation. It was terribly uncomfortable even so.

"Is this the might of Heaven's army?" Julia sneered. "I thought you'd at least put up a fight. Took you long enough to even find me, I was starting to think I needn't have bothered with precautions."

Excuse me, I think we found you rather quickly, actually, Aziraphale tried to say, but no amount of reminders could make his voice box work when it was all but crushed by the chain. All that came out was a helpless gurgling sound that brought a nasty smile to Julia's face.

"Well, what an interesting day it's been," she continued, stalking around Aziraphale in a circle, eyes still dark with that awful not-light. "Demons going through my files, angels setting fires in my office..."

Aziraphale stopped struggling, frozen in horror. She'd caught Crowley. What... what had she done to him...?

Julia paused in her circuit, looking at the doorway to the storage closet. The fire was almost out, but at her glance, the flames suddenly sprang up high again.

"I have a message for Raphael," she said.

She raised a hand and spoke a few more words, and the fire flowed out of the closet like a snake, swirling into a circle that surrounded Aziraphale. He could feel the heat of it as it rose into a wall of flame that scorched the ceiling.

"Once you've finished burning to death," Julia went on with a terrible delight in her voice, "and gone whimpering back up to Heaven, tell the Archangel this: if he wants his staff, he'd better come and get it himself, or the next time, I'll use hellfire on whatever stooge he sends."

The circle of fire began to contract, inching closer to Aziraphale like the tightening of a noose. He struggled weakly against the chains, even as he heard Julia walk away. The lift chimed, incongruous through the raging inferno. A moment later, he heard the doors swish shut.

Aziraphale gave up struggling physically and started trying to miracle himself free, but the tarnished chains were imbued with the same power as the wards on the door upstairs. The air inside the circle of fire was heating rapidly, crisping the ends of his hair and making his clothes begin to smoulder.

He didn't know what would happen if he were discorporated. It would put him squarely back in Heaven's power; he doubted they'd gladly hand over another body. He could try his possession trick again, but they knew he could do that now. They might have a way to prevent it, and even if they didn't, he couldn't in good conscience take over another human for anything less urgent than the imminent Apocalypse. He might be able to share with Crowley after all, given that swapping bodies hadn't made them explode, but it would be awkward to say the least—

A wave of panic went through him as he remembered what Julia had said about Crowley. Had she discorporated him too? Hell were even less likely to let him go, not with the evidence right in front of them that he wasn't nearly so indestructible as he'd made them believe...

The heat was unbearable. Aziraphale closed his eyes. He didn't much want to see his own skin start to blacken and blister.

Oh, Crowley, I'm sorry, I should have—

"Aziraphale!"

His eyes flew open, and immediately began to water - from the smoke, of course. There was a roaring, hissing sound, cool foam hitting his face in patches, and Crowley came into view, battling the flames with a fire extinguisher, teeth bared and something wild and terrible in his eyes. Aziraphale wanted to call out to him, to tell him it was all right, but he still couldn't speak, still couldn't move.

Crowley saw him through the fire and Aziraphale watched his eyes widen and then narrow as he took in the spell that bound him. Crowley snarled something that was barely words, hands clenching on the extinguisher, which he brought up and across the chains. As if it had become a cutting torch, the spray of foam cut through the tarnished silver, and Aziraphale collapsed to his knees, dangerously close to falling sideways into the parts of the carpet that were still burning. His arms and legs felt as frail as paper. Crowley tossed the extinguisher to one side, darted forward, and was hauling him out of the circle before Aziraphale could even blink his vision clear.

"Come on, angel, we have to get out of here," Crowley gasped, hauling Aziraphale up with an arm around his back. "Come on, you can walk, you have to walk—"

Somehow Aziraphale got his feet to put one in front of the other as Crowley half-carried him towards the emergency stairs. As if in afterthought, the fire alarms started blaring again just as they reached it. Aziraphale tried to heal his damaged throat, but his power stuttered and failed him as if the chains were still on his limbs. Everything had gone rather shimmery and incoherent.

He was vaguely aware of breaking glass, of Crowley grabbing him tightly under the arms, and then of the sweep of black wings and the ground dropping away from them.

Flying, in broad daylight, in London? Aziraphale thought with bleary horror. Oh, that's going to cause so much trouble—

The feeling was slowly coming back into his arms and legs, the sense of constriction fading. He raised one hand weakly and ran his fingers over his throat, sighing with relief as the pain eased and he was able to start breathing again. He felt Crowley shift his grip, and started to turn his head to tell him that they'd better land before anyone else saw them, when they suddenly plummeted, and there was once again the shattering of glass.

Crowley landed hard but kept his feet; Aziraphale staggered and slipped from his grasp, falling to his hands and knees on what he recognised, with some surprise, as his own rug in the bookshop. He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked with dismay at the shards of glass that had been the shop's dome skylight.

"Crowley, for heaven's sake, was there any need for—"

Crowley snarled something, snapped his fingers, and the broken glass soared upwards to reassemble itself. Then he dropped to his knees, wings vanishing, reaching out with shaking hands, and his expression stunned Aziraphale into silence.

"Are you all right?" Crowley managed, his face a ghastly pale, his eyes wide and frantic and completely golden from corner to corner. His fingers closed almost painfully on Aziraphale's shoulders. "Angel? Are you—"

"I'm— I'm all right, of course I'm all right, you were— you were just in time—"

He meant it as reassurance, as thanks; he didn't expect the words to break Crowley right there in front of him, shatter something in his face and tear something open behind his eyes. Crowley tried to speak, but choked, and fell forward, and all at once his arms were wrapped tightly around Aziraphale, face buried in his shoulder. He was shaking like he'd fly apart, and Aziraphale was too stunned to do anything but sit there, feeling Crowley shudder against him, his breath coming fast like he was on the verge of tears.

Aziraphale opened his mouth, desperate to ease the wave of his own panic by making a joke or telling Crowley to pull himself together, but the words wouldn't come. After a moment, hesitantly, he brought his arms up around Crowley, who made a desperate noise against the fabric of Aziraphale's jacket.

"It's all right," Aziraphale said softly after what felt like an age. He moved one hand cautiously, running his knuckles down Crowley's back, moving the other to cup the back of his neck. "My dear, it's all right."

He wasn't accustomed to touching, to this sort of closeness, and certainly not with Crowley. For a long time he'd been afraid that his touch might hurt, Crowley being a demon and all, but even when it became clear that it wouldn't, they'd kept a careful distance from each other. Anything else would have been too risky. If they were caught talking, even in their usual friendly manner, even over dinner or wine, it might have been possible to play it off as a scheme from one or both of them to get information. Words could be twisted, even fond words; words could be explained as lies. No amount of clever prevarication could have explained the touch of a gentle hand, or a comforting arm around the shoulders. They'd never needed to speak of it. They had both known the steps of their dance by heart for the last six thousand years.

Despite his uncertainty, it seemed he was doing the right thing. Crowley's shaking eased. His grip on Aziraphale loosened, though he made no attempt to pull free. Aziraphale, greatly daring, ran his fingertips through the ends of Crowley's hair where it lay against his neck, gentle little movements like he was petting a cat. It made Crowley shudder again, which hadn't been his intention, but the spasm seemed to take something with it, and suddenly Crowley was limp in his arms, breath finally slowing to something approaching normal.

Aziraphale wondered if he was supposed to release Crowley now, let him sit back and collect himself, but he found he couldn't stop stroking his hair. He'd always thought it would be soft, ever since he'd first seen it in the Garden in tumbling curls. He'd always been a little sorry whenever Crowley decided to cut it short. Right now, he wished the ends were long enough for him to wrap them gently around his fingers.

"Are you all right?" he found himself asking, keeping his voice low like he was trying not to frighten a wild creature. "What happened?"

Crowley made a choked noise and finally pulled away. Aziraphale let him go with great reluctance, watching him sit back on his heels and scrub a hand over his face like he was trying to wipe away his own feelings.

"What happened was you almost got yourself burned to death again," Crowley muttered. He looked Aziraphale over, as if checking for singed patches. "What were you thinking?"

"I was trying to distract her so you could escape—"

"But fire? Why did it have to be fire?"

"It was the first thing I thought of!" Aziraphale protested. "Anyway, you were the one who gave me the lighter."

Crowley blinked. His eyes were regaining their whites, the yellow shrinking down to a the size of a human iris.

"You... kept that?"

Aziraphale stared back at him, feeling like they were somehow talking at cross purposes, but unsure how or why.

"Of course I did, it was a gift from you. Anyway, what do you mean, again?"

"Huh?"

"You said burned to death again, I've never burned to death even once—"

Crowley grimaced.

"Please stop saying burned to death," he said.

"All right, but my point is—"

"The bookshop." Crowley looked down at his hands, then up at the shelves of books around them, quiet and untouched. "When I— when it burned. Before. I didn't know what had happened to you. I called you, I couldn't find you, everything was on fire, I thought— I didn't know about the damn circle until later, so I thought—"

"You were here?" Aziraphale said, stunned. "When it was burning? I thought— you said you'd found it afterwards—"

Crowley shrugged, and Aziraphale realised that he hadn't said that, not really. That he'd been vague on the details, when they'd compared notes after the fact. That Aziraphale had just assumed...

Something rippled sharp and painful in him then as he remembered the way Crowley's voice had broken when he found him in the pub later on. The way he'd sounded so wrecked, so lost. And he'd thought it was about the damned car...

I lost my best friend.

"Crowley," Aziraphale said, reaching for him, "I didn't—"

But Crowley twisted away from his hands, scrambling to his feet and turning his back all in one movement. He strode over to Aziraphale's desk, rummaged in one of the drawers, and pulled out a pair of sunglasses Aziraphale hadn't even realised were stashed there.

"So what I'm saying," Crowley went on, striving for nonchalance as he inspected the sunglasses and gave the lenses a quick wipe with his sleeve, "is try not to do that again, okay, angel? Getting a bit like a stuck record at this point."

Aziraphale swallowed down the words he wanted to say and something else that made his eyes sting, and carefully got to his feet. Best not to push Crowley when he was determined to move the conversation on and pretend nothing had happened. Aziraphale had tried it before, and it usually ended with not seeing him for a decade or two. He didn't think Crowley would leave him for so long now, but he still hated the thought of losing any of the closeness they'd gained in the last year. And besides, now wasn't the time, not with an angry warlock looking for them.

"I'll do my best," Aziraphale said, brushing the soot from his trousers and inspecting his jacket sleeves for any damage. "I wasn't expecting that Gregory woman to come storming in. Did she catch you?"

Crowley put the sunglasses on before he turned back to face Aziraphale, his eyes now hidden behind their usual shields.

"Yeah," Crowley admitted, making a face. "And, uh, for what it's worth, you did give me the chance to escape. So."

"You're welcome," Aziraphale said wryly. He glanced up at the skylight, reassuring himself that it was once more fully intact. "Do you think she could follow us here?"

"Dunno. She didn't know who I was—"

"Nor I."

"Then hopefully she doesn't know we were there together. That ought to give us a bit of breathing space."

"In that case," Aziraphale said, "I might as well make some tea while we discuss what to do next."

Crowley hadn't asked for tea, but Aziraphale had given him some anyway, and he was still too shaken to protest. Not that there was any reason to protest, really. He liked tea well enough. It was just that somehow coffee had become his thing, straight up and simple, as if in counterpoint to Aziraphale's preference for the infinite variety of steeped leaves in water.

It was like the thing with the books, just one of so many ways he'd defined himself in opposition to Aziraphale over the centuries, so many brushes he'd painted himself with to ensure that anyone looking at them would see them as irreconcilably different.

He could still smell the smoke, even when Aziraphale not-so-subtly miracled the soot off his clothes for him. He couldn't relax onto the sofa in the back room, even though by now it was worn to his exact contours. He took a deep drink of - Darjeeling, he thought, second flush, with that heavy floral musk that was almost wine-like - and tried to concentrate on what Aziraphale was saying.

"—not sure I understand what her purpose was in sending that message to Raphael." Aziraphale turned his own teacup pensively in its saucer. "It was like she was goading him."

"Probably has some horrible trap set up," Crowley replied, very carefully keeping his thoughts away the memory of hellfire bathing his skin. "Why him, though? I mean, Gabriel, I could understand that. What's she got against Raphael?"

Aziraphale shot him a look that was far too knowing and far too amused.

"Shut up." Crowley finished his tea and reached for the pot, refusing to look in Aziraphale's direction. "He's... okay. I suppose. Point is, if she wants to pick a fight with an Archangel, he's not the one I'd expect."

"She does have his staff. Perhaps it confers some advantage."

"So d'you think that's why she went after it in the first place? He was the only Archangel with that sort of Achilles heel?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Aziraphale took a sip of his tea, staring thoughtfully at the shelf behind Crowley. "And all that business about restarting Armageddon. Whatever for? And how does she plan to achieve it?"

Crowley suddenly sat up straight, heart thudding uncomfortably.

"You don't think she'd go after Adam, do you?"

Aziraphale's eyes widened, but after a moment he shook his head.

"He no longer has the power to set off the end of the world. He gave it up. Most of it, at least. I'm not entirely sure just how human he is these days, but I'm sure he couldn't go back and change his mind even if he wanted to."

"Then what?" Crowley asked, more to himself than Aziraphale. "She didn't just mean starting a bloody big nuclear mess, you could tell from the way she talked about it. She meant the whole thing, the end of it all, the war between Heaven and Hell. Everything that was supposed to happen last year and didn't."

"I feel as though we're missing something," Aziraphale said with a frown. "Like we've put all the edge pieces together but we need one good bit to get started on the middle."

"You always cheat when you get stuck on a jigsaw puzzle."

Aziraphale tried to look affronted, but his heart wasn't in it.

"So how do we cheat?" he asked, taking Crowley by surprise. "There must be something we can do to start bringing it all together."

Crowley was silent for a few seconds, turning possibilities over in his mind.

"Did you get anywhere with those prophecies Anathema sent us?"

"Not really. When I was working with Agnes's book, I could cross-reference things and so on, but with so few to work with—"

"When is a bottomless pit not a bottomless pit?" Crowley mused aloud. "That's gotta be to do with Julia Gregory. It's a stupid question though. Could have any answer."

Aziraphale sat forward, suddenly intent, brow creasing in a familiar way that made Crowley's lips twitch into a smile he suppressed out of long habit.

"It sounds like a riddle, more than a question," Aziraphale said. "And riddles follow certain patterns. When is a bottomless pit not a bottomless pit? When it's not really a pit? When it's not really bottomless?"

"... or when there's something at the bottom," Crowley said slowly. "We've been assuming the pit was an accident. What if she really did mean to do it? What if there was something down there she wanted?"

"Like what?"

Crowley shrugged helplessly.

"Wish we could get a look inside her house," he said. "But I don't think we should give that a go. Not if she's hoping to make an example out of any angels or demons who come after her."

He was braced for Aziraphale, with his usual blithe lack of self-preservation, to protest. To his surprise and relief, Aziraphale simply nodded agreement.

"No, she has altogether too many tricks up her sleeve," he said quietly. Was Crowley imagining the swift glance at his own face, Aziraphale almost-but-not-quite biting his lip before he carried on speaking? "You know, my dear, I'm starting to think we're in a bit over our heads."

"Nothing new there, then," Crowley muttered. He stood up suddenly, unable to keep still any longer. "Right. Back to the office?"

Aziraphale stayed seated, looking down into his empty teacup like he was trying to read the tea leaves (a futile endeavour, since his teapot had an excellent strainer that kept all the debris out of the cups).

"Tadfield," he said, with sudden certainty. He got to his feet, reaching for Crowley's cup. "I would like to talk to Anathema face to face. See where she's found these additional prophecies. If it's a book or a manuscript there might be some context that will help. And we can check on Adam at the same time."

"I'm not gonna say no to getting away from London while there's an angry warlock looking for us," Crowley replied, feeling a quiver of relief at the idea of taking Aziraphale further away from Julia Gregory. "If we leave now we can be there just after lunch."

You'd think (Anathema thought) that if you were going to have prophetic visions, they could at least make themselves useful and give you some warning before two supernatural entities showed up on your doorstep.

On the other hand, she supposed the argument could be made that mobile phones had been invented for this very purpose. Aziraphale at least looked apologetic when she raised the point.

"Sorry, dear girl, we were just... I say, is that a Victoria sponge?"

"Yes, I woke up with the urge to bake, for some reason—"

Anathema paused, then turned a suspicious look on the cake. She'd bought fresh coffee and a more interesting blend of tea than usual, too. Perhaps she had known they were coming, on some level. She obviously needed to start paying more attention to the things she did without paying attention.

She sighed.

"Come and sit in the lounge. The kitchen table's a bit... occupied today."

(Newt was attempting to lovingly restore an old TV he'd found at the village jumble sale. Anathema had rather pointedly laid out two kinds of fire extinguisher, a bucket of sand, and a first aid kit, but he hadn't taken the hint. So far the extent of its menace had been to shed enough dust to make the table look like the surface of the moon.)

Crowley peered at the carnage as he passed.

"He does know what happens when he—"

"Yes," Anathema sighed.

"And he still—"

"Yes."

"I think it speaks very well of him that he strives to overcome his difficulties," Aziraphale put in. "Especially if he's not naturally talented in that area."

"You should teach him a few of your magic tricks," Crowley muttered, throwing himself onto the sofa in a way that looked like it ought to be uncomfortable, but apparently worked just fine for him. "You can be stubborn idiots together."

"There's no need for that, Crowley."

Anathema left them bickering, put the kettle on, and cut some slices of cake. Newt wasn't exactly stubborn, was the thing. He was just so desperately, hopelessly in love with all things technological that he couldn't quite let go of the hope that maybe this time - this time - it would turn out differently. It was like watching a moth crash repeatedly into a lightbulb. On the one hand, you wanted to tell the poor thing to give up before it hurt itself. On the other hand, who were you to stop it dreaming of courting the moon?

"So, what's up?" she asked as she brought the tray through. She had a sinking feeling she already knew, but she couldn't help trying to delay the inevitable. "How's Lily getting on?"

She'd just intended it as small talk. She certainly hadn't expected both of them to stare at her like she'd spouted nonsense syllables.

"What?" Crowley managed.

"Lily? Lily White?" Anathema put the tray down on the coffee table and frowned at them. "She said you'd hired her. I thought—"

"You know her?" Crowley interrupted, incredulous.

Anathema stared at him.

"Of course. Didn't she say?"

"She— may have mentioned some connection," Aziraphale said, his surprise fading into what looked very much like an I-told-you-so glance at Crowley. "We hadn't realised you were friends."

"Well, not close friends," Anathema said, wondering if Lily had somehow upset them already. She did have a tendency to talk back. "She helped out with the Witchfinder forums and she has some interesting ideas about using smart technology in ritual magic—"

"So she's a real person?" Crowley blurted out.

"Crowley!" Aziraphale said with some exasperation.

Anathema just gave Crowley a flat look. Crowley mumbled something incoherent involving too many consonants, and reached for the coffee pot before speaking.

"Thought she might be, y'know. From one of our sides. In disguise, sort of thing."

Anathema gave that due consideration.

"I suppose it's possible," she said after a moment, "but if so, it's a long con. She was one of the first people to join Witchfinder last year. I met her and a couple of other London witches for coffee back before Christmas. And she posts pictures of her cat."

"Oh, definitely one of yours, then," Aziraphale murmured with another smug glance at Crowley.

"I keep telling you, cats were not our idea."

"If you thought she wasn't who she said she was," Anathema put in, still processing the new information, "why on Earth did you hire her?"

"It's a long story," Crowley replied with a wave of his hand and a glare in Aziraphale's direction. "Doesn't matter. She's got Aziraphale all aflutter over this database thing. We'll probably keep her."

He leaned forward and lowered his sunglasses just enough that Anathema caught a brief flash of his strange yellow eyes.

"But that's not why we're here."

Anathema sighed and moved to pour herself some tea. Aziraphale had been stealing hopeful glances at the slices of cake ever since she'd brought them in, so she put him out of his misery by offering him the largest. The way he lit up with delight made her smile. It was so human.

"It's about the prophecies, isn't it," Anathema said, sitting back in her chair.

Aziraphale's mouth was full of cake but he nodded eagerly. Crowley cast an exasperated look in his direction, and said, "Yeah, that's it. He wants to see where you found them. Look for clues, or something."

Anathema closed her eyes for a second, almost feeling the ghost of the headache that sometimes came with the visions. It would be very awkward timing... but the phantom pain passed as she rubbed her fingertips against her temple.

"I didn't find them," she finally admitted. "I made them."

Aziraphale's fork clattered onto his plate while Crowley stopped with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth, dismay twisting his face.

"You mean they're not real—"

"Yes, they're real!" Anathema snapped. "But they aren't from Agnes. They're from me."

Aziraphale put his plate aside, cake forgotten.

"You mean to say that you've... you've inherited her gift?"

"Seems like it." Anathema curled her lip. "Not sure about gift, though. Just when I thought I could get on with my own life—"

She stopped, hearing her own unexpected bitterness.

