First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2010

Reissued in this edition in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is:

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Skulduggery Pleasant rests his weary bones on the web at:

www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk

Derek Landy blogs under duress at

www.dereklandy.blogspot.com

Text copyright © Derek Landy 2010

Illuminated letters copyright © Tom Percival 2010

Skulduggery Pleasant logoTM HarperCollins Publishers

Skulduggery Pleasant © TM Derek Landy

Cover design © blacksheep-uk.com

Cover illustration © Tom Percival

Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007325979

Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780007382279

Version: 2017-04-10

This book is dedicated to Laura.

I’m not going to make any jokes here, because apparently you are the one person on Earth who does not find me even remotely funny.

I am HILARIOUS. Ask anyone. Ask your sister. She thinks I’m HYSTERICAL (you do, don’t you Katie …?)

And yet, even though you refuse to recognise my comedy genius, and you refuse to publicly admit how impressed you are by everything I do, you’re still getting a book dedicated to you – because without you, Skulduggery wouldn’t have his Valkyrie.

You’re my best friend and my muse, and I owe you a lot.

(A “lot” being, of course, entirely figurative, and in no way implies that you’re getting a share of the royalties.)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: Scarab

Chapter 2: Home Invasion

Chapter 3: The Plan, Such as It Is

Chapter 4: Bring Me the Head of Skulduggery Pleasant

Chapter 5: The Revengers’ Club

Chapter 6: Into the Sanctuary

Chapter 7: Back to Aranmore

Chapter 8: Calling Dibs

Chapter 9: Dead New World

Chapter 10: Blood and Bullets

Chapter 11: The Faceless Ones

Chapter 12: Down the Barrel

Chapter 13: No Thanks

Chapter 14: The Fact of the Matter

Chapter 15: Back on Cemetery Road

Chapter 16: The Temple

Chapter 17: Dead Man Talking

Chapter 18: Darquesse

Chapter 19: The New Pet

Chapter 20: The Zombie Horde

Chapter 21: The Raid

Chapter 22: The Man Who Killed Esryn Vanguard

Chapter 23: Crux

Chapter 24: The Plot Thickens …

Chapter 25: Last Vampire Standing

Chapter 26: Kidnapped

Chapter 27: When Kenspeckle Met Scarab

Chapter 28: The Midnight Hotel

Chapter 29: The Sit-Down

Chapter 30: Mid-Aftrnoon of the Dead

Chapter 31: Billy-Ray

Chapter 32: Things Get Worse

Chapter 33: Possessed

Chapter 34: The Meeting

Chapter 35: Myron Stray

Chapter 36: Playtime

Chapter 37: China’s Dark Secret

Chapter 38: The Castle

Chapter 39: Hollow Man

Chapter 40: With Gordon

Chapter 41: The Exorcists

Chapter 42: The Necromancers

Chapter 43: The Road to Croke Park

Chapter 44: Revenge

Chapter 45: Searching for Scarab

Chapter 46: Endgame

Chapter 47: Crazy

Chapter 48: A Quiet Moment

Chapter 49: Escorting the Prisoner

Chapter 50: Back to Haggard

Chapter 51: Whispers

Keep Reading …

The Skulduggery Pleasant series

About the Publisher

hen Dreylan Scarab had been locked away in his little cell, he’d thought about nothing but murder. He liked murder. Murder and long walks had been two of his favourite things when he was younger. He’d walk a long way to kill someone, he’d often said, and he’d kill for a long walk. But after close to 200 years in that cell, he’d kind of lost interest in walks. His passion for murder, however, burned brighter than ever.

They let him out of prison a few days early, and he stepped into the Arizona sunshine an old man. They had kept his power from him, and without his power his body had withered and aged. But his mind stayed sharp. Try as they might, the years could not dull his mind. Still, he didn’t like being old. He counted how long it took him to cross the road and wasn’t pleased with the result.

He stood there for two hours. The dust kicked up and got into his eyes. He looked around for something to kill, then quelled the urge. The entrance to the underground prison was within spitting distance, and killing something while the guards were still watching was probably a bad idea. Besides, Scarab’s magic hadn’t returned to him yet, so even if there were something in this desert worth killing, he might not have been able to manage it.

A shape came through the shimmer of the heat haze, solidifying into a black, air-conditioned automobile. It pulled up and a man got out slowly. It took Scarab a moment to recognise him.

