Good Omens

"Awwwright!" she said, stepping down from the stool. "Finally."

She finished the drink, hefted the sword over one shoulder, and looked around at the puzzled factions, who now encircled her completely. "Sorry to run out on you, chaps," she said. "Would love to stay and get to know you better."

The men in the room suddenly realized that they didn't want to know her better. She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.

And she held her sword, and she smiled like a knife.

There were a number of guns in that room, and slowly, tremblingly, they were focused on her chest, and her back, and head.

They encircled her completely.

"Don't move!" croaked Pedro.

Everybody else nodded.

Red shrugged. She began to walk forward.

Every finger on every trigger tightened, almost of its own accord. Lead and the smell of cordite filled the air. Red's cocktail glass smashed in her hand. The room's remaining mirrors exploded in lethal shards. Part of the ceiling fell down.

And then it was over.

Carmine Zuigiber turned and stared at the bodies surrounding her as if she hadn't the faintest idea of how they came to be there.

She licked a spatter of blood—someone else's—from the back of her hand with a scarlet, cat-like tongue. Then she smiled.

And she walked out of the bar, her heels clicking on the tiles like the tapping of distant hammers.

The two holidaymakers climbed out from under the table and surveyed the carnage.

"This wouldn't of happened if we'd of gone to Torremolinos like we usually do," said one of them, plaintively.

"Foreigners," sighed the other. "They're just not like us, Patricia."

"That settles it, then. Next year we go to Brighton," said Mrs. Threlfall, completely missing the significance of what had just happened.

It meant there wouldn't be any next year.

It rather lowered the odds on there being any next week to speak of.

Thursday

There was a newcomer in the village.

New people were always a source of interest and speculation among the Them, [It didn't matter what the four had called their gang over the years, the frequent name changes usually being prompted by whatever Adam had happened to have read or viewed the previous day (the Adam Young Squad; Adam and Co.; The Hole-in-the-Chalk Gang; The Really Well-Known Four; The Legion of Really Super-Heroes; The Quarry Gang; The Secret Four; The Justice Society of Tadfield; The Galaxatrons; The Four Just Persons; The Rebels). Everyone else always referred to them darkly as Them, and eventually they did too.] but this time Pepper had impressive news.

"She's moved into Jasmine Cottage and she's a witch," she said. "I know, because Mrs. Henderson does the cleaning and she told my mother she gets a witches' newspaper. She gets loads of ordinary newspapers, too, but she gets this special witches' one."

"My father says there's no such thing as witches," said Wensleydale, who had fair, wavy hair, and peered seriously out at life through thick black-rimmed spectacles. It was widely believed that he had once been christened Jeremy, but no one ever used the name, not even his parents, who called him Youngster. They did this in the subconscious hope that he might take the hint; Wensleydale gave the impression of having been born with a mental age of forty-seven.

"Don't see why not," said Brian, who had a wide, cheerful face, under an apparently permanent layer of grime. "I don't see why witches shouldn't have their own newspaper. With stories about all the latest spells and that. My father gets Anglers' Mail, and I bet there's more witches than anglers."

"It's called Psychic News," volunteered Pepper.

"That's not witches," said Wensleydale. "My aunt has that. That's just spoon-bending and fortune-telling and people thinking they were Queen Elizabeth the First in another life. There's no witches any more, actually. People invented medicines and that and told 'em they didn't need 'em any more and started burning 'em."

"It could have pictures of frogs and things," said Brian, who was reluctant to let a good idea go to waste. "An'—an' road tests of broomsticks. And a cats' column."

"Anyway, your aunt could be a witch," said Pepper. "In secret. She could be your aunt all day and go witching at night."

"Not my aunt," said Wensleydale darkly.

"An' recipes," said Brian. "New uses for leftover toad."

"Oh, shut up," said Pepper.