"My dear," Aziraphale said gently, "you can always make your own choices, prophecy or no prophecy. And such things are so rarely accurate in any case... When did this start?"

"Earlier this week. And they're accurate." Anathema gave a short laugh. "I'm not sure about nice. I had one yesterday that I'm almost certain was about Sophia Jenkins running off with that yoga instructor she's been taking private lessons from, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that information. I'm certainly not going to tell her husband."

"I don't think it's entirely directed," Aziraphale told her. "It's like accidentally picking up a channel on the radio. You don't have to act on it unless you want to. But the ones you sent to us—"

"They seemed like maybe they were more important." Anathema frowned. "Although I did find a frog in the back garden that had choked to death on a lizard, so maybe you should ignore the one about the gecko..."

"I don't suppose you remember any other details, do you? About the bottomless pit, in particular."

Anathema closed her eyes and concentrated. When is a bottomless pit not a bottomless pit? She could remember the feeling of it, and a taste in the back of her mouth like a crushing, unbearable weight. A sense of outrage, of a contract broken, a destiny denied.

"Hmmm," was all Aziraphale had to say when she tried to put it into words.

"Warlocks are big on contracts," Crowley muttered, fingers tapping restlessly on one knee. "And Julia Gregory was pretty upset about the Apocalypse being cancelled..."

"Julia Gregory?" Anathema blinked. "You mean she really is connected to all this?"

"She's our warlock," Crowley replied with a scowl. "And a very dangerous lady. Arms dealer, too."

"Wait, the woman who made my favourite lipstick sells weapons—?"

"Oh!" gasped Aziraphale, almost dropping his tea. His face had gone very pale. "Oh dear. Oh no."

"What?" Crowley had folded into a new direction like a collapsible chair, now leaning towards Aziraphale, scanning his face with alarm and concern. It would be sweet, if Anathema wasn't also feeling that prickle of unease from how tightly Aziraphale was clutching the cup in his hands. "Angel? What is it?"

"It's right there in her name," Aziraphale babbled, staring stricken at Crowley. "Gregory. Grigori, Crowley."

Crowley froze in place, a statue made of angles and taut wires, and Anathema saw his eyes widen even behind the sunglasses.

"You want to fill me in?" she asked. Her voice was less confident than she'd hoped.

"But she can't be—" Crowley croaked, ignoring her. "You're not saying—"

"Nephilim," Aziraphale replied, or maybe didn't reply, maybe he was just following his own thought train with no regard to Crowley's intercession. "No wonder she's so—"

"Tall? Scary? Mad as a hatter?" Crowley was waving his hands around desperately. "No, no, no, Aziraphale, that's not possible, not after the Flood, we'd know if any of them had survived—"

"Would we? Our head offices might, but would they tell us?"

Crowley's mouth snapped shut and his face did something very expressive that implied no, of course they fucking wouldn't.

"What are you talking about?" Anathema demanded, this time managing to put some authority into it.

"The Grigori," Aziraphale said after a moment, finally setting his cup down and putting his nervous fingers to work pulling at his shirt cuffs. "The Watchers. They were... a group of angels. They didn't Fall with Lucifer, but they were sent down to Earth not long after the Beginning, and they... well. They got a bit carried away... had their own ideas about how to guide human society... got too... attached to some of the mortals—"

"That's one way of putting it," Crowley muttered.

Anathema grabbed her phone and started tapping in search terms.

"—and they were cast down for it. Their leader was a chap called Azazel, and he was the one... well, he taught humans a lot of things, really, I don't know why people always talk about these two in particular, but... he taught them how to make cosmetics, and how to make weapons."

"And— what did you say? Neph—?"

"The Nephilim," Crowley answered with a look of distaste. "Their kids. Half human, half angel, all trouble." He made a strangled noise. "Family business, she said. She's a descendant."

"That explains her power." Aziraphale wrung his hands briefly. "Oh dear. That's really— that's very not good."

"I still don't understand what she wants from another go-round on Armageddon," Crowley went on. "Or what any of this has to do with Raphael—"

"Uh," Anathema put in. "Actually. I think I just found the answer to that question."

She held out her phone, and the page of information she'd found in response to searching for Azazel. It was succinct, with keywords highlighted. They leaned forward to read it, and then turned to stare at each other.

"Oh dear," said Aziraphale.

"Fuck," said Crowley, with almost the exact same inflection.

Chapter Text

Raphael wasn't answering his phone. Perhaps he was in an area with no signal (such as Heaven, or Milton Keynes) or perhaps he was even now suffering unthinkable torments.

"There's no way she's got to him this quickly," Crowley said. Aziraphale was fairly certain he hadn't spoken his worries aloud, but he supposed he was fidgeting a lot as the Bentley sped down the M40. "You didn't deliver the message, after all."

"Yes, but what if—"

"Crowley," Anathema snapped from the back seat, where she and Newt were being thrown around like loose change, "you're doing a hundred and ten miles an hour!"

"And I'd be doing more if everyone else would just get off the road!" Crowley retorted, glaring at a disconcerted Porsche driver who had up until that moment believed he was going too fast to be overtaken. "We're perfectly safe."

Aziraphale glanced at the speedometer and winced. He'd been too distracted to even notice it creeping upward.

"Perhaps you could slow down a little—"

Impossibly, the Bentley gained another five miles an hour as Crowley snarled something contemptuous and shot past the Ferrari he'd just tailgated until its courage failed it and it fled to the middle lane.

"You would probably have seen it coming if we were going to die in a car crash," Newt said weakly to Anathema. "Right?"

"I don't know, maybe that's what the thing with the fish was about—"

Aziraphale grabbed the door as they swerved between lanes and other cars. He decided enough was enough.

"Crowley, slow down."

Crowley growled, but let the Bentley decelerate to a positively sedate eighty-five miles an hour. Anathema breathed an audible sigh of relief, and Newt opened his eyes for the first time in fifteen minutes.

"Thank you, dear," Aziraphale said, ignoring the sour look he got in return. "Now, where were we?"

"Um." Newt frowned. "Azazel?"

"Right," Anathema said, like a teacher getting back to the main topic of the lesson. Aziraphale still wasn't quite sure about the wisdom of bringing the two humans with them, but Anathema had insisted on coming along, and then Newt had walked in just as they were leaving, so rather than try to explain she'd bundled him into the car too. "Azazel was the leader of the Watchers, the angels who were close to humanity in the beginning—"

"Oh, they were close all right," Crowley muttered. The speedometer started creeping up again. Aziraphale coughed pointedly, and the needle sank sulkily back into place. "Creepy, if you ask me, angels getting it on with humans—"

"The heart wants what the heart wants," Aziraphale replied, trying to call Raphael again. "Whatever else came of it, I've always believed Azazel and the others really did love the humans they chose to marry."

"Whatever else being a race of giants with a superiority complex, in this case—"

"That's the Nephilim?" Newt put in, gamely trying to keep up. "Like this Julia woman?"

"Yes," Aziraphale said, getting Raphael's voicemail and hanging up with a sigh. "I believe she must a descendant of Azazel's, and therefore her motives become a lot simpler: she wants revenge."

"For what?"

"Oh, where do we start?" Crowley groaned. "I mean, there was the bit where all the Watchers were cast out from Heaven and Earth and separated forever from their human lovers. The bit where the Nephilim were destroyed in the Flood. The bit where the Apocalypse didn't happen—"

"Why would she want the Apocalypse to happen?" Newt asked, bewildered.

"Because Azazel would have been released," Aziraphale explained. "All the Watchers were punished with Falling, but Azazel was singled out for a particularly harsh sentence. He was thrown into a deep pit beneath the ground, chained hand and foot, and pinned there by jagged rocks, until the end of days."

"By Raphael," Anathema added, waving her phone at Newt. "So it's personal."

"Indeed." Aziraphale sighed. "I should have made the connection sooner, but I wasn't involved in any of that business. I didn't even know about it until afterwards, let alone that they'd sent Raphael to clean things up. At any rate, it was written that when Armageddon was unleashed upon the Earth, Azazel would be released from his torment - and Raphael would plunge him into a lake of boiling fire."

"It's a river, actually, not a lake," Crowley muttered. "Phlegethon. Lovely place this time of year."

"Yes, I'm sure the charred corpses really add to the ambiance."

"The point is," Crowley went on, ignoring him, "if Azazel was able to contact his descendants, and they knew that the Apocalypse was on the way..."

"They could make plans," Aziraphale finished for him. "Who knows what she spent all that money on, but I would imagine it was in some way intended to give Azazel the upper hand in the struggle with Raphael."

"But then we stopped it happening," Anathema said, sounding justifiably rather smug. "So he was still stuck down there."

"And here we are." Crowley tapped his fingers restlessly on the steering wheel. "With his great-great-whatever-granddaughter running around trying to start the whole thing up again and pay Raphael back for what he did to Azazel."

Newt nodded slowly. For all his quirks, he was a bright lad. Aziraphale could see why Anathema liked him so much: they were, in an odd way, remarkably similar, like reflections of each other. Agnes had been right on the money in her matchmaking, though Aziraphale did worry sometimes that the two of them weren't actually aware of how well they fit. Anathema in particular, he thought, had accepted Newt the way she had accepted all of Agnes's instructions. He wondered if she even knew that she loved him, that it radiated off her in rainbow hues, that in a year together they had found all the spaces in themselves and begun to fill them up with each other.

"So she's got Raphael's staff," Newt said. "And the bottomless pit—"

"Not bottomless, after all. It just goes a very, very long way down, to where Azazel is pinned in darkness." Aziraphale shuddered. "She must not have had enough power to break his chains, even with the staff. Otherwise, well, we'd be knee-deep in another Armageddon by now."

"I wonder what she wanted me to do," Crowley mused with a troubled frown. "Harbinger of Armageddon, she said. I'm thinking she wasn't talking about getting on the BBC and making a formal announcement. Pity I didn't stay a bit longer—"

Aziraphale winced.

"Yes, all right, so perhaps I overreacted just a touch—"

To his immense surprise, Crowley leaned over and patted his knee in an absentminded way.

"Better than ending up bound into her service," Crowley said, returning his hand to the wheel. "No wonder Beelzebub's been after her. A warlock conjuring demons for her own ambitions is one thing; doing it in service of another demon looks an awful lot like a power grab, and Satan does not let that sort of thing slide. Surprised it's gone on as long as it has, to be honest."

"We need to find that staff." Aziraphale was still staring at his knee, wondering if Crowley even realised he'd offered such casual comfort. "Before she succeeds in freeing Azazel."

He moved his thumb to tap the call button again, but stopped himself. By this point, Raphael would know something was wrong as soon as he saw the missed calls. All they could do was wait, and hope he was just stuck in a meeting rather than, say, a cage of tarnished silver.

"I do have one question," Newt said.

"Yes?"

"Wasn't that our exit?"

Crowley swore loudly and extremely creatively, somehow performed a U-turn across three lanes without hitting anything, and drove back down the hard shoulder in the wrong direction. Aziraphale closed his eyes and thought very hard about not dying while Anathema and Newt wailed in horror from the back seat.

"Hi, Anathema," Lily said, blinking as the door burst open and the four of them all crowded into the office. "Uh... what's going on?"

"Armageddon, again," Crowley replied, pausing at the sight of his desk, which was clear for the first time in six months. "Wait, what happened to all the—"

Lily pointed at the laptop.

"Good heavens, you do work fast," Aziraphale said approvingly. "We'll be organised in no time—"

"Wait," Lily went on, staring at Crowley, "did you just say Armageddon? Armageddon again?"

"Er." Crowley rubbed the back of his neck. Between his initial assumption that Lily was a spy, and the fact that the small number of humans he spoke to on a regular basis had been present for the first go-round of the end of the world, he'd forgotten that they might have some explaining to do. "So, last year there was a bit of an incident—"

"I'll make us all some tea, shall I?" Aziraphale put in brightly, offering absolutely no help as Crowley shot him an exasperated look.

"Remember how Atlantis popped up for five minutes and then disappeared again?" Anathema said to Lily. "All the weird stuff the papers ignored but everyone kind of remembered until they decided it couldn't have happened?"

"I remember the M25 catching fire," Lily said, and Crowley very pointedly did not clear his throat or look embarrassed. "Except then it didn't - or hadn't in the first place—"

"Right, exactly. That was the start of the Apocalypse, except the Antichrist—"

"There's an Antichrist?"

"Yes, but he's a sweet kid, don't worry. Anyway, he decided not to end the world, and he put everything back the way it should be." Anathema frowned. "Mostly. I still think the weather is a bit too perfect around Tadfield—"

"Can he do that?" Lily demanded. "Just decide not to end the world? Isn't he supposed to be the Son of Satan, part of the grand plan?"

"He grew up human," Crowley explained, pacing the length of the office and back. "He chose humanity over Heaven or Hell."

"But why?"

Crowley paused to give Lily an incredulous look.

"You are human, wouldn't you choose—?"

"Well, yeah, I mean, I guess, but at the same time, you know." Lily waved her hand distractedly. "It's all kind of a mess. Especially in the last century, it feels like humanity's having a go at the end times without any help from the Son of Satan. You'd expect him to just get it over with. Mercy kill, sort of thing."

"He chose to believe that humanity has it within them to rise above their mistakes," Aziraphale said, bringing a tray of mugs over from the kitchen. He hadn't asked anyone what they wanted, but Crowley had a sneaking suspicion that everyone was going to find themselves handed their beverage of choice. "As do we."

Lily's eyes narrowed.

"You keep talking about humanity like you're not part of it—"

"That's a conversation for another time," Crowley said hurriedly. "Listen, we need to find something, fast, is there anything you can do on the computer that'll help?"

Lily gave him a long, flat stare that actually made Crowley feel slightly embarrassed.

"Could have a look on eBay," she said finally, shooting Anathema a look that screamed help me out here. "Check the Transport for London lost and found. Google it. Sort of depends what you're looking for, you know?"

"Oh dear, we're not explaining this very well," Aziraphale said, handing Crowley a cup of coffee. "We need to find where Julia Gregory is keeping Raphael's staff and take it back before she can lure him into a trap or release her demon ancestor to destroy the world, you see."

Lily opened her mouth, shut it again, stared briefly at the ceiling, then said, "Okay, I have questions—"

Aziraphale's phone rang, a cheerful little ditty of beeps that Crowley had specifically selected to be as annoying as possible. Aziraphale hadn't worked out how to change it yet - or at least, so he claimed. Given how badly the ringtone had started to get on Crowley's nerves, he had a sneaking suspicion Aziraphale might be leaving it on purpose.

Aziraphale almost dropped the tray in his haste to answer. Crowley grabbed it out of his hands and watched him fumble his phone out of his pocket.

"Oh, thank Heaven, it's Raphael."

He clapped the mobile to his ear and started babbling frantically about hellfire and silver chains. Crowley let him ramble for a couple of minutes, absently aware that Anathema had gone to Lily's side and was explaining things in an undertone. Finally, he reached out and plucked the phone from Aziraphale's grip.

"I'm guessing you didn't catch most of that," he said.

"Is he all right?" came Raphael's rather tinny voice on the other end. "I couldn't make head nor tail of—"

"We worked out what the warlock's after, and it's you," Crowley said bluntly. "She's a descendant of Azazel."

He was rather delighted by the string of obscenity that followed.

"Are Archangels allowed to use that kind of language—?"

Aziraphale snatched the phone back with a glare.

"So you see," he said, moving away from Crowley to prevent further interruption, "we had to make sure you didn't walk into any sort of trap—"

Crowley couldn't hear exactly what Raphael was saying, but from Aziraphale's slightly scandalised expression, he didn't think the swearing had stopped yet.

"Yes, we know," Aziraphale was saying, "she'll be trying to release Azazel— yes, actually, we bumped into her earlier today, so we've got a bit of inside info— yes, Raphael, we already thought of that—"

Someone grabbed Crowley's arm; he looked down at Lily.

"Archangel?"

"Look," Crowley replied guiltily, "I realise we probably should've given you a training manual or something before you started but could you just roll with it for—"

"No, no," Lily cut him off. "That's what you're looking for? The staff of the Archangel Raphael?"

"Yeah, it's pretty powerful—"

"Of course it is," Lily snapped. "It's the same staff Moses used to bring the Plagues of Egypt!"

Crowley blinked, while Anathema shot her a surprised look.

"It is? How do you know—"

"We all have hobbies. Mine's starting arguments about Christian theology online." Lily was tapping frantically at the keyboard, after a moment she turned the screen towards Crowley. "Look, the database is still pretty basic but I started with everything on your desk, right? And I was testing out an internet news feed based on keywords from your reports—"

A news article appeared on the screen, dated the day before. Crowley stared at it for several seconds, then let out a groan so heartfelt that Aziraphale stopped talking mid-sentence and turned to stare at him.

"Bloody Norwich!" Crowley snarled. "It was right there the whole time! Right on my desk!"

"The devil is in the details," Anathema said with wide eyes. Lily shot her a strange look, but she was focused on Crowley. "And the details are with the devil."

"What's going on?" Aziraphale asked with a worried furrow between his brows. "No, Raphael, not you, can you give me a moment— Crowley?"

"Flies in Devon," Crowley said. "Lice in London. Frogs in Norwich. Ringing any bells? Have we checked for rivers running with blood lately? The odd fiery hailstorm? I suppose we'd have noticed three days of darkness—"

"Oh. Oh no." A look of horror was settling onto Aziraphale's face, something haunted coming into his eyes that made Crowley's heart ache. He hadn't been there in Egypt, the first time around, but he'd found Aziraphale afterwards, walking through the city like a ghost in Azrael's wake, staring at each grief-stricken family as if he'd killed their firstborns himself. "Then that means—"

"The staff's in Norwich, or it has been recently. They're hopping out of the rivers and sewers, it's not just the odd transformation anymore."

"Why Norwich?" Aziraphale said, bewildered, then winced and returned his attention to the phone. "Yes, we think we've found it, but whatever you do, don't go rushing in—"

His mouth dropped open and he tore the phone away from his ear to stare at it in outrage.

"He hung up on me!"

"So much for angels fearing to tread," Crowley muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Crap."

"He's very upset," Aziraphale went on, sliding straight back into worry as he tried to call Raphael back. "He blames himself for leaving his staff in the chapel—"

"Which, to be fair—"

"Oh, hush a moment." Aziraphale made a face as the call apparently went to voicemail. "Oh dear. Do you think she really can trap him?"

"Norwich is a few hours away by car," Newt pointed out. He'd been sitting quietly on the sofa drinking his tea while everyone else did the shouting, which probably meant he was a bit more intelligent than Crowley had been giving him credit for. "Can't you get there first?"

"We're talking about the Archangel Raphael, he's not going to drive there," Crowley snapped. "He'll just manifest or whatever—"

"Can't you do that?"

"Above our pay grade." Crowley strode across the office to stare at the map of south-east England. "Even if we flew, we wouldn't get there in time—"

He stopped, head whipping around to focus on Aziraphale, who was stubbornly making his third attempt to call Raphael back. He started to grin.

"Angel, I have an idea."

"Oh, no," Aziraphale protested, with what Crowley felt was undue alarm. "That expression never means anything good, my dear—"

"Remember how I got away from Hastur?"

"No, oh no, absolutely not, that was dangerous enough when you were just going between your own two phones, travelling that sort of distance on that sort of scale would be madness—"

"It'll take seconds, angel, that's the beauty of it—"

"And if the connection drops or someone hangs up or there's a power cut at the telephone exchange we'd be bouncing around in there for goodness knows how long—"

"Does anybody else understand what the hell is going on right now?" Lily hissed.

"Got any better ideas?" Crowley demanded. He took Aziraphale's silence and pinched expression as his answer. "Lily, open one of those frog reports, would you?"

He grabbed the landline phone on his desk and dialled the number on the screen. Aziraphale was muttering in a very unangelic fashion, but he came across the room to Crowley's side all the same.

"If we end up stuck in a cassette tape, Crowley, I'm going to be very cross—"

"Mrs Potts!" Crowley exclaimed brightly into the telephone. "Hi, just calling about—" He checked the screen. "Neville, wasn't it? How's he doing? Okay, can you just give my assistant a few more details—"

He thrust the phone into Lily's hand.

"Keep her talking," he said, sotto voce, then turned to Aziraphale. "Ready?"

"Not in the least," Aziraphale replied with a sigh. "Lead on, then."

"See you later, alligators," Crowley told the three confused humans. "Stay put until we get back, okay?"

He grabbed Aziraphale's hand and dived between atoms.

It was a horrible way to travel, even without the looming fear of becoming lost in the endless human telecommunications network or crashing headlong into an overexcited electron. Aziraphale closed his eyes and clung onto Crowley's hand and pretended not to hear his whoops of exhilaration.

Lily's conversation with Mrs Potts echoed oddly around them. Neville was, apparently, doing as well as could be expected, although he had become rather picky about his flies recently.

