Space Witches 1: The Book of Witches

2. Heavenly Breakfast

"Now do you believe you are dead?" the short-haired girl pointed at the demon and the angel.

I wanted to answer that hell no, I didn't, but I could not explain away the fact that the door from my room had opened onto a dining room my family did not have. Teleportation wasn't possible as far as I knew. Also the horned fellow and the angel looked scarily... real. The angel even twitched his wing to shoo off a fly that was trying to reach the plate of freshly baked rolls he was carrying.

"Keep your flies to yourself," he said to the demon who was tailing him in a manner not unlike a dog.

Which the demon did. He snapped his fingers and the fly flew to him and burrowed itself into his hair. A closer look showed that his bushy hair was crawling with all sorts of little insects. His eyes looked exceptionally bright in the midst of all that dirty skin and hair. As for his age... maybe he was a bit older than the rest of the people I saw. But nowhere near as old as the angel.

"Ewww..." I said out loud and stepped backwards, staring at the wriggling and crawling in his hair.

The horned man smiled at me in a most un-demon-like manner. At least he had decent teeth.

"Oh, we have a newbie here!" he said. "Welcome, dear!"

This announcement didn't provoke much interest. A few people raised their eyes, gave me a quick once-over and returned to their conversations or reading or just staring out of the window at the summer scenery. The overall atmosphere of the place was not exactly lively. The first word that came to mind was boredom.

"OK, who is the leader here? The newcomer wishes to meet the leader," the girl escorting me announced to no one in particular. It sounded as though she found something amusing.

"Do we have one?" a Chinese looking girl asked, dipping her roll into a mug of coffee.

"Well we did have an election last year, didn't we?" my escort asked.

"Yes, so we did... does anyone remember who was chosen for this year?" the Chinese girl asked.

No-one seemed very interested either in the question or in providing an answer. The angel approached, shuffling his feet in his comfy slippers. The closer he got, the older he looked. I had always imagined that angels would be young and beautiful, but this one looked... just ancient. Wrinkly face, white wiry hair, bags under his eyes. Very kind eyes at that, though.

"You lot... " he sighed and shook his head, "come and sit down, dear, and I'll explain things to you."

He turned his back on me and waved his hand behind it to indicate I should follow him as he shuffled off towards the end of the table where there was an empty place.

"We knew there was someone on the way when the chair and mug appeared last night, and the table stretched itself to make room for another person," he said over his shoulder.

I was too busy staring at his wings, trying to see if they were fake, to answer. It was hard to tell, though, as he was wearing a long cape of sorts with slits that let the wings through. They could have been fake, but when they moved... they looked disturbingly real. I had never believed in any of that religious stuff, despite my mother's attempts to make me go to church on Sundays. Now I began to wonder if I should have gone after all.

"Yeah, the house always knows when someone is about to arrive," said a young man with his feet on the table.

"Feet, Matthew, feet..." the angel said without turning his head.