Barukh

Adam’s parents drove him and Warlock back to Tadfield two days after his thirteenth birthday, on Friday. Mrs. Dowling had offered to put up Lucius and Mr. Johnson temporarily at the flat she’d already reserved for Warlock’s first week of school, to allow Mr. Johnson some time to recover from a battery of tests done in a London hospital. Tests which proved, categorically, that the advanced cancer that had had him at death’s door was not only gone, but that his lung function was better than it had been in years. 

Harriet had reassured Warlock that she would be along no later than Monday so many times that he had gone from reassured to deeply sceptical, but there was enough going on around him that he didn’t have too much time to wallow.

He and Adam had been talking almost nonstop for two solid days. In the car, the Youngs had turned on the radio in the front of the car to some oldies* station to tune out the neverending conversation in the back seat.

*Mostly music from the late ‘80s, which seemed ancient to the boys.

The boys talked in low tones, not quite a whisper. 

It took that long for the subject to come around to Tadfield, while they were on the road to it. 

“You’re gonna love it,” Adam said. “I love it. It’s perfect.”

Warlock cocked his head at that, and said, “Does it have a choice?”

Adam blinked at him. “Whadyamean?”

“I mean, you grew up there, and you had all the,” Warlock waved his hand vaguely, “and like, could the place have been unhappy if it wanted to?”

“I mean, I got in trouble, I had fights, my life wasn’t perfect,” Adam said.

“Yeah, but you expected those. How many times did you ever move?” Warlock asked, remembering how many times they’d bounced between the States and his childhood home in England. How they’d spent the whole previous year travelling, when he wasn’t at school.

“Never,” Adam said.

“Never had a friend move away? A favorite neighbor?” Warlock asked, intrigued.

“Pepper and Brian and Wensleydale and the Johnsonites were always there,” Adam said. “Few kids from school moved away. No one I knew well.”

“Have the shops always had the same people in ’em?” Warlock asked.

Adam blinked at him.

“Look, we had new people all the time working in the house,” Warlock said. “Except for Nanny and… for Crowley and Aziraphale, who just up and vanished when I stopped being…”

“They thought they were protecting you,” Adam said. “You know that.”

“I’m just saying, how many things in your life are the way they are because you expect them to be? Because you keep them from changing?”

Adam blinked, and then closed his eyes. He could feel Tadfield, now that he thought about it, feel it perfect and unchanging. He remembered Anathema and Newt talking about the weather, about how they’d found the place, each of them. Crowley talking about his powers, Aziraphale talking about love…

“Is it a problem?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Warlock said. “I mean, if there are people who would have rather done something else than stay who stayed because you expected the place not to change…”

Adam considered that, and then leaned forward, and said, “Dad, did you ever want to move? Or change jobs? You know, before I came along?”

His father shook his head. “Love Tadfield. We were worried a few years back that they would route the new bypass through it, but right around the time we were gearing up to make a fuss, they just decided not to. Such a relief. Would have gone right through our house.”

Adam leaned back, thoughtful, and looked over at Warlock, who had crossed his arms across his chest with an expression that clearly said, “I told you so.”

“I mean, if I purposefully let it go,” Adam said quietly, “what if they decide to put another bypass through it?”

“Could you, oh, I don’t know, let the people have more latitude while still protecting it?” Warlock asked.

“I… I don’t know if I have that much control,” Adam said. “I mean, am I controlling you? Making you go to my school rather than the one you’ve been at?”

Warlock rolled his eyes. “Those assholes? I’m so done with it. I’m just hoping I don’t stand out too much at the new school.”

“The accent is a dead giveaway,” Adam said. “How long have you lived here, anyway?”

Warlock blinked, and then stretched his mouth, and then closed it, and answered in perfect RP, “My whole life, really. My parents are Yanks, though my father would probably throttle anyone who suggested it, because it means something completely different back there, but it’s only the last year that I’ve spent much time in the States at all. I managed to pick up an American accent at school, and from my parents, as a survival tactic. Dad didn’t like to hear me speaking like a Brit, so I learned to code switch around him. But I learned proper English from Nan… from Crowley, and sh… he taught me to code switch at will because it would help me manipulate people, and I quote. I stopped doing it when I was mad at them for leaving.”

Adam shook his head and said, “That must have been so weird.”

“Look at what you missed out on,” Warlock said.

“I’m sorry that it messed up everyone’s lives,” Adam said, “But I think it worked out as well as it could have, all things considered.”

“Messed up? You saved us. Just think if they’d picked another demon to deliver you somewhere else entirely, and they’d had unfettered access to you from the start? I’ll get over my daddy issues eventually, but only because I didn’t come down with a permanent case of Apocalypse. And I wouldn’t have been able to keep Tadfield safe. No, we were where we needed to be.” Warlock had been pondering for two days.

Adam sighed. “When I saw how badly it was going for Lucius… You know how protected Tadfield was? As a child, I didn’t like him. And his life has been hard. Is he better off?”

“Yes,” Warlock said, “but you changed a lot of things, you said, when you saved the world, and that didn’t change. So maybe some of these things just aren’t your fault.” He pulled out his phone. 

Adam fell silent.

There was another car in the drive when they pulled up to 4 Hogback Lane, and Adam sighed as his mother turned off the radio.

“Who is it?” Warlock asked. 

“Sarah,” Adam said. “My—Our sister. Wasn’t expecting her.”

“I called her,” Deirdre said. “Suggested she come home for the weekend with her young man, so that she could meet Warlock.”

“Doesn’t she start school soon?” Adam asked.

“Not until mid-September,” Arthur answered.

“She’s doing post-grad in Italy,” Adam said to Warlock. 

Warlock looked closer at Adam, because his tone was so flat. “You don’t get along?” They walked up to the front door.

Adam shrugged as he pushed the door open. “She’s, like, a decade older than me.”

“It’s only 9 years, hellspawn,” Sarah called out from the sofa, where she was sitting with her Italian boyfriend. They were watching something in French, eating a bowl full of crisps, and the rumble of laundry could be heard.

Adam flinched.

“Does she know?” Warlock whispered.

“No,” Adam whispered. “She’s just like that!” he continued, loud enough for Sarah to hear.

The boyfriend turned around to look at them, and then said, with a strong accent, “Fuck. You did not say your brother looked so very much like you.”

“He doesn’t,” she said, and then turned around. 

“Yeah,” Adam said. “You know how you always said I must have been switched at birth?”

“Shit,” she said, looking at Warlock. “What the fuck.”

Adam sighed, put his bag down next to the door, and said, “I’m going to get my dog. Warlock can explain.” 

Warlock looked at him, and then at Sarah, and swallowed.

As the front door slammed behind Adam, Warlock gave a close-lipped, worried smile, and a little wave.

“No, really, is he taking the piss?” Sarah asked.

The door opened again, and her parents walked in.

“What the hell is going on?” Sarah persisted.

“Yeah, so about that switched at birth thing,” Warlock started.

“Arthur, would you show Warlock to the guest bedroom?” Deirdre said, interrupting.

“Mum, we’re in there, the bed is too small in my room,” Sarah said.

Deirdre rolled her eyes upward, took a deep breath, and then said, “Matteo can certainly sleep on the sofa. You can take your old room for now. Warlock will be staying with us for the time being, and your room isn’t really set up for him.” 

“I really don’t mind,” Warlock said. “I don’t care about the decoration.”

“It’s a little… odd,” Arthur said. 

“You would not believe how strange my childhood was,” Warlock said.

Deirdre laughed outright. “At this point, I’d believe just about anything. All right, go take a look, Sarah can have her room if it’s too much for you, but Sarah, that means you’ll need to take your things out and put them up in the attic if you’re going to insist on the guest room whilst you’re here. And Matteo can still sleep on the sofa.”

“Mum!” Sarah started. “I’m twenty-one.”  

Deirdre lifted one eyebrow. 

“If it was Adam, you’d let him,” Sarah muttered.

“Adam is not asking to sleep in the same bed as a significant other in my house,” Deirdre said. “And if he was, the answer would be no.”

“Come on then,” Arthur said. “Let’s have a look.”

Sarah’s room seemed perfectly, completely normal at first glance. The underlying trappings of girlhood were there, things that had been chosen by a small child long before her parents brought the Antichrist home. But they were overlain first with the most absolutely classic trappings of a teenager, and then, once one looked closer, there were little things here and there that didn’t quite fit, as if smuggled in and put up when no one was paying attention. An archery set hung on the wall, with the quiver carefully oriented so that all the arrows pointed left. 

There were more crosses in the room than one would normally expect, and they were subtle. An ornate hand picked out of beadwork sat on the little vanity, an eye of contrasting beads on the palm. Another eye had been stencilled in black on the mirror, an ornate, Egyptian looking thing. Over the bed, something that looked like an 8-sided snowflake made out of forked sticks had been mounted. It was small, but oddly intricate.

The rug under the bed had flipped up on one corner, revealing a dark line on the floor. Above the bed were many stars. An old doll’s house had an intricate Norse hammer painted on the side. 

The entire room breathed a sense of utter terror. Not threat, just the feeling that someone who had lived there had been very afraid for a very long time. 

Arthur watched Warlock take it all in. “She knew something was weird,” he said to Warlock. “She started complaining when he was two. We thought she was jealous. By the time he was nine, she left for university. Said her head felt clearer when she was away from home.”

“It probably was,” Warlock said. “He’s better now, or he wants to be.”

“He’s been better for a while,” Arthur said. “It was the worst two years ago, but…”

“You know he’s blessed, now?” Warlock asked. “He’s not what he was. He chose… He chose you, he chose us.”

“I don’t know what he was,” Arthur said. “But it’s good to hear it.”

“I mean it, actually blessed,” Warlock said.

“Well, he does know that angel—” Arthur started.

“He showed us a picture of— I mean not just by an angel. More than that. You don’t have to be afraid. Neither does Sarah.”

“You know,” Arthur said, “I never was afraid of him. More, afraid for him, and what might happen if he didn’t figure out how to stop manipulating people. And then he stopped. Now, of course, it makes ever so much more sense. I’m rather sorry we didn’t get to know you growing up.”

“I had… I had a weird but surprisingly okay childhood,” Warlock said. 

“I’m glad,” Arthur said. “I’ve always tried to do the right thing for my family. We’ll try to do right by you now, even if we are in rather uncharted seas.”

At that, Warlock snorted. “At this point, it’s all so weird that I’m actually looking forward to a new school.”

“I think Deirdre was wanting to drive you over and get you signed up today.”

Warlock said, “This room is fine, really. I don’t mind it while Sarah’s here.”

“It’s a bit bigger than the guest room,” Arthur said. “We’ll have her pack it up if you want.”

“Whatever’s easiest,” Warlock said.

Deirdre set her bag down, and then picked it up again and sat down in the chair next to the sofa, and opened it, fingering through the contents absently.

“Are you saying he really was switched at birth?” Sarah asked, turning to her mother.

“It’s complex. There were three babies. Warlock ended up with an American family who were in the area, their baby ended up with the Johnsons, and we got Adam,” Deirdre said. The more she said it, the less real it felt, but it only took looking at Warlock to know that he was hers. Adam still felt like hers, too, but that felt more learnt. She’d wondered, those first days, if something was wrong with her, that the instant feelings of recognition she’d felt with Sarah had been somehow missing with Adam, and had gone through the motions until the feeling had settled, and then gone. His innate charisma had helped. 

Only now, with the explanation made clear, did those old feelings resurface, and the guilt behind them ease. 

“Woah,” Sarah said. “So who’re Adam’s real parents?”

“No one knows, or if they know, they’re not telling. He was left at the hospital that night. We're as real as can be, for all I didn't birth him.”

“Shit. Sorry, Mum. Poor kid. I mean, he’s lucky he ended up with us, I suppose, but that’s—” Sarah shook her head.

“You did not know until now?” Matteo asked. 

“We found out on his birthday. Their birthday.”

“Warlock, what sort of name is that?” Sarah asked.

Deirdre laughed. “The nuns tried to persuade Arthur that Adam should be Wormwood or Damien. So it’s not surprising that Warlock and Lucius ended up with the names they did.”

“What sort of nuns would suggest such a thing?” Sarah asked.

Deirdre shrugged. “The sort who would accidentally mix up three babies and wear their crosses upside down?”

Matteo actually crossed himself. Sarah cast him an odd look. 

“So this Warlock kid, he’s staying here?”

“His mother, Harriet, she’s separating from her husband, and there’s some drama with American politics, and they were going to board him in London for the school year anyway, so I suggested… well, she’s going to be staying nearby, so that she can be near Warlock and get to know Lucius.”

“What a mess,” Sarah said. “How did you find all of this out?”

Deirdre explained their trip to London, but left out the bit about the celestial beings involved, as she knew Sarah would latch onto that and never let it go. 

Adam knocked on the door of Jasmine Cottage, and was greeted by a muffled yapping. Anathema chuckled as she opened the door and Dog came hurtling out, actually leaping into Adam’s arms. Adam felt the tension leave him as he struggled to keep an armful of wiggling Dog from toppling him over. Finally he said, “Behave!” and set the dog down. 

Every part of Dog obeyed instantly, except his tail, which had a mind of its own and wagged back and forth irrepressibly. 

“Tea?” Anathema said.

Adam paused, deciding, and then nodded. “Yes, please, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble,” she said. “Though cocoa would also be no trouble, if you like.”

“Tea is fine,” Adam said absently, following her into the cottage. “So Warlock is staying with us.”

She paused, and then continued reaching into the cupboard. “And how do you feel about that?”

“He’s all right,” Adam said, sitting down at the kitchen table and kicking his feet absently. 

“But…” Anathema said.

“Sarah was there when we came home.”

“Your sister?” She filled the kettle and turned it on.

He sighed. “She called me hellspawn before I’d stepped inside the house.”

Anathema breathed deep as she got the milk from the fridge. “You never talk about her.”

“She left as soon as she could,” Adam said. “Her room… I didn’t understand it before I met you, but it’s covered with wards. She was always afraid of me, and I never understood why.”

“And she has no idea how much has changed?” Anathema asked.

“What am I supposed to say? Yeah, sis, you were right? I was swapped at birth and I’m the Antichrist? Or I was…”

Anathema staggered a little. “I’d forgotten,” she said, setting up cups and saucers. 

“I have that effect on people,” Adam said. “I met G_d on my birthday.”

She dropped a teacup. It didn’t break, but merely drifted down and settled. She stared at it. 

“You met…” Anathema struggled. What do you say to a declaration like that? ‘And how is the Almighty?’ or maybe, ‘Sounds like a cool party?’ She settled on, “And how did that go?”

Adam said nonchalantly, “I persuaded Her not to punish Heaven and Hell too badly. Oh, and I think the angels and demons are going to start a footie league. And I can now bestow blessings. Want one?”

Anathema leaned against the counter with both hands, staring at nothing, mind completely blank for a long moment. The kettle boiled. She startled, and then on utter autopilot, made tea.*

*She grew up with tea, of course—herbal or green or fancy pyramid bags of exotic blends (before they figured out it was bad for the environment) and weird medicinal tisanes and infusions brewed for hours in Mason jars—but it was Newt moving in that really made her go native and develop the kind of wiring that allowed one to brew English tea by reflex under the most strenuous of circumstances.  

Once she had poured the tea, and he’d added enough milk and sugar to noticeably change the texture of the fluid in his cup, she finally said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, Warlock asked for the ability to help trans kids transition more smoothly, like with their families and stuff. And Lucius—that’s Greasy Johnson, he wants to go back to his real name—asked to be able to help fish and do stuff that the fish need to be healthy. He would have asked for the ability to heal his father, but Aziraphale did that himself.” Adam stirred his tea, and then took a sip. 