Aziraphale had never done this, but he'd thought about it a lot since Crowley had so casually explained how he'd trapped Hastur, though perhaps worried about would be a better term. There was a reason they normally travelled in human fashion around the world. Pretty much any other option was fraught with danger, whether from supernatural forces or the whims of quantum mechanics. Messing about on the atomic level like this was just asking for a wave function to collapse at the wrong moment—

"Oh come on, angel, it's at least a little bit fun!" Crowley yelled. "Relax!"

"You know, I've been reading a lot about string theory recently and I really don't like some of the implications—"

There was a terrible, reverberating tone that seemed to go on forever, but that Aziraphale dimly recognised as the noise a telephone makes when someone is trying to call a busy line.

"Uh oh," Crowley said, hand tightening on Aziraphale's. "This could get awkward."

"I don't like the sound of that."

"It's fine, it'll be fine, we just need a few more seconds, just need— oh shit."

Aziraphale's eyes flew open in time to see something like a vortex forming directly in their path. He could see the tunnel-like outlines of the phone line stretching beyond it, but the sucking pit of static was already dragging them off course.

"What is that?"

"Robocall!" Crowley was twisting frantically like a salmon trying to leap upriver. "Bloody machines, they open a bunch of lines at once ready to grab anyone who takes the bait—"

"What do we do?"

Crowley swore, then twisted around to look at Aziraphale, who noticed for the first time that his sunglasses didn't appear to have followed him into this realm. His expression was resigned and a bit abashed.

"Look, when you get out the other end, just go after Raphael, okay? Don't worry about me, I'll catch up."

"Crowley," Aziraphale began in alarm, "what are you—"

Crowley contorted his body like he was throwing a javelin, although in this case, the javelin was Aziraphale. He tried to hold onto Crowley's hand, but Crowley twisted his fingers free with serpentine ease. His momentum carried him deep into the maw of the vortex while catapulting Aziraphale past it.

"Crowley!" Aziraphale screeched, even as he lost sight of him.

"I'll be fiiiiine—" came the distant reply, cut off as Aziraphale found himself spiralling out of the telephone and back into the real world.

Mrs Potts dropped the phone with a little shriek, eyes very wide. Aziraphale grabbed it.

"Crowley? Crowley can you hear me?"

"What?" Lily sounded almost as shocked as Mrs Potts. "What the— did you two just teleport or—"

"Damn it," Aziraphale muttered. "He's got himself stuck somewhere. I'd better go."

"What just happened—?"

He offered the phone back to Mrs Potts with his best attempt at a reassuring smile.

"Don't worry," he said. "We'll sort out your frog problem in no time."

Mrs Potts considered this, and then fainted. Aziraphale sighed.

"I'm hanging up now," he told Lily. "Let me know at once if you hear from Crowley. Anathema has my number."

"Do you even know where you're going?" Lily asked.

Aziraphale hesitated.

"Not as such, but I should be able to sense the staff when I get close to it—"

"Just— hold on second—"

He heard the sounds of a mouse clicking, and Anathema in the background protesting loudly that if they could just jump through phone lines, why did Crowley need to drive the way he did—

"The reports are clustered around one area," Lily said. "Anathema's going to text you the postcodes."

"Oh, thank you, that will help a lot." Aziraphale heard his phone make its bright little beeping sound. "Well, I'll just— we'll see you later then."

"I'm making a list," Lily replied pointedly, "of questions I'm going to want answered."

"I'll look forward to it."

Aziraphale ended the call, took a moment to ensure that Mrs Potts was quite all right, and would wake up shortly having had a lovely dream, and then hurried out of the house, trying not to fret about Crowley's whereabouts. He was right, Aziraphale really didn't have time to look for him, but some of those call centres were on the far side of the world, weren't they? If Crowley had ended up in India or somewhere, goodness knows how he was going to get back...

He flagged down a taxi (whose driver was quite surprised to find himself on a quiet suburban street, since he was pretty sure he'd been waiting at the train station a few seconds ago) and directed it to the first of the postcodes Anathema had sent through. He kept hoping the phone would ring and Crowley's name would pop up, but it remained silent throughout the journey.

Crowley was forced to admit that this had perhaps not been one of his better ideas.

He'd been desperate the first time he'd tried it, and he'd thought they were desperate enough to try it this time, but he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was nothing on Earth or beyond it that would persuade him to risk this experience ever again.

It was like being trapped on a particularly spiteful rollercoaster, one which didn't have to worry about G-forces or kinetic energy and was quite happy to yank you in any direction it pleased at any moment, regardless of where you'd been headed a second before. The computer making the automatic calls opened new lines every few seconds, cutting off the ones that hadn't born fruit, and Crowley was helpless to control his own destination as he was tugged back and forth by the newly-formed vortices. Even if he did get into one of the open lines, he ran the risk of dropping straight into someone's answering machine, and he had no idea how he'd get out of that one. Hastur had escaped the cassette tape, but most people had digital voicemail these days, and Crowley wasn't sure if it would work the same way...

Two new lines opened up at once, flipping him upside-down and around in a circle. It was a good thing he didn't need to worry about all that inner ear nonsense, otherwise he'd be discovering what happened if you vomited into the subatomic makeup of the universe. It didn't make the sensation any less horrible, especially since all he could hear were the overlapping echoes of the recorded call.

"HELLO!" boomed a woman's voice with the forced intonation of someone attempting to sound friendly and trustworthy, "THIS IS A CALL FROM YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER! WE HAVE DETECTED THAT YOUR CONNECTION IS BEING SLOWED DOWN—"

"Oh, piss off," Crowley snarled, giving up on movement for the moment and letting himself be limply flung wherever the currents chose to take him. "My connection would be just fine if it wasn't for you messing things up—"

"Hello?" came a quavering voice. Crowley wriggled in its general direction, trying to spot the vortex it was coming from. "Did you, mm, did you say there was some sort of problem, young lady?"

There, a stable tunnel, an open connection. Crowley was already being pulled towards it. He kicked and flailed his arms, then realised he had a better option. A second later, he was propelling himself forward with his wings.

He dived into the open line and willed himself forward as fast as he could go. He only had seconds before the automated call redirected the unfortunate victim to a human operator, closing off this route. Fortunately, when you were travelling at very nearly the speed of light, seconds were all you needed.

He tumbled out of a battered plastic handset and landed at the feet of an elderly man with thick glasses and not much hair, who blinked at Crowley in a befuddled manner.

"Oh," he said. "Are you here to fix the internet, young man?"

Crowley snatched the phone away from him and hung up even as a heavily-accented voice was starting to brightly request full access to 'all your Windows computers'.

"Where am I?" he demanded.

"In my living room," the man replied helpfully. "Would you, mm, like a cup of tea?"

"Okay, but what part of the country—"

The elderly gentleman was already shuffling towards the kitchen. Crowley groaned and yanked his mobile out of his pocket. He tapped on the map icon and waited while it orientated itself to his location. He was in some little village just outside Norwich. Could be worse; he supposed the call centre tended to work through blocks of numbers in the same area codes.

"One lump or two?" came a reedy query from the kitchen.

"None for me, thanks," Crowley replied automatically, dialling Aziraphale. The call rang and rang and then went to voicemail. Great. How long had he been in the phonebank, anyway? Time tended to run a bit differently when you were operating on that scale. "Your internet's fine, I'll just be on my way—"

He glared at the ancient telephone until it transformed into a top-of-the-line machine with built-in call screening that would ensure the old man wasn't bothered by any further scams. Then he hurried out of the house and borrowed the nearest car. As he drove off, he caught a glimpse of his erstwhile host standing confusedly in the doorway with two mugs of tea.

Chapter Text

As soon as the taxi turned into the street, Aziraphale knew that he was in the right spot; the whole area was shivering on an ethereal level, buffeted by ripples of divine power. He had the driver drop him off on the corner and hurried along the pavement, trying to get a feel for the centre of the phenomenon. This road was lined with big houses built around the midpoint of the twentieth century, with double bay windows and comfortable front gardens, although most of those had been turned into paved driveways.

There was one at the end of the road that was even grander than the others, set back enough to be within its own modest grounds, and surrounded by a high brick wall. It fit with Julia Gregory's style, and it was also the only house that had a furious Archangel throwing bolts of heavenly power at the glowing shield that surrounded it, so that was a bit of a giveaway.

Aziraphale was, naturally, rather more accustomed to displays of divine power than the average human, but even he slowed to an awed stop at the sight of Raphael's wrath. When was the last time an Archangel had unveiled themselves fully on Earth? The Annunciation? One of Michael's little dragon-slaying jaunts? More than a thousand years ago, either way, and Aziraphale hadn't been there to witness it.

It was a common misconception that all angels had white wings. Certainly, it was the default, and what Aziraphale had always been most comfortable with, but an angel's wings (like a demon's) were an extension of their celestial form, and took on whatever hue their bearer willed. Crowley's were black because Crowley wanted them to be black (he'd always insisted it was an Important Philosophical Statement, but Aziraphale had a suspicion he just thought they looked cool). Aziraphale's were white because he loved the soft glow of them and had never really wanted to change it.

(The other three Archangels had kept theirs white, which had led to a lot of other angels doing the same out of respect or to suck up. Michael and Uriel clearly considered it some sort of unofficial Heavenly uniform. Gabriel might well agree, but Aziraphale was almost certain that he also just hadn't figured out how to get his off the default setting.)

Raphael's wings were predominantly rust-red with tips like stained glass, the feathers a kaleidoscope of muted colour, as if their original white had been scattered into a thousand fragments by some celestial prism. They hadn't always been; Aziraphale definitely remembered them as white when Raphael stopped by in the Garden to give Adam that pep talk, right at the Beginning. Aziraphale didn't know when they had changed, not being privy to the personal lives of the Archangels, but he'd always had a suspicion that it had been after the Flood, that Raphael had taken the promise of the rainbow personally and worn it like a banner as he looked upon the ravaged Earth.

They were currently flared out high and angry behind his shoulders. His eyes were glowing like green flames and he seemed a good deal taller than his normal human height. It was all very impressive, except for the part where he didn't seem to be accomplishing anything.

That, and the frogs. They were everywhere as Aziraphale approached the house, hopping cheerfully over the gardens, the pavements, and each other. There were several on Raphael's shoes, and one on his shoulder, which he didn't appear to have noticed.

"Er— Raphael—?" Aziraphale called from the gate, not really wanting to sneak up on him in this state. "Could I— could I have a word?"

The fire faded reluctantly from Raphael's eyes and he turned towards Aziraphale with a surprised frown.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. His gaze flicked past Aziraphale and the frown deepened. "And where's your—"

"Crowley's catching up. I hope." Aziraphale opened the gate cautiously. "It's just, we're a bit worried that the warlock may have set a trap for you—"

"Of course she has," Raphael snapped. "But she's going to find she's seriously miscalculated if she thinks she can take on an Archangel."

"Even though she has your staff? It's just— I've been thinking, you know, about the way warlocks bind demons, how it usually involves some sort of— well, blood, or feathers, or some other part of them— and, your staff is an extension of you, in a way—"

Raphael scowled, but he folded his wings away as he thought about it.

"I suppose it's possible," he said begrudgingly. "This shield is certainly a lot tougher than it should be. If it's powered by my own staff..."

"Right, right," Aziraphale went on in relief. Thank heaven Raphael could be reasonable about things. "So it would probably be better if we—"

Raphael turned back to the house and flung out one hand, making an gesture with crooked fingers, like he was gathering in the strands of something and pulling them towards him. The shield waved, puckered at the spot right in front of him, and then opened up a gap right over the front door.

"Good thinking, Aziraphale," Raphael said, and strode towards the door. The frogs on his shoes fell away; the one on his shoulder had wrapped its toes around a long strand of hair and was hanging on for dear life. "If it's based on my staff, I can work with it instead of against it."

Aziraphale revised his previous assessment of Raphael's common sense and scurried desperately after him.

"Raphael, please don't go in there, I really think—"

"There's no time to think," Raphael replied over his shoulder. He finally noticed his amphibious passenger, stared at it for a moment with a furrowed brow, and then carefully unhooked it from his hair. He bent to place it gently in a flowerbed before straightening and stepping through the shield. "I won't let Azazel walk the Earth again. You have no idea—"

He bit off the words with a quick shake of his head. He raised a hand and slapped his palm against the front door; the whole thing blew off its hinges and landed somewhere inside.

"Stay here," Raphael commanded, and stepped inside the warlock's house.

"Oh dear," Aziraphale said, mostly to himself. No time to think? Of course there's time to think, there's always time to think... I wish I could think a bit faster though—

He looked down the street, hoping against hope to see Crowley, but there were only frogs and, regrettably, a large number of seagulls who had realised that the frogs represented an all-you-can-eat buffet. He looked back at the front door, and saw that the hole in the shield was beginning to shrink at the edges.

"Oh hell," Aziraphale muttered.

Maybe sometimes there really wasn't time to think. He dove for the gap and managed to squeeze through before it narrowed too much. No going back now. He hurried to the front door, fumbling for his phone as he went. He glanced at the screen, saw he had no messages or calls from Crowley, and shoved it back into his coat pocket. Unfortunately, he didn't notice that he'd lost every bar of signal the second he stepped through the shield, which was a pity, because about thirty seconds later Crowley fell out of a telephone a few miles away and tried to call him.

Crowley missed his Bentley. Other cars just couldn't compare, even - or especially - modern vehicles with built-in computer screens that told him with increasing hysteria to please obey the speed limit. Crowley couldn't figure out how to turn it off, so he tried going as fast as possible to see if it would overload the thing into silence.

Aziraphale still wasn't picking up, which was fuelling a growing panic in the pit of Crowley's stomach. After all his efforts to stay close, all his worrying about letting Aziraphale out of his sight, he'd gone and separated them with his own stupid plan, and now Aziraphale wasn't answering...

Crowley clamped his hands tighter on the steering wheel and tried to fill himself with an iron conviction that Aziraphale was fine, partly because he needed to stop panicking and think, and partly because he had to hope that if he believed it strongly enough, it would become reality. He barked an order at the phone lying in the passenger seat; it obediently called the Agency's office.

"It's me," Crowley snapped over whatever greeting Lily was stumbling her way through. "Where's Aziraphale?"

He remembered belatedly that Aziraphale had introduced himself to Lily with his human alias (such as it was), but Anathema must have been filling her in, because she didn't miss a beat.

"In Norwich, apparently. Where the hell are you?"

"Not in Hell, at least. I'm—" Crowley peered at a signpost as he zoomed past. "About fifteen miles away. Did he go after the warlock?"

"Yes. Anathema can send you the postcode."

Lily's voice indicated that she had given up on expecting sanity from anyone else for the time being, and was just rolling with whatever came next. Crowley had a feeling they were going to need a new database person after this. And a much more comprehensive employee training process. There was the sound of the receiver changing hands.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Anathema demanded.

"Nope." Crowley swerved sharply around a caravan that was dawdling up ahead, then back into lane before he could collide head-on with a horrified minivan driver. There wasn't technically room or time for either of these manoeuvres, but Crowley had never let that stop him. "If you hear from Aziraphale, tell him to call me, okay?"

"Crowley—"

Crowley hung up on her and coaxed an impossible extra five miles an hour out of the terrified engine. He reached for the glove compartment to grab a new pair of sunglasses, before realising that in this, too, the borrowed car was deficient. The dashboard display had become stuck in its litany and was just saying please - please - please over and over again like it was begging for its life. Crowley snapped his fingers and turned the whole thing into a surprised but quite stylish combination cup holder and ash tray.

It didn't make him feel any better.

It didn't take Aziraphale long to realise that there was something very wrong with the inside of this house. For a start, it was much bigger than the outside had suggested.

He'd also lost Raphael immediately, even though by all rights he should have been easy to catch up with. The well-appointed entrance hall on the other side of the front door had doors leading out in three directions. They were all closed, and showed no obvious sign of which way Raphael had gone. Aziraphale hesitated, then hurried across the hall and opened the door immediately opposite the entrance.

Beyond was a parlour with some rather disconcerting portraits on the walls, but it was empty. Aziraphale quickly checked the other two doors, one of which led to a study, the other to a kitchen, but there was no sign of Raphael in either of them. Aziraphale went back to the parlour, on the basis that Raphael was most likely to have forged straight ahead. As soon as he stepped into the room, the door swung shut behind him, leaving him with three new options to choose from.

Feeling slightly panicky, Aziraphale again made for the door directly opposite where he'd come in. There was a dining room beyond, a long mahogany table with a candelabra at the centre that looked more like something off a sacrificial altar than a pleasing dinner centrepiece. A hatch seemed like it should open onto the kitchen, except it was set into a wall that couldn't possibly connect to it.

In this room, too, there was a door in each wall. Aziraphale thought he'd propped the door behind him open, but heard it snick shut as soon as he was more than a couple of steps into the room.

He started to get a bad feeling about the place. Cautiously, he made his way to the door next to the hatch, and opened it.

A kitchen lay beyond: the same kitchen, he was sure, that he'd looked in on earlier, except it was geographically impossible for it to be there. Aziraphale furrowed his brow, compared his memory of that glimpse to his current position, and crossed the kitchen to the door that should by all rights open back onto the entrance hall.

Instead, he found himself looking into a rather pleasant sitting room with a stone fireplace and comfortable chairs. Well, pleasant until you noticed the titles on some of the books under the coffee table...

"Oh dear," Aziraphale murmured to himself, unsurprised to see that there were again four doors in this room, one in each wall. "I wish Crowley were here."

He was thinking of the demon's knack for directions, but as soon as the words left his mouth, a rush of longing went through him. It was starting to sink in on him how foolish he'd been to rush in - although Raphael certainly shared some of the blame for that - and that he had no idea what to do next. He wanted Crowley there as much for his sarcastic comments as for his ability to navigate. And for the reassurance of knowing that even if Crowley was as lost as Aziraphale, they were in it together. And for the sake of just having Crowley near, really, oh goodness, what if he had ended up in India...? Or worse?

Well, there was no sense in dithering about wishing for Crowley to appear out of nowhere. If wishes were goats, and all that. Or was it donkeys? He could never remember, and he'd never really understood the idiom anyway.

Aziraphale shook himself. He looked around the sitting room, considering what he'd already seen, then fumbled through his pockets until he found a handful of coins. He placed one carefully on the coffee table, then chose a door at random, and stepped into a music room containing an upright piano and a number of violins. He glanced back once before allowing the door to close behind him, ensuring he'd fixed the coin's location in his mind, before selecting another door.

Crowley had thought, being as he'd been in actual Hell and all, that he'd experienced the full range of unpleasant experiences on offer to a thinking being, but it turned out driving over a carpet of frogs was a new and special horror all its own. Especially when he hit a seagull, which didn't even have the good grace to be stunned, but instead landed on the car bonnet and screamed at him through the windscreen.

"Uh oh." Crowley let the car roll to a halt and glanced around nervously. He'd never got on with seagulls. They were vindictive bastards at the best of times, but for some reason every single one of the things had held a grudge against him since at least the sixteenth century. He'd even begun to wonder if some other demon had laid an unexpectedly successful curse on him. "Look, just get back to your dinner, there's plenty of frogs to go around."

The seagull locked eyes with him through the glass and, with great ferocity and purpose, relieved itself on the car's paintwork. Crowley grinned. Not his car. Not his problem.

What was his problem was the unmistakeable feeling of power up ahead, and the way one particular house was glowing like a particularly over-eager homeowner had broken out the Christmas lights in June. Crowley cast the seagull a wary look, opened the door, and stepped out.

There was a squelch. He winced.

"Sorry," he muttered, trying to step in the clear patches between frogs and seagull crap and the sad remains of frogs. The result was an undignified hopping gait as if he were walking on consecrated ground. The seagull on the car reared back, spread its wings, and screamed at him again. "Oh, sod off, I don't have time for this."

The seagull narrowed its eyes and launched itself at his head. Crowley snapped his fingers, and it vanished, to reappear fifty miles inland and in someone's garden shed, where it would later cause an Incident that would make the local news. Crowley didn't care right now. Another snap of his fingers cleared a path through the frogs, and he jogged towards the house at the end of the road.

The place was shielded so heavily it made his skin prickle. Crowley threw open the front gate and stalked up to the glowing barrier with a grimace. He prodded at it with one finger, snatching his hand back before the energy could burn him.

It certainly felt divine rather than infernal, which wasn't what you'd expect from a warlock. Crowley yanked his phone out of his pocket and tried one more time to call Aziraphale. This time the call didn't even connect. Crowley almost crushed the phone in a rush of anxiety, shoved it away, and began to walk around the edge of the barrier, looking for any sort of weakness he could exploit.

He was almost surprised when he found one, then another. Tiny chinks in the shield, like a wrinkle not quite smoothed down. When he looked closer, Crowley saw that they were caused by the presence of other wards - these ones more traditionally demonic, defending the house from intruders. The shield had been laid over the top, and where it touched them, its power recoiled a tiny fraction.

