“I think it’s angry,” Aziraphale said. He did not lower the kitchen knife he was holding aloft.
“Of course it’s angry, you bloody scalded it!” Crowley said, clutching a meat tenderizer and speaking with a good deal of nervous sibilance.
“Well how was I supposed to know it had been hexed?”
“Oh I dunno, pattern with the snakes eating each other wasn’t a bit of a tip-off?”
“I just thought it would be a good day to use some of the nice china. It’s a gorgeous day for a picnic–”
Just then the teacup scuttled out from behind the dustbin, its china claws raised and snapping.
There was a misaimed miracle and the clang of meat tenderizer on tile. Aziraphale attempted to kick the teacup into a kind of jerry-rigged trap made of three egg cartons, a saucepan, and a length of bubble wrap. It dodged all of these assaults and scampered towards the hallway on its many, many legs.
“No, no, don’t let it get away!”
“It’s getting away, angel!”
Crowley snapped at it viciously, missed, and Aziraphale’s ancient refrigerator began oozing blood.
“Oh look what you’ve done, now I’ll have to throw out the baklava.”
Another snap and the refrigerator was healed, the baklava crumbled into the bin.
“Why did you even bring that dreadful thing here?”
“Well it’s too chintzy for my place, and I thought it might just be gaudy and ridiculous enough for yours–”
“Oh very funny–and you’re the one who has snakes on every conceivable surface–”
“–not eating each other! That’s messed up.”
“Is that terrible teacup the sort of thing they sell in the Hell gift shop?” Aziraphale asked, exasperated.
“Nah, it’s mostly postcards. That’s my employee of the month gift, for NFTs.”
Aziraphale did not ask what enefftees were.
“Now it’s loose in the shop! How am I supposed to do any business?”
“Don’t suppose you can,” Crowley said, and watched Aziraphale’s face brighten.
There was a noise like the rapping of far too many knuckles. Aziraphale and Crowley both yelped shrilly.
“I don’t know, I thought it had gone into the stacks!”
“Great, just great,” Crowley groaned. “We’ll never find it and it will breed in there until your bookshop is crawling with deadly ceramic larvae.”
“There’s only one of them, Crowley.”
Crowley gave a dark look.
“I’m sure it’ll find a way.”
They crept from the kitchen tentatively, neither one letting go of their improvised weapons.
“Let’s think about this logically,” Aziraphale said. “What would attract an infernal entity?”
“I dunno, rotting flesh? Gloomy old castles? Tax havens?”
“Angel, why’ve you got that funny look on your face?”
“Well I–I don’t think that’s quite right, is it? Isn’t it more accurate to say demons are more attracted to corruptible things? Attracted to good things?”
“What, you’re going to draw it out with the force of good? That’ll never work.”
Fifteen minutes later they were crouched behind a shelf of papyrus scrolls watching the teacup take tiny, dazed steps towards the halo floating in the middle of the shop.
“Can’t believe this is working,” Crowley growled. “It’s like a moth with a lamp, the stupid thing. What kind of self-respecting demonic entity walks right up to an angelic artifact and just stares at it?”
“Mmm,” Aziraphale said, casting a sidelong look at Crowley, who was nestled rather close to his side.
The teacup stopped in front of the halo and tipped itself backwards, as if dazzled by the light.
They both lunged forward. Crowley took the longer leap, and brought one-twentieth of the Oxford English Dictionary down onto the teacup with a brutal smash.
Aziraphale snapped and the halo disappeared, as Crowley continued savaging the shards with Q through Sh.
“Stupid teacup, trotting up to its doom just to peek at a bloody halo…”
“Yes,” said Aziraphale, looking a little dazzled himself as he stared at Crowley. “Imagine that.”
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