“Why the hell didn’t you break me out?” Scarab growled. His voice depressed him. In the open air, away from the confines of the prison, even his growl sounded old and frail.

The man shrugged. “I was kind of hopin’ you’d die in there, to be honest. You sure you didn’t? You look pretty dead. Smell dead, too.”

“I’m staying alive long enough to do what has to be done.”

The other man nodded. “I figured you’d be wantin’ revenge. Eachan Meritorious is dead though. Nefarian Serpine killed him. Few others’ve been killed since you were put away, too.”

Scarab narrowed his eyes. “Skulduggery Pleasant?”

“Missin’. Couple of Faceless Ones came through their little portal ten, maybe eleven months ago. They were forced back, but they dragged the skeleton with ’em.”

“I miss all the fun things,” Scarab said without humour.

“His friends have been lookin’ for him ever since. You want my opinion, he’s dead. For good, this time. You might get lucky though. They might find him, bring him back. Then you can kill him.”

“What about Guild?”

A bright, white-toothed smile. “He’s the new Grand Mage in Ireland. He’s a prime target for you.”

Scarab felt a tingle, a slight buzz in his bones, and his heart quickened. It was the sensation of magic returning to him after all this time of being kept locked away. He kept the elation out of his dry, croaky voice. “No. It’s not just him. It’s all of them. I’m going to make them all pay. Their world is going to crumble for what they did to me.”

“You got a plan, I take it?”

“I’m going to destroy the Sanctuary.”

The man took off his sunglasses and cleaned them. “You goin’ to need some help with that?”

Scarab looked at him suspiciously. “I’ve got nothing to pay you with, and there’s no profit in revenge.”

“This would be a freebie, old man. And I know some people who might be interested in gettin’ involved. We’ve all got scores to settle in Ireland.” Billy-Ray Sanguine put his sunglasses back on, covering up the black holes where his eyes had once been. “I’m thinkin’ of one li’l lady in particular.”

he missed him.

She missed his voice, and his humour, and his warm arrogance, and those moments in his company when she realised that this was when she came alive – finally living, by the side of a dead man.

For eleven months he had been gone and for almost a year Valkyrie had been searching for his original skull, to use as a tool to reopen the portal and get him back. She slept when she had to and ate when she needed to. She let the search consume her. Time spent with her parents grew less and less. She’d been to Germany, and France, and Russia. She had kicked down rotten doors and run through darkened streets. She had followed the clues, just like he’d taught her, and now, finally, she was close.

Skulduggery had once told her that the head he now wore was not his actual head – he had won it in a poker game. He said his real head had been stolen, while he slept, by little goblin things that had run off with it in the night. At the time he hadn’t gone into any further detail, but he had filled in the blanks later on.

Twenty years ago, a small church in the middle of the Irish countryside was being plagued by what appeared to be a poltergeist. The angry spirit was causing havoc, terrifying the locals and driving away the police when they came to investigate. Skulduggery was called in by an old friend and he arrived, wrapped in his scarf with his hat pulled low.

The first thing he learned was that the culprit wasn’t a poltergeist. The second thing he discovered was that it was most likely a type of goblin, and there were probably more than one. The third thing he unearthed was that the church, as small and as spartan as it was, had a solid gold cross set up behind the altar, and if there was one thing goblins loved, it was gold.

“Actually, if there’s one thing that goblins love,” Skulduggery had said, “it’s eating babies, but gold comes in a close second.”

The goblins were trying to frighten everyone away long enough so that they could pry the cross loose and make off with it. Skulduggery set up camp and waited. To pass the time, he sank into a meditative state, to be roused whenever anyone got too close to the church.

The first night the goblins came and he leaped out, screaming and throwing fireballs, scaring them witless. The second night they crept up, whispering among themselves to bolster their courage, and he appeared behind them and roared curse words and they ran off once again, crying in fear. But the third night they surprised him, and instead of sneaking up to the church, they sneaked up on him and grabbed his head while he was deep in a meditative trance. By the time he had figured out what was going on, they had disappeared, and Skulduggery had nowhere to put his hat.

Now wearing a head that was not his own, Skulduggery’s investigations had revealed that the goblins later ran foul of a sorcerer named Larks, who had stolen their paltry possessions and sold them on. The investigation ended there, as other events began to call for Skulduggery’s attention. He had always planned to get back to it, but never did, and so the rest was up to Valkyrie.

