"Thank you," Gabriel murmured, accepting the bottle without trying to hide the relief on his face. He eased himself down to sit on the arm of the pew and unscrewed the bottle, pausing for a moment. It probably, he reasoned, wasn't a very good idea for him to drink the lot of it. As careful as he was being, his wings were still in agony, and the fact was that they felt ... dirty.

It was the Faceless One's touch. Or maybe a spell. He couldn't say for sure, except that beneath the pain there was a certain kind of sharpness too. When mortals got injured, the wound had to be disinfected, right?

Gabe would rather not risk what a Dark God's touch could do to him if left untended.

So he took a couple of small mouthfuls, watching Skulduggery break the news to his friends. He met Ghastly's stare calmly and with a sort of gentle amusement. Fletcher's words made him break into a grin, and he turned his head enough to catch the Teleporter's eye, his voice still hoarse but well enough to raise above a whisper. "I've been a hobo. Pretty frequently, in fact. It's the best thing to be when you want to sit on a bench, feed the birds and watch the world go by."