Crowley crouched down by one of the weak spots, pressed his hands to the ground, and scowled as he channelled as much infernal power as he could through his fingertips into the wards. It was like heaving his shoulder against a cliff face, but after a few moments, as sweat began to bead on his forehead, he felt the beginnings of a shift. The shield bent fractionally away from him. The gap widened slowly. Crowley kept up the flow of energy, but he could already see it wasn't going to be enough. The second he stopped concentrating, the hole snapped closed. He needed someone to hold it open while he passed through.

Crowley sat back on his heels and wiped his forehead with a grimace. Anathema or Lily might be able to help, but he had no way of getting them here, and he wasn't sure how their witchcraft would interact with the warlock's sorcery. Another demon would be best, but it wasn't like he was on speaking terms with anyone from Hell right now.

Somewhere in a nearby garden, a dog started to bark frantically, possibly because it had discovered its water bowl was full of frogs, possibly just because it was a dog, who knew? Either way, the sound made Crowley jump to his feet with the beginning of an idea. Call for me and I will come. He was a long way from Dartmoor, but hellhounds weren't bound by quite the same rules as other demons, and responding to their master's call had always been one of their powers...

"Wist!" Crowley shouted at the top of his lungs, throwing a demonic echo into the name that made it cut through the air like thunder. "Hey, Wist! I need your help!"

For a moment, nothing happened, except that the nearby dog let out a terrified whimper and fell silent. Then Crowley felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and turned to find a shadowy corner behind a large shrubbery had gained two glowing eyes and the impression of raised hackles.

What is this place? Wist demanded, edging out from between the leaves and staring at the glowing shield.

"The warlock's in there," Crowley explained. "So's Aziraphale. I need you to help me get inside so I can find both of them, stop the warlock restarting Armageddon, and fix that great big hole you're so upset about."

(He still didn't actually know how they were going to fix the gaping pit in the moor, but he figured dealing with the other problems was a good first step.)

That barrier is wrought of Heaven's light—

"I know, but there's a way. Look here." Crowley crouched again, indicating the wards. Wist crept forward cautiously, ears back in protest at the brilliant light. Crowley pointed. "If we pour enough power into them—"

Yes, I see. One must hold the curtain back whilst the other passes through.

"Exactly."

Wist lowered his head to the ground, eyes glowing brighter. A low growl travelled into the earth and up through the soles of Crowley's feet.

Very well. I will open the way for you, and then you will keep it open for me.

Crowley blinked.

"Wait, no, you don't have to come with me, I only need—"

The wards flared with power. The barrier peeled back slowly.

You, and then me, Wist said implacably. I promised I would aid you when you needed it. I cannot do so if I am outside this barrier.

Crowley sighed. The gap widened until it was just big enough. He wriggled through it like a high-stakes limbo dancer.

"Fine. Just don't try to fight the Archangel who's also in there somewhere, all right?"

Wist raised his head slightly, fixing Crowley with a flat look.

"I'll explain on the way," Crowley muttered, trying not to think about the kind of reputation he'd end up with if it got out that he was hanging out with Archangels now as well. He put his fingertips to the ground and focused on keeping the wards powered as Wist relinquished his hold on them. "Come on."

Aziraphale had been sitting quietly in a surprisingly comfortable armchair for about fifteen minutes.

As strategies for finding lost Archangels went, it was perhaps an unorthodox one, but he'd thought the problem through very carefully before deciding on his course of action. It would have been nice if that had translated into the confidence to sit without constantly fidgeting and worrying about Crowley, but one couldn't have everything, after all. He kept looking at the clock on the wall.

Just as he was starting to think about risking one of the books on the coffee table (he was fairly certain the Necronomicon wasn't a real occult text, but there nonetheless appeared to be a copy of it between 101 Things To Do With the Rest Of The Goat and Virgins: A History, and he was curious about its contents) the door to his left blew off its hinges and Raphael stormed in, eyes once more glowing a vibrant, furious green.

"There you are," Aziraphale said with a sigh of relief, jumping to his feet. "I was starting to worry."

Raphael stared at him, the light fading out of his eyes until Aziraphale could see the pupils and whites again, though the irises were still too brilliantly emerald to be mistaken for human.

"Aziraphale? I told you to wait outside—"

"Yes, well, you may recall I'm not exactly taking orders from Heaven anymore," Aziraphale replied. It came out much snippier than he'd intended; Raphael's eyebrows shot up. "Er. Anyway. Now I've found you—"

"Found me?" Raphael snapped, folding his arms. "You were just sitting there."

"It seemed the most efficient method, given the properties of the maze. I knew you'd come through here eventually."

"How, when there are hundreds of these damned identical rooms?"

"There aren't," Aziraphale said, trying not to sound too pleased with himself. Raphael hadn't figured it out. He stepped past Raphael and picked up the coin that had been lying on the table, holding it up. "It's not hundreds of rooms, it's about... ten, I think, unless there are some less common ones I haven't been through yet. The sorcery is in the connections between them, the doors - they loop back on themselves. I haven't been able to determine a pattern yet."

He paused thoughtfully.

"Although the dining room and the kitchen do always seem to be connected. Presumably dinner would be terribly awkward otherwise."

Raphael opened his mouth and then shut it again. He had the grace to look both sheepish and a bit impressed. After a moment, he turned to look back at the door he'd just burst through. It had quietly returned itself to its hinges when neither of them were looking.

"So it doesn't matter how many doors we go through, we're just going around in circles?" Raphael said. "We'll never get anywhere?"

"I imagine there's a trick to navigating it successfully," Aziraphale replied, losing some of his confidence. "But I haven't the foggiest what it is. Perhaps a talisman is required. Or perhaps one must start from the entrance hall and make the correct number of turns. Either way, we're rather stuck."

Raphael raked a hand through his hair in frustration.

"How did a human come up with something so devilishly complicated?" he demanded. "I can't make head or tail of this place."

"They're rather clever, humans," Aziraphale said with a sigh. "Cleverer than us, I think, when you get right down to it. But there must be a way through."

"Must there? If we don't have the key—"

"Humans," Aziraphale interrupted, moving across the sitting room to one of the doors. He opened it, and found himself looking into the study, which was convenient, since that was where he'd wanted to end up, "are also rather more aware of the potential for failure than we are. They can't just miracle themselves out of a jam, you see. And this is a terribly complex work of sorcery, not something our warlock could just take apart and reassemble at a moment's notice."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Raphael followed him into the study. Aziraphale began to examine the desk carefully.

"It means," he said, opening a drawer, "that there will be a spare key somewhere. Or a set of instructions. Or a large, red button marked emergency escape, I don't know. Something. There'll be something. Because Julia Gregory is not the kind of woman who'd allow any possibility of getting trapped in her own maze. We just have to find it, which I expect will be quite difficult, since she's unlikely to have put it anywhere obvious."

There was a moment of silence. Then, with a certain meekness that absolutely did not give Aziraphale a smug sense of self-importance, Raphael asked, "Where should I start looking, then?"

The entrance hall was impressively ominous, Crowley would give it that, although that might have had something to do with the way Wist started growling low in his throat as soon as they stepped over the threshold.

"What's wrong?" Crowley asked.

The world has been twisted here, Wist replied, putting his nose to the ground as if searching for a scent. Those doors are not real doors. If we step through them, we will be caught in the snarl.

"Did Aziraphale come through here? Can you tell?"

Yes, he and the Archangel both passed this way.

Crowley hissed between his teeth, looking rapidly between the three doors on offer.

"Any idea which one of these—?"

It does not matter. Wist padded over to the nearest door and snuffled along the bottom of it. They are all lies.

"That's not helping, Wist—"

Wist suddenly opened his mouth, showing impossibly sharp, impossibly white teeth, which he clamped onto the bottom edge of the door at an awkward angle. For a moment he looked like nothing so much as a dog attempting to chew a bone far too large for him. And then he pulled.

The door peeled away towards him. Or rather, the world did. Crowley blinked rapidly to try and make his eyes focus, and by the time he was done, Wist had torn a ragged hole in reality. On the other side of it, Crowley could see what looked like a dark, narrow passage with a floor of rough concrete that had been carved with symbols and complex runes. A damp and unsettling smell drifted out of it.

Here are the bones of it, Wist said with some satisfaction. The spaces between. This is the way.

"You know, I watched this documentary on serial killers once..." Crowley muttered with a shiver. Wist gave him a blank look. "Never mind. Lead on into the murder hole."

It was dark and cramped in the passage. The first part didn't bother Crowley's demon eyes, but the claustrophobia made his skin itch. He gritted his teeth as they walked, resisting his body's attempts to start breathing too fast. The corridor made him think of Hell's lower levels, the ones he'd spent millennia trying to stay out of.

They reached a junction, another identical passage jutting off to the right. Peering around the corner, Crowley spotted a small point of light like a solitary star.

"D'you see that?"

I smell it. Wist prowled towards the light, Crowley hurrying in his wake. A point of connection between the truth and the lie.

"A spyhole," Crowley realised as they drew near.

It was just at the right height to look through, perfectly round, clearly intentional. He was about to lean in when caution reared its head. No need to get stabbed in the eye by a pointy thing on a spring, was there? Crowley fumbled through his coat pockets, found a spare pen, and cautiously poked it into the hole.

Nothing happened. Distinct lack of spikes. Crowley tucked the pen away again and put his eye to the gap.

He found himself looking at greenery. The room looked very much like a conservatory, with its wicker furniture, abundant houseplants, and bright natural light, but there was no glass to be seen anywhere in its construction. Crowley could see more from the spyhole than he should have been able to - some sorcerous trick no doubt - and could spot no obvious source for the light. He eyed the plants critically (limp and apathetic, the lot of them), noted the three visible doors, then straightened up.

"Nothing much in there," he told Wist. "Are there more of these, do you think?"

It would make sense. Wist began to pad along the corridor once more. This way. I think I have the scent of your angel.

Crowley stumbled slightly at the phrasing, a very undemonic swell of emotion filling his chest. Ridiculous. Wist was only distinguishing between the two angels currently present, after all. To distract himself, he flicked his own tongue out as he followed, trying to catch any trace of Aziraphale, and pulled a face as he was swamped with the smell of damp and dust. He thought he caught a hint of that cologne Aziraphale was so fond of, but he couldn't have put a direction on it.

He was realising with a certain amount of chagrin that it was a good thing Wist had insisted on accompanying him. He tried not to think about what trouble Aziraphale might be in already. Just please let the blessed idiot decide against starting any more fires...

Another tiny point of light ahead. Crowley crowded onto Wist's heels; the hellhound took the hint and increased his pace. Moments later, Crowley was peering into a sitting room with a cosy fireplace.

"This is not what I expected," he muttered. "I was thinking more along the lines of dungeons full of chains and skeletons, not armchairs."

They moved on. Ahead was a crossroads, a neat four-way junction of identical passages. Crowley could see the glimmer of more spyholes down each of the new passages. He glanced at Wist, who paused, sniffing the air, and then turned left. They paused at another spyhole - a music room - and then Crowley caught a faint murmur up ahead. He almost tripped over Wist in his eagerness to get to the next point of light. He'd know Aziraphale's voice anywhere, even muffled by distance and who knew how many walls and enchantments.

Crowley pressed his eye to the spyhole and breathed out in a rush of relief that embarrassed him with its intensity. Aziraphale and Raphael were both in there, apparently in the process of ransacking the place. He couldn't make out what they were saying. He took a deep breath, raised his fist, and hammered on the wall next to the spyhole.

"Aziraphale! Oi! Can you hear me?"

Aziraphale paused in his inspection of the bookshelf and turned his head a fraction, frowning. Crowley banged hard enough on the wall to hurt his hand.

"AZIRAPHALE!"

Aziraphale was definitely looking around for the source of the sound now, though Crowley didn't think he'd necessarily recognised what it was. He willed his fist to ignore small details like bruising and grazed skin and kept up a constant, urgent pounding. He watched Aziraphale home in on it and walk cautiously over to the wall.

"— some sort of knocking," he was saying, his voice so faint Crowley almost felt rather than heard it, but good enough.

"Aziraphale! It's me!" he yelled, putting his mouth right next to the hole. "Can you hear me?"

He ducked down quickly to look again, in time to see Aziraphale's expression flash through surprise and then into a relief and delight that warmed Crowley like the sun coming out.

"Crowley?" came his faint reply. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me, what the heaven have you got yourself into, angel?"

"I didn't catch all of that—" Aziraphale turned his head towards Raphael, and Crowley couldn't follow whatever he said next. "—in one of the other rooms, perhaps?"

"No, I'm not, I'm outside the rooms, some sort of creepy passage—"

"What was that? A carriage?"

"PASSAGE. Corridor. Tunnel. Look, you're in some sort of TRAP—"

"Yes, my dear, I'd worked that much out, thank you. We're attempting to find—"

He turned his head slightly again and Crowley lost the rest of the sentence. He rolled his eyes.

"I can't hear you when you look away!"

"Oh, sorry." Aziraphale cast a puzzled look in Crowley's general direction. "How can you see me at all?"

"There's a thing— spyhole— they're in all the rooms."

"A bible?"

"A SPYhole, angel."

"Oh! Oh, that makes more sense. How fascinating. I can't see anything at all like that from this side, there's only this rather elegant wallpaper—"

He ran his hand over it. His palm passed over the spyhole, but somehow the view wasn't obstructed.

"That's disconcerting," Crowley muttered, then raised his voice again. "Wist says things are all twisted up in there."

"Sorry, did you say something about wisteria—?"

"Never mind! What I mean is—"

There was a muffled exclamation from Raphael. Aziraphale immediately spun towards him, and Crowley couldn't follow whatever was said next, but then Raphael handed Aziraphale something, and Aziraphale held it up in front of the spyhole. It was a small key with an ornate handle.

"I knew it," Aziraphale said triumphantly. "I knew she'd have a spare key somewhere."

Crowley couldn't help grinning at how pleased with himself he looked.

"Does it work in the doors?"

He wasn't sure if Aziraphale heard him, but took a sideways step anyway and there was a distant scrabbling sound. Crowley realised there must be a door in the wall he was looking through, despite the lack of any such thing on his side. Aziraphale reappeared with a frown.

"It's much too small for the keyhole," he said. "It's dripping with magic, though, and it was very well hidden, so it seems likely it's important."

"There must be something it fits."

"It has to fit somewhere," Aziraphale said at almost the same time. "I suppose we'll just have to search the rooms one by one."

"Right." Crowley pulled back from the spyhole and looked both ways down the passage he was in. "I'll help, I can scout around in here. Maybe spot something through one of these holes."

"What was that?"

"I said, I'll scout around in here!"

"Oh, all right then. Do be careful."

"You too," Crowley said. "I'm going now, okay?"

"Right. Give us a shout if you find anything."

Crowley nodded, before remembering Aziraphale couldn't see him. His throat was sore from all the yelling; he wished he had something to drink. He looked down at Wist, who had his head cocked to one side, ears alert.

"Did you catch all that?"

Enough of it. I will go ahead and explore the limits of this place while you look through the gaps. There is no magic here to make us lose our way; I can find you again by scent.

"Sounds good to me," Crowley said. He bent for one last look through the spyhole, but was only in time to see Aziraphale disappearing through the opposite door. With a disappointed grimace, he turned away. "Just watch out for spikes."

Chapter Text

They found what they were looking for in the parlour - or rather, Crowley found it and banged on the walls until he got their attention. Aziraphale looked around for a door, until Crowley shouted something, muffled behind the wall. He moved closer to where he guessed the spyhole to be.

"What was that?"

"There's a thingy here," came Crowley's faint response. "Wall, tunnel, I don't know. Connection of some kind. Over by that clock."

Aziraphale examined the grandfather clock closely. The key certainly looked like it would fit the lock on the casing. He tried it, and found that it clicked easily. The door swung open, and somehow opened wider than it should, peeling back reality in a truly disconcerting fashion, and revealing a short hallway leading to a set of carpeted stairs. Aziraphale exchanged a look with Raphael, and they hurried through before anything could happen to prevent it.

"Crowley?" Aziraphale called worriedly.

One of the walls bulged strangely, then tore from the ground up like someone was peeling back the wallpaper. Aziraphale had a moment of alarm when he saw gleaming red eyes in the darkness, but seconds later, Crowley was wriggling out into the light, followed by a familiar canine silhouette.

"Wist!" Aziraphale exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"Being bloody useful, mostly," Crowley muttered as he straightened and looked Aziraphale over with poorly concealed relief. His hair was sticking out in ways it normally didn't, less like carefully crafted chaos than like he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. "You all right?"

"Yes, my dear, I'm fine, what about you? I hope you didn't end up anywhere too terrible."

"Nah, just another bit of Norfolk."

Crowley was still missing his sunglasses, Aziraphale realised with a start. It was terribly strange seeing him without them in public; it was something he associated very much with quiet, private evenings together in the bookshop. He was surprised by how much he resented the idea of other people seeing Crowley like this.

"You!" exclaimed Raphael, pointing at Wist.

Wist in turn was sniffing the air, ears twitching.

You, he replied, with clear amusement.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows at Crowley, who shook his head, glancing between the Archangel and the hellhound.

"You two... know each other?" Aziraphale asked.

"I know that aura," Raphael replied indignantly, still eyeing Wist. "Every time I'd go back to check on my chapel there'd be trails and traces around it, people talking about seeing a mysterious beast... and every time I'd try to track it down, I'd end up on a wild goose chase, usually into a bog!"

There are many bogs on the moor, Wist replied with satisfaction, and not the slightest attempt at denial. Not many Archangels who'd forget they could fly over them, though.

"I was trying to be inconspicuous!"

So was I, until you left your staff on my moor like a burning beacon without so much as a by-your-leave.

"Your moor?"

My moor, Wist said firmly. Every last bog and tor.

Raphael stared at him for a handful of seconds, and then, to Aziraphale's relief, laughed.

"All right," Raphael said, "I'll ask next time, shall I?"

Wist flicked his ears in a way that suggested he'd rather Raphael just didn't do that again, but contented himself with a faint huff of agreement.

"Fine, fantastic, now we're all friends, maybe we could think about this mess we're in?" Crowley had circled around Aziraphale and ended up on his left, fidgeting from foot to foot. "There's a warlock upstairs, in case you've forgotten."

Raphael's expression turned grim.

"I haven't forgotten," he said, starting for the stairs.

Not again, Aziraphale thought with some despair. He took one step after Raphael, and was startled when Crowley immediately grabbed his arm.

"You can't just walk in there!" Crowley snapped, half at him, half at Raphael. "What about the hellfire?"

It was enough to make Raphael stop and turn back. "What hellfire?"

"She said she'd use hellfire. On the next angel that came after her. That was the message she wanted Aziraphale to give you."

"She could have been bluffing," Raphael said, but Aziraphale could hear the uncertainty, the doubt. "Hellfire's not something you can just... keep in a box, certainly not in the mortal realm."

"Does anything about this woman make you think she's in the habit of bluffing?" Crowley demanded.

"It's a good point," Aziraphale said with a shudder. "We'll have to be very careful—"

"How about you just don't go in there at all?" Crowley suggested urgently. His hand was still on Aziraphale's arm, fingers gripping just hard enough to convey how much anxiety he was trying to suppress. Aziraphale remembered how he'd fallen apart in the bookshop, felt his heart give an uncomfortable lurch. How had he missed it, this desperate fear that had been under Crowley's skin for so long? "Wist and I can have a look, we'll be safe from anything she's got set up for angels—"

"If she's got hellfire, what makes you think she doesn't have holy water?" Aziraphale blurted out, a dread of his own taking shape in his thoughts. He turned a little towards Crowley and reached to cover his hand with his own. "And she knows how to bind demons. You'll be in just as much danger—"

"Wait," Raphael interrupted sharply, and Aziraphale jumped, letting his hand drop back to his side. "I thought the two of you were immune to both hellfire and holy water."

Crowley's eyes went wide even as Aziraphale felt the colour drain from his own face. They stared at each other for seconds that felt like hours, both struggling to come up with something to cover their slip. Aziraphale's mind had gone blank.

"Uh," Crowley said. He let go of Aziraphale's arm to shove his hands into his pockets with aggressive nonchalance. "Yeah, of course, of course, but, you know, um, you and Wist—"

Raphael folded his arms over his chest and glared with frank scepticism at Crowley, who glared right back, even if he was also fidgeting terribly while he did it. Aziraphale sighed.

"I think the cat's rather out of the bag, my dear," he said gently. He could feel the tremor of fear in his hands; he clasped them together to hide it. "We might as well—"

"No!" Crowley whirled on him, and it was all Aziraphale could do not to reach out when he saw the terror in his eyes. "It's the only thing keeping you safe from Heaven—"

"Not the only thing," Raphael said pointedly. "I won't stand aside and let them come for you again. It was a trick, wasn't it? Somehow you made them believe—"

Crowley closed his eyes tightly. Aziraphale took a deep breath.

"Yes," he admitted. "It was a trick. We found a way to—"

He stopped, struck by a thought.

"Wait, Crowley, what if we did it again?"

Crowley's eyes flew open and he stared at Aziraphale with dawning comprehension.

