“Why me?” said Crowley desperately. “You know me, Hastur, this isn’t, you know, my scene … ”
“Oh, it is, it is,” said Hastur. “Your scene. Your starring role. Take it. Times are changing.”
“Yeah,” said Ligur, grinning. “They’re coming to an end, for a start.”
“Why me?”
“You are obviously highly favored,” said Hastur maliciously. “I imagine Ligur here would give his right arm for a chance like this.”
“That’s right,” said Ligur. Someone’s right arm, anyway, he thought. There were plenty of right arms around; no sense in wasting a good one.
Hastur produced a clipboard from the grubby recesses of his mack.
“Sign. Here,” he said, leaving a terrible pause between the words.
Crowley fumbled vaguely in an inside pocket and produced a pen. It was sleek and matte black. It looked as though it could exceed the speed limit.
“ ’S’nice pen,” said Ligur.
“It can write under water,” Crowley muttered.
“Whatever will they think of next?” mused Ligur.
“Whatever it is, they’d better think of it quickly,” said Hastur. “No. Not A. J. Crowley. Your real name.”
Crowley nodded mournfully, and drew a complex, wiggly sigil on the paper. It glowed redly in the gloom, just for a moment, and then faded.
“What am I supposed to do with it?” he said.
“You will receive instructions.” Hastur scowled. “Why so worried, Crowley? The moment we have been working for all these centuries is at hand!”
“Yeah. Right,” said Crowley. He did not look, now, like the lithe figure that had sprung so lithely from the Bentley a few minutes ago. He had a hunted expression.
“Our moment of eternal triumph awaits!”
“Eternal. Yeah,” said Crowley.
“And you will be a tool of that glorious destiny!”
“Tool. Yeah,” muttered Crowley. He picked up the basket as if it might explode. Which, in a manner of speaking, it would shortly do.
“Er. Okay,” he said. “I’ll, er, be off then. Shall I? Get it over with. Not that I want to get it over with,” he added hurriedly, aware of the things that could happen if Hastur turned in an unfavorable report. “But you know me. Keen.”
The senior demons did not speak.
“So I’ll be popping along,” Crowley babbled. “See you guys ar—see you. Er. Great. Fine. Ciao.”
As the Bentley skidded off into the darkness Ligur said, “Wossat mean?”
“It’s Italian,” said Hastur. “I think it means ‘food.’”
“Funny thing to say, then.” Ligur stared at the retreating taillights. “You trust him?” he said.
“No,” said Hastur.
“Right,” said Ligur. It’d be a funny old world, he reflected, if demons went round trusting one another.
CROWLEY, SOMEWHERE west of Amersham, hurtled through the night, snatched a tape at random and tried to wrestle it out of its brittle plastic box while staying on the road. The glare of a headlight proclaimed it to be Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Soothing music, that’s what he needed.