“Did you ask for a blessing for yourself?” Anathema asked.

“I’d already gotten the ability to give blessings,” Adam said. “That seemed like more than enough. ’Specially with what I already have.”

She wrapped her hands around her own mug, and regarded him thoughtfully. “How many blessings can you give?”

“I think it’s one per person,” Adam said. “But She said I’d have as many as I needed?”

“Can I think about it?” Anathema asked. “Talk it over with Newt?”

Adam shrugged. “Just not too many people. I don’t want, like, attention about this. Don’t want to make trouble.”

She laughed weakly. “No, I can see that.”

They drank tea quietly, and then she said, “You’re a good kid, you know?”

“I’m trying really hard,” Adam said. 

“That only makes you better,” she said. “If you didn’t have to try, it wouldn’t be as significant. But you, you have all this power, and you’re being careful, and thoughtful, and I daresay we’d be a lot worse off if you weren’t.”

“And my sister is afraid of me,” Adam said. “Sometimes I’m afraid of me.”

“I don’t think that…” Anathema glanced upwards and then cocked her head to one side. “Did you say She?” 

Adam nodded.

“Huh.” Anathema paused, and then smiled, bemused. “Anyway, I don’t think She would have allowed you so much power if She didn’t trust you with it.”

“She’s my Grandmother,” Adam said. “She said She was there after I was made, but before I was given to Crowley. That I was made the way the first Adam was made.”

She blinked at him. “How much of it is true? The stories?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask Aziraphale or Crowley, they might know.”

“I wonder if I could get away with asking that my blessing be that I could actually get some answers?” Anathema asked.

Adam shook his head. “I wouldn’t… I don’t think you’d like the fallout of that. And if I could make it work, I don’t it would be right to force Her to answer, the cost might be very high. She doesn’t seem to mind being asked. I think She might smite someone who tried to force Her to do something She didn’t want to do. The last time that happened, Heaven and Hell were created, if I understand it right.”

Anathema’s eyes widened. “Yeah, I want to know, but not that badly.”

Dog whined. “Awright, you,” Adam said. “Come on, then. Back we go.”

“Come back any time,” Anathema said. 

He grinned as he left, Dog trotting behind him.

The Them were waiting for him at the gate, Pepper next to her bike, the other two walking.

“So?” Pepper asked, as they all fell in step together.

“I’ve got someone you need to meet,” Adam said. “But Sarah’s home.”

“Well,” Brian said. “Who is it, then?”

“Gotta be that Warlock kid,” Wensleydale said. 

Adam nodded. “He’s good people. Related. Looks the spit of Sarah, it’s uncanny.”

Pepper stopped, reached her hand out and grabbed his shoulder. “You said he was born the same day. How related is he to you?”

“To me? Biologically? Not at all.” Adam said. “But apparently, neither is the rest of my family.”

They stared at him. 

“Shit,” Wensleydale said, finally getting the hang of swearing.

“You’re sayin’ you and this kid was swapped at birth?” Brian asked.

“Not exactly,” Adam said. “More like, oh… Okay, so pretend you went to live at Wensleydale’s house, and Wensleydale went to live at Pepper’s house, and Pepper went to live at your house, Brian, only no one knew the difference because you all had basically similar stats.”

“Shit,” Pepper said. 

“Anyway, so Warlock is staying with us for a bit. His mum, well, the one who raised ’im— She’s coming and staying somewhere, and Lucius is staying with Mr. Johnson, and I’m staying where I am, but he’s coming to school with us.”

“And how do we feel about that?” asked Brian.

“We get on,” Adam said. “I think he’s just glad not to have to go to that fancy school of his with a bunch of gits. And he seemed lonely. Guess his parents have been away and fighting a lot. And well, Tadfield’s perfect, so that should help.”

“Wait, who’s Lucius?” Wensleydale asked.

“That’s Greasy Johnson,” Pepper said.

“Yeah, don’t call him that anymore,” Adam said.

The Them considered this. Finally Brian shrugged. “Yeah, all right.”

They walked slowly back to Adam’s house, arriving to find Warlock and Sarah sitting in the garden, talking. 

Adam’s steps slowed further as they approached.

“Go on,” Pepper said. “We’ll meet the new kid, and you can talk to your sister.”

Adam made a slight guttural whine in the back of his throat. 

“Don’t be a baby, you know we can totally take her if we have to,” Pepper said, elbowing him. 

He cast a fond look at her, and walked forward. Sarah looked up, her expression less readable than he’d ever seen. He looked down, and then started to turn. “I really don’t think…”

Brian and Wensleydale caught him, nudged him back around and Pepper pushed him forward. She called out, “Hey, new kid. We’re gonna show you round Tadfield. Adam’s going to have a chat with his sister.”

Sarah’s eyebrows went up, and Warlock turned. 

“Holy shite-balls,” Brian said. “They look like twins.”

“She’s a lot older, though,” Wensleydale said, having already processed that the age gap for Warlock and Sarah must needs be identical to the one he’d calculated long ago for Sarah and Adam.

“Doesn’t look it,” Pepper muttered. 

“All right,” Warlock said. “You must be Pepper. And—” He considered for a moment. “Brian?” He nodded at Brian. “And that makes you Wensleydale?”

They eyed him suspiciously.

“Adam told me all about you,” he said. “I’m hoping that you’ll not be too annoyed at me for borrowing him on our birthday. I’m sure it won’t need to happen again.”

“So, ’zis make you, what, brothers?” Brian asked.

“Close enough,” Warlock said. “I’m looking forward to being around actual human beings for a change, instead of walking stuffed shirts.”

Pepper smiled. “He’s all right. Come along.”

Deirdre poked her head out. “Meet me down at the school in 45 minutes. We’ve got to get him signed up for the new term. I’m pulling out the paperwork now.”

“Yes, Mrs. Young,” they chorused. 

“I’ll meet you there,” Adam said, and they dragged Warlock off, leaving him staring at his sister.

“So,” she started.

“I owe you an apology,” Adam said.

She blinked. “What? I thought I owed you one.”

He walked over and sat down on the late summer grass. “Why? You were right about me, all along.”

“I said some horrible things,” Sarah started. “I didn’t know you… I mean, switched at birth? I feel like if I’d actually known you’d been abandoned, I might have, I don’t know, understood why things were so different.”

“You called me hellspawn,” Adam said.

“Yeah, that was really uncalled for,” Sarah said.

“No, it was pretty fucking accurate, actually,” Adam said.

She turned her head, frowned, and looked at him sideways. “I don’t follow.”

“You never did,” he said. “You were the only one who actually saw that there was something deeply wrong. You covered your room in wards against evil.”

Now a familiar fear rose on her face, and he shook his head. “I’m not anymore.”

“You were a little kid,” she said. “Little kids can’t be evil.”

“Yes and no,” he said. “I wasn’t inherently evil, but by the time you moved out, I’d twisted this place so much that nothing could change, nothing could touch it. Being a teenager is hard enough, you didn’t need me insisting that you stay just as I expected you to be, for years.”

“What are you even talking about?” she asked.

“Mum doesn’t know who left me at the nunnery, or why,” Adam said.

“What, and you do?” Sarah asked.

He nodded. “The one who left me there was an actual demon—at least, then. I just… they made the wrong swap. And when it came time for me to join Hell, well… I didn’t. They wanted me to tear it all apart. And I… I said no.”

“This is absolutely mental,” Sarah said, shaking her head, increasingly upset. “You were so normal you were creepy, but actual spawn of Hell? What the fuck even is that?”

“They wanted Armageddon,” Adam said, throwing the words at her. “Fucking Satan went to the actual, honest to fucking Hell Garden of Eden and made me out of dirt. So you were right, then.”

“I’m so sorry I made you think that,” Sarah said, starting to cry. “I never meant…”

He waved a hand and she stopped talking, and her eyes went wide.

He dropped his hand, releasing her, and crumpled into a ball on the ground, sobbing, barely intelligible as he said into his arm, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t going to, I swore I wouldn’t and I don’t want to control you, just, you’re not listening and you’re not believing me and it’s really hard to let someone keep getting it so wrong because they can’t get their mind around the fact that their brother actually was the fucking Antichrist.”

“Oh G_d,” she said, and then realised that the force that had stopped her from speaking had let her go. 

“Careful,” Adam said, looking up at her, tears streaking his face. “I know for a fact that She’s listening, and with me here, you saying Her name like you mean it, well…”

Sarah stared at him.

He sighed. “What is it that you’ve wanted most in the world?”

“To have a clear head, to know that when I say something true, people believe me,” Sarah said without hesitation. 

“You really want that?” Adam asked. “Really and truly?”

She nodded, slowly. 

He stood up. “I can do that for you, if you’ll let me. But if it gets to be too much, you have to tell me.”

“I’m not sure I believe that you can do that, but okay,” Sarah said.

Adam took a deep breath, cast his eyes upwards, and said, “Please be gentle with her, Grandmother. This is supposed to be a blessing, not a curse.” With that, he put a hand on her forehead. 

She closed her eyes as a warm calm moved through her body from top to bottom. “Ohhh,” she breathed. Then she opened her eyes. A moment later she tipped her head to one side, looked past Adam and asked, “Who are you?”

“She can see us?” 

“Apparently.”

“Who are you talking about?” Adam said to Sarah, turning around to scan the apparently empty garden.

“There are two women in suits standing behind you,” Sarah said, puzzled.

And indeed, there were. 

“Grandmother, is it safe for her to see you?” Adam asked.

“Oh, I’ve only got a tiny sliver of Presence here, child,” She said. “Michael was curious about what you would do with the Blessings, so we were watching.”

“That’s not polite,” Adam said.

“Grandmother?” Sarah asked.

“Your brother calls me so,” She said. “You called me by another name just now.”

“Is he my brother?”

“In truth, every truth that matters,” the Almighty said.

“Will we not drive her mad?” Michael asked.

“She asked for a clear head. So, I think not.”

“What about Warlock?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, him, too. Yes. Young Adam was quite effective when he refused his birthright from the one who made him. Congratulations!”

“You’re saying…” Sarah floundered. It was not an unfamiliar sensation, it had happened a lot in molecular genetics in university, that feeling of almost grasping all the pieces of something, only to find that they’d run through her fingers like so much sand. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that your brother was created to be the ultimate evil, and he decided to be the ultimate mediator, the quintessential middle ground. A force for actual kindness and complexity, not just order or chaos. In part because he valued the opinion of those he cared about.”

Sarah blinked. “And what did he just do to me?”

“He granted you a blessing,” the Almighty said. “You asked to be a prophet. And he made you a prophet.”

Sarah shook her head. “That sounds like a really, really bad idea.”

“I can take it away if you like,” She said. “But you asked for a clever blessing. You didn’t ask to know the truth, you asked to see clearly. And you didn’t ask to be able to speak the truth, you asked for people to believe you if you spoke the truth.”

Michael asked, “How long had you thought about that, hmmm, wish?”

“Since he started—” Sarah stopped.

“Since I started twisting the world around me to stay the way I liked it,” Adam said. “And no one believed her when she said something was wrong.”

“I feel so much better,” Sarah said.

“It’s the aftereffects of the blessing,” the Lord said. “The feeling is not permanent, but should sustain you for a while.” 

“She likes you,” Adam said to Sarah.

“I look forward to seeing what you do with your gift,” Michael said.

“Who exactly are you?” Sarah asked.

“The Archangel Michael,” she said, bowing. “Be not afraid,” she added, out of habit.

“And just how close do you plan on watching me?” Sarah asked.

“Please don’t stalk my sister,” Adam said to Michael. “I know you want to understand, but humans value privacy, and she can see you. It’s going to be weird if you stand around watching while she’s going about her business.”

“I have a boyfriend,” Sarah said, and then blanched. “Do you lot really damn people to Hell for premarital sex?”

G_d laughed. “I really don’t care what people do with each other as consenting adults, as long as it is not done unethically and breaks no vows. Rape, coercion, and unfaithful behavior, on the other hand—”

Sarah blinked. “So as long as a married couple, for example, were honest with each other, it wouldn’t get them in trouble with you? And you’re fine with gays?”

The Lord shrugged. “False witness and the breaking of vows were on the list of commandments. I don’t like people who hurt other people through dishonesty. At the very least, it’s rude. At the worst, it damages people’s souls. As to who loves whom, gender is not relevant so long as all involved are willing and free from other obligation.”

“Can we talk more?” Sarah asked. “I have so, so many questions.”

“I will, how do you young ones say it? I’ll be around,” She said.

“I’m pretty sure that phrase is older than I am,” Sarah said. 

“You’re all young from my perspective,” the Almighty said. “Even you, Michael.”

Michael inclined her head. 

“Be easy, granddaughter,” She said. “You are loved.” She stepped forward and put a hand on Sarah’s forehead. 

Sarah closed her eyes, which were streaming tears. When she opened them, it was just her and Adam, side by side on the grass. 

“Holy shit,” Sarah said. 

“Now do you believe me?” Adam asked.

“You’re telling the truth,” she said, and he knew it for a fact.

Then she said, in wonder, “And you were always my brother,” and he crawled into her arms and sobbed into her shoulder.

The Them were only a quarter mile down the path when Pepper said to Warlock, “Is it just me, or are those men following us?”

Warlock glanced back. “I kind of come with a security detail,” he said. “But they don’t interfere as long as I’m not risking my life or doing something that endangers—” and here he dropped his voice, “—National Security.”

“Wow, I almost forgot you’re American,” Pepper said. “Where’s your accent?”

“Lived here most of my life,” Warlock said. “London, mostly.” And he dropped into a deliberate exaggerated twang. “I can talk lahke this fower y’all if y’all want me to,” and here he switched back to the precise, posh accent he’d been using since he met them, “but I’d rather not.”

“Cor, that’s a cool trick,” Brian said. “Teach me?”

“You’d have to grow up with it,” Wensleydale said. “You have to learn it young.”

“We are young,” Pepper said. “Bet I could learn a good American accent.”

“I mean, you could,” Warlock said, “but what good would it do you?”

“I suppose that depends on what I do with my life,” Pepper said. “But it will make a fun party trick for you.”

“So why is your name Warlock?” Wensleydale asked. 

“Yeah, and if you’re, like, in hiding or something,” Brian asked, “are you gonna change it?”

Warlock looked flummoxed. “I suppose now would be the time if any.” He stopped, and looked back at his detail, and waved them forward. “Yeah, so, are they changing my name?”

The shorter of the two agents turned, put a hand to her ear and muttered something into it.

The taller asked, “What name do you want? We were thinking about Mark Young.”

Warlock made a gagging face, and said, “I don’t know.”

“Could do something related, like Magus,” Brian said.

“Nah, if he’s actually trying to be not-obvious, it should be something different.”

Warlock closed his eyes, and let his memory drift to the lists of names he’d been perusing since he learned what his name meant, and then to the list he’d been perusing since he’d started attending the GSA* at his school.

*Genders and Sexualities Alliance, in many schools an activist club, in some schools a social club. At his old school, more the latter than the former: most of the activism they bothered with seemed to be directed at their own parents.

Suddenly a name floated to the top of his list, and he opened his eyes and smiled. “I’m assuming I can change it later if I want?” he said to the agent, who made a gesture that was half nod, half shrug.

“Then I think my name is Nyx,” he said. “For now.”

“Nicks?” Wensleydale asked, somehow the spelling clear.

“N-Y-X,” Warlock said. “Means ‘Night.’” 

“Can we call you Nick for short?” Brian said.

Pepper elbowed him. “It’s actually longer.”

“Isn’t that a little too much like Old Nick?” Wensleydale asked, looking concerned.

The name evaporated in Warlock's head.