The skull, she had learned, was bought by a woman as a surprise, and somewhat unsettling, wedding gift for the man she was to marry. The woman had then used the skull to beat that man to a bloody and pulpy death after she found him stealing from her. The murder inquiry was undertaken by “mortal” police – Valkyrie hated that expression – and so the skull had been logged as evidence. Now known as the Murder Skull, it had found its way on to the black market, and changed hands four times before a sorcerer named Umbra sensed the traces of magic within. Umbra had acquired it and within a year it came into the possession of Thames Chabon, notorious wheeler, unscrupulous dealer, and all-round shady character. As far as anyone knew, Chabon still had the skull. It had taken considerable effort to even get in touch with him, and Valkyrie had been forced to use quite unorthodox means to do so.

The unorthodox means stood by the side of the quiet street, hands in pockets. His name was Caelan. He had been maybe nineteen, twenty years old when he’d died. He was tall, his hair was black, and his cheekbones were narrow slashes against his skin. He glanced at Valkyrie as she approached, then looked away quickly. It was close to nightfall. He was probably getting hungry. Vampires had a tendency to do that.

“Did you arrange it?” she asked.

“Chabon will meet you at ten o’clock,” he muttered, “tomorrow morning. The Bailey, off Grafton Street.”

“OK.”

“Make sure you’re on time – he doesn’t wait around.”

“And you’re sure the head is Skulduggery’s?”

“That’s what Chabon said. He didn’t know why it’s so valuable to you though.”

Valkyrie nodded, but didn’t respond. She didn’t tell him about the Isthmus Anchor, an object belonging to one reality but residing in another. She didn’t tell him how it kept the portals between these realities active as a result, or that all she needed to open a portal near Skulduggery was his original head and a willing Teleporter. She had the Teleporter. Now she needed the skull.

Caelan looked across at the setting sun. “I’d better go. It’s getting late.”

“Why are you doing this?” Valkyrie asked suddenly. “I’m not used to people helping me out for no reason.”

Caelan kept his eyes off her. “Some time ago you imprisoned a man named Dusk. I don’t like this man.”

“I’m not too fond of him either.”

“You scarred him, I hear.”

“He had it coming.”

“Yes, he did.”

He paused, then walked away. His movements reminded her of the terrible, predatory gracefulness of a jungle cat.

When he was gone, Tanith Low emerged from the alley on the other side of the street, all blonde hair and brown leather, hiding her sword under her long coat.

Tanith took her home, and Valkyrie stood beneath her bedroom window and swept her arms up by her sides, clutching the sharp air and using it to lift her to the sill. She tapped on the glass and a small light turned on. The window opened and her own face – dark-eyed and dark-haired – peered out at her.

“I thought you weren’t coming home tonight,” her reflection said.

Valkyrie climbed in without answering. Her reflection watched her close the window and take off her coat. It was as cold inside as it was out, and Valkyrie shivered. The reflection did the same, approximating a human response to a condition it had never experienced.

“We had lasagne for dinner,” it said. “Dad’s been trying to get tickets for the All-Ireland Championship on Sunday, but so far he hasn’t been able to.”

Valkyrie was tired, so she just gestured at the full-length mirror inside the wardrobe door. The reflection, having no feelings to hurt, stepped into the glass then turned and waited. Valkyrie touched the mirror and the reflection’s memories swam into her mind, settling beside her own. She closed the wardrobe and realised she hadn’t been home in eight days. She had a sudden longing to see her parents and not just settle for the memories viewed through the eyes of an emotionless substitute. But her parents were asleep down the hall and Valkyrie knew she would have to wait until morning.

She took a black ring from her finger and put it on the bedside table. Ghastly, Tanith and China didn’t like the ring – it was a Necromancer tool after all. But for what Valkyrie had had to face over the past eleven months she had needed something extra, and her natural aptitude for Necromancy had provided her with the sheer strength she had required.

