Simon sighed.

“It’s not good enough,” he said as he sat down. “I really frelled this up. The six of us against an army of souls and five Lucifers. And then Lilith and those Men In Black and all the rest of it.”

A black, starry cloud that smelled of peppermint settled round Simon’s shoulders. “Right will be, Da,” thought Xirm Christ, the first of Simon’s sons, born and died and risen on a world in which God had been tricked into imprisonment by the first and craftiest of Simon’s Lucifers. “Past you look over, obvious see not.”

“We’ve been through Hell, Dad,” Billy Christ said with a flick of the tail.

“That’s not making me feel better, kids,” Simon said.

“Da no, through Hell been me,” Xirm projected urgently. He was used to his heavenly father trapped beneath not listening, and had learned patience.

“When we died, Father,” twittered Wook, we went to Hell.”

Simon took his head out of his hands. He saw.

”’Who is King in Hell?’” Simon laughed with joy.

Things had just gotten a helluva lot easier.