Pepper, who had actually been contemplating what to nickname a boy named Warlock since she’d heard the name said, “Locke, with an ‘e’ is actually kind of interesting. John Locke is one of the people who helped think up human rights. He had some ridiculous ideas about money, though.”

“Yeah, that's maybe better,” Warlock said. “Locke? Or John?”

Pepper thrust the handles of the bike she was pushing at Brian, who caught it reflexively, and dashed off the path, making a beeline for a little spot nearby that had frequently yielded up useful sticks. To her surprise, one of her old wooden swords was there, leaning against a tree. She stared at it, then picked it up and dashed back to where her friends stood. 

“Right,” she panted. “Kneel.”

Warlock stared at her.

“I’d do what she says,” Brian said, from long experience.

Bemused, Warlock got down on his knees.

“Oi, not like that,” Wensleydale said. “You’re getting dubbed, not executed.” (The Them’s notion of formal propriety was more strongly based on old movies than on current practice.) 

Warlock put one knee up.

“Right,” Pepper said, bringing up the slightly green wooden sword. “I dub thee Locke Jonathan Young, Esquire.” She tapped him on each shoulder, leaving little mossy smudges. 

He laughed, and gave an exaggerated nod as he said, “My Lady.”

Brian winced and Wensleydale said, “Oh, I wouldn’t…”

Pepper stared as Locke scrambled to his feet, apologizing. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, I shouldn't have presumed. Are you nonbinary?”

“Non-whatary?” asked Brian.

“Terms like Lady have long been used to oppress women,” Pepper said, mostly out of habit, not actually that mad at him. 

“What would you rather I use as a term of respect?” Locke asked.

“Hmmm,” Pepper said. “I’ll have to think about it. But points for asking. Welcome to the Them.”

He frowned. “The them? Is this a pronoun thing?”

“’s what the village calls us,” Brian said. “The Them.”

“Jonathan?” Locke asked Pepper.

“Gives you lots of nickname potential,” Pepper said, tossing the wooden sword into the bushes by the side of the path and wiping her hands on her trousers as they continued walking. “Anyway, you’re all right. We'll keep you.”

Locke decided that he liked the name, and liked being kept, and gave a contented sigh as he thought about how it would look written down.*

*Later, Deirdre Young would discover that all the paperwork she’d been provided to enrol him in school, including his birth certificate, read, "Locke Jonathan Young." She wouldn't think twice about it.

Deirdre found Adam curled up against Sarah in the garden, Sarah absently petting Adam's head as they stared off into the distance. Deirdre stopped, frozen, looking at them, as Arthur came up next to her. She grabbed his arm, and then pointed. 

“Hmm, they've made up then?” Arthur said. “’Bout time.”

Deirdre moved forward and gingerly lowered herself down to sit next to Sarah on the dry grass.

Arthur picked up a garden chair, carried it over, and sat behind them, filled with a novel and not entirely comfortable measure of curiosity.

Sarah turned, and without preamble, said, “I was right, before, but Adam is better now.”

The words rang with certainty. Deirdre nodded.

Then Sarah grinned. “And G_d doesn't care if I sleep with my boyfriend.”

That, too, rang with more certainty than Deirdre had ever felt about anything having to do with G_d. “Maybe not,” she said, “but I care about it happening in my guest room this weekend.”

Adam chuckled, not moving. “Could’ve told you she’d say that.”

Harriet had spent much of her time on Saturday discussing options for Tadfield with Crowley and Aziraphale, at her flat in London. After two solid hours of it, Crowley lost his patience, snapped his fingers, and dropped the three of them neatly in the old waiting room of Tadfield Manor.

Another snap put an only momentarily surprised Mary Hodges* directly in front of them. Her eyes widened, and she said, “This way, quickly.”

*formerly known as Sister Mary Loquacious before her order was abruptly terminated and she’d discovered she had a head for business.

She led them into her office, and said, “Master Crowley, you know I want to do the right, I mean the wrong, well, I know how I was raised, but you must know I was released from my vows years ago.”

“Yes, yes,” Crowley said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “I’m not here to give you any grand Evil tasks to complete. I’ve rather been released from my own position as well. Got a promotion out of the company, as it were.”

“Really,” she said flatly. “I didn’t think that possible.”

“Oh, it’s true,” Aziraphale said. “Heaven and Hell have been taken off the table as it were, for the moment, as least in terms of being able to manipulate their followers.”

Harriet stared at him. 

Mary said irritably, “And just who are you?”

“Aziraphale, former Principality and angel of the Eastern Gate of Eden, lately general miracle-doer and thwarter of wiles,” he said, with an elegant bow. 

“Oh good heavens!” Mary blessed with all the emphasis of a proper swear. “Former, and you’re no demon?”

He shook his head. 

“This’s way, way over my pay grade,” Mary said.

“You’re your own boss,” Crowley said. “I checked. You’ve got the deeds for this place, free and clear.”

“What is it, exactly, this place?” Harriet asked, looking around. The place felt familiar, but had been redecorated. Well, the odd signage had been replaced and the paint freshened.

“Tadfield Manor is an elegant and innovative retreat for corporate training and initiative enhancement,” Mary said proudly. “And who are you?”

The location clicked. Harriet looked at Aziraphale and Crowley, and then back at Mary. “They said you were a nun here, back when I had my baby?”

“Oh, are you Mrs. Young? I didn’t meet her, I was too busy helping the American Ambassador’s wife.”

Harriet gaped at Mary.

Crowley muttered, “And we have found the weakest link…”

“Actually,” Harriet said, recovering her composure as only one who has been hobnobbing with political intrigue—in the form of diplomatic spouses—for several decades could possibly do, “I was the American Ambassador’s wife. I believe the woman you met was Mrs. Young. Am I correct that you swapped the foundling child with hers? And then sent hers out?”

“You mean the Ant…” Mary stopped when she realised that Crowley was miming zipping his lips. “Oh, my… goodness. I… Master Crowley told me to take a baby to room 3. Oh, oh dear.”

“And someone brought Mrs. Young’s child to me, and took mine away, and then they thought he was the foundling?” Harriet continued. 

“Oh, there’s been a terrible mistake. Oh, Sa… Oh my. I am… You know all this—have you been reunited with your child, then?” Mary asked. 

“I raised young Locke as my own, and recently met young Lucius,” Harriet said. “I need a place to stay, with my security, as they’re both going to be in Tadfield for the foreseeable future. The only solution that made sense was for me to come to Tadfield, but as there is little property available here, Mr. Crowley suggested I might discuss options with you.”

“Yes, of course,” Mary said, preoccupied as her head turned her memory into a maths problem, added up 1+1 and got a completely unexpected answer. She shook herself a little, turned to Crowley and said, “And what, if I may ask, did you have in mind?”

“Oh, not much,” Crowley said. “Just, she has a talent for management and people, and that seemed like something that might be useful here. I believe some of the old rooms might be appropriate for her and her staff. And pray tell, is anyone using the caretaker’s cottage?”

“Well, we were just finishing renovations on the east wing,” Mary said, frowning, “But nothing’s quite ready yet.”

Crowley and Aziraphale glanced at each other, a complicated series of expressions passed between them, and finally Crowley shrugged, and twisted his fingers up in a snap. “I think you’ll find the renovations have been completed ahead of schedule,” he said casually. “You should give them an early completion bonus.”

“And the caretaker cottage?” Aziraphale asked.

“Oh, we’re just using the attached shed for storage,” Mary said. “But it still has some fire damage. That was a project for next year. Would have happened earlier, but we had an incident two years ago.”

Aziraphale smiled, and asked, “Do you think there’d be room for a garden there?”

Mary shrugged. “I can’t see why not.”

Aziraphale turned to Crowley. “If you don’t mind, my dear, shall I?”

“Be my guest,” Crowley said, expansively.

“I was thinking I’d be something more than a guest, actually,” Aziraphale said, and drew his hand down into a snap.

“Of course,” Crowley said, amused. “Whatever was I thinking?” He turned to Mary. “Right. Then. Best let you draw up the contract, Ms. Hodges. I think you’d rather take that on than to have us do it.”

She gave a wary nod. “Right away. I’ll take the, er, improvements as consideration in lieu of rents, I suppose?” 

“For us,” Crowley said. “As a professional courtesy, since you will surely benefit from our, er, presence.”   He was still adapting to the idea of his presence being innately beneficial.

“Could we work out a contract together, next week?” Harriet asked. “I’d like to have a chance to look over your business plan and offer suggestions for where my skills might be most useful, if you don’t mind, and we can talk money after.”

Crowley smiled a wide, humourless smile that seemed to contain a few too many sharp teeth. “Oh, I’m sure that Sister Mary would be happy to be more than fair, given how much trouble your family has gone through as a result of the errors that were made here.”

Mary did another mental rapid calculation that put numbers together and popped out the words “successor organization”* and nodded quickly. “Of course.”

*Successor organization: theoretically the liability belonged to the now-defunct order, but her previous association thereof plus her current possession of the real property thereof added up to possibly her responsibility, if not entirely her fault. In any event, taking an, er, Adversarial stance, so to speak, could prove more expensive than just going along with it. Mary Hodges was nothing if not sensible, now that she’d figured out she could be.

The caretaker’s cottage—which up until that point had been mostly home to spiders, mice, and other small creatures, because of small burn holes in the roof and the kind of damage that comes with neglect—sat at the back of the property, well removed from the main manor. It had, for most of its existence, been a small, humble abode, with three small rooms and a little vegetable garden. It was now brighter, larger, and while it still appeared to be quite small and picturesque from the outside, it now glowed in much the way a Thomas Kincade illustration glows, with light spilling from the windows and puddling under the lamps that lined the path to the front door.

Aziraphale smiled. 

Crowley noted the garden, and the greenhouse behind it. “Was that there before?”

Aziraphale followed his gaze. “Well, I thought it would be a good home for your lovely plants.” 

“You've moved them already, haven’t you,” Crowley said. It was not a question.

“I don’t need to ration miracles for things like this,” Aziraphale said, and then smiled radiantly.

Crowley gave him an answering, goofy smile, and said, “Don’t have to ration them at all, yeah?”

Aziraphale smiled back, and they walked into the cottage together, Crowley holding the door open for Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale moved aside so Crowley could see, and stood, hands behind his back, shifting nervously in place as Crowley slowly surveyed the room.

Crowley had long associated Aziraphale with the dust and wear of the bookshop, with worn-in fabrics and worn-in books and worn-in paths on the wood of the floor. He’d known, always, that his friend had a hedonistic streak, a love of beauty and nice things, but it did not—until he looked around the cottage that Aziraphale had decorated in an instant from whole cloth—really register for him how tightly the angel had been reining in his natural inclinations. 

It wasn’t that the cottage was opulent; it wasn’t. It was just that it gleamed. Not in a metallic, bare way, but the beams had a dark lustre, the plaster walls a brightness, the shelves and tables were all wood that looked like it had been hand-polished with oil and wax until they radiated honey-warmth. The lamps that lit the place were not actually gas lamps, but had that golden glow, so that the light pooled around them. And the plants that liked indoors and shade best had found homes in corners. There were not quite as many books as he would have guessed, but there were definitely books, everywhere, shelves fitted into the arms of couches, under the coffee table, at the ends of the glass-fronted cupboards in the kitchen.

It was clearly a space for the two of them, the kind of open plan that works fantastically well for two people who enjoy spending a lot of time together in compatible activities, and terribly for people who like to do conflicting noisy things. 

Crowley smiled, his eyes going from detail to detail. “It’s like you updated the back of the bookshop and made it all shiny and new.”

“There’s a wine cellar below,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley grinned. “You know me so well.”

“Well, I should hope so. And along that line, that door back there, well, you should look at it.”

Crowley followed Aziraphale’s pointed nod to the back corner, beyond the kitchen table, and walked over in a few long strides. He pushed the door open to find a glassed-in solarium, with a painted wrought-iron table and cushioned chairs, several of his larger plants, and through the slightly greenish glass, he could see a small covered pathway leading to a larger greenhouse. He stopped, froze, trying to look everywhere at once.

“I didn’t want to overdo,” Aziraphale said. “Bringing in new plants and setting this up as you like will be most of the fun, so I’m afraid it looks a bit sparse.”

Crowley reached out a hand, blindly, and found Aziraphale’s sleeve, still not saying anything. 

Aziraphale looked up, and said, “I kept the upper glass as smooth and clear as possible, so you can see the stars when it’s dark, and there aren’t too many clouds. The only reason the walls aren’t crystal clear is, well, I didn’t think you’d want lookie-loos just wandering by and staring.”

“Is this place even visible from most of the property?” Crowley asked.

“Well,” said Aziraphale, “Not so much, exactly. Did I get it right, like you would want?”

Crowley pressed his lips together and nodded quickly.

“Oh, there’s the bedroom, I almost forgot,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley made a funny little gesture, and then said, behind his now-not-foggy sunglasses, “The bedroom?”

“Well, you like to sleep,” Aziraphale said awkwardly. “And I, well, you know how it’s been since…”

“No, I haven’t really wanted you out of my sight more than necessary, either,” Crowley said. “Show me.”

Aziraphale blinked at him, knocked back by Crowley’s bluntness. “Yes, well, come along.”

He led Crowley back past a couple of closed doors, and opened the last one on the right. “After you,” he said, pushing the door open.

Crowley stepped into a simple room with plenty of floor space, a very familiar bed, and next to it, a cosy chair, a small bookshelf, a table with a lamp, and a foot rest. 

“So you can read? While I sleep?” Crowley asked. 

Aziraphale nodded. “There’s a dressing room over there,” he said, nodding at another closed door. “Mirrors and such, a place to store the clothing we actually purchase. And there’s offices for each of us down the hall from here, but they’re completely familiar.”

“You didn’t bring the throne, did you?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale twitched.

“No matter,” Crowley said. “So long as you don’t mind if I…”

“Oh, Heav— Really, change anything you like,” Aziraphale said. Then he frowned. “Dear, could you take off your sunglasses, if you don’t mind? I’m having a hard time reading how you feel about all this.”

Crowley hesitated, and then pulled the sunglasses off, tucking them into his pocket. His eyes glimmered in the light from the lamp, the light from the windows. 

“Are you upset?” Aziraphale asked. “Did I get it wrong?”

Crowley shook his head. “No, I’m just, what do they say? Submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

Aziraphale looked even more worried.

“No, it’s okay,” Crowley said. “I just… it’s perfect, and I love it, and you got it just right, and it’s all overwhelming. It’s been a while since I could see…”

“We don’t talk enough about these things,” Aziraphale said.

“It’s just so much easier to get drunk,” Crowley said. “Or to sleep. Or to simply exist while you read. Talk about anything but the fact that She changed everything.”

“I’m still not used to the idea,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley slipped his glasses back on. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s return Harriet to her minders. And then we can go for a drive, and bring along anything that we missed that we might want here, when we bring the Bentley. Unless you…”

“Oh, no. It’s still in London. I wouldn’t presume—”

Crowley snorted. “That’s where your line is? You are magnificent, Angel.”

Aziraphale looked worried. Crowley clapped an arm around his shoulder and led him back to the manor house, to find Harriet.

Harriet Dowling had found her suite to be startlingly familiar, with her own things furnishing it, things she’d been worrying about leaving behind in the States, but which she’d set aside as lower priority than almost everything else in her life. In particular, her sitting room. She and Nanny had not been particularly close, but they’d been in proximity for years, and she remembered many an evening in her sitting room, with Locke playing nearby under Nanny’s watchful eye, as if Nanny could sense when her guilt at not being more involved with her son was getting to be too much.