"What, here?"

"Yes! That way, if she tries to use hellfire or angelic wards on me, or holy water or demon banes on you—"

"What if she just slings both at once?"

"They'd cancel out, and anyway why would she think of doing that, when she looks at us and just sees—"

"Would you mind," Raphael put in loudly, "explaining what the hell you're talking about?"

There was a nervous pause, during which Wist made a snuffling sound that had to be laughter. He'd settled down with his chin on his paws, apparently quite content to watch the show. Aziraphale shot him a reproving look. Wist grinned a canine grin back at him, un-reproved.

"Perhaps it's best if we just show you," said Aziraphale, glancing at Crowley for assent.

Crowley looked deeply unhappy.

"What, here?" he repeated. "With them watching?"

"It's not like we can just step out."

"Yeah, but it's, I dunno..."

Crowley shrugged in a complicated fashion that managed to express both uncomfortably intimate and must look really weird from the outside. Aziraphale had his own misgivings, even though it had been his idea, but they were more about, well. Himself, and the way that swapping bodies with Crowley had made him feel the first time. He pushed his nerves aside and held out his hand.

Crowley sighed, grimaced, and took it. Their eyes met and held, and Aziraphale was stunned and exhilarated by how easy it was this time, how well his body and soul remembered what it was like to slip asunder and reach out for Crowley's. It felt like slipping into a warm bath, and although the storm Aziraphale kept so well-caged in his own chest raged and leapt in response again, more than anything he was conscious of the reassurance of it, the relief, like a soft sigh, of feeling Crowley right there and all around him and safe.

It was over so quickly there wasn't time for him to do more than take a shaky breath. Crowley let go of his hand, and Aziraphale looked into his own face, which was currently twisted into a disapproving frown.

"What the heaven happened to my hair?" Crowley muttered, that odd blend of Aziraphale's voice and his own intonation.

"Ah, yes, I did notice it was a bit—" Aziraphale put his hands up to try and fix it. From Crowley's expression, all he did was make things worse. "Oh dear, I wonder if there's a mirror anywhere—"

A wordless, strangled sound reminded them both abruptly that they were not alone. Aziraphale turned hastily to find Raphael gaping at them, white as a sheet and with eyes as round as saucers.

"There, now you know," Crowley said sulkily, trying to shove his hands in his pockets and finding that Aziraphale's clothes weren't willing to cooperate. "That's the trick. And if you tell anyone—"

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, wondering what Crowley thought he could threaten to keep an Archangel silent.

"So you see," Aziraphale said apologetically, "we're perhaps not as unusual as we claimed to be."

Raphael shook his head mutely. He looked between them, first one, then the other, his eyes glowing green as he looked past the base layers of reality and into the places where their wings, their auras, their non-corporeal forms dwelt. To Aziraphale's astonishment, he took a step backwards at whatever he saw.

"Unusual?" Raphael breathed. "You're more than— that shouldn't be— it's not— how are you doing that?"

"It's not so difficult," Crowley said with studied nonchalance, as if they hadn't spent hours arguing about it the first time, working out the details. "Just swapped corporations, put a bit of a damper on our auras—"

"Your very essence should be incompatible!" Raphael insisted, eyes still flicking between them like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "You should have annihilated each other!"

"Well, er..." Aziraphale cast a worried glance at Crowley. He hadn't quite expected this reaction from Raphael, he had to admit. "We didn't?"

Raphael shook his head again, his eyes fading to a troubled ocean green.

"I don't think you understand what you've done. I don't think I understand what you've done. No wonder you're both so... so..."

He gestured at them in frustration, lost for words and clearly still stunned.

Mirrors of each other, Wist said with some satisfaction. He seemed entirely unmoved by the revelation. Now I understand.

"I'm glad someone does," Raphael muttered. He shook himself, and visibly pushed aside his shock. "All right, I see what you mean now. If the warlock attacks one of you, she'll use the wrong weapon. All the same, be careful. This isn't your fight."

Crowley glared at him, which gave Aziraphale a very strange feeling, seeing his own face wearing such a Crowley expression.

"In case you missed the memo, we're not particularly in favour of the world ending," Crowley said. "That makes it our fight."

Raphael studied him intently for just long enough that Crowley shifted uneasily onto the other foot.

"I suppose it does," Raphael said finally. He turned towards the stairs. "Come on, then."

For the second time, when Aziraphale started to follow, Crowley caught his arm.

"Wait a sec, let me just—"

His hands were in Aziraphale's hair before Aziraphale could register his intentions. He froze as Crowley quickly tugged and tamed it into something approximating his usual style. The deft touches sent a little shiver of sensation down his spine and made him want to close his eyes and lean into it. He swallowed hard as Crowley stepped back.

"Thank you, my dear."

Crowley shrugged and looked away.

"Can't have you running around in that sort of mess," he said, conveniently ignoring the fact that he had presumably been running around that way for some time. "Ruin my reputation, you will."

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and followed him up the stairs, which led to a broad hallway. At the far end of it was a pair of double doors that absolutely radiated ominous sorcery.

They checked the other doors as they passed, but found only relatively mundane bedrooms and bathrooms, although the decor was... well, Aziraphale supposed that some people might enjoy sleeping with an entire rack of bladed weapons above their bed, but he personally struggled to understand the appeal. As they approached the end of the hallway, he felt the push of wards, forbidding him from approaching closer. Raphael slowed as well, grimacing.

"Crowley—"

"Yeah, I feel it." Crowley knelt down and started tugging at the fitted carpet. "Underneath, I think. Maybe if I—"

Wist trotted past the two angels, pressing his nose to the ground, and then opened his mouth, took hold of a good chunk of carpet, and tore. There was a fizzle of sparks, and the pressure of the wards vanished. Wist shook his head a couple of times, like he had a bad taste in his mouth.

"Goodness." Aziraphale peered at the hellhound in concern. "Didn't that hurt?"

Stings a little. No worse than biting down on a hedgehog.

"He's got some sort of, y'know, natural affinity, I think," Crowley said, standing up again and brushing his hands over his - Aziraphale's - trousers. Aziraphale tutted in disapproval. "With physical space and the material plane. Might be a hellhound thing."

"The warlock's through those doors, I take it?" Raphael put in, striding forward. "We'd better—"

"She's got to know we're here," Crowley interrupted, quickly side-stepping to block Raphael's path. "She'll be ready for anyone who just walks through those doors. What we need is—"

There is another way in, Wist said, nose back to the ground. I can smell it. Through one of these other rooms, a crack in the way she has twisted this place.

"That, that's exactly what we need," Crowley finished triumphantly. "Right, I've got a plan now. The rest of you go and find this secret passage while I head through those doors—"

"Now hold on, Crowley," Aziraphale protested, "I don't like the sound of that at all—"

"Relax, angel, remember she's going to think I'm you. Whatever she throws at me won't work, and then I'll have her attention while the rest of you sneak around behind her—"

"It's much too dangerous—"

"Crowley has a point," Raphael said. Aziraphale glared at him. Raphael shrugged awkwardly. "I don't like the thought of putting you at risk, but since you're determined to get yourselves involved anyway, throwing her off-balance like that would certainly be—"

"Absolutely not, out of the question—"

"Look, can we just pretend we've had the argument and I've won?" Crowley interrupted. "Because you know I'm right, one of us has to do it, and when it comes down to it, I'm better at keeping people talking than you are."

Aziraphale's fists clenched so hard they ached, but Crowley was right, damn him, and whether they argued for fifteen minutes or whether Aziraphale gave in now, sooner or later the conclusion was going to be the same. Aziraphale nodded stiffly, not trusting himself to speak for a few moments. Crowley gave him a look half-apology and half-exasperation, and did it with Aziraphale's own face, just to add insult to injury.

This way, Wist said, starting back to one of the doors they'd passed. The weak spot is through here.

"I'll count to a hundred or something," Crowley said.

"Be careful," Raphael told him, before turning to follow Wist.

Aziraphale hesitated a moment longer.

"Do be careful," he said finally. "Don't do anything stupid."

He hurried after the other two. Wist had led them to the room with the uncomfortably martial decorating scheme, and was nosing at the far corner, worrying at the wallpaper with his teeth. Even as Aziraphale entered, he was gripping it and pulling, and again Aziraphale had that sense of vertigo as a space opened up to a dark passage that shouldn't have been there.

"Better move quickly," Raphael muttered. Wist had already disappeared into the darkness.

Aziraphale paused, looking at the rack of weapons again, eyes drawn to a particularly hefty broadsword with a double-edged blade.

"Just a moment," he said. "Might as well take a little extra insurance with us..."

Crowley diligently counted to one hundred. He couldn't hear any sound from the others, and he was afraid of waiting longer in case Julia picked up on their approach somehow. He took a deep breath, grabbed the handles of both doors at once, and swung them open as dramatically as possible.

The scene on the other side was so impressive that Crowley, perversely, tried his best not to be impressed. Yes, all right, it was a cavernous, octagonal hall with a painted dome above the centre, and yes, it was definitely much too big to fit into this suburban house, and yes, there were carved pillars with demonic faces peering down from the top of them, a balcony that ran around the full circumference of the room, a gigantic iron-frame chandelier hanging from the dome, flaming braziers and wall sconces and tapestries—

Honestly, it was just too over-the-top. Nobody needed this stuff to work with the occult. A bit of mood-setting was fine if you liked that sort of thing, and Crowley always enjoyed a show, but there came a point where too many goat skulls was just tacky. Taking up at least half the enormous space was an indescribably complex ritual circle which blazed with such bright white light that he could barely make out Julia Gregory at its centre, standing over a bound and kneeling figure. Furniture and odds and ends of ritual paraphernalia had been shoved back haphazardly to make room for it.

"Good grief, you've even got pentagrams embroidered into the rugs," Crowley said aloud. "You ever heard of subtlety?"

Julia didn't even look up as tarnished silver chains whipped out of nowhere and wrapped themselves around Crowley. Or tried to, at least. They couldn't get purchase, and Crowley wriggled easily out of their grasp, then watched them knot themselves up into a frantic tangle in the place where he'd been standing.

"That won't work on me a second time, I'm afraid," he said, making more of an effort to imitate Aziraphale's voice. Julia had spoken to both of them, after all. Wouldn't do to let her make any guesses. "I'm a little different from the other angels."

That finally got Julia's attention. Her head snapped up, her eyes widening, and she lowered the staff she'd been holding aloft. The blinding white light from the circle dimmed, and gave Crowley a much-needed handful of seconds to take in what was going on.

The circle was like nothing he'd ever seen before: not just a single circle, in fact, but five interlocking ones surrounded by a sixth. The workings in the smaller circles were bizarre, Enochian symbols that made no sense and spelled out no words or incantations that Crowley could recognise, but each circle was clearly powered and functioning. Julia stood in the centre, dressed in flowing black robes that suited her altogether too well, wearing a mask fashioned after a goat-horned demon (what was it with Azazel and goats, anyway?), Raphael's staff clutched tightly in one hand.

It was surprisingly plain, for such a powerful artefact. Some of the paintings had made it out to be gold or bronze, and to have a number of jewelled decorations, but it was in fact just a long, sturdy wooden pole, with a carved snake winding its way around to the unadorned tip. The snake didn't even have any colours painted on it, relying instead on the natural deep browns of the polished wood to give it definition. It was, Crowley was reluctantly forced to admit, very tasteful, understated and classy. He made a mental note never to tell Raphael.

Then his eyes were drawn to the figure kneeling at Julia's feet. A short, slender demon with a neatly groomed pointed beard and plush velvet evening jacket: hopelessly out of date and terribly cliche, but instantaneously recognisable. Crowley bit back a curse. Mephistopheles never could resist anything that smacked of forbidden knowledge. He'd been less active in the last couple of centuries, sulking about how the humans hardly needed demonic assistance to dig into things better left alone (which Crowley could've told him from the start).

He looked utterly terrified, bound hand and foot by blessed chains and bleeding from a knife gash in his arm where Julia had undoubtedly drawn his blood for spellwork. He was staring at Crowley in confusion and desperation and just the tiniest hint of pleading, which meant that things must be really bad, since expecting help from (what was apparently) an angel was a bottom-of-the-barrel sort of thing for any demon.

Julia recovered from her shock in seconds, snarled a guttural curse, and gestured, but Crowley was ready for the giant, shadowy hand this time. He ducked and rolled behind a sacrificial altar that looked entirely too unstained to have ever been used for its intended purpose, and watched as the long black fingers groped around in confusion. To his delight, they found the writhing ball of tarnished silver chains and attempted to grasp it; the chains responded by lashing themselves around the shadowy digits. It was like watching a snake fight an octopus, and the look on Julia's face when Crowley peered around the altar was one he was going to treasure.

He glanced around the edges of the room, looking for the other entrance Wist had detected. He couldn't see anything obvious, but then, with Julia's flare for the dramatic, it was probably a secret passage behind one of the tapestries. Or maybe a trapdoor.

"Who are you?" Julia demanded, and Crowley felt the raw command in the question again, had to bite down hard to keep himself from replying truthfully. "You're no Archangel, you're not even of the First Circle - how can you possibly resist me?"

How would Aziraphale respond? Crowley smirked to himself.

"Well, it's actually a really interesting story, you know, it all started about six thousand years ago when I was assigned to Earth, although I suppose one could say that it started, like everything else, when God created—"

A blast of raw power struck the altar, shattering it into ornamental gravel, but Crowley had been expecting something of the sort and was already halfway to a new bit of cover. This one was a carved font that was probably supposed to hold the blood of living sacrifices or something equally blasphemous. From the faint, sweet aroma clinging to it, it seemed to have been used as a chocolate fountain at some point in its history.

"That's hardly polite, young lady, asking a question and then interrupting while I'm trying to answer," Crowley protested in his best affronted Aziraphale impression. It was possible he was laying it on a bit too thick. If Aziraphale could hear any of this, Crowley was going to pay for it later. "Why don't you just put down that staff and we can talk about all this over a nice cup of tea—"

Another blast, another scramble for new cover. This time he fetched up behind a statue of somebody doing something obscene with— yep, it was a goat, because of course it was.

"What I don't understand," Crowley went on, wondering where the others were and how much longer he needed to keep this up, "is why you're here in Norwich of all places? Why didn't you go back to your big impressive pit in the moor?"

"It's the ley line!" squeaked Mephistopheles, followed immediately by the sound of a blow, and a yelp of pain. Crowley frowned. Whatever Mephistopheles had got himself into here, he clearly wanted no further part in pursuing it if he was willing to risk volunteering information like that.

Unfortunately it didn't help Crowley much. Ley lines weren't his area of expertise. His powers were drawn directly from Hell, and he had no need to channel the natural energies of the planet or anything fiddly like that. His sole hands-on experience had been getting drunk with various over-enthusiastic Age of Aquarius types in the Sixties and convincing them that, no really, those three rocks over there absolutely formed a straight line. It was largely thanks to him that any map of England's leys was crisscrossed with red herrings, false starts, and, in one particularly inventive case, something that Crowley was fairly sure was just a line drawn between sixteen ancient roadside toilets.

"Ley lines?" he repeated. "Getting in touch with our inner Earth Goddess, are we?"

He was already moving as he spoke, but unfortunately, Julia was anything but slow on the uptake, and capable of predicting his next move. A blast of what felt like raw infernal energy slammed into Crowley and tossed him against one of the tapestries like a straw doll. He slid down to the floor, momentarily stunned. At least the blast itself hadn't harmed him. She still thought she was fighting an angel.

"Stings a bit," he mumbled, rolling groggily to his knees. "Seriously, though, what do ley lines have to do with—?"

He didn't like the way Julia was pointing her free hand at him, eyes glowing, but he only had a moment to take it in before she was struck by an honest-to-goodness bolt of lightning from the heavens. Raphael's work, Crowley assumed, and it really should have left her a smear on the floor, but no such luck. Julia dropped to her knees with a roar of fury and pain, but she kept her grip on the staff, and she was still inside her circle.

"Crowley!" wailed Mephistopheles. Crowley had a moment of sheer horror, but then he realised that the other demon wasn't looking at him. Of course he wasn't. He was craning up at the balcony, where Aziraphale - in Crowley's body - was leaning on the railing with both hands and staring at the scene below. "Crowley, please, help me! I didn't mean to—"

Julia's hand shot out again, striking Mephistopheles so hard across the face that he sprawled over backwards and lay there whimpering.

"You?" she spat, following Mephistopheles's gaze. "You're the demon Crowley? The traitor?"

"No need to be rude," Aziraphale replied, sounding entirely too much like himself. He seemed to realise it at the same moment as Crowley, and went on, in somewhat better form, "Look, you seem like an int— a smart woman, you must know what releasing Azazel will do to the world—"

"Yes," Julia snarled, "we will tear apart all of Heaven's tyranny and Hell's petty sabotage and build a new and glorious empire, and I will be queen of it all!"

"You really believe that?" came Raphael's voice. At least the Archangel was sticking to the plan and staying out of sight. "Azazel will never share power—"

"He will with his own blood!" Julia staggered to her feet and spun around, searching for Raphael. "Come out and face me, Archangel. Come out and pay for what you did."

"What I did? What about what he did?"

"What Azazel did was strive to right an ancient wrong—"

"What Azazel did was try to raise an army of humans against Heaven itself!" Raphael thundered. "A second rebellion, this time to take control of Earth! And he killed half the people alive at the time to get his way!"

Crowley exchanged a worried glance with Aziraphale across the width of the room. Raphael sounded dangerously like he might be about to lose his cool again. Aziraphale gestured subtly at Crowley and Crowley nodded, then began to quietly slip closer to Julia and the glowing circles.

"And how many did your vengeful God drown in the waters sent to erase my bloodline from the world?" Julia spat back. "The history of humanity is a history of slavery, ground down under Heaven's boot! Armageddon would have set us free! Our army was ready, our weapons prepared, Azazel would have risen again and we would have driven you and your kind out of our kingdom forever!"

Crowley had to admit to a small number of mixed feelings as she ranted. On the one hand: batshit fanaticism at its finest, complete with a side-order of delusions of grandeur. On the other: not actually so different from their own choice to side with Earth. If only Julia had been the sort of person to look for a less drastic solution than declaring herself God-Empress of the planet. She might have been a useful ally.

"And then what?" Aziraphale asked. "Even assuming you could defeat Heaven - which I find extremely unlikely - you'd be left ruling a wasteland. They were going to start a nuclear war and kill millions!"

"We could do with some population control around here," Julia retorted with the cool indifference of a psychopath or someone who had spent far too much time on certain internet forums. "Much better to cull the chaff and rebuild the world with what's left. Most people on this planet are worthless, just eating, sleeping, and fucking their way through their lives. I will breed a better humanity, one that can seize the destiny that we were cheated out of!"

For just a moment, Crowley felt a shudder of deja vu, smelled wet tarmac and scorched metal and saw a boy standing between humanity and the monsters it had created. Not that Adam had done any ranting about eugenics, but this was how he'd been supposed to think, wasn't it? He'd been supposed to look out over the world and decide that he could do it better, regardless of who had to suffer under his feet.

Crowley had never at any point in the last year stopped being grateful for Adam's rejection of his powers, but he felt it all over again now in the face of Julia Gregory's unflinching zeal.

"Humanity's destiny has always been its own, that's the whole point!" Raphael's voice had echoes in it, harmonics of power that sent an instinctive shiver down Crowley's spine. "Heaven only tries to guide you, to show you the right path and let you find your own way to it—"

"Bullshit!" Julia retorted, and quite honestly Crowley had to bite his tongue to keep from echoing the sentiment.

He was right at the edge of the outer circle now, could feel the sorcery coming off it like heat coming off a bright lamp. Trying to break it while it was in a powered state was about as sensible as trying to snap a live wire with his bare hands, and he didn't even know if he'd succeed. A whisper of movement made him jump; he glanced down to find Wist at his side, nose to the ground as he examined the markings.

There was a hiss from the centre of the circle, so quiet it was almost inaudible. Crowley looked up, to see Mephistopheles had craned his head around from where he'd fallen and was watching with a desperate intensity. As soon as he saw he had Crowley's attention, he started frantically mouthing words that Crowley couldn't follow. Crowley made a face at him, trying to convey his lack of comprehension. Mephistopheles let his eyes flick up to Julia towering over him, then back to Crowley and Wist on the edge of the circle. Then up again, urgently, and Crowley realised suddenly that he wasn't looking at Julia, but beyond her, up to the ceiling above, where the huge wrought-iron chandelier hung on its many chains. It was designed in the shape of a pentacle, because Julia Gregory had apparently never met a cliche she didn't embrace with both arms—

Wait.

It wasn't just an over-theatrical design choice. There were etchings on the rim of the chandelier, and the candles had been placed at precise locations around its rim. There were thin black cords tied between the arms of the five-point star, turning its geometry into something more complex. There was power in it, and as Crowley looked swiftly up and then down again, he saw that it intersected perfectly with the circles that had been drawn on the ground. Sorcery in three dimensions; Crowley couldn't remember ever seeing anything like it before.

