They turned to stare along the bar at her, one more fuzzily than the other. Alice glanced up from her peanuts and gave them a wave, and then went back to crunching her peanuts, as noisily as possible.
There was an indignant snort from the other end of the bar; one the barman tried his best to ignore. Instead, he started to dismantle the wall of glasses. “Well, that’s her. And she’s good to drink in here as long as she wants. She’s one of us.”
“I don’t drink,” said Alice, sliding off her stool and brushing peanut skins from her hands. “And I’m not exactly one of you.”
“Don’t mind him, he’s...”
“I get it. He’s still adjusting – is that it? Not got used to having his wings clipped. I’m not the one he should be taking it out on, am I?” She smiled unhappily.
“It takes a while.”
“I said I get it.”
“I mean, you. You and Mallory and hell and Lucifer. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have Lucifer.”
“We don’t. Michael does. And what do you think he’s going to do with him?”
“End it. End the war.”
“Really?”
“You kill Lucifer, you end the war. Everyone knows that.”
“Huh. Know Michael well, do you?”
“Sure. Well... no. Not personally...”
“Huh.” Alice blinked at him. “I do.” She slid a couple of coins across the top of the bar. “For the peanuts. And this.” Her fingers closed around a slip of paper lying on the bar. Written untidily across it in green ink was a date.
A date, a time and a place... and the word “FALLEN.”
IT HAD BEEN six months. Six months since the angels besieged hell; six months since Alice, along with her mentor Mallory and friend Vin, had climbed back up to the world – cold and exhausted, but victorious. Moderately victorious, at least. Six months since she had defied the Archangel Michael, and six months since she had seen Gwyn, Gabriel’s favourite, stripped of his wings for betraying them all.
Six months since Michael had warned her that – sooner or later – he would come for her.
Six months since Mallory had left.
She still didn’t know how she felt about that.
Mallory had, at long last, been able to go home. It was what he wanted – what he needed – and Alice knew she should be happy for him. She wanted to be happy for him... But.
However hard she tried, however much she wanted... a part of her still felt the same. Like he had left her; they had all left her: with Mallory’s wings restored, he was able to go home, and Vin had wasted little time before disappearing back off to Hong Kong. And Alice had looked around at the ruins of her life and wondered what it had all been for, exactly. And every time she caught sight of the angelic sigil burned into her wrist, it reminded her of Michael, with his eyes full of spinning fire, and his warning that he would come, and she decided it might be best to just get on with things and keep her head down.
If they wanted her – any of them – they knew where to find her.
Her first problem had been finding somewhere to live. With Mallory gone, it seemed only logical that she should take over his home in the sacristy. It also seemed only logical that (given his somewhat laid-back approach to housekeeping) she should give it a thorough clean first. So she did. She scrubbed and polished and threw out a quite extraordinary number of empty bottles, which had been stashed everywhere from under the sink to inside the cold water tank. She washed the mould from the grout and shook the woodlice out of the sofa cushions – feeling only the faintest pang of guilt as she did so, given the number of times she’d woken up face to face with one of them – and she had a close encounter with a cockroach which made her entirely glad she was alone, because she screamed like a little girl. And flapped her hands. And screamed one more time before finally clamping an upturned bucket over the unfortunate creature and sitting on it, just for good measure.
But no matter how hard she scrubbed, she couldn’t quite rid herself of the image of Lucifer’s eyes, watching her from a face that was not his own.