Well, Nanny probably had been able to sense it after all, hadn’t she? He? Crowley was a puzzle, certainly. Serpent, demon, yet startlingly kind, under the rigid veneer of her… of the nanny persona. She’d seen Nanny talking to Francis, wondering at how open she was to the homely gardener. The two of them as they were now made a little more sense, but it was still hard to reconcile the different faces, harder still to reconcile the flurry of wings, the teleportation. Teleportation. She laughed at the absurdity of it. 

She’d always felt herself to be a practical, competent person, not noble, but able to adapt to new situations. She looked up. “Do you want me to go to church again?” she said to the empty room. “Should I start reading the Bible?” There was no answer.

She found her bedroom, which was not at all like any room she’d had since she’d been married, and much more like the room she’d furnished in her first apartment after college, before she’d married Tad. The quality was better, though the sense of freedom remained. Somehow its familiarity shocked her less than the sitting room. It felt like a place she might catch her breath, and remember who she was.

There was a knock on the doorframe. Harriet turned.

“Sorry, I didn’t want to bother you, but I have the information you asked for,” Mary said, handing Harriet a slim, professional-looking tablet. “I can have a hard copy for you tomorrow, if you prefer.”

“No, this will be fine,” Harriet said, taking the tablet. She looked up at Mary. “I’m not—I feel like I should be angry, but I’m not. It all feels rather bigger than I can grasp.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’re meant to grasp it,” Mary said. “I was raised, oh, well, let’s just say that my people were an odd religious sect, and I just grew up with it and didn’t know anything else. It took getting away from what everyone kept telling me I should be for me to figure out that I wasn’t what they said. Oh, I’m probably not making any sense.”

“No, you are,” Harriet said. “I can’t imagine the people I’ve been hanging out with are all that much different.”

“You know Satanists?” Mary said, and then clapped both hands over her mouth.

Harriet raised an eyebrow, gave a crooked smile, and said, “No, Republicans.”

The Them, now featuring Locke, spent The Birthday, Take Two, as they’d taken to calling it, much as they’d spent most of Adam’s birthdays, exploring, doing things that grownups would probably rather they didn’t, and enjoying the last of the summer. Circus setup was endlessly fascinating, especially now that they were tall enough and strong enough to actually help, and familiar enough to the travelling acrobats that they were actually not only trusted to do some of the work, but slipped several quid apiece on the grounds that they had been actually helpful.

Adam spent most of the way back to his house considering the problem of the security detail, finally settling on a plan when they were almost home.

“It’s nonsense, really, for them to keep following you,” Adam said to Locke. “Your name is different, no one knows who your mum really is, and the only thing they do is draw attention to you in ways that don’t even make sense.”

“Tell that to the Americans,” Locke said with a sigh. 

“I think it would work better,” Adam said slowly, “if I shifted things just a little.” He held up a hand and wiggled his fingers, suggesting magic.

Locke stared at him for a moment, and then said, “I think… I think you might not have to?”

“Oh?” Adam asked.

“Well, I mean, did you change my birth certificate and all the other paperwork?” Locke asked. “I mean, I know you were having a heart to heart with Sarah while we were thinking up my new name, you really weren’t in a frame of mind to do that on purpose, were you?”

Adam blinked. “What? I don’t remember doing anything like that. Maybe the security detail did?”

“Nah,” Locke said. “Your mum had the paperwork in her hands already before we went off, it was in my birth name, we thought that the security detail was going to have to work something up, but by the time we got home, it was already done and they looked confused when we thanked them. Like they’d forgotten my name was ever anything else.”

“What do you mean your name was something else?” Adam asked, and then his eyes widened, as, making the effort to remember, he did. “Ohhhh.”

“Yeah,” Locke said. “I thought about how much I liked my new name and having friends who liked me without being required to, and how much a relief it was to not keep pretending, and like, every single person has called me Locke ever since, whether I told them to or not. I suspect if I really concentrate on how safe and at home I am here, my security detail may just make themselves redundant.”

Adam smiled a radiant grin. “It’s working just right, yeah?”

“You didn’t restrict it to trans kids,” Locke said.

Adam shrugged. “Why would I? There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to make kids safer, more secure and less dysphoric at home, no matter why they weren’t before.”

“Even myself?” Locke asked. 

Adam made an expansive “See?” gesture with one hand, and smiled.

“Right,” Locke said, and closed his eyes, stopping in the middle of the path. 

“You go on,” Adam said to the Them. “Don’t eat up all the cake, we’ll be along.”

Locke said, “I’m thinking about our parents, all of them.”

“What do you call them?” Adam asked.

“The Dowlings are Mom and Dad,” Locke said, with a flat, American accent on both titles, “and the Youngs are Mum and Dad.” This was said with a smooth, local accent, almost exactly how Adam would say it.

“Both of those things are accurate and true,” Adam said. “Believe them.”

Locke nodded. “I’m thinking that Mom and Dad are not going to worry about me here. I’m thinking that when I’m here with my family, I don’t need security at all, because no one who wants to hurt me knows where I am.”

Adam nodded. “Believe that. Know that it is the best thing for you, and for them.”

And then Locke said, less confidently, and quieter, “And I don’t need to be afraid just because I don’t know if I’m queer.”

“You really don’t,” Adam said. “No one’s going to hurt you for that.”

“I can take my time to figure it out,” Locke said. “I don’t have to know right now.”

“I mean,” Adam said, “I don’t even have that figured out.”

Locke opened his eyes and stared at Adam. “Yeah?”

Adam blew out a sigh. “I mean, Pepper keeps talking about consent stuff, yeah? And I mean, that’s part of why I told you and Lucius the truth. Because how can you make choices and consent to things when you don’t know the most important things about who you are and where you come from?”

“We were giving it a good go,” Locke said, bemused, “but go on.”

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the whole thing with Sarah, and with the Them, and Tadfield and how easy it was to twist the whole world without even trying. How can I bring someone into that? How can I keep myself from twisting them? Making someone like me? Make them want what I want? I don’t want that.” The words poured out of Adam in a rush. “All it took for me to literally take control of Sarah, even only for a moment, was being frustrated with her. How can I ever trust myself not to hurt anyone? I mean, I can’t even think about who I might be attracted to, when I know that me being attracted to someone might pull them to me. You don’t know what I did that summer.”

“You mean when you were, yourself, being controlled?” Locke asked.

Adam sucked in a rough, shuddering breath. “It was the worst feeling, worse because it felt good, right up until I realised I was losing everyone I ever cared about because of it. I don’t want to do that to anyone else, ever.”

“You don’t have to,” Locke said with absolute certainty. “You get to decide in your own time whether you are ready to be involved with anyone. No one gets to push you. And attraction… Maybe you will be, maybe you won’t. Not everyone is. It doesn’t matter until you say it matters. You have all the time you need to figure it out.”

Adam shivered, and sucked in a deep breath as a sense of calm overtook him. “I felt that.”

“Fuck,” Locke said. “I didn’t know if it would work on you.”

“I left a window in the blessing,” Adam admitted. “I deliberately made it so that how far any changes went was up to Her. So if you try to do something malicious, it probably won’t work. But as long as She likes what you’re doing? I don’t honestly know where the limits are. I mean, that would be true regardless, but every once in a while She scolds someone by making their wishes come true, so it was sort of an ‘if it please you, make it so’ prayer in the middle of it.”

Locke’s eyes went wide and he paled. “So would it do me any good to study theology and go to church?”

Adam snorted, and then looked thoughtful. “Might be worth knowing the background,” he said. “I’m just going on what I know, which is way more than any kid our age probably should, but most of the stuff I have read has been, hm, not particularly on the mark.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, they all get some things right, well, except the really weird ones, but they all get a lot wrong, too,” Adam said. “I mean, we can confirm a lot of this now, just, like, ask Sarah to tell you and if you believe it when she does, it’s true.”

“Oh, that’s sneaky,” Locke said, in spite of himself. “It means we get to bug Sarah lots, and we can figure things out that we wouldn’t have any other way of knowing.”

“Exactly,” Adam said. “Let’s go eat cake.”

And Locke, who had never experienced a truly homemade birthday cake, smiled, and followed his brother up the path.

Over cake, after the parents had retreated from the giggling, shouting din, the kids settled enough to start talking about the implications of Locke’s blessing.

“I guess I’m wondering,” Locke said, “if it’s even okay for me to use it, because, isn’t it changing people’s minds?”

“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the thing where Adam made it so you can do actual magic,” Wensleydale said.

Brian said around a fingerfull of thick buttercream, “If anyone could, Adam could. Hey, do we get superpowers?”

Adam swallowed an entire icing flower* whole, took a long gulp of milk, and shrugged. “I mean, if you’re going to ask for something reasonable that isn’t too dangerous.”

*It was probably a flower. It had been created with a special bag and a different colour and though its genus could not be determined, it was, simply by nature of being a great glob of icing, extra desirable. The important part was that it was mostly sugar and butter and food colour.

“You don’t think it’s dangerous for me to be running around changing reality?” Locke asked. “I mean, aren’t I changing people’s minds?”

Adam shrugged. “Depends, I guess, on why their minds were stuck where they were in the first place?”

Pepper put down her fork. “There’s a lot of ways of changing people’s minds. But why is, you know…” she looked around, “why is…” here she pointed upwards, “She paying Locke so much attention that way?”

“With Sarah, She just seemed, I dunno, interested in what we would do,” Adam said. “Like, I think we’ve always been part of an experiment, but now we’ve exceeded the design parameters, and She’s, oh, well, a scientist, I guess? Only, She’s really The Scientist, like—” He sighed, failing to come up with a suitable metaphor.

“She’s a scientist, but compared to other scientists like they’re ants,” Wensleydale guessed.

Pepper frowned. “Is it good scientific method to go poking your fingers down into an experiment?” 

“Maybe She’s studying finger poking,” Brian said, and then stuffed a too-large spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. He made a bizarre series of faces as he developed an instant headache. 

Adam thought he heard a faint chuckle, but no one else seemed to notice. “Hey, Sarah!” he called out. “Please bring out the lemonade?”

A few moments later, Sarah appeared. “Sorry, we got distracted.” She brought the tray around to set on the table, but before she could put it down, she gasped, and it fell from her nerveless fingers, only to drift onto the table of its own accord. 

“She’s there, isn’t She?” Adam asked. 

“G_d is sitting on our roof,” Sarah said, staring upward. “And She’s not alone.”

Adam sighed without turning around, and said, “It’s rude to watch. Come have some cake if You’re going to be here.”

The Them looked up at the roof of the house. Pepper clapped her hand over her lips. A bite of cake fell out of Brian’s mouth. Wensleydale blinked behind his glasses, and Locke turned his head a little and called out, “Thank You for the blessing. But I have some questions.”

“Who…” Pepper said, and then stopped herself. “Which one…” 

“Well,” Sarah said, as she bent to straighten the cups a bit with shaking hands—which was difficult since she couldn’t take her eyes off the roof, “The one in the white suit thing is, well, Her , and the one with the bun is Michael. I’m not sure about the rest of them. Tall one’s an angel, for sure.”

“Why can we see them?” Wensleydale asked, as the Almighty, Michael, Gabriel, Beelzebub, and Dagon all descended from the roof. The Almighty descended, rather; Michael glided, Gabriel just climbed down, and Beelzebub and Dagon both slid on their bums and plopped into the shrubbery next to the house. 

“It’s Sarah’s gift,” the Lord said. “She asked for people to believe her when she speaks truth. And with belief comes sight. So when she sees Me watching, and she tells you, you believe, and so you see.”

“What about mine?” Locke asked hurriedly. “It feels like the whole world changes around the things that I want. It’s kind of frightening.”

“This is the one we thought was the Antichrist?” Dagon asked.

The Lord nodded at the demon, and then said to Locke, “Parents want what is best for their child, usually. They don’t always understand how to make that happen, and they don’t always have an accurate understanding of what is best for their child. Much of the problem you want to fix is caused by a direct conflict between what the child wants and what the parent perceives as their best interest. Often that perception is based on what they think I want. But I never, ever want parents to reject their children for something so unimportant as who they love or what colour they make their hair, or gender. Gender,” She shook her head. “That one wasn’t even Mine. We only introduced variances in the physical form for humans to help increase genetic diversity and enhance adaptability of the species. The form follows function at a basic level, but not every creature born with the same form must needs enact it in exactly the same way or even function in the same way. I made you adaptable. I’m not going to get mad at you for adapting. Life would be boring and short if you didn’t.”

“But, I mean, Adam and Eve, in the Bible…” Wensleydale started. 

She sighed. “Please, child, ask Aziraphale and Crowley. They were there. Even where I did give the earliest humans the words, they changed them. It was… frustrating.”

Michael snorted, and then looked aghast at herself. 

“All right,” the Lord said. “I may have overreacted. And the young often do not do as they were told.”

“You gave them free will,” Adam said reproachfully.

“And then they went and did that with it?” Gabriel said, his horrified gaze fixed on the remains of a large slab cake with gaudy blobs of coloured icing. 

“Cake is good, Gabriel,” the Lord said. “Try some.”

Sarah cut a piece and deposited it on a plate, and handed it over with a fork, her eyes still wide.

“Does that mean we’re eating angel cake?” Brian whispered to Pepper, who nearly blew crumbs out her nose trying not to laugh.

Gabriel stared at the cake, looking completely perplexed, and Michael finally reached out, cut off a forkful, and said, “Here. Don’t bite the fork. Use your lips to pull it off.”

“When did you ever—” Gabriel started to say, but then was silenced as Michael shoved the forkful into his open mouth. His cheeks bulged out and his eyes crossed as he tried to look at the fork, and then he moved his jaw around ineffectively and looked thoughtful as the sugar made itself known.

Adam quietly pulled out his phone, snapped a picture, and sent it to Crowley.

“Wha do ah do nah,” Gabriel said around the mouthful, spraying crumbs. 

“Swallow, you numbskull,” Beelzebub said.

Gabriel’s face went through a series of contortions, and then his throat twitched and he looked much relieved. “You must do this eating thing every day?” he asked the children.

They looked at each other, and then Brian said, hesitantly, “Yes, but we like it?”

“Who are they all?” Pepper asked. “I know who You are,” she said, nodding to the Almighty. “And Michael?” 

Michael gave a polite tip of her head.

“The one with the fly is Beelzebub,” Adam said. “The other demon is Dagon, Lord of the Files.”

“And obviously the git with the frosting on his nose is Gabriel,” Dagon muttered. 

Gabriel crossed his eyes again trying to look at his own nose.

“Lord of the Files?” Pepper asked. “You don’t mean flies?”

“I am obviously the Lord of the Flies,” said Beelzebub. “Dagon is in charge of the paperwork. The Files.”

“The scruffy ones are Lords of Hell,” Adam said, as if he’d been giving their year in school. “Gabriel and Michael are Archangels.”

“Should we be worried having them all here?” Wensleydale asked. “I mean, last time they were awfully rude and they threatened you.” Seeing them was like being reminded of something he’d forgotten. And then it was exactly that.

“Nah,” Adam said. “Grandmother’s here, She’ll keep ’em in line. We wouldn’t have noticed them if it wasn’t for Sarah. Well, and I can kind of hear them a little when they’re about and invisible. That’s why I called Sarah out.”

There was a little popping noise, and Aziraphale and Crowley appeared on the lawn beside Sarah, who jumped.

“Right, and who are you lot?” Sarah asked.

Aziraphale looked around, and then said, “Oh! Cake! What fun!”

Crowley had the relieved expression on their face of someone who has just heard an alarming noise and then discovered it was the cat bumping something over in the dark. “Hello, Adonai, what brings You to this part of England, and why do You have that lot with You?”

 “We wanted to know about sports,” Dagon said. “And She said we should see the children talk about their miracles.”

“And you listened?” Crowley asked. “I tried to tell you about sports years ago.”

