It was Sunday, and incidentally it was also the first day in years that Crowley woke not from an alarm, but from the rays of sunlight that were cast through his bedroom window. After he had changed Adam into his striped pajamas and put him to sleep in his portable crib at eight in the evening last night, he himself had spent two more hours sketching at his drawing board before finally calling it a night as well. And so, he managed to wake up of natural causes, five minutes before his alarm was meant to go off.

A pair of gangly legs swung over the side of his bed, and Crowley sauntered into the living room to check on Adam, pulling on a pair of trousers along the way. The boy still slept peacefully, tightly clutching his a vaguely dog-shaped plush animal, which was simply named Dog, according to his mums. He gently poked one of the rosy cheeks and pondered briefly what could have become of him, had he found someone nice to settle down with and adopted a child for themselves. The thought only stung more with the realization that he had, in fact, found someone nice to settle down with, but was too much of a coward to admit it.

His eye fell on the freshly dusted-off drawing board that stood not too far away from the crib. A few sketches hung, taped to the surface, while others were crumpled up and strewn across the floor. Perhaps it had been too long, perhaps he had lost his touch. Perhaps he simply didn't know what to do with a historical non-fiction cover. He rather liked minimalism, Swiss graphic design and Bauhaus for their simplicity, but how could that suit an epic about a witch that blew up an entire town in the seventeenth century? He needed something a little more bombastic. Something he could hide more meaning in than was really necessary. Something—

Knocking at the door derailed his train of thought. Upon realizing that Adam was still sleeping, and Crowley quite liked the boy that way*, the man ran to the door to open it as fast as humanly possible. "Anathema? What are you doing here?"

(*Being low-maintenance and all...)

A single bushy, yet stylishly plucked eyebrow rose on the girl's face. "Just checking if the kid made it through the night."

Crowley sighed and stepped aside to let her in. "I'll have you know, he's sleeping like a… baby," he supplied when no sufficient metaphor came to mind.

Anathema crossed the room to peer over the edge of the crib. "Oh, he's the cutest!" She whispered. "He reminds me of the babe, you know?"

"What babe?"

"The babe with the power," Anathema smirked.

"No. And by the way, I'd appreciate it if you didn't wake him up. I was trying to do some thinking."

"Thinking or overthinking?" Anathema asked carefully. The girl knew him too well for her own good.

"Thinking," Crowley insisted. "Ezra asked me to make him a proposal."

Anathema visibly perked up.

"For his next book cover."

And she immediately deflated again.

"I mean it, Anathema."

Anathema scooped Adam out of his crib and walked over to the drawing board, holding him ever so gently.

"'The Nice And Accurate Vengeance Of Agnes Nutter, Witch'?" She read aloud.

"That's the title," Crowley nodded. "I don't know why, but that name rings a bell. Like I've heard it before."

His niece looked up at him.

"That's because you have," she said as she planted Adam back in her uncle's arms and started for the flat's door. "Call Ezra, tell him I've got something that'll make him go weak at the knees when he gets his hands on it. I'll meet you guys at the bookshop later today," she said with absolute certainty.

"Where are you going?" He asked.

"Home. I have to beg to mum to let me take something out of the house."

"So, do you have any idea what Anathema wanted to show me?" Ezra asked from above, standing on a ladder to dust off the tops of his shelves. It was just the three of them. The bookshop was closed, and the two of them had just split a bánh mì between themselves as their lunch.

"Not in the slightest," Crowley said. He was sat in the windowsill beside bookshop's door with Adam in his lap, who held and drank his bottle of formula on his own. Adam was a very capable boy for his age, Crowley noted.

There was a loud ringing as a certain teenager stormed through the shop's front door with a gigantic grocery bag, despite the 'closed' sign being up.

"We're closed," Ezra droned on auto-pilot.

"Hi Anathema."

"Hi Ezra, hi uncle Tony."

The shopkeeper turned to look at the new visitor and smiled before he confidently let himself slide down the ladder.

"My, how you've grown up, miss Device," Ezra beamed. "How long has it been since you first came here? Nine years?"

"Ten, actually," Anathema said. "Uncle Tony still owes me that book he never bought me because you two were too busy talking."

"Does she always hold grudges like this?" Ezra turned to Crowley, who simply said

"Yes."

"Remind me to never get on her bad side."

Meanwhile, Anathema hoisted the grocery bag onto the counter and produced a thick binder. Crowley recognized it as a genealogy project she had put together for school several years earlier.

