Ah. Well, that explained it. She had been perfectly safe after all.

She watched the car disappear toward the center of the village, and wheeled the bike up the path to the cottage. She hadn't bothered to lock it. She was sure that Agnes would have mentioned it if she was going to be burgled, she was always very good at personal things like that.

She'd rented the cottage furnished, which meant that the actual furniture was the special sort you find in these circumstances and had probably been left out for the dustmen by the local War on Want shop. It didn't matter. She didn't expect to be here long.

If Agnes was right, she wouldn't be anywhere long. Nor would anyone else.

She spread her maps and things out on the ancient table under the kitchen's solitary light bulb.

What had she learned? Nothing much, she decided. Probably IT was at the north end of the village, but she'd suspected that anyway. If you got too close the signal swamped you; if you were too far away you couldn't get an accurate fix.

It was infuriating. The answer must be in the Book somewhere. The trouble was that in order to understand the Predictions you had to be able to think like a half‑crazed, highly intelligent seventeenth‑century witch with a mind like a crossword‑puzzle dictionary. Other members of the family had said that Agnes made things obscure to conceal them from the understanding of outsiders; Anathema, who suspected she could occasion­ally think like Agnes, had privately decided that it was because Agnes was a bloody‑minded old bitch with a mean sense of humor.

She'd not even‑

She didn't have the book.

Anathema stared in horror at the things on the table. The maps. The homemade divinatory theodolite. The thermos that had contained hot Bovril. The torch.

The rectangle of empty air where the Prophecies should have been.

She'd lost it.

But that was ridiculous! One of the things Agnes was always very specific about was what happened to the book.

She snatched up the torch and ran from the house.

– – -

"A feeling like, oh, like the opposite of the feeling you're having when you say things like 'this feels spooky,' " said Aziraphale. "That's what I mean."

"I never say things like 'this feels spooky,"' said Crowley. "I'm all for spooky."

"A cherished feel,"said Aziraphale desperately.

"Nope. Can't sense a thing," said Crowley with forced jolliness. "You're just over‑sensitive."

"It's my job, " said Aziraphale. "Angels can't be over‑sensitive."

"I expect people round here like living here and you're just picking it up."

"Never picked up anything like this in London," said Aziraphale.

"There you are, then. Proves my point," said Crowley. "And this is the place. I remember the stone lions on the gateposts."

The Bentley's headlights lit up the groves of overgrown rhododen­drons that lined the drive. The tires crunched over gravel.

"It's a bit early in the morning to be calling on nuns," said Aziraphale doubtfully.

"Nonsense. Nuns are up and about at all hours," said Crowley. "It's probably Compline, unless that's a slimming aid."

"Oh, cheap, very cheap," said the angel. "There's really no need for that sort of thing."

"Don't get defensive. I told you, these were some of ours. Black nuns. We needed a hospital close to the air base, you see."

"You've lost me there."

"You don't think American diplomats' wives usually give birth in little religious hospitals in the middle of nowhere, do you? It all had to seem to happen naturally. There's an air base at Lower Tadfield, she went there for the opening, things started to happen, base hospital not ready, our man there said, 'There's a place just down the road,' and there we were. Rather good organization."

"Except for one or two minor details," said Aziraphale smugly.

"But it nearly worked," snapped Crowley, feeling he should stick up for the old firm.

"You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction," said the angel. "It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moments of apparent triumph. No matter how grandi­ose, how well‑planned, how apparently foolproof an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of iniquity and sink headfirst to vanish without trace into the seas of oblivion."

Crowley considered this. "Nah," he said, at last. "For my money, it was just average incompetence. Hey‑"

He whistled under his breath.

The graveled forecourt in front of the manor was crowded with cars, and they weren't nun cars. The Bentley was if anything outclassed. A lot of the cars had GT or Turbo in their names and phone aerials on their roofs. They were nearly all less than a year old.

Crowley's hands itched. Aziraphale healed bicycles and broken bones; he longed to steal a few radios, let down some tires, that sort of thing. He resisted it.

"Well, well," he said. "In my day nuns were packed four to a Morris Traveller."

"This can't be right," said Aziraphale.

"Perhaps they've gone private?" said Crowley.

"Or you've got the wrong place."

"It's the right place, I tell you. Come on."

They got out of the car. Thirty seconds later someone shot both of them. With incredible accuracy.

– – -

If there was one thing that Mary Hodges, formerly Loquacious, was good at, it was attempting to obey orders. She liked orders. They made the world a simpler place.

What she wasn't good at was change. She'd really liked the Chat­tering Order. She'd made friends for the first time. She'd had a room of her own for the first time. Of course, she knew that it was engaged in things which might, from certain viewpoints, be considered bad, but Mary Hodges had seen quite a lot of life in thirty years and had no illusions about what most of the human race had to do in order to make it from one week to the next. Besides, the food was good and you got to meet interest­ing people.

The Order, such as was left of it, had moved after the fire. After all, their sole purpose in existing had been fulfilled. They went their separate ways.

She hadn't gone. She'd rather liked the Manor and, she said, some­one ought to stay and see it was properly repaired, because you couldn't trust workmen these days unless you were on top of them the whole time, in a manner of speaking. This meant breaking her vows, but Mother Supe­rior said this was all right, nothing to worry about, breaking vows was perfectly okay in a black sisterhood, and it would all be the same in a hundred years' time or, rather, eleven years' time, so if it gave her any pleasure here were the deeds and an address to forward any mail unless it came in long brown envelopes with windows in the front.

Then something very strange had happened to her. Left alone in the rambling building, working from one of the few undamaged rooms, arguing with men with cigarette stubs behind their ears and plaster dust on their trousers and the kind of pocket calculator that comes up with a different answer if the sums involved are in used notes, she discovered something she never knew existed.