They shrugged. “She let us see Her again. I don’t remember why we were fighting in the first place.” And with that, Dagon reached over toward the cake, looking like they were going to grab it directly, when Adam reached over and rapped their knuckles with his ice cream spoon.

They stood up and pulled their hand back. 

“You can have cake,” Adam said. “Just use a plate and a fork. If you’re going to hang around, you have to use manners like everyone else.”

“But that one used his fingers,” Dagon said indignantly, nodding in Brian’s direction.

“He’s twelve. You’re, what, ten thousand or so?”

“Time didn’t really have meaning, er, before,” Crowley said. “But the boy is right. Use a fork. I do, when I eat.”

Sarah reflexively gave Dagon a piece of cake with a blob of green frosting on it. “Anyone else?”

“I’d love one,” the Lord said.

Sarah was shaking as she cut a slice.

“Grandmother, You need to tone it down,” Adam said. “You’re giving her the wobblies.”

“I’m just setting an example,” the Creator said. “None are too high to break bread with a child.”

“It’s cake,” Brian said, through another mouthful.

Wensleydale elbowed him and hissed, “You probably should not be correcting G_d. It’s a figure of speech.”

Her laughter made the world sparkle for a moment. “It is a figure of speech, but I, of all people, must be careful with My words, lest your fine sweets become a different dough. I’d rather have a child speak truth to Me than fear Me. I think I’ve outgrown My need to be without correction.” 

“It’s very good,” said Aziraphale. “I’ve had fancier, but I’m not sure I’ve had tastier.”

“You’re very quiet,” Crowley said to Michael.

“It has been made clear to the Hosts of Heaven that we are to shift our focus to quiet contemplation of our errors,” Michael said. “I am trying not to have any more errors.”

“Is that what you told them?” Crowley asked the Lord.

She made a little gesture and Gabriel disappeared. “I may have implied that, but mostly to shut Gabriel up. Michael, darling, you may speak as you will, but I would remind you that Pride goeth before the Fall, and that the only reason the majority of Heaven has not fallen for that sin is that I still haven’t decided what I’m doing with the lot of you on both sides. But in the meantime, have some cake. Learn why they celebrate each year that they are alive. Why it is not necessary for them to be perfect and without error to be loved.”

“There are whole universes in a slice of cake,” Crowley said, slyly, handing one over to Michael. “See if you can find them.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “That’s Douglas Adams, Crowley. I read you that book.”

“It’s true, though,” Sarah said, and they suddenly knew that it was, that there were, in fact, universes in cake. It was deeply unsettling for a moment.

Then Adam, upon whom the universe (and the rest of them) had centred quite assertively for years, laughed and said, “That’s just the molecules and stuff. I mean there’s so much space in there, it’s about as much as there is out here, if you just look at it at the right angle, angel.”

Michael studied Adam for a long moment. “Is there an appropriate way for me to study this child further?”

“I don’t want you lot following us around all the time,” Adam said, his words ringing with the force of his intent. “I don’t mind talking with you sometimes—it’s interesting, sometimes—but you have to do some of this work, this understanding, by living it your own selves.”

Sarah, having recovered her composure, said to Michael, “You should come with me, when I leave here. If you need to learn from humans about how to be human, you’re going to get a better idea if you go to university.”

“Only part of that is true,” said Michael. “I think you are not ready to leave, but that I should. Tell me about this university?”

“Later,” said Adam. “We want to get back to having the party. Eat cake if you like.”

Locke said, “First, wait, can you finish telling me why it isn’t changing their minds?”

The Almighty looked down at him, and smiled. “All I do is resolve the cognitive dissonance. When their conflict is based on faith, their faith is rewarded with this small scrap of truth. It is enough. When their conflict is based on perception, I remind them that when I walked the Earth among you with My Child, I did not see those things as flaws for humans to judge.”

“But You judge?” Pepper asked quietly, hesitantly. 

“On occasion,” She said. “It is complex.”

“Will we see You again?” Pepper asked.

“Perhaps. Would you like to see Me again?”

“I have soooo many questions,” Pepper said, “But I’m just one kid. I don’t want to monopolise…”

Adam laughed outright. “You couldn’t. I know it feels to you like you have the whole of the universe looking at you, but this that we see is only a tiny bit of Her. I don’t think we’re made to understand just how good She is at multitasking.”

“If only,” Crowley intoned, “there were some place where people could gather and talk about their great theological questions.” 

“There hasn’t been a church open in Tadfield in years,” Sarah said. “When Mum had us go, we had to drive.”

“Fourteen, fifteen years?” Crowley asked. 

“I think I was seven, so yeah,” Sarah said, and then it landed. “Oh. It closed down because of him.”

“No,” said Crowley. “Tadfield was chosen because the church had closed down, so the nunnery wouldn’t draw the wrong sort of learned attention.”

“That was Me, actually,” the Lord said.

Aziraphale put down his cake and said, “I knew it. I told you all, and did you listen?”

Michael shrank a little. Crowley’s grin at Aziraphale could have lit a bonfire. 

“Let me guess,” Locke said. “You nudged things so that instead of it being one swap, it was two?”

She shrugged, “I meddled very little.”

“So what happened to the old church?” Adam asked. He’d been all over Tadfield his whole life and never known it was there, and he’d thought he’d known everything about Tadfield.

“It’s still there,” Sarah said. “Just not occupied.”

“Still where?” Adam asked. 

Sarah pointed past the garden, through the hole in the hedge, down the valley, to where a steeple rose, that Adam had never seen before. 

He did not turn to look at the Lord before he said to her, “Were You there… You were there… The whole time? Hidden from me?”

She smiled, and said, “Come find Me, tomorrow. We will not eavesdrop again.”

And with that, She and her odd entourage vanished.

“Are they really gone?” Adam asked Sarah.

In the valley, the church bell began to ring the hour. 

“Bloody typical,” Crowley said, leaning over and using a finger to swipe a large blob of purple icing on to his finger. He waved the finger around, and the icing wobbled precariously. “In one moment, and poof!” He popped the icing into his mouth and then swallowed. “Gone again.”

“To be fair, dearest,” Aziraphale said, “We just did that to Harriet not twenty minutes past.”

“She won’t mind,” Crowley said. “Think she’ll be glad she missed it. She’s not ready for it.”

“How is she?” Locke asked guiltily.

Crowley’s voice softened. “Oh, love, she’ll be all right. It’s just a lot right now. Take you to see her later? After the party?”

Locke nodded.

“Good lad,” Crowley said, ruffling Locke’s hair with his cleaner hand. “Oh, and I love the new name. Suits you better, it does.”

“New name?” Locke asked, and then blinked. “Damn, did it to myself.”

“Do you mind?” Adam asked, genuinely curious.

“Nah, makes it easier,” Locke said. Then he looked up at Crowley and asked, “What pronouns do you want? I keep getting confused.”

Crowley grinned. “Good. Keeps you on your toes. Use whatever seems right for the moment. Live with the confusion, it’s good for you.”

Locke closed his eyes, breathed, and then opened them again. “Okay, Nanny.”

“That’s my boy,” Crowley said, and then looped an arm through Aziraphale’s, winked at Locke, pulled an umbrella out of nowhere, and they drifted off into the distance and out of sight in the general direction of the manor.

Locke wiped his cheek with the back of his hand.

The rest were gaping.

He glanced over at them and said, “What, you see the actual Lord of all Creation in front of you eating cake, and it’s my old nanny leaving on an umbrella that does it for you?”

“I’m guessing,” Adam said slowly, “That Crowley saw Mary Poppins before he became your nanny?”

“That would explain a lot,” Locke agreed. “When she’s got the full getup on, it’s something.”

Sarah sat with Matteo in the guest bedroom, an hour afterward, trying to find the words that would make sense for why she wasn’t going back to Italy right away.

“Just say whatever comes to your mind,” he said gently, taking her hand. “I will tell you if I believe you.”

She took a deep breath, and said, “I’m questioning my entire field of study.”

He nodded. “That’s true.”

“It’s based on logical theories of evolution and mutations affecting the development of species over time.”

“This is also true.” He squeezed her hand a little. “Go on.”

“Theories which cannot be true if my brother was made from clay in the Garden of Eden.”

“That did not feel entirely correct,” he said. 

“I have too many questions that need to be answered here before I can go back to my studies,” she said in one breath.

“Not entirely true, but mostly true. Tell me you have too many questions.”

“I have too many questions.”

“This is not true.”

“My questions need to be answered before I can go back.”

“This is not entirely correct.”

“Some of my questions need to be answered before I can go back,” she tried again.

He nodded. “That sounds right.”

“I don’t feel like I can focus on my studies while I’m still grappling with a freakin’ blessing from a G_d I didn’t even fully believe in last week.”

“Go on,” he said, nodding.

“Is evolution valid in a created universe?” she asked.

“You have to tell me,” he said.

“If G_d  made the world, evolution cannot work,” she said.

“That does not feel true,” he said wonderingly.

“God made evolution?” Her voice lifted in question, but he was nodding.

“Holy fucking shitballs,” Sarah said, eyes wide.

“You want to keep going?” he asked.

She nodded. “All right, try this. The world was made in six days.”

He twitched. 

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t know how to describe it. Like, I feel truth, but like, as if there were a star next to it.”

She thought for a moment, and said slowly, “Maybe…” Then with more confidence, she said, “Time is arbitrary to a deity.”

He gasped.

“What?”

“That felt like the most true thing anyone has ever said,” he murmured. “And when you say it… I have always struggled with belief, my whole life, but you say it, and I have no doubt.”

“It took six days from her perspective,” Sarah said, and Matteo was already nodding. 

“It took 14 billion years, give or take a billion years from the perspective of our timescale,” she said a moment later, carefully choosing her words.

He was shaking, eyes wide. “Yes. Mi amore. Yes.”

“You love me,” she said with a smile.

“I do,” he said. 

“You’re okay with this?” she asked.

And he was suddenly more certain of that than he’d been of anything she’d said before.

“The keys to the world have been handed to you,” he said. “I may perhaps need to change my course of study.”

“Theology?” she asked.

“Tell me how the world will react to certainty,” he said.

“I think people crave understanding,” she said. “But it could frighten them.”

He nodded. “You may need to walk very carefully when giving people truth, to give them also what they need to reconcile it with faith.”

“I may need to give people truth but temper it with context,” she said. 

“You also need to walk quietly lest the world crucify you,” he said.

“They wouldn’t crucify me,” she said, and he nodded.

“But they might try to hurt me in other ways,” she said. And he nodded again. 

“I think we need to do some testing,” she said. “Range, does it work on a recording, that kind of thing.”

“Mi mobile es tu mobile,” he said, which made her laugh. 

“You really went overboard with the parasol,” Aziraphale said to Crowley once they were back at the edge of the manor grounds, on their feet and walking leisurely back to the east wing. 

Crowley laughed. “Oh, they loved it.”

Aziraphale suddenly started giggling. “Gabriel,” he said, “with the cake,” and set Crowley off.

Then Aziraphale sobered and said, “Do you think you’d be safe going to church tomorrow?”

Crowley’s expression was positively devilish, “Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for anything. Everyone who’s anyone will be there, and quite a few who aren’t.”

“Do you think She’ll do a proper service?” Aziraphale wondered. “I mean, She can’t, She wouldn’t… there’s so much nonsense…”

“Probably just drop the whole nonsense into one of us like, WHOOPSY and Bob’s your uncle, you’re the pastor now,” Crowley said. Then he paled. “She could do that to me. Maybe I should stay home.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “You know if She wants you there, it wouldn’t stop her. Besides, we’re her chosen. We really should go, and go prepared.”

Crowley looked slightly ill as he said, “I can’t wait,” with an expansive hand flourish.

They took Harriet back to London and were rather surprised to find the security detail completely unconcerned about her absence. When she informed them where she would be moving, they mentioned that they would be reducing her detail. This didn’t worry her, nor did any of them mention that Locke’s detail was on their way back and no replacement was going back to Tadfield for him. 

Crowley and Aziraphale took their leave quickly, walking from her flat to St. James Park, neither mentioning that it might be a while before they returned. They sat on their bench, not talking, for a long time, until finally Aziraphale said, “Do you really like it? And will it be all right, you and me staying together in it?”

It took a split second for Crowley to realise Aziraphale was talking about the cottage. “We’ve hardly been apart in two years,” Crowley said. “Why would you even wonder? You know I love it.”

The word flowed out easily, naturally, and it took a moment for it to land. 

Aziraphale sighed. “So much has changed. I hardly know who I am anymore. I suppose I never really had the memories to know when I thought I did, did I?”

“You haven’t changed that much,” Crowley said once he’d sorted the sentence out. “I feel like She rewrote my whole operating system.”

“Oh, really?” Aziraphale said. “It just feels to me like you’re becoming more yourself. More free to be yourself. I guess I feel it too. Sobering, really, to find oneself realizing that almost everything one has done for thousands of years has been centred around fear.”

Crowley sighed. “I think if we’re going to continue this conversation, I’d like to do it where there is not a pelican staring at me.”

“And where there’s wine,” Aziraphale agreed. “Copious amounts?”

Crowley stared at the pelican until it finally gawped its mouth shut and waddled away, looking profoundly unsettled. Then he said, “No. I mean, some wine is fine, but I don’t…” He trailed off, not quite knowing what he didn’t want.

“Not seeking oblivion?” Aziraphale asked.

“I mean, it was a coping mechanism, right? Something to pass the time and let us stop thinking about the powerful forces arrayed against us. Now it’s just grappling with our own selves and a complete shifting of our professional expectations.”

“And deciding whether that means we should reevaluate our, er, personal expectations?” Aziraphale asked, his words slow and carefully chosen.

“You breaking up with me, Angel?” Crowley said, his tone joking but his eyes sliding sideways to check Aziraphale’s expression.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale said. “Just, well, decisions that were made under one set of circumstances might be due for reevaluation given the recent, well, revelations, I suppose, about our changed status.”

If there had been a table in front of Crowley at that moment he would have put an elbow on it to stare at Aziraphale and parse that out, but they were in the park, so he had to settle for shifting his sprawl and turning his body towards Aziraphale. His arm, which had been across the back of the bench the whole time, slid forward a little. This put his hand in a position to waver between toying with Aziraphale’s hair and coming up to support his head, which in turn was reeling a bit. 

His hand made up its mind, went to his own forehead, and he closed his eyes to say, “Did you just hit on me?”

“I didn’t,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley opened his eyes and stared. “Well, you’ve managed to thoroughly confuse me, Angel.”

“I was merely suggesting that we have a conversation in order to determine whether or not either or both of us would be open to further discussion about whether we should reexamine the terms of our relationship,” Aziraphale said primly. 

“I take it back,” Crowley said. “This is going to need at least a bottle of wine. The good stuff.”

The bookshop, Crowley found, had not really changed at all. 

When Aziraphale caught Crowley’s bemused expression, he looked embarrassed and said, “The cottage isn’t for selling, so it’s not really unethical to have copies there, is it? And this place is too much itself to disrupt it.”

“’S nice,” Crowley said. “Familiar.”

Aziraphale busied himself quite unnecessarily with getting out glasses and a dusty old bottle. 

“Brandy?” Crowley asked, as he sat down in his spot and slipped his glasses into his pocket out of habit. 

“Well, if we’re not getting soused, might as well have something designed to be savoured, yes?” 

“As you will,” Crowley answered. 

Without looking at Crowley, Aziraphale poured the amber liquid into the snifters, and said, “We had a lot of good, valid reasons for not pursuing anything particularly physical in our relationship. Some of the base assumptions have changed. I don’t know what that means for us.”

Crowley laughed. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

“Aren’t you?” Aziraphale asked, turning around without picking up the glasses.