He nodded in exaggerated fashion to Mephistopheles to show he understood.

"It's not freedom to choose if you're punished for making the 'wrong' choices," Julia was shouting at Raphael. "It's not a choice if the only options are loaded from the start, if the conman offering them makes sure you'll always lose—"

"God is not a charlatan—"

"No, God is a sadist and our world is His torture chamber!"

Another bolt of lightning struck her, but this time she was prepared. She thrust the staff up to meet it, and the energy grounded itself in the wood with a deafening crack, barely even causing her robes to flutter. At the same time, Raphael strode out into full view, incandescent with righteous anger, eyes glowing so bright their green was almost shading into white, like an utter, utter reckless idiot. Julia's tarnished silver chains immediately shot towards him. Raphael swept them aside with one hand, but Crowley saw the way he flinched from the contact.

He looked desperately up at Aziraphale, who was staring in horror at Raphael. Crowley waved his arms frantically over his head to get his attention, then pointed at the chandelier. Aziraphale looked up at it, then down at Crowley in confusion. Crowley waved his arms around some more, trying to mime three different things at once, and in the process completely forgot about the risk of drawing attention to himself. He was reminded forcefully a second later when black fingers ripped from the ground and seized him.

"I don't know what you think you're doing," Julia snarled over her shoulder, even as she raised the staff towards Raphael and sent him staggering backwards under an assault of raw power, "but however you've made yourself immune to my wards, it won't stop me simply tearing your head off."

That was, unfortunately, a very good point, and one Crowley had no counter to other than to wriggle desperately and hopelessly against the grip of the enormous black hand as two of the giant fingers moved into position to pop his head off like a champagne cork. Or Aziraphale's head, rather, and shit, Aziraphale was going to kill him for ruining his favourite bow tie—

He flicked his eyes back up to Aziraphale, just in time to see him unfurl his wings. His wings - his own white wings - they weren't Crowley's dark feathers, and oh, heaven, they hadn't ever tried getting their wings out the first time, had they? The shock of it went through Crowley like iced water, the sight of himself with those snow-white wings, just like they'd been in Heaven before he decided he was done with that whole aesthetic (before he'd been ripped away from it and forced to find a new identity in the wreckage of the old—)

And then Aziraphale took three steps backward and launched himself off the balcony towards the chandelier, and he'd managed to get a sword from somewhere, bloody big one like they used to cart around during King Arthur's time. It wasn't flaming - you couldn't just conjure divine fire - but from the way it ripped through the air leaving a faint blue glow, Aziraphale had done something to consecrate it.

It was, for a moment, absolutely the coolest thing Crowley had ever seen anyone do, as Aziraphale used his wings for upward momentum, landed squarely in the middle of the chandelier, swung the sword over his head with both hands, and sliced through the five iron chains like they were no more than ribbons, and the fact that he was doing it while looking like Crowley really only made it that much more awesome.

It was a shame he then lost his footing, or got tangled up with the chains or something, and barely managed an "Oh, bugger—" before the whole thing plummeted down right onto Julia Gregory's head.

Chapter Text

Crowley opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, bemused to find it painted with murals of people dancing around satanic altars. He didn't remember making that particular decorating choice. Then he jolted back to full awareness and scrambled to sit up. Everything ached, and his ears were still ringing with the explosion of energy that had come at the moment the chandelier impacted the ground. The shadowy hand holding him had vanished, just in time for the shockwave to catch him and fling him away. And then the whole building had heaved like it was caught in an earthquake; there were still tremors running through the ground beneath him and shaking the walls.

The big hall was a mess. Most of the balcony had collapsed into piles of debris. Almost every piece of furniture had been knocked over or smashed by other flying objects. The conjoined circles had been torn up by displaced flagstones, their lines now dull, their power used up in one cataclysmic overload. And in the middle of it all, the twisted wreckage of the chandelier and half the ceiling, and oh, shit, Aziraphale—

He realised at the same moment that he was back in his own body. Either the overload of power had been strong enough to reverse their switch, or Aziraphale had been discorporated. Crowley catapulted to his feet and stumbled frantically towards the mess in the middle of the room, heart hammering, mouth dry. He was halfway there when a pile of debris cascaded apart and Julia Gregory surged to her feet like a furious Aphrodite rising from a sea of broken brick and plaster dust. The effect was slightly spoiled by the fact that she immediately bent over coughing with her hands on her knees.

Crowley jerked to a stop, casting around desperately even as he wondered what the heaven he was supposed to do about this apparently indestructible woman.

Julia put out a hand to support herself, seemed to realise she was holding onto the twisted metal of the chandelier, and looked around in horror.

"No! What did you do?"

Even as she spoke, the ground bucked beneath them, sending them both sprawling. There was a terrible, tortured groan from somewhere above their heads, like a lot of masonry suddenly under a lot of pressure. Somewhere, something fell with a sound like a rock slide. Crowley started to get up, then threw himself flat on the ground again as a sizzling bolt of power went sailing through where his head had been.

"Oh, come on," he groaned. "We've obviously wrecked whatever you were doing, can't you just give it up?"

"I will never give up!" Julia howled. "And you wretched, meddling demons and angels will pay for—"

He saw her realise it at the same moment he did: she was no longer holding the staff. She turned in a wide arc, muttering in Enochian, and pieces of rubble flew up around her and cast themselves carelessly aside as she scanned the ground. Crowley ducked a chunk of hardwood that had probably been part of a staircase.

"Looking for something?" said Raphael from the other side of the heap.

You had to hand it to Julia, her reflexes were phenomenal. She didn't even have the decency to turn and gape for a second, she just spun on the spot and flung some nasty little curse in Raphael's direction. It was about as effective as a water pistol; Raphael had his staff in his hand and effortlessly deflected the spell.

"This ends now," Raphael declared, and it was honestly a bit unfair how impressive he looked just then, staff in hand and eyes beginning to glow and aura sparking with righteous power. All he needed was a wind machine to blow his ridiculously perfect hair back off his face. Crowley caught himself wishing he had a pistachio cream cruffin to throw at the Archangel. Some instincts were hard to suppress. "If you surrender, we can be merciful—"

"I've seen enough of Heaven's mercy!" Julia snarled, and flung a bolt of raw power at Raphael, who deflected it with the staff and retaliated in kind. Seconds later, they were locked in a duel of sorcery, big glowy globs of energy ricocheting everywhere.

Right, well, they could entertain themselves with that for a bit while Crowley got on with the important stuff, like finding Aziraphale under all this mess. For that matter, where was Wist? The whole room shuddered ominously again; Julia staggered, while Raphael manifested his wings to use for balance. Crowley decided to stay on the ground, and began to work his way around the pile of debris, searching for any sign of tartan and beige beneath the wreckage.

He caught sight of a particularly high mound of rubble and scrambled over to it. He yanked a big chunk of stone out of the way, then jerked back with an undignified yelp as he found himself looking into two burning red eyes.

"Wist? How did you—"

Wist let out a low rumbling growl, and Crowley saw that his head was bent, his teeth firmly fixed in something. He reached for more of the debris, and his breath caught when he understood what he was seeing.

Wist was standing with all four legs braced, back arched, and what he held in his mouth was a thick, glowing silver cord that crackled and sparked like a live wire. Wist was hanging onto it for dear life, eyes brighter than twin red suns, and every so often he would shudder or twitch, and the building around them would rattle in turn.

"Wait, is that—"

"The ley line," came a croak from deeper into the rubble. It wasn't Aziraphale's voice. "It's— ugh."

Crowley peered through Wist's legs, and saw that he was standing over Aziraphale's alarmingly limp body, shielding him from the worst of the debris. Further inspection revealed that Mephistopheles was under there too, looking considerably the worse for wear. Aziraphale must have landed right on top of him, the poor bastard.

Somewhere on the other side of the heap, either Raphael or Julia did something that caused a huge crackle of energy to reverberate around the chamber. Wist swayed on his feet, gritting his teeth even harder and flexing his claws for better balance.

"Hang on," Crowley said, grabbing at chunks of plaster and throwing them over his shoulder as quickly as possible. "I'll get you out. Is Aziraphale all right?"

"The angel?" Mephistopheles mumbled weakly. "I don't think he's dead. He's heavy though. I can't feel my spleen."

"You're not supposed to feel your spleen," Crowley muttered. Mephistopheles had never quite got the hang of human bodies, and had once almost discorporated himself from a paper cut simply because he believed he could. "Is he breathing?"

"Why would he be breathing?"

"Habit." Something nasty zipped over Crowley's head and he ducked lower. "What the heaven did you get yourself mixed up in, anyway? And do you have any idea what Wist is doing?"

"Holding up the ceiling, I think." Mephistopheles cast Wist a worried glance. "Metaphysically speaking. Are livers supposed to ache?"

Crowley finally managed to get a good grip on half a mahogany table and hauled it over to one side, giving him enough space to grab Aziraphale under the arms and tow him out of the rubble. His wings were still out, trailing awkwardly over the debris. Crowley ignored Mephistopheles's whining for long enough to establish that Aziraphale was indeed breathing, but was out like a light, probably due to a large bruise on his forehead. Crowley gathered him into his lap, on the basis that even unconscious he couldn't be trusted not to wander off somehow, and peered down at Mephistopheles.

"Can you move?"

"I don't want to," Mephistopheles replied with a dramatic sigh. "I think my corporation's done for."

"You're talking too much to be dying," Crowley retorted. "Try and wriggle out this way, there's room."

Mephistopheles did as he was told, albeit with much groaning and sighing and general conviction that he was going to expire at any moment. Crowley checked him over. There were a couple of broken bones, but nothing Mephistopheles couldn't heal if he'd stop moaning and pay attention for a minute. Crowley generously did it for him, partly in the hope he would shut up.

There was an enormous crash and the room shook again. Crowley heard Julia screaming something incoherent at Raphael, followed by a sizzling sound and another bang. Wist braced himself even harder, growling around the thing in his mouth.

"That can't be good," Crowley muttered. He prodded Mephistopheles in the side, eliciting a yelp of surprise. "Right, explain all this ley line business, quick."

Mephistopheles wrung his hands in a way very reminiscent of Aziraphale.

"You have to understand, I didn't know what she was planning, if I'd realised—"

"Yes, yes, I get it, hurry up!"

"You know about St Michael's ley line?" Mephistopheles went on hastily. "It's one of the most powerful in England, it runs from the south-west all the way up here."

"Right," Crowley said, though it was the first he'd heard of it. "So what?"

"So when she realised she didn't have enough power to break Azazel's chains even with the staff, she decided to use the ley line to channel more. Between here and that pit she made, all along the line, she's set up five circles of power, one at each of the biggest nodes, Glastonbury and Avebury and so on... each circle was matched to one of the ones in the bigger configuration here..."

That was why the symbols in the circles had seemed meaningless, Crowley realised: they'd been coordinates, rendered into rough Enochian.

"And then she could enact the final spell from here," Mephistopheles continued, "and finish what she started."

"Okay, but we destroyed it," Crowley said. He glanced down at Aziraphale, and was encouraged to see his eyelashes flutter slightly against his cheeks. "So now what's—"

"When you broke the circle, all the accumulated power should have earthed itself through the ley line. Would've made a huge mess, earthquakes all through the south of England—"

"Wait, what?!"

"But he's stopped it!" Mephistopheles squeaked, pointing at Wist. "I don't know how! But that's the ley line itself he's got in his teeth, and he's holding back the surge—"

"So if Wist lets go, he unleashes a catastrophic natural disaster from here to Dartmoor, is that what you're saying?"

"Er. Yes?"

There was a blinding, crackling lightning strike bare feet away, making them both duck reflexively. Wist whined, eyes closing for a second and all the hair along his spine standing up straight. Aziraphale flinched against Crowley and mumbled something incoherent but clearly disapproving of all the racket.

"You know, it would really help," Crowley growled, "if those two would stop doing that!"

Aziraphale wasn't unfamiliar with the concept of a pounding headache - there were occasions, after all, when he forgot to sober up after an evening drinking with Crowley, and even an angelic constitution sometimes protested too many hours squinting at indecipherable handwriting in poor light - but he was fairly certain he'd never felt like his head might actually fall off before. It was like someone had set off a signal flare behind his eyes and the entire inside of his skull was both ringing with the blast and bleached bare by the fierce light. He didn't like it, and he wanted it to go away, and it would be much appreciated if whoever kept making all that loud noise over there would stop, thank you.

He groaned. It seemed appropriate. In response, someone flicked his ear with a finger, and Aziraphale's eyes snapped open in sheer indignation.

"Ow," he said pointedly.

Crowley peered down at him, relief breaking through his stressed scowl.

"About time you woke up. We've got a problem—"

There was another of those inconsiderate explosions. Aziraphale flinched and closed his eyes again.

"Head hurts."

"No time for that, angel, come on."

Aziraphale felt himself hoisted into a more upright position, his cheek coming to rest on Crowley's shoulder. He could feel the weight of his wings on his back, and dozens of small sharp pangs from feathers that had been pulled askew. He really didn't feel like moving. Crowley's arms felt very nice around him and his head hurt so much. His scattered thoughts were taking their time to pull back together. He'd done something rather silly, hadn't he? Attempting acrobatic manoeuvres just because he'd been in Crowley's body and it had seemed the thing to do...

He blinked his eyes open again, frowning up at Crowley. They seemed to be back in their own corporations. When had that happened?

"Aziraphale," Crowley said, exasperated but urgent. "We've got a little bit of a situation here."

"Why aren't you me anymore?" Aziraphale asked.

Crowley hissed at him, eyes darting sideways at someone Aziraphale couldn't see.

"He's knocked himself silly," he said loudly. "Take him a moment to start making sense..."

Aziraphale wanted to argue that he was making perfect sense and Crowley was being deliberately obtuse, but before he could marshal the words, someone else said, "So this is that rebel angel, then?"

Well, really.

"I'm not a rebel angel," Aziraphale protested. "I'm— I'm— I'm an independent contractor."

Crowley snorted with laughter. Aziraphale glared fuzzily up at him, then winced at another throb of pain behind his eyes. Something suspiciously like concern passed over Crowley's face. He pressed his fingertips to the sore spot on Aziraphale's forehead. Before Aziraphale could even flinch, the pain eased.

"Better?" Crowley asked. "I don't like messing around too much with heads. Might scramble something important."

It was much better. The headache was still there, but reduced to a tolerable discomfort. His thoughts were suddenly a lot clearer. Short-term memory returned with a rush. Oh, and he was apparently rather clinging to Crowley, while being cradled in his arms, as another demon looked on. Aziraphale put his wings away and sat up in a hurry, just in time to duck a nonspecific magical explosion right over their heads.

"What—"

"Right, yeah, so." Crowley shifted back from him and glanced at— oh dear, was that Wist? "The situation."

It took a couple of goes for Aziraphale to grasp what Crowley was telling him, particularly since the other demon - oh, of course, it was Mephistopheles, Aziraphale recognised that beard - kept trying to helpfully interrupt, and the ongoing magical duel was providing unnecessary punctuation.

"Why hasn't Raphael beaten her yet?" Aziraphale asked as they all ducked again. "If he's got his staff back..."

"Because she's bloody terrifying," Crowley snapped in response.

"No, it's because all this twisted space is siphoning off the power of the staff," Mephistopheles corrected. "There are too many extra dimensions lying around - it's like a sponge. I helped set the whole thing up—"

Aziraphale and Crowley both fixed him with a long stare. Mephistopheles looked abashed.

"Didn't I mention that?"

"You helped—" Crowley ran a hand across his face. "Meph, when this is all over, we are going to have a talk."

He looked desperately at Aziraphale.

"Any bright ideas?" His eyes were wide and his face was streaked with dust and it reminded Aziraphale painfully of the moment before Satan had decided to pay his son a visit. "'Cos I'm stuck on everything is completely fucked."

Perhaps it was Aziraphale's turn to come up with something, after all. He frowned, mind racing.

"Maybe we can solve one problem with another," he said after a moment. "We need to bleed off the ley line safely without leaving the whole south of England in ruins. Can we feed it into this construct somehow? And that way Raphael will be able to use his full power to contain Julia and we can put this whole sorry affair behind us."

"It could work, if I use the same sort of ritual structure as before," Mephistopheles said uncertainly. "Or it might make everything explode."

Aziraphale looked at Wist, holding on grimly to the silvery flow of power, then up at the ceiling, which was still shaking with occasional tremors, then over in the direction of the battle, which seemed to have fallen into a temporary lull, although he could hear Julia swearing under her breath.

"I wouldn't lay odds on everything not exploding regardless," Aziraphale said with a sigh. He waved a hand to clear a patch of debris, and conjured a box of chalk sticks for drawing out the circle. "We'd better give it a go."

It was hardly an ideal environment for spell work, but Mephistopheles set about it with a fervour that suggested either he was trying to make up for the part he'd played in Julia's scheme, or that he was extremely worried about his chances of survival if he didn't. Possibly both. Once Aziraphale saw the general outline of what he was doing, he was able to help with some of the details. Crowley hovered in the background nitpicking their handwriting until Aziraphale threw a piece of chalk at his head. At some point, the magical explosions resumed.

"Well?" Aziraphale asked impatiently when Mephistopheles had been staring at the circle for over a minute with no further additions. "Is it done?"

"It's as good as we're going to get, I think."

"Now what?"

"Now the hellhound needs to drag the ley line over here and thread it through the circle."

They all looked at Wist.

"Can you do that?" Crowley asked him.

Wist dipped his head fractionally in what was presumably a nod, since a moment later, he began turning very carefully on the spot, never slackening his grip on the line, until his back was to the freshly chalked circle. Then he braced his legs and began to pull.

If the tremors before had been disruptive, they were nothing compared to the shaking and rumbling that seized the hall now. It was as if Wist were pulling a tablecloth slowly out from under a full dinner service, and every wine glass and candlestick was swaying dangerously. The longer he kept pulling, the worse it became, until the whole floor seemed to be rocking like the deck of a ship. Aziraphale found himself grabbed by the waistcoat and hauled down onto hands and knees by Crowley before he could fall. Mephistopheles simply lost his footing, sprawled over a piece of debris, and apparently decided it was safest to stay where he was.

"What are you doing?" came an enraged shriek that could only be Julia. "Stop! I command you—"

Aziraphale looked up to see her scrambling over the heap of debris. She looked rather singed and scorched, and there was murder in her eyes as she raised a hand towards Wist, whose back paws had just crossed the edge of the circle. The ley line in his mouth was flaring and rippling and it was all too clear that it was causing him terrible pain to move it. His eyes were so dim now Aziraphale could barely see their glow at all.

Aziraphale looked at Crowley. Crowley looked at Aziraphale. Then, as one, and with very little in the way of grace or dignity, they launched themselves at Julia Gregory's knees, knocking her backwards and sending the three of them tumbling down the far side of the mound of debris. Crowley was flailing at her like a furious cat and Aziraphale was doing his best to sit on her legs to keep her down, but she was already hissing some awful-sounding curse—

Everything went white. It was a white Aziraphale had only experienced once or twice before, a white with silvery edges that stung the back of your eyes and tasted like lightning on your tongue, the white of both creation and destruction, the pure power of making and unmaking that had been unleashed in the beginning of the world. For a moment it seemed like every part of Julia's labyrinth existed in the same place, every single dimension overlaid one on another, every atom of everything and everyone condensed to a single overcrowded point in space.

It reminded Aziraphale unpleasantly of the time he'd let Crowley talk him into trying absinthe. Wormwood apparently had some interesting effects on ethereal beings. He never did find out what had happened to his hat.

Then everything expanded with a gasp, and the white shaded back into depth and width and height, and colours began to seep back into his vision.

They were still in Julia's hall, but it had taken on a strange unreal quality, like a pencil drawing made solid. The outlines were there, but beyond them Aziraphale could see strange and dizzying constructs, the rooms they'd passed through in constantly-changing configurations, faint flashes of the world outside interspersed with more troubling glimpses of the roiling turmoil of raw chaos. The walls around them kept expanding and contracting, almost like a heartbeat: one minute seeming half a mile away, the next crowding uncomfortably close. It made him feel vaguely seasick.

It didn't help that the floor was heaving under him - oh, no, wait, that was Julia Gregory trying to shove him off her legs. Aziraphale scrambled back hurriedly, reaching blindly for Crowley and finding a handful of sleeve that he used to yank him out of range of the wild swipe Julia directed at his head.

"Did that work or did we just fuck everything up even more?" Crowley asked as they flailed backwards, both watching Julia, who had pressed her hand to her eyes in obvious pain. She was the only mortal present: even with all her powers, the way the laws of physics were currently being abused must be almost incomprehensible to her senses. "Wist? Meph?"

"I'm here," Mephistopheles called. "But the hellhound isn't looking good..."

Crowley immediately scrambled to his feet and took off in the direction of Mephistopheles's voice.

"Raphael?" Aziraphale tried.

"What just happened?" came the response.

