Good Omens by Gaiman Neil / Pratchett Terry

Author:Gaiman, Neil / Pratchett, Terry [Gaiman, Neil / Pratchett, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Humor, Devil, Apocalypse
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1990-01-01T02:00:00+00:00

There was a pinging sound.

Shadwell, who had been bringing the Army pay books up to date, looked up in the middle of signing for Witchfinder Lance-Corporal Smith.

It took him a while to notice that the gleam of Newt’s pin was no longer on the map.

He got down from his stool, muttering under his breath, and searched around on the floor until he found it. He gave it another polish and put it back in Tadfield.

He was just signing for Witchfinder Private Table, who got an extra tuppence a year hay allowance, when there was another ping.

He retrieved the pin, glared at it suspiciously, and pushed it so hard into the map that the plaster behind it gave way. Then he went back to the ledgers.

There was a ping.

This time the pin was several feet from the wall. Shadwell picked it up, examined its point, pushed it into the map, and watched it.

After about five seconds it shot past his ear.

He scrabbled for it on the floor, replaced it on the map, and held it there.

It moved under his hand. He leaned his weight on it.

A tiny thread of smoke curled out of the map. Shadwell gave a whimper and sucked his fingers as the red-hot pin ricocheted off the opposite wall and smashed a window. It didn’t want to be in Tadfield.

Ten seconds later Shadwell was rummaging through the WA’s cash box, which yielded a handful of copper, a ten-shilling note, and a small counterfeit coin from the reign of James I. Regardless of personal safety, he rummaged in his own pockets. The results of the trawl, even with his pensioners’ concessionary travel pass taken into consideration, were barely enough to get him out of the house, let alone to Tadfield.

The only other people he knew who had money were Mr. Rajit and Madame Tracy. As far as the Rajits were concerned, the question of seven weeks’ rent would probably crop up in any financial discussion he instigated at this point, and as for Madame Tracy, who’d only be too willing to lend him a handful of used tenners …

“I’ll be swaggit if I’ll tak the Wages o’ Sin frae the painted jezebel,” he said.

Which left no one else.

Save one.

The southern pansy.

They’d each been here, just once, spending as little time as possible in the room and, in Aziraphale’s case, trying not to touch any flat surface. The other one, the flash Southern bastard in the sunglasses, was—Shadwell suspected—not someone he ought to offend. In Shadwell’s simple world, anyone in sunglasses who wasn’t actually on a beach was probably a criminal. He suspected that Crowley was from the Mafia, or the underworld, although he would have been surprised how right he nearly was. But the soft one in the camelhair coat was a different matter, and he’d risked trailing him back to his base once, and he could remember the way. He thought Aziraphale was a Russian spy. He could ask him for money. Threaten him a bit.

It was terribly risky.

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