They both watched in suspense as she scanned the meticulous index before she leafed through, looking for a very specific page.

"It probably won't come as a surprise when I say that uncle Tony and I come from a long line of witches and heretics."

Ezra shot Crowley an amused look. Crowley blushed. No. Ezra didn't seem surprised at all.

"At some point, I'm pretty sure the Illuminati and the Freemasons got involved as well, but without hard evidence I wasn't allowed to include it."

"The point, Anathema," Crowley urged as he willed the redness from his face.

"Right, the point is," Anathema said as she opened the binder, pulled a page from it and held it out to Ezra. "Agnes Nutter is an ancestor of ours."

Ezra turned as white as a sheet, the author took the page from her and read it over. And again. And again. Everything checked out. From the name to the family relations to the date and the cause of death.

"I can't believe my eyes..." He said breathlessly.

Anathema took the office chair from behind the till and put it behind Ezra.

"You're going to want to sit down for this one," she said.

And he did.

"Because here's the kicker. Agnes wasn't just a witch. She was a prophetess. She had visions of the future and knew she would one day be burned at the stake." Anathema said as she shoved the binder aside and went back to rummaging in the bag. "So, the day before she knew she was to be burned, she sent her most prized possession to her son-in-law's farm a few towns away." The girl pulled something from the bag. It was dark and large, and judging from Anathema's face, it was heavy, too.

"It can't be..." Ezra gasped.

"Oh, but it is," Anathema grinned. "A book containing Agnes Nutter's spells, visions and memoirs. All handwritten in old-timey English. It was a heirloom granny Ashtoreth left to me when she found out about my fascination with magic and stuff."

"Dear, did you know any of this?" Ezra asked as he spun his chair around to face the other man. The look of curiosity and genuine excitement on his face did something to Crowley's heart that he would never admit to another living person.

"Again, I had no idea," he said, holding up his free hand in self-defense. "Except for Anathema's childhood obsession with magic. She made sure everyone knew about that."

"Granny said the book was meant for my eyes only, but I'm giving you special permission to use it in your research." Anathema smiled proudly.

Ezra stood from his chair and walked over. He snatched a pair of cotton gloves from behind the counter and carefully started to leaf through it.

"Anathema, this is exactly what I needed. This is going to fill in so much, I… I don't know how to thank you for this."

"No need to thank me," she said casually as she stepped around the counter. "Just promise to be careful with it and give it back when you're done with your book."

Without another word, Ezra pulled the girl into what looked like a bone-crushing hug while Anathema giggled and patted his back.

"Well, thank you anyway. Have a look around, you can take home any one book you like. You deserve it."

"I think I will!" Anathema said, clasping her hands together in excitement before shooting her uncle another glare. "That doesn't mean you're off the hook, by the way."

With a pout, Crowley wiggled his wallet out of his back pocket.

"Fine, pick out a second book while you're at it."

A few hours later, while Adam napped on the sofa in Ezra's apartment, Crowley sat at the desk in the back room, next to the shopkeeper himself, who did his taxes. He rubbed at his forehead in an attempt to remedy an oncoming headache as he scribbled in his sketchbook in the dim, orange light of a single light bulb that hung overhead.

"That was exciting, wasn't it?" Ezra asked. He still had that blissful smile on his face, and Crowley knew it wasn't going away any time soon.

"Yeah," Crowley muttered sarcastically, "nothing more exciting than finding out that you descended from a medieval witch annex prophetess that blew up an entire village and all the people in it."

"Come now, dear, it's quite alright," Ezra said as he placed a hand on Crowley's shoulder and squeezed in reassurance. "I mean, it happened three hundred years ago. It's not like anyone could come after you."

A chill ran down his spine from the touch alone. He wanted to tell the other that no, that was exactly the point, Ezra, people died, but he wasn't about to have that conversation. He shook his head to chase the thoughts away. Instead, his mind drifted to how he lucked out with his last name, though. After all, my name is Anthony, but you may call me Crowley, sounded infinitely cooler than my name is Anthony Nutter. Or 'Device', for that matter. Enough people called him a 'nutjob' or a 'tool' as it was.

"How is your drawing coming along?" Ezra asked without looking up from his laptop.

Finally. Something Crowley could technically say something intelligent about.

"Not as well as I hoped it would. I just don't know where to start. Nothing I come up with seems to suit the theme."

"Well… Maybe just give it time. You're good. I'm absolutely positive you can do it."

Crowley smiled. "Glad one of us has that kind of faith in me."