It was slightly muffled, and there was an accompanying sound of little pieces of debris hitting the ground. Aziraphale looked around wildly and eventually located an avalanche of plaster where a big chunk of the ceiling had apparently come down right on Raphael's head. The heap was heaving about erratically, and before Aziraphale could even think of going to help, Raphael burst out like a jack-in-the-box, clutching his staff for support, and looking rather less like an Archangel than like someone who'd been on the wrong end of a snowball fight. The overall impression wasn't helped by the way he gaped at their surroundings, or by the little flakes of paint falling from his hair like technicolour dandruff.

"What did you do?" Raphael demanded, equal parts incredulous and alarmed. Aziraphale was keeping a wary eye on Julia, but she'd curled up onto her side like she was dealing with the worst hangover ever invented, and didn't seem inclined towards any further magical antics. "What's happened to the walls?"

"Well, you see, the ley line was—"

"We do not have time to explain!" Crowley interjected. Aziraphale tensed up at the suppressed panic in his voice. "Can't you feel it? All the twisted space is trying to untwist, and there's not enough room for it all. We have to get out of here before we find out what the inside of a black hole feels like!"

Aziraphale hurried in the direction of his voice. He found him with Mephistopheles, trying awkwardly to lift Wist, who was looking distinctly the worse for wear and suddenly very much like an ordinary, injured dog. Aziraphale nudged Crowley out of the way and hoisted the hellhound over his own shoulders.

"Right," Aziraphale said, shifting Wist into a slightly different position. His tail twitched weakly. "Er. How do we get out of here, Crowley?"

Crowley turned on the spot, squinting at the ever-shifting walls.

"Um. Good question."

"Over there," Mephistopheles said, pointing. Aziraphale looked and saw a place where the walls folded strangely, creating a rippling space between them. On what was left of the floor, a complex set of runes glowed dull red. "That's one of the anchor points. Maybe if we go from one to the other like stepping stones..."

Behind him, Aziraphale heard an explosive curse and an explosion of sorcery. He looked to see Raphael staggering back from Julia, a grim expression on his face as he watched her scramble away from him, eyes still closed but hands aglow with power.

"Don't touch me," Julia snarled.

"Didn't you hear what he said?" Raphael demanded. "We need to go—"

As if to punctuate his point, everything flared briefly white again, and Aziraphale felt like the air had been sucked out of his lungs - or, perhaps, like he was the air being sucked out of something else's lungs. The hall swam back into view, the walls clenching around them so close they seemed to be standing in a closet, before easing back out a little way.

"I'd sooner die here than let you drag me away in chains!"

The floor beneath them cracked suddenly, a chasm with such razor-straight edges that it baffled the eye, a line of impossible depth from one side of the hall to another. Perfectly perpendicular faults sprang out from it at intervals as it widened. It was clear it would swiftly divide the floor into separate pieces, like tiles being pulled apart. Their path to the anchor point was still clear, but maybe for only a few more seconds.

"Raphael!" Crowley yelled urgently. The Archangel was on the wrong side of the main fault, still trying to get to Julia. The walls shuddered and started to come apart in chunks, each with baffling and impossible geometry. "We have to go now!"

Reginald Sprocket had not been having a good day even before the frogs.

It wasn't easy being a door-to-door salesman in this modern era. In fact, he was coming to the glum conclusion that the golden age of double-glazing sales might have finally come to an end. Oh, in his decades of door-knocking there had always been people who shouted, and people with large dogs, and people who'd been dragged out of the bath and were armed with a loofah and a scowl, but it used to be that there were also bored housewives desperate for a bit of adult conversation while the kids were napping, and lonely pensioners, and occasionally even someone who was interested in replacing all their windows. Actually making sales had never been Reginald's priority, though. He liked the way the job got him out of the house and into other people's, where there was an unlimited supply of tea and biscuits, and conversation seldom got more complicated than a comfortable session complaining about potholes.

Nowadays, though, people didn't want to stand on the doorstep and have a chat, or offer a freshly baked scone. Nowadays, they opened the door like they couldn't believe he'd had the nerve to knock in the first place, and told him to get lost before he'd even finished his first sentence. Or yelled at him for interrupting their conference call. Or demanded to know why he didn't have their Amazon package. It was tragic, really. Communities torn apart by this newfangled expectation that people would only knock on the door if it was important.

That, and it was hard to find a house without double-glazing at this point.

The people of Norwich had been particularly unfriendly today. Not a single cup of tea had been forthcoming, not even from the nice little old lady who'd told him she liked his tie before shutting the door. And then he'd turned into the next road on his list, and... frogs. Frogs everywhere. And things eating the frogs, including a large number of seagulls and crows, a couple of delighted cats, and an enterprising fox that had decided being nocturnal was all very well, but free food was free food.

Reginald almost turned around and left, but he had a quota to meet, after all, so he squelched his way up the street, knocking on door after door, and getting not a single response. This was the kind of area populated by busy young couples working full-time jobs, their kids at nursery, their elderly relatives safely sequestered in some pleasant retirement facility.

The first earthquake happened when he was halfway down the road. All the birds flew off at once, and a dog started howling nearby. Reginald shook his head. It was all that fracking, that's what it was. Never used to get earthquakes in England.

He kept trudging, vaguely aware that the air had become oddly hot and prickly like there was a storm brewing, but focused entirely on the hope that somewhere around here he'd find an offer of a comfy chair and a chocolate Hobnob.

The house at the end of the road looked more promising. Posh enough to belong to some big city banker, and some of them still had stay-at-home wives (or husbands - never let it be said that Reginald Sprocket wasn't a man with modern attitudes). Might even be the kind of posh that offered you a beer rather than a cup of tea, it was past five o'clock now, after all—

He was just opening the gate when the door burst open and a three people rushed out like they were running for a train. He barely had time to take in their odd appearance, or the fact that one of them was carrying a large dog over his shoulders, before they almost trampled him into the pavement. Someone grabbed him by the elbow and hauled Reginald along with them before he could even shout. Looking back, he saw another man stagger out of the house, and at that point he had to start wondering if he was having some sort of hallucinatory episode, because for a moment he could swear that the man unfurled rust-red wings and used them to propel himself forward in a desperate leap.

And then the house exploded. Or, well... imploded? Every single window shattered at once, and the structure buckled in on itself like a drinks can under the wheels of a passing car, with a dreadful noise that was more than just the cracking of masonry. It sounded like silk tearing, if said silk were woven from the tortured inner gravity of stars and the howl of seventeen dimensions fighting for dominance. Every frog on the street was sucked towards it as if someone were using a giant hoover to clean the place up, and Reginald felt a dreadful tugging on his own body, a wind strong enough to lift him and drag him backwards.

The man with the wings had hit the ground hard a couple of metres away; he now scrambled to his knees and held up a great big walking stick of some sort. Unbelievably, the wind dropped away from them, and whatever was happening to the house seemed to be contained within a bubble of still air.

Then there was a deep, resounding boom, and what was left of the building collapsed into a pile of rubble, and a stunned silence fell.

"You know," Reginald said weakly, falling back on the comfort of a familiar topic, "All UltraGlaze Windows are Guaranteed for a Minimum Of Five Years against breakages. Perhaps I could interest you—"

"Nope," said a man dressed all in black who appeared to have something wrong with his eyes. It seemed to be an automatic response. He was still staring at the wreckage of the house. "Not interested."

"Weren't they one of yours?" asked the man carrying the dog. "Salespeople."

"Nah, humans've been flogging stuff to other humans since they figured out what money was. Remember that carpet merchant who wouldn't leave you alone in Alexandria?"

"Oh. Yes. They were very nice carpets, in fairness."

"Yes, but you didn't need a new rug every week." The man in black finally dragged his attention away from the house and looked at Reginald. Reginald immediately wished he hadn't. "Shall I sort this one out?"

"Would you? I want to check on Wist—"

And then the man in black gestured with one hand, and Reginald knew no more.

Some time later, he found himself sitting in his car. He was fuzzy on how exactly he'd got there or what had happened previously (why did he have a sudden antipathy towards frogs?) but he was absolutely certain of one thing: it was time for a change of career.

He was both surprised and, somehow, not surprised at all, to open his briefcase and find a leaflet about becoming a home visitor for the elderly and disabled. It sounded like exactly his cup of tea, and if he was lucky, there would be biscuits as well.

Chapter Text

They took the train back to London. Raphael was too exhausted to just whisk them all back to the office, and Aziraphale wouldn't let Crowley steal another car when there was perfectly good public transportation available. Crowley had some quibbles with his definition of 'perfectly good', but since he was himself feeling the strain of an exceptionally busy day, he didn't put up more than a token protest. And if it miraculously turned out that everyone else who should have been in the first class carriage hadn't shown up, Aziraphale had the good grace not to mention it.

Mephistopheles tried to slink away before they got to the station, but Crowley had been expecting something of the sort, and was ready with an iron grip on the other demon's collar and a glare that put the fear of holy water into him. Mephistopheles came along perfectly quietly after that, and with a sort of reverent terror that Crowley secretly enjoyed, despite Aziraphale's disapproving expression.

Wist had recovered enough to walk, although he still seemed diminished somehow, reduced to just a large black dog rather than the creature of shadow and mist they'd met on the moor. Raphael had used the last of his power to heal what he could, and Aziraphale and Crowley had both taken a turn as well, but it had been hard to know what they were trying to repair.

"I suspect it's a matter of time," Raphael said. "You made yourself a conduit for such tremendous power... it's lucky you weren't drained completely of your essence. It should restore itself eventually."

I'd feel better if I could go back to my moor, Wist grumbled, but since none of them currently had the ability to transport him there, he'd had to settle for the train like the rest of them. He was now stretched over two seats, chin resting on the table, and had indicated that he would be amenable to a ham sandwich. Crowley had crowded Mephistopheles into the window seat across from Wist, and taken the neighbouring seat himself to make it clear there was going to be no wriggling out of things. Aziraphale and Raphael were sitting at the table across the aisle, with Raphael's staff stashed in the luggage rack above their heads. Shortly after the train pulled out of the station, an attendant tried to come by and tell them that dogs weren't allowed on the seats, but changed her mind so abruptly she almost walked into a wall. Then she brought them all complimentary gin and tonics, which probably wasn't part of the normal service even in first class.

"Quinine was one of mine, you know," Raphael said absently, turning his glass in his hand. "I said to the others, look, if we have to go ahead with the whole malaria thing, let's at least give the humans something that works on it. And then Gabriel went and put all the trees on the wrong damn continent." He shook his head. "Never thought they'd turn it into a cocktail. But then, I never thought of antibiotics or vaccines, either. Could've saved myself a lot of time stirring that bloody pool."

"Clever buggers, humans," Crowley agreed. Someone probably ought to tell Raphael that his hair was a disaster, but Crowley was finding that fact far too satisfying to be the one who did. "Speaking of. What do we think are the odds that Julia Gregory's actually dead?"

"Well, we did leave her behind in a collapsing pocket of space-time," Aziraphale said, though he sounded as doubtful as Crowley felt. "Surely that should have done the trick?"

"Want to bet on it?"

"I don't gamble," Aziraphale replied primly, and Crowley choked at the bald-faced lie. "But I do rather think that's the last we'll see of her. Hopefully."

"Hopefully," Crowley echoed, in a deliberately poor imitation of Aziraphale's voice. "I'm just saying, everyone knows it's up in the air unless you find the body—"

"Oh, hush and drink your gin and tonic, there's a dear," Aziraphale replied with a sigh. "This isn't one of your spy thrillers."

"I'll be looking into it, anyway," Raphael put in. "I'm not about to leave something like that up to chance."

Crowley muttered rebelliously to himself, picked up his drink to take a sip, and realised Mephistopheles was staring at him with open confusion.

"They told us you went rogue," the other demon blurted out, "but they never said you were working for Upstairs now."

Crowley almost spat his gin and tonic across the table, getting a reproachful look from Wist.

"I am not working for Heaven," Crowley snapped. "Neither of us are! We were just minding our own business—"

"Well, not exactly," Aziraphale put in. "I mean, we do make a habit of poking into these things—"

"Angel, please." Crowley passed a hand across his eyes in utter despair. "Look," he went on, addressing Mephistopheles's wide-eyed bewilderment. "It's complicated. And anyway, what were you doing working with Julia Gregory?"

"Ah. Er. I didn't exactly intend to." Mephistopheles looked wretched. "Oh, I'm going to be in so much trouble. Beelzebub will string me up by my beard as an example to the others. I wasn't even supposed to be up here, but..."

He shot a nervous look at the two angels across the carriage, and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially,

"Crowley, it's been a mess down there ever since Armageddon didn't happen. Beelzebub's changed our departmental goals three times this year, Dagon keeps demanding copies of paperwork from centuries ago, Hastur kicks at least one person per day into the boiling sulphur for looking at him funny, and Himself hasn't come out of his throne room for months."

Crowley smothered his smirk, no matter how gratifying he found this information. Mephistopheles had clearly had a rough time of it and needed a sympathetic ear.

"Sounds like— well, Hell."

"Oh, it's worse than that. At least we always knew where we were with the Great Plan, you know?" Mephistopheles shuddered. "Now I never have any idea whether I'm supposed to be fetching the red-hot poker or filling out form 77b, and let me tell you, that sulphur's not a bit less boiling than it was the first time around. It quite ruined my favourite coat."

"How awful!" Aziraphale put in. Crowley shot him a sharp look, but Aziraphale was completely sincere, because of course he was. "Although the one you're wearing now is rather stylish, I must say."

Mephistopheles brightened.

"Do you think? I wasn't quite sure about the lace trim, but—"

"If you two start swapping fashion advice, I'm going to throw myself into the boiling sulphur," Crowley interrupted with a grimace. "The warlock, Meph, get back to the whole warlock thing."

"Oh. Yes." Mephistopheles fiddled nervously with the aforementioned lace trim at his cuffs. "The point is, I just wanted to get away from it all for a bit. So a few months ago, I found an excuse for a trip up top and then I sort of... didn't get around to going back. Nobody seemed to notice."

"I'll bet," Crowley muttered, thinking of all the other demons who'd been doing the same thing. Mephistopheles had always been a quiet sort... "Go on."

"Everything was going fine until my curses started getting hijacked by frogs—"

"Sorry, what?"

"Well, you know I don't really go in for..." Mephistopheles made a finicky gesture with his fingers. "For the torment and so on. But some humans are so rude, I can't be expected to just let that slide... anyway, every time I tried to curse someone with a bit of bad luck, they turned into a frog instead. Very unusual."

"That would be my staff," Raphael put in. He'd mostly been listening silently with his arms folded, which was probably for the best, since every time he spoke, Mephistopheles cowered noticeably in his seat. "Once it's in plague mode it's a bit insistent. Julia must have messed up the settings when she was opening that pit of hers."

"Thank heaven it was only the flies and the frogs and so on," Aziraphale murmured, a shadow passing over his face. "Good lord, if it had been the final plague—"

"No," Raphael said with certainty, his eyes the colour of sea ice. "Not that one. That one will never happen again. I tore it out of the staff myself."

There was a moment of awkward silence before Crowley nudged Mephistopheles pointedly. Mephistopheles cast one more nervous glance at the Archangel, then turned back to Crowley.

"Yes, so, it started with the frogs... and then I realised someone was messing with a lot of infernal power nearby, doing such original things with it." Mephistopheles looked sheepish. "You know how I've always liked the clever ones, Crowley. I went to have a look at what was going on and it turned out to be her, setting up all that business with the circle and the staff. I'd never seen anything like it, and obviously I didn't realise she was trying to free Azazel, I was interested in the mechanics of it, tapping into the ley line like that..."

"So you helped," Crowley said with a sigh.

"Just with the details! And the spellwork for the defence system, the shifting rooms and so on... it was such a clever idea, I never would have thought of it." Mephistopheles frowned. "I don't know how you got through it so quickly."

Crowley pointed at Wist, who thumped his tail once smugly.

"I suppose it's a good thing you did," Mephistopheles conceded. "It turned out she needed a demon to sacrifice to complete the ritual. The harbinger, she called it. She came rushing back earlier today in such a rage. She spilled my blood before I could stop her, and then of course she could bind me completely..." He sniffed. "And the whole time she was telling me I was barely usable and she'd wanted a much more powerful demon. It was insulting."

Crowley supposed he should be flattered to be considered a much more powerful demon. He wasn't, particularly, especially not when he glanced at Aziraphale and saw the horrified realisation in his eyes.

"Anyway she explained her whole plan while she was binding me. At some length." Mephistopheles rolled his eyes. "You know how they get, warlocks. Can't shut up once they've started a good monologue. I thought I was done for, until you all turned up."

He paused.

"I suppose I should... er... I mean... I should probably say..."

Crowley waved him off, no more comfortable with hearing Mephistopheles thank him than Mephistopheles was with saying it.

"You owe us one," he said, falling back on the familiar language of demons, bartering and bargaining and trading favours. "Right?"

"Of course," Mephistopheles replied, looking gloomy but relieved at the same time.

They were interrupted by the arrival of the refreshments trolley, its contents suspiciously epicurean. Crowley raised an eyebrow at Aziraphale; Aziraphale pretended not to notice, or possibly really didn't notice, given how excited he was over the improbable selection of sushi on offer.

"Not for me," Raphael said with a shudder. "Never really felt the same about fish after that whole business with Tobias."

"Oh, yes, I quite understand..." Aziraphale smiled at the bewildered attendant. "I'm sure there are sandwiches as well."

(There were. They were on china plates with the crusts cut off. Crowley asked for tomato soup, which he got, piping hot with a sprig of fresh parsley on top. Wist received his ham sandwich.)

Several minutes of contented silence followed, interrupted by Aziraphale's phone ringing. Aziraphale dropped his chopsticks in dismay.

"Goodness! I completely forgot about Anathema and the others, they must be so worried..."

He jumped out of his seat and hurried away to the end of the carriage, which wasn't far enough to disguise the torrent of frantic questions that poured out of the phone as soon as he answered it. Crowley listened to Aziraphale start to explain what had happened, rolled his eyes as the angel immediately made a hash of it, and decided that right now it was not his problem.

Raphael was the sort of person who normally walked up the escalator, but on this occasion, he simply leaned on the handrail and let it carry him back up to Heaven. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so utterly spent. He was practically using his staff as a walking stick at this point, though he was trying not to let it show.

There was a lot to think about, and a lot to be concerned about, but right now he was enjoying a feeling of profound relief. The staff hummed quietly in his hand, and Raphael was going to take a lot better care of it after this (although he had in fact almost left it in the luggage rack when they got off the train; Crowley had spotted it and given him such a look). He wondered absently if he could rearrange its structure to make it smaller and easier to keep with him, or change its appearance entirely, but the logical conclusion of that train of thought was a wand of some sort, and he wasn't a fairy, damn it...

He'd rather intended to slip quietly off and rest before talking to any of the other Archangels. Just his luck, then, that he ran straight into Michael three steps from the top of the escalator.

"What happened to you?" Michael asked, eyebrows shooting for the ceiling. "And what's all that in your hair?"

Raphael had been trying not to think about his hair. He shrugged.

"Plaster, brick dust, bits of chandelier, I really don't know. It's been a long day."

Michael's eyes narrowed.

"Doing what, exactly? Did you have anything to do with whatever just happened in Norwich?"

Raphael managed a grin and clapped her on the shoulder in the way he knew that would annoy her most.

"Took care of a small problem for you. Don't worry, it'll all be in my report. Did you really fight enough dragons in the south of England to form a whole ley line, by the way?"

"It was one dragon," Michael snapped. "Why do people always fixate on the dragon?" She paused, realising he'd distracted her, and fixed him with an icy glare. "What problem?"

Dangerous ground, here. Raphael definitely wanted a chance to think about exactly which parts of today's exploits he was going to share with the others. There was one thing he fully intended to rub her nose in right now, however. He flourished his staff theatrically.

"Heard you were looking for this. Thought I'd save you the trouble."

Michael glanced at the staff, frowned, and looked back at him with polite incomprehension, and Raphael was suddenly off-balance in a way that even the earlier earthquakes hadn't managed..

Michael had invented the concept of the poker face. Michael had never played a card she didn't have to. Michael hated to admit when she'd been outmanoeuvred. But Raphael had also known her since the creation of the universe. There had even been a time when he would have called them close.

And he was absolutely sure that she had no idea what he was talking about.

"You weren't," he blurted out. "It wasn't the staff you were looking for. What, then?"

Michael drew in on herself, face a mask.

"Looking for? What makes you think I'm looking for anything?"

"Come off it, Michael, you think I buy that bullshit about general reconnaissance on Earth? That all this cosy collaboration with the other side is just in the name of better understanding?" His voice rose, fury and outrage seizing him as Michael's expression remained impassive. "You think I don't know what really happened after Armageddon? What you tried to do to Aziraphale?"

Finally, he got what he wanted, a crack in the mask, a flicker of something in her eyes.

"You've been talking to him."

"It's not like any of you were giving me a straight answer. Whose idea was it, exactly, to unilaterally destroy an unFallen angel of the Lord without so much as waiting for Her approval?"