She undressed, dropping her sleeveless top and her trousers on the floor over her boots. No clothes made by Ghastly Bespoke ever creased, and for that she was quietly grateful. Valkyrie pulled on her shorts and the new Dublin football jersey her dad had got her last Christmas then climbed into bed. She reached out and turned off the light before quickly pulling her arm back under the covers.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow they would find the skull and tomorrow they would use it to open the portal. Wherever Skulduggery was, the portal would open close by. Valkyrie thought about this and what she would do when she saw him again. She pictured running to him and hugging him, feeling the framework beneath his clothes that gave him mass, and she tried to imagine the first thing he would say. Something dry, she knew. Something understated and funny. Probably a boast.

When she looked at her bedside clock, Valkyrie realised that she’d been lying in bed for over an hour. She sighed, flipped the pillow to the cool side and turned over, banishing such thoughts from her mind, and eventually she experienced the welcome embrace of sleep.

It was a fitful sleep though, uneasy, and she awoke in the night to find someone standing over her. Her heart lurched, yet even through the shock, she was going through a list of possibilities – Mum Dad Tanith –and then the man reached down and wrapped his cold hands around her throat.

Valkyrie squirmed, trying to kick out, but the bedcovers were trapping her legs. She fought to break the chokehold, but her assailant was far too strong. His fingers dug into her throat and blood pounded in her temples. She was going to pass out.

The covers came loose and she slammed her foot into his thigh. His leg moved back, but his grip didn’t loosen. She got both feet against his belly and tried to shove him off. The dark shape stayed where it was, looming over her. She was going to die. She took one hand away from his wrist and pushed at the air, but the push was too weak to have any effect. She reached for the Necromancer ring, desperately slipping her finger into it, and immediately she felt the darkness within, cold and coiling. She curled her hand and thrust it at him. A fist of shadow slammed into his chest and suddenly the choking fingers were gone and he was stumbling away. Valkyrie leaped off the bed, snapped her palms against the air and the man shot backwards off his feet. He hit the wall and fell, crashing through her desk. She clicked her fingers, conjuring fire into her hand, illuminating the room.

For a moment she didn’t recognise him. The clothes were all wrong – layers of torn and filthy garments, mud-caked boots and fingerless gloves. The hair was longer, untamed, and the face was dirty. It was the beard that gave him away though. The pointy little beard that Remus Crux always wore to hide his weak chin.

She heard her father shout her name and she extinguished the fire. Her parents were about to barge in. She whipped a trail of shadow around her bed and dragged it so that it jammed the door shut.

“Stephanie!” her mother screamed from the other side as the doorhandle turned uselessly.

Valkyrie turned back to Crux just as he grabbed her and hurled her against the wall. She rebounded and jumped into him, using her knee to drive him back. She jumped again, extending both legs, her feet slamming into his chest. He wheeled back, tripping over her discarded clothes and falling. His head crunched off her bedside table.

Her parents were doing their best to break down the door.

In an enclosed space Valkyrie’s knowledge of Elemental magic wasn’t going to get the job done. The Necromancer ring was cold on her finger as she drew in the darkness. She focused it into a point and then unleashed it. It hit Crux’s shoulder and he jerked back. She did it again, hitting his left leg, and it crumpled beneath him.

“Steph!” her father roared. “Open the door! Open the door now!”

Crux came at her before she could strike him again. With one hand he grabbed her wrist, holding the ring away from him, and with the other he grabbed her throat. He pinned her against the wall, pressing against her, cutting off her weapons. His eyes were narrowed and through them she could see his madness.

The window shattered in on top of them. Valkyrie gasped as Crux was wrenched away from her. Shadows swirled and a thousand arrows of darkness flew at him and he dived, barely avoiding the barrage. He snarled, flinging himself out through the broken window.

Solomon Wreath turned to her, checking that she was OK, while shadows wrapped themselves around the cane in his hand.

The door hit the bed and it moved sharply. Wreath followed Crux out of the window and Valkyrie shoved her bed aside. Her parents barged in, her mother wrapping her in a hug while her dad searched the room for an intruder.

“Where is he?” he yelled.

Valkyrie looked at him from over her mother’s shoulder. “Where’s who?” she asked, not having to act a whole lot in order to sound shaken.

Her father spun to her. “Who was here?”

“No one.”

Her mum gripped her shoulders and took a step back so as to look at her properly. “What happened, Steph?”

Valkyrie scanned the room. “A bat,” she decided.

Her dad froze. “What?”

“A bat. It flew through the window.”

“A … bat? It sounded like you were being attacked in here.”

