Ellie nodded, not arguing the point, though she still disagreed. Even if you were backed into a corner and doomed, meeting your fate with a weapon in your hand, with your head held high, was different than meeting it cowering or begging for mercy.

"Oh, I know," she said, smiling sadly. The day she'd first met Crowley, he had been in no condition to present any kind of front, and so she had some inkling just how illusory that cocky act of his really was.

"Do you know," she said, scanning the menu and speaking not quite casually, "that day in the greenhouse, those accusations Raphael made against him--all he was worried about was that you might believe it and not want to talk to him anymore." He'd go away forever, Crowley had said, as though that were the worst of all possible catastrophes. "I think that frightened him more than the idea that two archangels had just damn near killed him."