Michael hissed at him for silence, eyes darting to a passing cherub.

"Not here," she said.

"Fine, you want to take this to the boardroom, let's go, I'm done with the games, I'm done with this rank hypocrisy—"

Michael grabbed his arm and the words died as if strangled. Michael never touched him. Michael never touched anyone. She'd kept an invisible, impenetrable wall around her at all times since the moment she'd struck Lucifer down. Her fingers were like iron bars, digging into his forearm.

"No, Raphael," she said. "Not here."

Her eyes slipped sideways, to the broad glass window showing the skylines of the world, to the glittering fountain just visible through a nearby arch, to the white walls and gleaming tiles of Heaven itself. Raphael didn't need to breathe, especially not here, but his breath caught anyway. Michael met his eyes again, and her head moved in the most fractional of nods, before she released his arm and stepped back.

"I have business on Earth," she went on coolly. "I'll be in New York for a few days, so we won't be seeing each other around."

"No," Raphael said carefully, mind racing. "I don't suppose we will. You usually stay at that place on Times Square, don't you? The one with the martinis."

"I like the view," Michael replied, deadpan. "I look forward to reading your report when I get back."

She turned to go. Raphael didn't try to stop her.

"Good luck with your hair," Michael added over her shoulder. "Perhaps a pair of scissors might help. Or a razor."

Crowley hadn't really wanted to go back to the office, but Aziraphale had insisted. Apparently none of the humans were content with a quick explanation over the phone, which Crowley supposed wasn't particularly surprising, especially since one of the humans was Anathema.

Raphael and Mephistopheles had headed for the main entrance to Heaven and Hell, both trying very hard to look like they had no idea the other was going the same way. Wist had stuck with Aziraphale and Crowley, and was now dozing contentedly in a newly-conjured luxury dog bed under Crowley's desk while Anathema and Lily took turns running the interrogation. Crowley was starting to think they'd be stuck here all night. His contribution to proceedings had been to make coffee and then lean against Aziraphale's desk, just close enough to Aziraphale that he could occasionally nudge his chair into swivelling slightly before he could brace his feet to stop it. Aziraphale had given up on glaring at him at this point.

"What about the pit?" Anathema was asking. "Even if Julia didn't free Azazel, there's still a way down—"

"Raphael will be able to close it as soon as he's had a chance to regain his strength," Aziraphale replied gamely. He seemed to feel they owed it to humans to keep answering questions until the next Armageddon, but his enthusiasm was flagging. "He'll sort out all the flies and so on as well. We're going to take Wist back in a day or two and meet him there."

Lily was staring intently at Wist.

"Are you sure that's a hellhound?" she demanded. "He doesn't look very—"

"He's feeing a bit under the weather," Aziraphale said. "I'm sure he'll be right as rain once he's had a chance to rest up, and get back to Dartmoor."

"So he's not going back to Hell?"

At that, Wist cracked open one eye and gazed at her levelly.

Hell is not my home, Wist said. Not anymore.

Lily was still focused on him with an intensity that Crowley found slightly alarming.

"And you can just decide that?" she said. "I thought the whole point of Hell was that once you ended up there, that was it. Kind of messes up the system if people can just leave, doesn't it?"

"Well, that is the, er, the traditional approach," Aziraphale said cautiously. "And obviously it wouldn't do to spread it around—"

Lily's gaze snapped to Aziraphale with a force that made him stop mid-sentence.

"Why not?" she demanded. "Why not give people something to hope for?"

"Er, I mean, they're— they're supposed to hope for Heaven—"

"And Heaven's worth hoping for, is it?"

Aziraphale flinched like he'd been struck, a terrible guilt spreading over his face, his hands clenching tight in the fabric of his trousers.

"All right, that's enough theological debate for the day," Crowley interrupted, glaring at Lily. Lily glared right back. It was surprisingly intimidating. Crowley made sure to smirk like he didn't care, glad he'd grabbed a backup pair of sunglasses from the Bentley on the way in. "Trust me, we've been having this argument for six thousand years, you're not going to catch up in one evening."

He had a horrible moment of thinking that Lily was going to carry on anyway, and Anathema had a certain gleam in her eye that suggested she had some thoughts on the subject, but thankfully Newt appeared to be both capable of picking up on social cues and as ready to end the conversation as Crowley was.

"You know, we should really think about heading home," he said to Anathema. "Aren't you hungry?"

Aziraphale opened his mouth, and Crowley knew, just knew, that he was about to dutifully offer up Crowley and the Bentley to drive them back to Tadfield. It was a difficult angle to stomp on his foot, but Crowley managed it. Aziraphale gave a little yelp and shot him a reproachful look.

"I guess so," Anathema replied reluctantly. Then she brightened. "We could all go out to dinner together—"

"Not tonight," Crowley replied immediately. "Long day, we're going home. Maybe some other time."

He was going to regret that, he suspected, from the way both Lily and Anathema looked like they were scribbling it down on a mental IOU sheet, but oh well, never do today what you can put off 'til tomorrow and all that. Maybe they'd forget about it. Or another warlock would come along to distract them.

"How are you getting back to Tadfield?" Lily asked. It was probably an innocent question, but Crowley glared at her again anyway. She didn't seem to notice. That was the one drawback of the sunglasses, he supposed.

"We're not," Newt said. "We're going to stay at my mum's for the night. I called her earlier."

"Want to get something to eat with us?" Anathema asked Lily.

"Sounds good to me." Lily glanced questioningly at Crowley and Aziraphale. "And do I just turn up at nine on Monday, then?"

Crowley blinked. Aziraphale made a surprised noise.

"You still want to work here?" Crowley managed. "After all this? Thought you'd be running for the hills after the workday from hell."

Lily snorted.

"From hell? Please, compared to some days I've had, this is barely purgatory. Besides—" She narrowed her eyes. "I've got more questions."

Crowley barely held back a groan.

"Fine, yes, see you on Monday then," he muttered.

The humans fussed around gathering their belongings and getting ready to leave. As Aziraphale was escorting them to the door, Anathema paused with a frown.

"Did you ever figure out that third prophecy?" she asked. "The one with the gecko?"

Aziraphale shook his head. "It didn't seem to come up."

"It was about revenge," Crowley mused aloud. "Maybe something to do with Julia. Maybe she had a lizard tattoo we didn't see."

"Hmm. Maybe." Aziraphale shook his head and then smiled at Anathema. "We must talk more about this gift of yours, my dear, when we have a moment."

"That reminds me, don't put any money on a horse called Bouncing Betty, she's about to have a very bad month," Anathema replied absently. "We'll see you later, then."

Aziraphale closed the door behind them and Crowley let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. Aziraphale gave him one of those looks that said I am chastising you for your rudeness but also, yes, exactly.

Fondness warred with a sudden clench of anxiety in his chest. Much as he wanted to go home and rest, the thought of parting from Aziraphale was even more terrifying than it normally was. In the course of one day the angel had managed to almost burn to death, get lost in an interdimensional maze, and concuss himself with a falling chandelier. Crowley was seriously considering never letting him out of his sight again.

He opened his mouth to find some excuse to draw things out - anything would do, just a few more hours - but Aziraphale spoke before he could.

"Shall we go home then, my dear? I'd very much like to put my feet up. We could open one of those exquisite bottles of single malt you brought back from Islay."

Crowley forced himself to give this more than 0.005 seconds of consideration, just for the look of the thing.

"Yeah, sure, sounds good," he said nonchalantly.

Aziraphale smiled with such obvious relief that it took Crowley aback for a moment. Then he seemed to remember something. He bent to peer under Crowley's desk.

"Er— Wist? You're also very welcome—"

I am quite comfortable here, thank you, Wist replied. And I have no interest in whatever a single malt is.

"Right, well then, we'll— we'll be on our way."

Aziraphale looked hopefully at Crowley. Crowley peeled himself off the desk, grabbed his jacket, and sauntered towards the door. To his surprise, as soon as he got there, Aziraphale took his arm, as if to assist him in stepping over the threshold. Before Crowley could even summon up a sarcastic remark, Aziraphale had linked their arms together, easy as anything, as if it was something they always did, and the resulting confusion struck Crowley mute.

Alarm bells began to sound in the back of his mind as Aziraphale turned off the lights and locked the door behind them, then guided him down the stairs to the Bentley, all without a single explanation for his unexpected, affectionate gesture. Crowley remembered with a flash of mortification how he'd had that little... moment in the bookshop earlier. How Aziraphale had looked at him afterwards.

Oh no, he thought with the kind of dismay normally reserved for getting stuck in one of his own traffic jams, we're going to have a conversation, aren't we?

The whisky was truly excellent, and Aziraphale found nothing in the world as comforting as his favourite chair in the bookshop, except perhaps the sight of Crowley sprawled over the sofa with his sunglasses discarded on the end table. He looked as relaxed as he ever was on these occasions - Aziraphale wasn't sure he'd ever seen Crowley relax completely while awake, he was like a spring that always held some tension - but there was a certain sense of wriggliness about him, particularly in the way he kept trying to steer the conversation onto more and more abstract tangents.

Aziraphale let him wriggle, for now. He needed a bit of time to work out what it was he wanted to say - and that Crowley clearly didn't want him to say - and it really had been a long day. The temptation was to put it off until tomorrow.

But he'd been doing that since Armageddon, hadn't he? Old habits. Old instincts. Falling back into the way things had always been. Staying within the boundaries carved out over six thousand years.

He hadn't really considered that anything else needed to change. Not even with those odd currents he'd been picking up from Crowley, that sense of agitation, that growing discontent. Not until Crowley had fallen apart for those few minutes earlier in the day, and Aziraphale had realised how very badly he needed reassurance, and comfort, and... and friendship, no matter how much he tried to pretend otherwise. And oh, Aziraphale had been slow to offer it, hadn't he? Not because he didn't want to, but because he'd trained himself far too well to take what Crowley said at face value, rather than torment himself with wondering what was really going on behind his golden eyes. And Crowley always, always wanted Aziraphale to think that he was fine.

Aziraphale was secretly unsure that Crowley had ever been truly fine since his Fall, but he couldn't think about that. It was too close to looking directly into the storm.

"My dear," he said, and then realised he'd broken into the middle of whatever Crowley had been saying about windmills. Oh well, too late to take it back; Crowley had immediately shut his mouth and was staring at the ceiling with the vaguely pained look of one about to endure a dentist visit. Aziraphale would have been offended if he didn't know him so well. "I rather think we need to talk."

"We are talking," Crowley immediately protested. "Lots of talking going on here."

"Yes," Aziraphale persisted, "but not much being said, I think."

Crowley shot him an outraged look, then swung himself suddenly upright, placing his half-empty glass down on the table and grabbing his sunglasses.

"If you're bored of me you just have to say, angel," he groused, sliding the glasses onto his face and leaping to his feet in the same movement. "I can push off."

Aziraphale sighed, got to his feet, and intercepted him before he could start towards the door. Crowley froze.

"Actually, I was thinking perhaps you could stay here tonight," he said quietly, studying Crowley's jacket buttons rather than trying to read his eyes behind the sunglasses. "I don't... want you to go off by yourself."

"You know how I feel about your bed—"

At that, Aziraphale looked up, took in the rebellious set to Crowley's jaw, and snapped his fingers.

"There," he said. "You'll find it much improved. I'm not sure what a memory foam mattress is but I read in the paper that they're very comfortable."

Crowley opened his mouth, shut it again, then made one of his incomprehensible, frustrated noises in the back of his throat.

"Where are you going with this, Aziraphale?" he asked finally.

Aziraphale bit his lip. There was so much, was the problem. Six thousand years of it. Where did they even start?

Perhaps with something small, he thought. He reached up for Crowley's sunglasses. He paused before he took hold of them, giving Crowley a moment to consent or rebuff. Crowley swallowed and leaned fractionally towards him. His eyes were rather wild when Aziraphale slid the glasses off and put them aside.

"You worry about me, don't you?" Aziraphale said. "You worry something will happen to me when you're not around."

A flush crept over Crowley's cheekbones. He looked away, trying to summon up the same bad-tempered response he always gave when Aziraphale called him good or nice or kind.

"You get yourself into enough trouble. Hardly a moment's peace—"

"Crowley." Aziraphale reached out again, and this time laid his hand lightly on Crowley's chest. He could feel how fast his heart was beating. It made him ache, how terrified Crowley was of admitting vulnerability, even here, even now. "I worry about you too. All the time. Especially after a day like this. When I saw that spell grab you..."

"Angel—"

"And I just thought," Aziraphale plunged on, "that if we're going to worry about each other, we might as well do it together, mightn't we? Rather than... off in our own corners. Pretending that's not what we're doing. And it's not that I don't like your flat—"

Crowley snorted with sudden amusement, shaking his head.

"It is," he said with a grin. "It is that you don't like my flat."

Aziraphale rolled his eyes.

"Well, all right, maybe a little..."

Crowley laughed, and then abruptly reached out, pulling him close in a hug. Aziraphale tensed instinctively, and then relaxed again at once, arms going tentatively around Crowley and hugging back. It didn't have the desperation of the way Crowley had clung to him earlier. It felt like an anchor line drawing tight, putting a stop to the drifting and bobbing of a small boat in a large sea. It felt like shelter from the storm.

"Thought we didn't have anything to worry about anymore," Crowley said quietly. "Thought we were free agents now."

Aziraphale sighed, long and low, letting his cheek rest on Crowley's shoulder.

"It was nice while it lasted," he replied. "If it hadn't been Raphael, it would have been someone else. They were never going to leave us alone for long, not for all the holy water and hellfire in the world."

"No," Crowley said, reluctantly, but like someone letting go of a weight they'd carried for too long. "No, they never were."

Crowley's arms tightened on him for a moment, fingers finding a better hold on the worn satin back of his waistcoat, as if determined not to risk him slipping through. Then he let go and stepped back. Aziraphale found himself regretting the loss of him, but he wasn't sure how to say that, or what to ask for in its place. Crowley hesitated, then suddenly whirled and flung himself back onto the sofa.

"You think Raphael will tell them?" he asked, eyes darting away from Aziraphale until they lighted on his abandoned whisky glass. He snatched it up and took a long drink. "The truth about what we did to survive our trials?"

"I don't think so," Aziraphale replied, absently straightening his collar. "I really don't. I think Raphael is— I think he's still what Heaven ought to be. He wouldn't put us in danger. But that doesn't mean someone else won't figure it out eventually. Or decide to try some other means of... well, removing us from the equation, I suppose."

"You know, Alpha Centauri's still an option."

Aziraphale laughed. He took a step towards his chair, then paused, turned, and broke a habit of decades by sitting down on the sofa with Crowley instead. Crowley shifted to make room for him with a little sideways glance of surprise.

"My dear, you'd be so bored. Even at the time I did wonder what your long-term plan was."

"Didn't really have one," Crowley admitted. "Just wanted to get you as far away from it all as possible."

"My dear Crowley," Aziraphale murmured, smoothing his hands over non-existent creases in his trousers to contain the surge of feeling that went through him. "You know, I don't think I ever... I don't think I ever apologised. For saying we weren't friends—"

"No need, angel, you never needed to. It wasn't anything you hadn't said before, anyway—"

"But it was different, wasn't it? It was different, that time. And I'm sorry for it, because we are friends. You are my dearest friend."

Crowley made another of those strangled noises, turning his head away, which didn't at all hide the way the tips of his ears were turning red.

"I'm not drunk enough for this sort of mush," he complained unconvincingly. "My head's gonna catch on fire if you don't shut up."

"I believe that's more generally referred to as blushing."

"Demons don't blush!"

"Mm-hmm." Aziraphale retrieved his own glass with a wave of his hand, and brought the bottle while he was at it. "Must be the whisky then."

The rooftop bar was packed, but there was a bubble of space around Michael where she sat in one corner. Raphael made his way over to her without using his powers to clear a path. He'd always rather liked the way humans behaved in social crowds, the way they tried to make space for each other even when there wasn't much to go around, the way they bumped up against each other like warm, laughing pebbles on a beach.

"Nice place," he said as he took his seat. "You were right about the view."

Michael glanced out over the lights of New York, but didn't comment. A waiter approached with a tray. Michael raised an eyebrow when he placed two identical yellow cocktails on the table.

"I didn't order," she said.

"I did." Raphael picked up one of the glasses and sipped the cloudy, cold drink. Gin, lime, bitters, creme de menthe: just on the right side of sour. "You'll like it."

Michael appropriated the other glass and took a wary sip.

"Hmm," she said. "Yes, all right. What is it?"

Raphael grinned and leaned back in his seat.

"They call it a Fallen Angel."

The look she gave him was so venomous it could have taken down an elephant. Raphael grinned wider, and drank defiantly from his own glass.

"So," he went on. "What exactly do you want to talk about that can't be said within the bounds of Heaven?"

"You tell me," Michael snapped. "You're the one suddenly asking questions. And what exactly did happen today?"

"Nothing much. Fought a warlock, knocked down a house, saw a dog about a ley line."

"A warlock?"

"Long story." Raphael leaned forward abruptly, grin dropping off his face. "Couldn't have done it without Aziraphale, though."

Michael's eyes narrowed and she pointedly took another sip of her cocktail before speaking.

"You weren't here," she said. "You don't know what it was like."

"Go on, then. Enlighten me." It was a struggle not to raise his voice. "Explain to me the holy righteousness of putting Aziraphale in the fire, the sanctity of collaborating with Hell to destroy Crowley. Tell me what made you think you knew better than the Almighty."

Michael flinched, so subtly it was almost undetectable. She stared at her drink. Raphael suddenly regretted the choice of cocktail. He waved his hand and turned it into one of the dry martinis she preferred.

"Thank you," Michael said quietly.

And then she looked at him, and Raphael froze, because he couldn't remember the last time Michael had really looked at him like that, without the mirrors in her eyes. It reminded him all at once that although they were both Archangels, she was the warrior, and he was the healer, and she'd struck down Lucifer, her own twin soul, who'd had more power than all of them...

"You can see it too, can't you?" she said with simple, devastating honesty. "That we've gone wrong, somewhere."

Raphael swallowed, and nodded.

"He would have Fallen, if he'd truly defied Her will," Michael went on. "We took matters into our own hands when he didn't. And the demon... is it possible for one of them to be redeemed? What are they now, the two of them?"

"I don't know. They..." Raphael paused. "What do you see when you look at them?"

Michael grimaced.

"A pair of idiots," she muttered. "I pulled the surveillance files, you wouldn't believe how long they'd been brazenly meeting up in public..."

"And yet you never noticed," Raphael pointed out with a faint smirk.

"I can't be expected to comb through every single—"

"All right, all right," Raphael interrupted before she could build up steam. "My point is..."

He thought back to that moment when the two had so... easily exchanged their corporeal forms. As if they hadn't just broken a law of the universe as immutable as the speed of light.

"When I look at the angels of the Lord," he went on slowly, "I see the sun at noon, blazing and bright. And when I look at the Fallen, I see blackest night, no stars, no moon. But when I look at them... really look, Michael, the way we always used to look at each other, back in the beginning..."

He cast his eyes out over the crowded rooftop, seeing the deeper ethereal threadwork of the mortals as they laughed and chattered, seeing the patterns of souls and the intricate bonds between them: subtle, shimmering, complex. He looked back at Michael: she shone like a beacon, white and blazing light with edges like cut diamond, uncompromising and unwavering and unchanged in six thousand years.

"When I look at Aziraphale and Crowley," Raphael said, "I see dawn and dusk, and I can't tell which is which."

"What does that mean?" Michael demanded.

"I have no idea. But it can't be outside of Her plan, can it? So it must be part of it. A part we've never known about."

He expected her to protest, but instead, her shoulders sagged minutely, like her strings had been cut. Like her heart had given a single solitary beat, for the first time since the Fall.

"Maybe that's why—" she began, then stopped, and he saw her reaching for the mask again, fingers tightening on her glass.

"Why what?"

Michael looked at him one last time, and seemed to reach a decision.

"I've kept lines of communication open since last year," she said. "It seemed... prudent, after everything, to share information."

"With Hell, you mean?"

Michael nodded.

"That's why Beelzebub informed me when she discovered that... things are not as they should be."

"What do you mean?"

"Hell's numbers don't add up," Michael said. "The total of damned souls should be higher than it currently is."

Raphael stared at her.

"You mean— we're winning? Collecting more souls?"

"No. When I checked our records, I found that Heaven's total population is also lower than it should be, according to how many humans have lived and died since Adam and Eve. I had Uriel run the numbers to confirm. She found the same thing."

"But that's— how can that be possible?"

"I don't know. None of us do." Michael paused. "There's another thing. Beelzebub's keeping it quiet, down there, and I'm keeping it quiet... at home. Even Gabriel and the others don't know..."

"Know what?"

Michael took a long drink from her martini, set her eyes on some point far in the distance.

"You asked me what I'm looking for," she said. Her voice was tight. "It's not a what, it's a who. Lucifer has departed from Hell. And no-one knows where he is."