The mind of Agnes Nutter was so far adrift in Time that she was considered pretty mad even by the standards of seventeenth-century Lancashire, where mad prophetesses were a growth industry.

Gunpowder, charred wood, smoke, and rusty nails.

Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong; Heaven is not England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.

Ethereal musk, blonde woods, and dusty Bible accord.

Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than a fortnights metamorphose into Best of Queen albums. No particularly demonic thoughts were going through his head. In fact, he was wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.

Crowley had dark hair, and good cheekbones, and he was wearing snakeskin shoes, or at least presumably he was wearing shoes, and he could do really weird things with his tongue. And, whenever he forgot himself, he had a tendency to hiss.

Infernal musk, red patchouli, lilac cologne, mahogany, lemon rind, oakmoss, leather, and vanilla husk.

It was not surprising that she had recognized him, for his dark grey eyes stared out from his photo on the foil-embossed cover. Foodless Dieting: Slim Yourself Beautiful, the book was called; The Diet Book of the Century.

Sleek black tea, tobacco leaf, frankincense, lilac, and white musk.

It wasn't a dark and stormy night,

It should have been, but that's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convienient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is finished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor racks up the overtime.

But don't let the fog (with rain later, temperatures dropping to around forty-five degrees) give anyone a false sense of security. Just because it's a mild night doesn't mean that dark forces aren't abroad. They're abroad all the time. They're everywhere.

They always are. That's the whole point.

Two of them lurked in a ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Lurk," these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for over an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.

Finally, after another twenty minutes, one of them said: "Bugger this for a lark. He should have been here hours ago."

The speaker's name was Hastur. He was a Duke of Hell.

Smoky-sour labdanum, black patchouli, wet tobacco, and brimstone.

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.

Camellia, jasmine, heather, orange blossom, osmanthus, wisteria, thyme, angelica, freesia, granny's nightcap, and English wildflowers.

"What's this Crowley like?" said Ligur.

Hastur spat. "He's been up here too long," he said. "Right from the Start. Gone native, if you ask me. Drives a car with a telephone in it."

Ligur pondered this. Like most demons, he had a very limited grasp of technology, and so he was just about to say something like, I bet it needs a lot of wire, when the Bentley rolled to a halt at the cemetery gate.

Dry olibanum, black moss, soggy ti, khus, and opoponax.

Newt had been amazed to find that Madam Tracy was a middle-aged, motherly soul, whose gentleman callers called as much for a cup of tea and a nice chat as for what little discipline she was still able to exact.

A coquettish blend of tea rose, ume blossom, geranium, lily of the valley, violet, and heliotrope.

She wore a knit tweed suit and discreet pearl earrings. Something about her might have said nanny, but it said it in an undertone of the sort employed by British butlers in a certain type of American film. It also coughed discreetly and muttered that she could well be the sort of nanny who advertises unspecified but strangely explicit services in certain magazines.

Middle Eastern flowers, amber, honey, blood red-berries, whip leather, and polished paddle wood.

She herself had short red hair and a face which was not so much freckled as one big freckle with occasional areas of skin.

Pepper's given first names were Pippin Galadriel Moonchild. She had been given them in a naming ceremony in a muddy valley field that contained three sick sheep and a number of leaky polythene teepees. Her mother had chosen the Welsh valley of Pant y Gyrdl as the ideal site to Return to Nature. (Six months later, sick of the rain, the mosquitoes, the men, the tent trampling sheep who ate first the whole commune's marijuana crop and then its antique minibus, and by now beginning to glimpse why almost the entire drive of human history has been an attempt to get as far away from Nature as possible, Pepper's mother returned to Pepper's surprised grandparents in Tadfield, bought a bra, and enrolled in a sociology course with a deep sigh of relief.)

There are only two ways a child can go with a name like Pippin Galadriel Moonchild, and Pepper had chosen the other one: the three male Them had learned this on their first day of school, in the playground, at the age of four.

They had asked her her name, and, all innocent, she had told them.

Subsequently a bucket of water had been needed to separate Pippin Galadriel Moonchild's teeth from Adam's shoe. Wensleydale's first pair of spectacles had been broken, and Brian's sweater needed five stitches.

The Them were together from then on, and Pepper was Pepper forever, except to her mother, and (when they were feeling especially courageous, and the Them were almost out of earshot) Greasy Johnson and the Johnsonites, the village's only other gang.

Wild English roses, French gardenia, vanilla, honey, golden ginger, blood orange, tuberose, bergamot, and geranium.

"Excuse me," barked Tyler. "Is that your crisp packet?"

"Oh, it's not just mine," said the boy. "It's everybody's."

R.P. Tyler drew himself up to his full height. "Young man,' he said, "how would you feel if I came over to your house and dropped litter everywhere?"

Pollution smiled, wistfully. 'Very, very pleased,' he breathed.

"Oh, that would be wonderful."

Beneath his bike an oil slick puddled a rainbow on the wet road.

A toxic chypre: radioactive green musk, davana, and oozing white amber.

Shadwell had turned out to be about five feet high and wore clothes which, no matter what they actually were, always turned up in your short-term memory as an old mackintosh. The old man may have all his own teeth, but only because no-one else could possibly have wanted them; just one of them, placed under the pillow, would have made the Tooth Fairy hand in its wand.

He appeared to live entirely on sweet tea, condensed milk, hand-rolled cigarettes, and a sort of sullen internal energy. Shadwell had a Cause, while he followed with the full resources of his soul and his Pensioner's Concessionary Travel Pass. He believed in it. It powered him like a turbine.

Roll-ups, mildewed raincoat, sweet tea, and condensed milk.

The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five:

1. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side to the west side, a portion for Afher.
2. And bye the border of Afhter, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali.
3. And bye the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaffeh.
4. Buggre all this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone half an oz. of Sense should bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @"AE@;!
5. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben.

[The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty four.

They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads:

"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life," and read:

25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee? 26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next. 27 And the Lord did not ask him again.

It appears that these verses were inserted during the proof stage. In those days it was common practice for printers to hang proof sheets to the wooden beams outside their shops, for the edification of the populace and some free proofreading, and since the whole print run was subsequently burned anyway, no one bothered to take up this matter with the nice Mr. A. Ziraphale, who ran the bookshop two doors along and was always so helpful with the translations, and whose handwriting was instantly recognizable.]

Crumbling paper and ancient cracked leather with a touch of tobacco leaf and incense.

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 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, but not up close.

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

Red ginger, black spices, patchouli, honeysuckle, and three blood-soaked red musks.

"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.

An immaculately clean scent: well-scrubbed soapy skin and fresh cotton.