Afternoon light slanted through the shop, catching Aziraphale’s hair in an ethereal glow. Crowley shook his head. “I’m good.” He blinked reflexively and then reconsidered out of habit and then left it when the word didn’t hurt. “I mean, yeah. I’m okay not having all the answers right this moment. You want me with you, I want to be with you. I’m still trying to figure out who I am after all of this, but I know who you are. And the physical stuff,” Crowley shrugged. “We both know it’s not necessary, and that it might be fun, and that we’re in no hurry, and I don’t mind leaving it up to you whether that goes somewhere new.”

“I don’t know who I am right now,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t know how you manage to be so calm. I thought I knew what I wanted and what you wanted and now I’m realizing that what I wanted was based on who I thought I was and who I thought you were and what I thought was possible and now I don’t know what I want at all because I don’t know who I am.”

“Have a sip,” Crowley suggested. 

Aziraphale turned around, picked up the snifter, and tossed back the finger of brandy he’d poured in. 

“Or a gulp,” Crowley amended, after the fact.

Aziraphale paced. Crowley stood up and got his own glass, and sat back down. He breathed in the aged brandy’s scent, his gaze never leaving the pacing angel. 

“What if we tried something and I didn’t like it, or you didn’t like it?” Aziraphale asked.

“Then we wouldn’t do whatever it was again,” Crowley said.

“I don’t even know if I’m talking about human intercourse,” Aziraphale said, exasperated.

Crowley chuckled. “Neither am I.” 

“How can you be so calm about it?” Aziraphale asked, continuing to pace.

Crowley shrugged. “You heard her. We managed to muddle through six millennia of not knowing and still came out where we are now. What we have is enough for me; not knowing if there will be more or not is irrelevant to that.”

Aziraphale stopped, and stared. “But do you want it? More?”

Crowley tipped his head to one side and said, “I don’t not-want whatever it is I think you’re getting at. But I have—” He paused, sighed, and then took a long sip of his brandy. “I already have so much more than I ever dared even hope for, let alone let myself want. And I don’t want you to tie yourself up in knots worrying about it. If you figure out what you want, or even want to try something to figure it out, ask. It’s not… It couldn’t… It won’t change how I feel about you. And I’ll probably say yes. I usually do.” 

The frantic tension fizzled out and Aziraphale sank into his chair like his strings had been cut. A slight motion of the wrist and his snifter was back in his hand, with a modest finger of brandy in it. He closed his eyes and breathed it in, and then opened his eyes and met Crowley’s steady gaze as he rolled the tiniest mouthful around his tongue. He rested the glass in his palm and said, “I don’t know if I even want more. This has been so much—so important to me.”

“You don’t know whether it’s a fragile butterfly or a solid tree,” Crowley said.

“I just, I’ve gotten so many things muddled up for so long, and I hurt you and I don’t want to ever hurt you.” Aziraphale sighed and took another sip. “You matter to me, Crowley. I don’t know if anyone or anything has ever mattered more. No, I’m sure they haven’t. They couldn’t.”

Crowley’s breath caught, which had the unfortunate effect of sending brandy down the wrong pipe. It took him a split second to banish the offending liquid back to the glass. Then he said, “I realised that, when you went into Hell for me.”

“That was an even trade,” Aziraphale said. 

“The worst thing either of us could imagine,” Crowley said, “was never speaking to each other again.”

“I thought I fell in love with you in 1941,” Aziraphale said, “But I’d already started down that path before the fall.”

“Yeah, I knew how I felt in Rome,” Crowley said, “and earlier. But when She told me where I was going, and told me I wasn’t going to be alone, I didn’t dare hope she’d send you to keep me company.”

“You really couldn’t stand the others back then, couldn’t you?” Aziraphale asked.

“There’s a reason I wasn’t fighting,” Crowley said. “But  you always made me feel like it might be all right. And—I think it is.”

Aziraphale stared at his glass until it refilled, then set the glass on the table in front of him. He looked around at the familiar dusty bookshop, the glow of the late afternoon light both giving it a nostalgic glow and highlighting the worn dust of it all. He had a sudden longing for the new adventure, shifted his gaze to Crowley and said, “Darling, would you please take us home?”

Crowley held his gaze, and without looking away said, “Car, or…”

At that, Aziraphale smiled beatifically and said, his voice rich with fond amusement, “Oh, surprise me.”

Crowley’s eyebrows slid upwards, and he pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then he raised his hand, hesitated, and snapped his fingers.

Aziraphale’s delighted laugh filled the Bentley as Crowley reflexively popped his sunglasses on. 

“I mean, you were expecting either,” Crowley said. “So why choose?”

“Oh, I am looking forward to the drive,” Aziraphale said. 

“Need anything else from London?” Crowley asked.

“Do you?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley flicked a snap in the direction of the back seat, and a slightly dusty breeze blew through the car as several paintings and books landed in the back seat, followed by his favourite plant mister. “Naw, everything I need ’s right here. You were thorough with the plants.”

“No statuary?” Aziraphale asked.

“They’ll be all right where they are,” Crowley said, starting to drive. “Don’t need ’em.”

Once he’d settled into gear as the road cleared out leaving London, he glanced over and found Aziraphale’s right hand resting, palm up, on the less-beige-than-usual fabric of his trousers. Crowley put his own right hand on the steering wheel, and dropped the left onto Aziraphale’s hand and squeezed. 

“Oh, don’t you need… I guess you don’t,” Aziraphale said, looking at the steering wheel.

“Technically don’t need any hands to drive. Could just snippy snappy and foom, but I like keeping my hand in, so to speak,” Crowley answered, not looking at Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale’s fingers laced into Crowley’s, and he said, “Yes, well, I suppose I do like you keeping your hand exactly where it is. It’s nice.”

Crowley didn’t even bother to grumble about the word, the heat having gone out of that argument completely with recent revelations.

They drove through the lazy late-summer evening glow and slow twilight. The normally busy road toward Oxford was surprisingly lightly travelled, but Crowley took the drive at a positively leisurely pace. 

After a bit, Crowley said, “You don’t have to wait for me, you know, to take the lead on anything you are thinking about, you know, wanting to try.”

“I do try to avoid grabbing people’s driving hands,” Aziraphale said.

“No, of course, I know, but—” Crowley took his other hand off the steering wheel to gesture, though the steering wheel seemed not at all bothered by the lack of direction and kept on keeping on. “—in general, you know. I’m curious.”

“You ever try, you know, any of it?” Aziraphale asked, his voice a study* in nonchalance. 

*not, however, a pass.

“With a human?” Crowley asked, a look of something between bafflement and revulsion. “Always seemed like more trouble than it was worth.”

“It is,” Aziraphale said. “With humans.”

“You mean you…” 

“No, but I’ve had occasion to observe. And of course, I read. Loads of trouble.”

“I’m surprised that with as much as you like other human pursuits you never, hmm, dabbled,” Crowley said. “They seem to enjoy it quite a lot.”

“Whole lot of tab A into whatever can be remotely stretched to fit tab A,” Aziraphale said. “Very messy.”

“Not like mess is a problem for us,” Crowley said. “Just, you know—” he mimed snapping his fingers with his not really so much driving as just pretending to hand, “whoosh it away.”

“I have no idea if Heaven still has access to my miracle list,” Aziraphale said primly. “And I know for a fact that She knows everything but especially the miracles we specifically do. The idea of that showing up on a ledger somewhere…”

Crowley actually giggled at the thought, “Can you imagine,” he said, between giggles, “‘The celestial beings used three miracles to perform miscellaneous sexual activities, at 11 pm on,’ what day is it?”

“What, today?” Aziraphale asked. “Are we ready for that?”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “It’s an example. No one is rushing anyone into anything. But I see your point. Might be best to clean up in more, er, usual ways.”

“There is a lovely bathtub at the cottage,” Aziraphale said, and then sighed. “Not that I’m sure I’m ready to take baths again. The last time was a bit much.”

“The holy water surely didn’t hurt you?” Crowley said, startled.

“Not me, it’s that they wanted to do that to you. I had to watch a demon dissolve in it beforehand. And it took some time to stop imagining that happening to you every time I so much as glanced at a bathtub.”

Crowley had a sudden vision of flames, flames, and more flames, and shuddered. “Perhaps we should start with things that don’t require cleanup.”

“Hmm,” Aziraphale agreed, staring out the window into the deepening blue of the sky ahead of them. 

Ten minutes later, Crowley said, “I really do love the cottage.”

Aziraphale looked over at him and smiled brightly. “Oh, you do! I’m so glad. It’s hard to know, but I’ve been with you so long, I thought maybe I might have the knack. Is it really so mortifying to be known?”

“I know we’ve known each other our whole lives,” Crowley said, “and I’ve always cared about you, more than I thought I should have done early on, but always… but after the Thing, knowing you were on my side after feeling for so very long that I couldn’t…”

“There’s a certain before-and-after to it,” Aziraphale agreed. “And the before seems more distant than it should, for as long as we’ve been alive.”

“I like being on your side,” Crowley said. “I like you being on mine.”

Aziraphale started to open his mouth to argue that Crowley had always been on his side and that he’d not been very good at reciprocating but then closed his mouth, accepted the compliment, and sighed with contentment. “I do, too.”

~~

Harriet finished taking care of her business in London, a seemingly endless stream of annoying minutiae, in time to find Lucius and his father puttering around the swank but compact kitchen in her upscale flat, making dinner. They worked in tandem without speaking much, and she watched from the doorway as they helped each other create a dish they’d clearly made together many times before. 

“What is it?” she asked.

Henry looked up. “Oh, it’s my wife’s shepherd’s pie. Fussy, but it tastes like home. Hope you don’t mind.”

She shook her head. “It smells great.”

“It reminds me of her,” Lucius said. “She died a long time ago, but every time I help Dad make this, it reminds me of watching him help Mum. It’s one of the only things I still remember.”

“May I join you and try it?” she asked after a long, thoughtful pause.

“Of course,” Henry said. “There’ll be plenty.”

“I found a place in Tadfield today,” Harriet said. “The Manor will be renting me a suite of rooms. The… Crowley and Aziraphale, they’ll be in the caretaker’s cottage.”

“I didn’t realise you’d gone so far,” Henry said, spooning some of the things they’d been cooking into a baking dish. 

She let out a huffing little laugh. “I didn’t either until I realised they’d—” she snapped her fingers, “—right over to the hospital the boys were born in. I mean, it’s not a hospital any more of course, but still.”

“I didn’t know they let rooms,” Henry said. “Thought they were doing something else now.”

“Oh, they are. But Crowley can be rather persuasive. I know we talked about going back Monday, but if you two are up for it, I’d love to do the drive after dinner, if you’re not too tired.”

“I feel quite good, actually,” Henry said. “What about you, my boy?”

Lucius shrugged. “Whatever you want, Dad.”

“Oh, I forgot. Aziraphale suggested that if we were in town, we might, how did he put it?” She slipped into a passable RP, “Nip on down to the church in Tadfield for service tomorrow.”

“There’s no church in Tadfield,” Lucius said. “We’ve been going to Norton for my whole life.”

“Oh, but there used to be,” Henry said. “Your mother and I were married in Tadfield proper, weren’t we? I’d forgotten all about that little church.” He looked profoundly puzzled by that.

“So tonight after dinner?” she asked.

He nodded, still looking thoughtful.

It took several hours, the enlistment of several unwitting friends in Italy, Japan, and Colombia, and a number of experiments to determine that Sarah’s range did not appear to have limits. Medium didn’t seem to matter. Live action or recording didn’t seem to matter. The written word, voice, and video were all equally effective. If she told someone something true, they believed her. 

Language did matter. Sarah spoke her native English, academic Italian, passable Spanish and French, and truly mediocre German. Her listener had to understand her words to believe her. They could be translated, but the intent had to be translated accurately. That discovery led to some interesting tests of Google Translate,  a quick text, and then video call with an old friend in Japan, who believed her readily in his excellent English, and not at all in the automatic Japanese translation. 

However, once he’d translated it himself and sent the message to a friend, the effect persisted. 

When they closed the call, Matteo and Sarah stared at each other for a long moment.

“That worked,” Sarah said.

He nodded. 

“I don’t know what to do next,” she said.

“Get some sleep?” he suggested.

“I don’t want to sleep alone,” Sarah said. 

He thought for a moment. “I will sit on the bed next to you until you fall asleep. Then I will go sleep elsewhere so that your mother will not hate me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Sarah said. “She’s just messing with me.”

He shook his head.

“She does hate you?” Sarah asked.

“No, she’s not just messing with you. It must be something else.”

Sarah sighed. “She wants to do things the way she was taught because it’s the only thing she feels like she has any control over right now.”

He nodded.

“Feels like messing with me,” Sarah said, pouting. 

“Lie down, Sara mia. Sleep.”†

She breathed a long sigh, with a soft smile at the silly nickname, which turned into a yawn. “But don’t go.”

“Not until you’re asleep,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

It was full dark when Aziraphale and Crowley finally pulled up the long drive of the manor. Crowley expected there to be a garage for his car, and so there was. Neither of them could remember if it had been there before. But they parked, and then went into the cottage, which had been dark, but by the time they were out of the garage, was glowing again.

“It is just so homey,” Aziraphale said, opening the door. “I expect you’re wanting to sleep?”

Crowley took off his sunglasses, slipped them into his pocket, and hung his jacket on the convenient coatrack near the door. “Are you wanting to…”

“Oh!” Aziraphale said. “I assumed you would be tired, and I wouldn’t want to presume upon…”

Crowley, still facing the rack, shook his head with gentle consternation. “Only you, Angel. Why don’t you come read whilst I ready myself for bed? You made such a comfy little nook for yourself up there.”

Aziraphale stepped up beside him, divesting himself of his jacket and waistcoat, hanging them upon the rack as well. 

“Shirtsleeves?” Crowley said teasingly, “Why, that’s positively indecent for you.”

“Hmph,” Aziraphale said with mock pique as he set his shoes on the shoe rack that hadn’t been there a moment before but was now.

“Cute toes,” Crowley said, and walked back to the bedroom while Aziraphale looked at his stockinged feet and blushed.

Then he looked up and trotted after.

Crowley had been mostly sleeping on Aziraphale’s couch or in his own bed while Aziraphale read on the couch at the flat,  but Aziraphale had only very rarely seen Crowley ready himself for bed. It seemed to involve the removal of more layers than Aziraphale had noticed Crowley wearing. until all that remained were a pair of boxer-briefs. 

“Not even a vest?” Aziraphale said before he could stop himself.

“It’s August,” Crowley said, and slid under the lightweight duvet. “I can have a nightshirt or I can have a duvet, and the duvet is more comfortable.”

“Right,” Aziraphale said, still standing in the doorway. 

“You coming in?” Crowley asked. 

“Oh!” Aziraphale said, and with a quick nod, the lights all went out.

A moment later, he was crawling into the bed next to Crowley.

“I actually thought you might want to read,” Crowley said.

“Oh dear! I misunderstood.”

He could see the heat flush on the angel’s cheeks in the dark, but as Aziraphale seemed to be turning to get out of bed, Crowley snaked an arm around Aziraphale’s middle. 

“Sssshhhh. I’m teasing. Just stay right there,” Crowley said. 

“All right,” Aziraphale said, relaxing slightly onto the pillow without really relaxing at all. 

“I’m too tired to go messing around,” Crowley said. “But a snuggle?”

He could feel Aziraphale’s nod more than see it, so he slid up as close as he could get, spooned Aziraphale from behind, and slowed his breathing until he could feel himself dropping off.

Even more slowly, Aziraphale relaxed against him. It wasn’t the first time they’d curled up against each other. The other times had been few and far between, but involved far more clothes and alcohol, and far less spoken affection. And even less sense of potentiality.