“Wait,” her mum said. “No, we heard the window break after everything else.”

Damn.

Valkyrie nodded. “It was already in here. I think it was in the corner. It must have flown in a few days ago and, I don’t know, hibernated or something.”

“Stephanie,” her dad said, “this room is a war zone.”

“I panicked. Dad, it was a bat. A massive one. I woke up and it was fluttering around the room, and I fell against my desk. It landed on the floor and I tried to push the bed over it. Then it flew straight through the window.”

Valkyrie hoped it wouldn’t register with her parents that all the broken glass was on the inside.

Her father sagged as relief spread through him. “I thought something awful was happening.”

She frowned. “Something awful was happening. It could have got stuck in my hair.”

After enduring another few minutes of her parents worrying about her, and checking her feet to make sure she hadn’t cut herself, her mother helped her set up the bed in the spare room and finally said goodnight.

Valkyrie waited until she was sure they were back in their own bed before she sneaked out of the window. She let herself drop, using the air to slow her descent. Her bare feet touched wet grass and she hugged herself against the freezing cold.

“He’s gone,” Wreath said from behind her.

She turned. Wreath stood, tall and handsome in a pale kind of way, dressed in black. He was as tall as Skulduggery, and as calm, but they shared other traits too. They were both excellent teachers. Skulduggery had taught her Elemental magic and Wreath was teaching her Necromancy, but they both treated her as an equal. Not every mage she met did that. Another one of Skulduggery’s talents that Wreath shared was the knack of arriving in the nick of time, for which Valkyrie was particularly grateful. “What are you doing here?” she asked. She didn’t thank him. Wreath didn’t believe in thanks.

His eyes gleamed when he looked at her. “I heard Remus Crux had been sighted in the area,” he said. “Naturally, I assumed he was coming after you. It seems I was right.”

“And why didn’t you tell me this?” Valkyrie asked, her teeth chattering.

“Bait doesn’t needs to know it’s bait. Crux might have sensed a trap and that would have sent him scurrying back into the shadows.”

“I don’t appreciate being bait, Solomon. He could have gone after my family.”

“He doesn’t want to hurt your family. We don’t know why he’s after you, but at least we now know that he is.”

Wreath wasn’t offering her his coat. Skulduggery would have done that by now.

“I don’t want this happening again,” she said. “My town is off-limits to this stuff. China Sorrows can put up symbols and sigils to make sure he can’t get into Haggard. Tomorrow that’s what I’m asking her to do.”

“Very well.”

“Solomon, next time something like this comes up, I’m expecting you to tell me about it before I’m attacked.”

He smiled. “I’ll try to remember that. It’s quite safe for you to return to your house. I’ll keep watch until morning.”

Valkyrie nodded and positioned herself beneath the spare room window.

“Oh, and the skull?” he asked. “Are you close to retrieving it?”

“We’re meeting the seller tomorrow.”

“And you’re sure he has the one you’re looking for? You’ve been disappointed before …”

“This time it’s different. It has to be.”

He bowed his goodbye then tapped his cane to the ground and invited the shadows in around him. By the time they had scattered, he was gone. It was a Necromancer trick, similar to teleportation but with far less range. It used to impress her. It didn’t any more.

She swept her arms up and a gust of cold wind lifted her up the side of the house. She climbed through the window and closed it behind her then wiped her feet on the carpet to dry them. She scrambled under the bedclothes and lay there, curled up in a shivering ball.

She didn’t get much sleep.

he next morning Valkyrie went back to her own room. It was freezing. There was glass all over the floor and the desk was in pieces. She called China Sorrows and told her what she needed. For the past six months China had been instructing young sorcerers in the language of magic, and she said she would send her students to construct a warning system around the town.

Valkyrie thanked her and hung up, then opened the wardrobe and touched the mirror. Her reflection stepped out then crawled under the bed to hide while Valkyrie dressed in her school uniform and went downstairs. It had been over a week since she’d joined her parents for breakfast and she was anxious to enjoy their company. She was also determined that today was the day she’d get Skulduggery back.

Her parents talked about the broken window – her father was confident he could replace the glass himself, but her mother wasn’t so sure – and then her dad announced his plans.

“I’m taking a half-day,” he said. “I’m off to meet a few clients, take them out for a quick nine.”

