He stood there in his dark suit coat and jeans, hands firmly tucked into the pockets of his pants, sunglasses in place and sighed. The ducks were quacking expectantly at him. They had grown accustomed to him coming to this exact spot and tossing them bread crumbs. It was rather pathetic. It was routine for Crowley now. Like he expected that the routine would someday change and the Angel would be standing beside him and chiding him for not always letting the ducks come back to the surface.
Today he had no bread, so while they quacked, they were gradually losing interest in him. There was a tingle to the air. A sort of electrical current that signaled the presence of something not quite the same as him, but similar enough.
Enough that he turned around and looked at the girl munching on her sandwich. She was young. Not like him, he decided. Initially he had thought that maybe Hastur was trying to sneak up on him. Though, it was difficult to sneak up on a demon.
He had to decide what to do. He could ignore it, walk away and pretend he never sensed the strangeness about the girl. He could just continue to watch her and look as if he were some sort of child-peeping creep. Or he could talk to her. Which required interacting. With a child.
Crowley sighed. He was going to choose the latter. There were people from all sorts of worlds in this place. Tricksters, demon hunters, demons, people with special abilities... and whatever this girl was, it was from somewhere Downstairs. Or related to Downstairs. In some world or another. Which could mean another Antichrist or something else equally worrisome.
“Pardon me,” he said finally, approaching her on the bench. “Do you have the time?” There, that was innocuous enough.