After John left, Crowley grabbed Aziraphale.
"Listen, angel, that man is dangerous!"
Aziraphale looked bewildered. "Dangerous? I thought he was very friendly."
"Friendly people don't break into Hell and then burn down my office!"
Crowley said gravely, "He's a wizard. I can tell. There's evil magic in him."
This left Aziraphale thoroughly baffled. As far as he could see, John was simply a friendly book lover.
But compared with the angel's innocence, Crowley, who had fallen into Hell, clearly thought much further ahead.
As an angel who had once served God, he could tell that the man had not the slightest reverence for God.
Even in this age of technology, people still spoke of God with devotion or respect.
John's entirely appraising attitude, without a trace of respect, left Crowley almost certain that he was dangerous.
Although Aziraphale thought John was friendly, his old friend of so many years had said otherwise, so he decided to trust him this once.
An angel trusting a demon sounded absurd.
In truth, Crowley had once been an angel too. Unfortunately, God's strange actions had led him to question things.
For instance, despite being the Creator, he had wanted to destroy humanity over a trivial matter.
He had even had everything a believer owned destroyed just to make a wager with Satan over that believer's loyalty.
None of these things seemed like something a wise master would do.
And so Crowley had fallen from Heaven into Hell.
Even so, he had done no evil in Hell.
Humanity's talent for courting disaster had already outstripped any demon's ability to tempt them.
Some people's actions even made him feel that they ought to be the ones sitting on Hell's throne.
Still, that did not stop him from claiming credit for those human disasters as the results