Arthur Young was reading the paper and drinking morning tea Sunday morning when all three of his children came bustling noisily through the house, looking several degrees nattier than he would normally expect on a weekend, at least three hours earlier than he’d ever expect to see any child over the age of 12 on a day with no school.

He looked over his paper over his reading glasses, and said, “What’s this then?”

“Aren’t you coming, Dad?” Sarah asked.

“Coming where?” Arthur said, feeling as if something had gotten away from him when he wasn’t paying attention.

“Church, Dad,” Sarah said. “The church down in Tadfield is reopening today.”

Now if anyone but Sarah had said it, he’d have dismissed it completely, but something about her voice unlocked a whole raft of memories he’d somehow mislaid, or overlain with a slightly different reality. He felt dislocated for a moment. “I’d forgotten it was even there.”

“Yeah, that’s what She wanted you to do,” Adam said. “But She’s opening it back up.”

“She?” Arthur said, still completely at sea.

“We met G_d yesterday,” Locke started, and then sighed. “You’d best tell him, Sarah, it will save trouble.”

“Met…” Arthur Young had once thought that his solid English upbringing had prepared him to approach any novel situation with the appropriate aplomb, but lately he had too-often been proven wrong.

“Yesterday,” Sarah explained with the weary sigh of someone who has just realised that their calling has landed on their head and that they asked for it and that they are now going to have to explain things over and over again forever, “the Almighty came down with several angels and demons and had cake with us at the boys’ birthday. And She told us to come see Her at the church, which She’d apparently hidden from us so that Adam would have a chance of saving the world rather than ending it.”

Arthur stared at her over his paper. His glasses slid a little further down his nose. “She?”

Sarah started to open her mouth, but Locke said, “This one’s mine,” and then turned and said, “Apparently G_d does not have an inherent gender but tends to prefer female pronouns and presentation, so we respect that. And we’re going to church because She’s got answers we want to hear.”

Arthur wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted answers to questions that he’d been taught long ago to stop asking, but there was such certainty in the children’s* voices that he found that he believed them completely, and that perhaps this Sunday, in the light of all that had happened, he might, just maybe, be curious enough to try something new. 

*They would continue to be “the children” as long as he lived, even when he was 87 years old and they were well into their middle age.

He sighed. “All right. Is your mother going?”

“She took an armload of bouquets down an hour ago,” Adam said. “I told her she didn’t need to, but apparently it’s a reflex?” 

Arthur suddenly flashed to his wife, younger, with darker hair, laughing as she set bouquets around the church, asking him for help and giggling as he lifted her up to reach a vase sconce just out of either of their reach. How he’d finally worked up the courage to ask her to lunch, and for the first time in a while, he smiled. 

“Let me get my tie,” he said, and folded his paper.

Aziraphale woke to the smell of a fancy, chocolatey coffee* and something flaky and baked sitting on the little table next to the bed. Crowley slouched in Aziraphale’s chair, watching him.

*Let us be honest. It was more chocolate and foam than coffee. The foam made a picture that might have been a heart, or angel wings, if it hadn’t been jostled in transit from the bakery.

“Oh, I dropped off!” Aziraphale said, sitting up. “I wasn’t expecting to.”

“’s my soothing presence,” Crowley said. “Coffee?”

“You’ve been busy. I’m rather surprised you’re up first,” Aziraphale said, as he swung his legs out of the bed. 

“Wellll,” Crowley said. “Have places to be, don’t we? Wouldn’t want to be caught flat footed if Herself decides to deaconise us.”

“Deacon???” Aziraphale sounded put out. “Certainly we’d be higher up than that. Bishop, at least.”

“She said we were out of the hierarchy,” Crowley said. “Visiting prelate, perhaps.”

“I suppose we’re going to have to come up with something other than Angel and Demon to think of ourselves as,” Aziraphale said with a sigh. “That’s the problem with human language. You think up something new, and the words aren’t there until you invent them.”

“Just ask Her,” Crowley said. “You’ll always be ‘angel’ to me, don’t think I can help it.”

In the manor, Harriet dressed reflexively in her “going to church” clothes, which were distinct from her “tea with the other ambassadors’ spouses” clothes and from her “state dinner” clothes. When she’d finished, she walked down the hall and asked Mary if she was coming.

Mary looked utterly at a loss, and then frowned, looking out the window. “Where is Master Crowley off to on a Sunday?” 

“I told you,” Harriet said. “Church.”

Mary opened her mouth and then shut it again, watching Crowley adjust—”Is he wearing a suit?”

Harriet looked out the window. Crowley was not only wearing a suit, he was wearing a deep indigo brocade suit with a decided peplum. She nodded.

Mary seemed to weigh her options, and finally settled on, “Well, I might pop over for a bit, if only to see him step foot in a proper church. Didn’t know he could.”

“I had the impression that he’d, er, reformed,” Harriet said. “Or something like that. Would you like to ride with me?”

“Oh, bless you. Such a lovely offer. I really wouldn’t want to impose,” Mary said, looking as if she would actually like very much to impose.

Harriet smiled, on familiar ground. “Oh, it’s no trouble. I insist. And you look very appropriate for it already; were you planning on going out?”

Mary waved her hand. “Oh, most of my clothes look like this. I got in the habit, see…”

Harriet coughed out a startled laugh. “I suppose you did, didn’t you?”

Mary looked at her blankly, “Whatever do you mean?”

Harriet blinked. “Just let me get my handbag.”

Lucius and his father walked over to the church just before ten. The building was a typical old country church, large enough that once upon a time it could have contained half the population of Tadfield, but not enormous like the great cathedrals of the larger towns and cities. The shape of the stones spoke of great age, but they gleamed with a pristine cleanliness that should have been impossible for a building that had clearly been there for many hundreds of years. The fine stonework and stained glass were unblemished, and the foliage and lawns around the building were verdant, at odds with the dryness of the late summer. 

The sign at the front, hung from posts, said, “Tadfield Church of the Divine Revelation.”

There were only three cars parked in the church carpark, but they could hear laughing within, voices from a half dozen people. 

The church felt familiar enough to Henry. Now that he thought of it, he hadn’t been back to this building since long before his wife had died. Even before Lucius had come along, they’d ended up following friends to another church and then, what had happened? He wasn’t sure yet. He remembered meeting his wife in the small choir. They’d talked, before it became clear that for one reason or another they couldn’t conceive, about baptizing their babies there, had married there. How had it been so easy to stop? He remembered something about renovations, but then… Like so many things, it had slipped away, new habits formed. 

It looked cared for, the church. It had had another name, once, hadn’t it? He supposed given the events of the days prior, it was hard to imagine another name for it. Divine revelation. There’d been quite a lot of that. 

Harriet, Mrs. Dowling, he supposed, was waiting in the doorway, smiling when she saw the Johnsons, and then looking over to see a cluster of people walking down the hill from the Youngs’ house. 

“Shall we, lad?” Henry asked his son.

“Yeah,” Lucius said, giving a friendly-but-guarded smile to Harriet as they approached the step.

Crowley had known, intellectually, that the consecrated ground (it had been a long time since any ground had been so consecrated) would not hurt him, but knowing did not beat remembering, and his first step inside had been hesitant. His second had been confident, the place, with its solid stone and ornate carving, exuding the kind of holiness that only came from divine presence, but there was no heat, no sting, no pain. What there was, was flowers, everywhere.

And a frustrated Mrs. Young, frowning at a bouquet with broken stems and a wall sconce vase she’d tried to reach and failed.

His hesitation completely forgotten, he stepped forward, healed the broken stems, and said, “Can I help you?”

“I know you’re tall, but you’re not that tall,” Deirdre said.

With a wink, he let his wings slide into view, and took the flowers from her now-nerveless fingers, gave a gentle flap, set them in place, then let himself settle to the floor. 

“Really, love, that’s a bit much,” Aziraphale said. “Can we help you with anything else?”

She pointed to the other sconce on the opposite side of the front area of the nave. 

“This bunch?” Aziraphale asked, holding up the last of the flowers. 

She nodded. 

He snapped his fingers.

“Oh, like that’s not showy?” Crowley asked.

“The wings are more flash,” Deirdre managed. “The—” she snapped her fingers, “—is more intimidating. Maybe.”

“So have we seen Her yet?” Aziraphale asked.

Deirdre shook her head. “I brought down the flowers and I’ve been busy with them since I got here. You’re the first I’ve seen.”

“I wouldn’t expect a usual service,” Aziraphale said.

“I can’t remember the last time we went,” Deirdre said, picking up stray leaves and tucking them into one of the buckets. They each picked up a bucket and carried them back out to the vestibule. “It just got rather busy, and then with Adam, and…” She set down the bucket. “Here I am making excuses to actual angels for why I haven’t gone to church.” She wrung her hands nervously.

“I think it’s, oh, eighty years since I’ve been,” Aziraphale said reassuringly.

“You’re really going to count trying to entrap Nazis in a building that was subsequently blown up as ‘going to church?” Crowley said.

“Well, it was enough going to church that you were hobbling for a day and a half,” Aziraphale said shortly.

She blinked at them both. “Someday I hope you’ll tell us some of the old stories,” Deirdre finally said. A moment later, on reflection, she wasn’t so sure she was ready for it.

They came in with a bustle, despite being only seventeen people when all had filed in, in a church that had once upon a time held hundreds.

The morning was bright, sunshine streaming through colourful windows to settle vivid on the pale stone floors. 

Those who had spent time in churches settled automatically into the pews, those who hadn’t followed a little more slowly. 

Crowley and Aziraphale sat in the front, despite the temptation to sit in the back and watch, and the kids all piled into the next pew back. In some unspoken consensus, everyone older than 25 (except Crowley and Aziraphale, of course) ended up on the right side of the church, the kids on the left. 

Anathema and Newt, who had come because Adam had texted and asked them, sat with the kids, as they’d spent less time with the adults.

They talked quietly in the seats for a few minutes, no one quite ready to ask when something was going to happen, when the carved red door opened again, and She walked in, looking as She had each time they’d seen Her before, trailing behind Her a sizeable number of beings who were probably doing their best to appear human but mostly failing. At the front of the aisle, the Lord turned around and said, “Take seats, all of you. No, don’t divide yourself by type, just sit down somewhere. In the pews. The benches.”

There was a great shuffling, and a settling, and the humans watched with wide eyes as representatives of the hosts of Heaven and Hell sat down among them. The demons present had all done what Crowley had done, hesitating at the threshold, then walking in when it didn’t hurt.

The Lord looked at the crowd, sighed, and then said, “Right. So, this is not going to be a lecture from the bible, nor a sermon, really. It’s more to be a conversation. You ask me questions, I ask you questions, maybe there are answers, maybe not.”

“How come,” asked Brian, “how come they can come in?” He nodded in the general direction of a nearby demon, 7 feet tall and wearing a completely incongruous business suit, despite an otherwise scruffy appearance and a pair of horns he’d forgotten about hiding.

“Yeah, I thought, like, sacred ground and stuff was a problem for demons,” Wensleydale asked.

“I decide who can step on consecrated ground and when,” the Almighty said. “They are here to learn, and to hear my apology.”

The whole room went absolutely silent. 

“When Heaven went to war, I was young, and caught off guard, and not ready for the next phase of my experiment. I did not understand my own power, or the responsibility that came with it, and I did the only thing that came to mind to stop the fighting—I pulled my creations apart, and divided them from each other, to stop them from destroying each other and everything I’d built, utterly. But I allowed one side to think itself favored, and the other side to think itself banned, when in reality I allowed the conflict to separate those inclined to order from those inclined to chaos. I removed power from no one, and the process allowed weaknesses to form in all. And the result went further than I could have imagined, and hurt everyone involved more than I could have dreamed.”

“How… How were we hurt?” Uriel asked.

“You were all so afraid to break from the rules that you stopped thinking about their intention. My Intention. Heaven was hampered for millennia by that, and none of you have been home to where you started since the war ended.”

And they remembered. Remembered that first Heaven, the one where they had been created, where rules had been few and joy had been great, until the Earth, until the dissent, until they’d cast the joy away for certitude and rightness. That they hadn’t realised, as their counterparts had, that they’d lost the one true thing. 

“We forgot how—” Michael said. “We forgot how to love.”

“Aziraphale didn’t,” Uriel said. “That was why he didn’t seem to fit.”

“Crowley, neither,” Ligur said. “Felt wrong on him, always.”

“They were the only ones who did not fight,” She said. “And they were apart forever after from the rest of you.”

“What are we, now?” Aziraphale asked. “We lack words for this new reality.”

“You have both long been my stewards,” She said. “Do you need more?”

Aziraphale found, abruptly, that he did not. He closed his mouth and sat back.

“Excuse… excuse me,” Henry said hesitantly.

“Yes, my dear?” She said, looking at him.

“What— How— Do you want us to do something? Us humans? I’ve gone to church my whole life. Is that what you want? Our prayers? Our worship?”

She hesitated a long moment, and then said, “Church is a useful way to keep humans working together toward common goals in community. It is not necessary to me that any human attend, or even worship me, but I do think that you all tend to do better when you’re working together. I would not say that the current goals of many existing churches have much to do with my priorities. But that doesn’t necessarily matter.”

“What are your priorities?” Harriet asked.

“For you?” the Lord asked.

Harriet answered, “All of it. Do you have priorities for yourself? Priorities for us as a planet? As a species? As individuals?”

“That could take considerable time,” She said. “For you, I would love to see you find your best self, whatever that means for you. For humanity as a species? I’d like to see the glimmers of brilliance and complexity I see in you come more richly to fruition. I’d love to see you stop spending so much time worrying about what will happen after and worry more about the world you live in. I can’t give you rules for that. I gave hundreds of rules, once upon a time, to keep the people who listened safe, but times change and I would rather you find ways to live in this world that hurt each other less and worry less about pleasing me. Kindness pleases me. Care pleases me. Creativity and joy please me. Those who strive to understand the world and the people and the breadth of my creation please me. One can do all these things without ever doing them in my name and I will still be pleased that they are done.”

“What about the planet?” Anathema asked. “We’re breaking it.”

“The challenges are not insurmountable,” the Lord said. “You still have time to correct much of the damage that has been done.”

“Could you fix it for us?” Adam asked. “Could I? I know, when the thing happened, I affected the whole world.”

“I could fix it,” the Lord said. “But the consequences might be dire in ways that even I cannot predict. I’m sure you still remember a bit of what happened the last time you tried. There is more in existence than this reality alone, and I really cannot explain how many things could happen which could affect far more than your world. It would be better if you found ways of, hm, delegating the tasks. You already have several pieces you will need, and the tools to make more.”

Lucius spoke up. “How far does my blessing reach?”

At that, the Lord smiled, and said, “I’ll leave that for you to discover. Ask for help if it gets to be too much.”

“How can I help?” Matteo asked. “And what should I call you?”

She smiled. “I used to like Shaddai. Aziraphale used that, before. Crowley sometimes calls me Adonai. And as for how you can help, ask that question of Adam and Sarah.”

Matteo gave a respectful nod.

“Do we have to be good now?” asked Ligur. 

She shook her head. “You have free will, with some limits. I have not thrown open the cells in Hell, nor opened all the gates of Heaven, but you now have the ability to decide whether to open the doors you have access to. You may choose what you do with that freedom in your domains. On Earth, you will abide and learn, without manipulation.”

“But what is the goal?” Michael asked. “What are we striving towards? What are we to do?”

“Your personal task right now, Michael, is to learn to be, without knowing. This is an interlude. In twenty Earth years, we shall reconvene and begin the next stage. You’ve been on duty your entire existence. Take a vacation. Try a fruity drink. Sow kindness. Learn.” 

There was a long moment of silence, and then Deirdre said softly, “May I ask a question?”

“Of course,” the Lord said. 

“How much of it… How much of what happened with the boys was an accident?”

G_d laughed. “I did not see all of it, but I saw some. The rules of your reality do not allow me full precognition. Closing a church to influence the placement of a certain nunnery. I was aware of a number of potential births in the area; that it was yours that so closely correlated with Hell’s plans— There were eight families in Tadfield proper expecting at the same time, you were just the closest to being ready when they sent Adam up. I had very little effort to make once you were in labor, other than watch. Delightful, really. I fully expected to have to meddle more, but Hell’s agents managed all on their own.”

Mary blushed at that. Hastur glowered. Beelzebub looked thoughtful. 

“So are we going to get super—” Brian glared when Pepper elbowed him, “—I mean are we going to, well, get blessed? Like Locke and Sarah?”

“Adam may, if he chooses, and you want to, use a blessing to help you in some way, or to help the world in a way that you choose.”

“Did you mean for my blessing to reach so far?” Sarah asked. “I can record something, send it to someone, have them translate it into their language, and it still works.”  

“You asked to be believed when you speak truth,” the Lord said. “Speech is complex and varied, and humanity has come up with many methods of communication. It would not be kind to limit truth to only the people who can stand next to you, hear you, and understand without translation. Your failsafes will protect your words from being used to manipulate people with falsehoods in erroneous translations.” Her voice held an edge at the last. 

“How much should we be telling other people?” Pepper asked. “Are we some kind of new ministry? Because quite honestly, I’m only 12, I think I’m a bit young for that.”

“Thirteen was the traditional age of the covenant,” the Lord said. “You are not so far off, but no, I make no requirements of you. What you choose to do is up to you. In twenty years, I may ask something of you, but you will always, always have a choice.”

“When I’m thirty-three?” Adam asked quietly.

There was a shiver of recognition from those who had had more religious education, and a sharp intake of breath from Aziraphale. Crowley muttered under his breath, “Should have left it at forty years. First time was bad enough.”

“You will not force martyrdom on my son,” Deirdre said, her voice calm but full of steel certainty.

“Conditions have changed,” the Lord said to Deirdre. “I have already learned the lesson I needed to learn. He is not walking My Child’s path, but his own. He started carving it when he refused mastery. But he chose to love the world, instead, and stepped onto a new path. I couldn’t be more pleased with him. Be at ease, darling.”

“What are you going to do?” Adam asked. “In 20 years?”

“I’ll tell you then,” She said. “In the meantime, live. Learn. Be kind to those who need kindness. Speak truth to those who need truth.”

“And what of the afterlife?” Henry asked. 

“That is not something I wish you to concern yourself with at this time. I know you ask because of your wife, and I will not be cruel to either of you. Be at peace,” She said. 

Henry’s eyes widened, and he breathed in sharply, then gave a small nod. 

“How come there’s no crucifix?” Lucius asked. “At our other church, there’s a great big one.”

She smiled him the slightly pained smile of someone explaining something awkward to a child. “It was bad enough the first time,” She said. “And I said no worship of idols for a reason.”

In the quiet that followed, Matteo spoke up hesitantly, “Sha… Shaddai? Can I study with you? Look at the old works? Understand what is wrong and what is right about them? I turned away from the church of my birth, because it did not feel…” He paused, searching for a word, and then said, “It did not feel kind the way I wanted it to be kind. But to know that You are true and that You exist and are willing to speak with us… How better could I live my life than to sit at your feet and study truth?”*

*Before this moment, Matteo was working on his third graduate degree. He already knew there would not be another.

She looked at him and said, “You may return each Sunday. In the meantime, if Sarah is willing, much can be gleaned from the boon she requested.”  

Sarah felt a calm settle over her, brushing away the buzzing energy of the previous two days, and said, “I’m willing. Matteo has already been a tremendous help. It feels like the work of a lifetime, though. I’m not sure we can do it at my parents’ house.”

“You may use the vicarage,” the Lord said. “It should suit your needs.”

“They’ll need internet access and food,” Adam said.

G_d turned, looked him in the eye, and said, “As I said, it should suit their needs.”

Adam’s eyes widened. “Thank you.”

She nodded, and they were suddenly reminded of a meal of bread and fish, and fields of manna. 

Harriet finally spoke. “Most of my religious life, we were told to go out and spread the Good Word. Should we be evangelizing?”

“I neither want you to hide the truth nor coerce people into a new religion,” the Lord said. “Those who need to come, will come. There is no one true path to rightness. But Heaven is not a reward to be sought. The weight on a person’s soul is determined by the work they do on Earth. There is no easy path, no last minute redemption. It is not about following specific rules. You cannot know your destination by knowing where you are. Only the trajectory matters. Life is a long string of choices and what you make of them. Do not be cruel. Try to be kind. Take care of each other. Find your strengths. Perfection is not required. Intention and willingness to learn are.”

Pepper stood up, and said, “What about the harm we cause in living? Should we be vegan? Can we own pets? Is driving a car a sin?”

Her smile gleamed bright for a moment, and then She said, “I did not make the world devoid of dependency, and survival is not a sin. The old laws stated that it was transgressive to deprive a starving person of a forbidden food. This was for good reason at the time, both the forbidding of certain unclean foods and the allowance of exceptions. I do not mean for My children to starve. I do not mean for you to leave no footprint on this earth. But I do intend for you to strive to be kind, where you can, to improve the world where you can. If you are able to tread more lightly, and eat more kindly, you should. But I gave you sheep and goats and the like as I gave the gazelle to the lion and the grass to the gazelle. Abel brought me new life, which he had nurtured gently and kindly, and used as I intended.”

“Do you know about the factory farms?” Pepper asked, unconvinced.

The Almighty closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them. “I do. There are more people now than could ever have been supported one farmer at a time. Perhaps the truth of kindness will reach them. It is possible to be kind, even while being efficient.” 

“I want to help,” Pepper said. “I want to understand how to do it better and I want to explain to people how to do it better and I want them to believe me and follow through.” 

“Specifically with animal farming?” the Lord asked.

“Animals and plants and cars and women’s rights…” Pepper paused, as Locke whispered into her ear. “I mean, human rights, gender and racial equity, and climate change.”

“This is a large task, child,” She said. “You want all of it?”

“I’ll help,” Anathema said, smiling proudly at Pepper.

“I’d like to help with the technological side of what they’re doing,” Newt said. “But I’m really rubbish at computers.”

The Almighty looked momentarily nonplussed, looked at Newt more closely, and then laughed. “I’m so sorry, child. I’m afraid it actually slipped my mind.” 

He looked perplexed.

“Agnes was pretty clear on what would be needed from you, at the last,” G_d said. “So I may have meddled. But it’s no longer necessary.”

Newt looked puzzled, and then felt something that wasn’t quite electrical but wasn’t quite not electrical pass through him. 

“What happened?” he asked.

“I just, oh, how do you say it now? I reversed your polarity. Well, it would be more accurate to say I put it back to where it would have been had I not meddled a little with you at your birth. Your trouble with computers should be gone.”

Newt looked like he might burst into tears. Anathema took his hand. 

“I wanna help Pepper, too,” Brian said. 

“Yeah,” said Wensleydale.

“Chaos and order are necessary for change,” She said. “I think you will both find your natural abilities well-suited to the tasks at hand. Would you like some time to decide what you would specifically like to do?”

Wensleydale shook his head. “I want to do what is needed to help Pepper as best as I am able.”

“What he said,” Brian added.

Pepper and Adam looked at them, and then at each other. Something shifted. Adam looked thoughtful, and a little wistful, and then nodded. Pepper turned and said, “I would be honoured.”

“They’re so young,” Deirdre said.

“If they come to me,” the Lord said, “and they ask for their burden to be lifted, I will lift it from them. I do not expect any of my children to always be the same. Change is allowed. Change is encouraged.”

“They still need school,” Arthur said. “They can’t go gallivanting off to save the world when they have school.”

“But it’s breaking now,” Pepper said. “If I wait until I’m 18 or 21 or 30, there won’t be a world left at this rate. I can’t wait 20 years to start.”

Silence hovered in the room.

Crowley stood up, straightened, and said, “I think that’s where we can help.” He looked over at the demons and angels who had filled the back of the church.

He turned to face the Almighty. “Adonai, may we send them out into the world, to help stabilise it? Remove all the old curses? The holy blindness? Ease the pain we all, all, caused? Soften the hardened hearts, remove the extra temptations? You know they’re capable of coming up with a lot of nonsense themselves, but we’ve all meddled, and it’s making it worse.”

“You may, and you may provide clarity where needed,” She said. Then, addressing the throngs that filled the church, “Demons, I am not asking you to ‘be good,’ because that is not your nature. Please know that the goal is not for order and Heaven to win, but for balance to be attained. You will each know where you need to go, and what you need to do. Successful completion of your goal will, hmmm, score points. Undermining your opposition will lose points. I will know if you do.”

“Does this mean no fruity drinks?” a voice called out from the back. 

Crowley squinted and said, “A few, Ligur. More when the job is done.”

“Is this enough of them?” Pepper asked, peering at the several hundred beings she could see..

Aziraphale leaned forward. “There are twenty million of them back there. I think it’s enough.”

“What, how?” Wensleydale turned and stared at the church, which was full, but not overfull.

Sarah said in wonder, “Size is arbitrary to demons and angels. Most of them are only here as awareness, not a physical body.”

“How did you know that?” Matteo asked. 

“It’s obvious, if you look right,” Sarah said. “They sort of sparkle. Like dust motes, but without the sunbeam. I can see it.”

“Molecules,” Adam said, as if that explained everything. 

“Adequate?” Crowley asked Pepper.

She nodded, eyes wide.

There was an abrupt rustle as the embodied hosts stood as one, and even the air seemed to stand at attention, and then a rush of air as the church abruptly emptied until the only ones left were the humans, Aziraphale, Crowley, and G_d. 

“See, now you can still be a kid, but you’ll be learning what you need to learn to do the job, and once that lot have had a chance to work, you’ll have a better sense of what still needs doing,” Crowley said to Pepper.

“I don’t know how I’m going to handle school knowing what we know now,” Pepper said.

“Won’t be much difference from when I went through it,” Sarah said. “You’ll feel like you know something everyone else doesn’t, and you’ll feel like people don’t understand you, only this time, you’ll be right. And I’ll be around. If you need me to explain something to someone, I don’t mind.”

“And me?” Adam said, turning to his Grandmother.

“What about you?” She asked.

“They all have something to do, together. What’s my place in this?”

She smiled. “Your task is to find your place, and decide what you are going to do with what you’ve been given.”

“Is it safe for me to ever love?” Adam asked.

“You love already, you love harder and wider than any other human ever has,” She said.

“But, like, will I ever be able to trust in a relationship that I have not coerced someone into caring about me?” His voice was quiet.

“I mean for my children to have free will,” She said. “And they shall. Be easy with yourself. And bring them before me if you are in doubt.”

He hesitated, then nodded, and the tension flowed out of the room. 

“Shaddai, is this to be our church from now on?” Henry asked.

“If you choose it,” She said.

Henry snorted. “As if I could go back to anything else after this!” His gesture seemed to encompass not only the church but everything else beyond.

“Kinda miss the singing, though,” Lucius said softly. 

“Oh, I love singing,” She said. “Lift up your voice, young Lucius.”

He glanced around, cleared his throat, and then started in on the “Old Hundredth,” rather startled to find that changing the pronouns was effortless. His baritone was clear and mellow, and did not crack. When he came to the second verse, Wensleydale joined him, voice still high enough to sing the descant. The sweetness of the old hymn rang through the church as the adults joined in. 

When they finished, there was a smattering of applause, and a radiant smile from the Almighty. “Does anyone else have a song for me? Doesn’t have to be church music. I’m partial to The Sound of Music. ”

The question burst out of Crowley before he could think better of it. “Why that?”

She looked at him with bemused tolerance. “Because, Crowley, it shows someone turning from the church for the benefit of children, because her kindness there means more than any slavish devotion to Me, or to the image Humanity has carved of me. Because a man given an easy path resists and does the right thing at great personal cost. Because Julie Andrews is a delight and Maria was even more of a delight before her. Because I really, really don’t like Nazis and it makes fools of them. And because it brings so many children to singing and the idea of doing the right thing because it is right and not because it is the rule. It’s essentially an incredibly subversive, layered story cloaked in a palatable sauce of sweet music. Right there in the muddling middle, and still extraordinary. It is a story that took one of the worst epochs of human history and gave people hope. Music doesn’t have to be soaring, complex, and transcendent to be fundamentally good. Sometimes it just needs to be a story you want to hear that helps you learn to sing your own song.”

It started slow, but they sang for another hour, and had tea, and bid each other goodbye, and staggered back out into the world with new burdens on their shoulders and a new lightness in their hearts. 

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said Crowley to the children as they paused by his car. 

“Yeah, but we thought it was going to get worse and never better,” Pepper said. “This is all right. I don’t mind having a job to do. Better than not knowing what I’m supposed to do at all.”

“Do you still think She was foolish to put this on you?” Aziraphale asked Adam.

“I reckon,” Adam said thoughtfully, “that most people who are actually the best for a job would be the last to say so. I’m just glad I’ve never been alone in this.”

“Great lot of rubbish being a chosen one?” Wensleydale asked.

Adam laughed. 

“Makes a lot more sense to choose a lot of people to do lots of things,” Brian said.

“What do you think She meant about consequences if She did it for us?” Pepper mused.

Aziraphale shook his head. “I sensed, well, fear, when She said that. From Her. I wouldn’t push it.”

“What could make G_d afraid?” Lucius asked.

“I’m 100% certain,” said Crowley, “that that is far beyond my pay grade. Best take what you’re given, and the help we can give as well, and take on the task as we must.”

“You’re not even a little bit curious?” Adam asked.

Crowley shuddered. “I’m naturally curious. But I’m also fond of survival, and I find that my curiosity stops when I think about Her being afraid. There are some things that not even I wish to know.”

Aziraphale nodded. “She’s more powerful than any of us ever could be. If where She comes from is so complex it could contain this entire universe as a class project, I don’t want to know about the ones in charge of Her and what they might do to us if She does not abide by the rules.”

They stood in silence for a long moment, and then Locke said, “Right, can we get ice cream?”

“Sensible boy,” Crowley said fondly. 

“It’s Sunday,” Locke said. “We should get sundaes. Do they make them here? I know I can get them in London.”

The little ice cream shop the children had been frequenting their whole lives had always been simple and out of date, but by the time they got there, a startled hot fudge machine was sitting on a countertop, and the staff didn’t seem to realise that they, by all rights, shouldn’t know how to use it already. 

“39 flavours?” Brian asked Locke.

Locke laughed. “Yeah, more than that even. They’ll put anything in ice cream now. Even hot sauce. Marshmallow. Jam. Cake. Corn flakes. Gummy bears. Anything.”

From across the street, Aziraphale asked after swallowing his first bite, “Did you bring the fudge?”

Crowley, bemused, said, “Not I.”

“I wonder which one of them managed it?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley looked thoughtful. “You know, I have no idea. Doesn’t quite fit with the things they were wanting to do, and I don’t know that Adam had had hot fudge yet.”

“’s good,” G_d murmured next to them, a fluted glass in Her hand, which She was digging into with a very long spoon. “The world could do with a little more sweetness.”

“Best not tell them,” Aziraphale said. “You’ll get pilgrims to the holy hot fudge machine.”

At that, She laughed, and vanished again.

“I always knew She was watching,” Aziraphale said. “It is considerably more disconcerting to be reminded of the fact on a regular basis.”

A faint, ethereal chuckle echoed around their heads, and then was gone.

Fin