Her mother looked at him. “A quick nine what?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It’s a golf term. Men my age say it all the time. I wanted to take them to the football final on Sunday, but golf this afternoon will have to do.”

“You don’t play golf,” his wife pointed out.

“But I’ve seen it on television and it looks pretty straightforward. Hit the ball with the thing.”

“Club.”

“What could be easier?”

“Your hand-eye co-ordination isn’t the best though, and you hate long walks and carrying things. And you also regularly say that you think golf is stupid.”

“Golf is stupid,” he agreed.

“Then why would you want to take your clients golfing?”

“Primarily, it’s the outfit. The V-neck jumpers with the diamond patterns and the trousers with the socks pulled up.”

“I don’t think people wear those any more.”

“Oh.”

Valkyrie often thought her parents were ideally suited to one another. She doubted that anyone else would be capable of appreciating just how odd they really were.

She finished her breakfast and went back to her room to change into her black clothes. The reflection took each item of school uniform as it was removed and put it on.

In a town called Roarhaven, almost two years earlier, Skulduggery had shot the reflection and killed it. Its original purpose had been to fill in for Valkyrie while she was with Skulduggery, but as a result of its overuse, it began developing certain quirks of behaviour, a problem compounded when it “died”. They had returned the body to the mirror, and the reflection came back to its imitation of life, but after that it became even more erratic. It had broken free of some of its own boundaries – the changing of its clothes being a primary example – and every now and then there were short gaps in its memory.

But Valkyrie didn’t have time to worry about any of that now. She needed to get Skulduggery’s head. Besides, someone had to go to school today and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her.

She buttoned up her black trousers and pulled on her boots, letting the trouser turn-ups fall over them. The top was sleeveless but warm, and when she slipped into the coat, it was like she was suddenly wearing thermals. The material reacted to the environment and to her body temperature, keeping her in comfort no matter what. The coat was black, but its sleeves were the dark red of dried blood. A Ghastly Bespoke creation.

The reflection picked up Valkyrie’s schoolbag and left, closing the door behind it.

Valkyrie rang Fletcher Renn and he stepped out of empty space beside her. The phone crackled in her hand as the network struggled to compensate, then gave up. His blond hair was painstakingly untamed, and his grin was the usual mix of cocksure and mocking. He wore old jeans, scuffed boots and an army jacket, and the only problem with how he looked was that Fletcher knew he looked good.

“What happened here?” he asked, the grin vanishing as he noticed the mess.

“I was attacked.”

His eyes widened and he grabbed her, as if making sure she was still alive. “Are you OK? Are you hurt? Who did it?”

“I’m fine, Fletcher. I’ll tell you about it when I tell the others.”

“It wasn’t the vampire, was it?”

“What?”

Fletcher let Valkyrie go and stepped back. “What’s-his-name, from yesterday. Mean and moody vampire boy.”

“His name’s Caelan. And no, of course not.”

He nodded slowly. “OK then. And you’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“What did he say anyway? The vamp.”

“He set up the meeting, like he said he would.”

“No chit-chat then?”

“He’s not the type.”

“Strong and silent, eh?”

“I suppose. Also the sun was going down.”

“Ah, OK. He probably didn’t want to turn into a horrible monster and tear you apart on your first date.”

“I’m sensing that you don’t like him very much.”

“Well, no, on account of the horrible monster part. Do you?”

“Like him? No. I don’t even know him.”

“Well, all right then.” Fletcher seemed satisfied. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You already did.”

“Can I ask you another?”

“Can you ask me somewhere my parents won’t hear?”

He took her hand and in an eyeblink they were standing on the roof of Bespoke Tailor’s. These days, teleportation didn’t even make Valkyrie dizzy.

“Ask away,” she said.

He hesitated and then said, very casually, “Do you think things will return to normal for you when we get Skulduggery back? You and him, out solving crimes and having adventures and stuff?”

“I expect so. Don’t see why they wouldn’t.”

“That’s good,” he nodded. “It’s nice that it’s finally coming to an end, isn’t it? After everything we’ve all done and been through.”

“These past few months have been terrible,” Valkyrie admitted.

“Yeah, I know. But at the same time, like, I’ve actually been, you know, enjoying it.”

Valkyrie said nothing.

“Not in a bad way!” he added, laughing. “I didn’t enjoy the fact that he was lost, or that you’ve been so worried about him. I just mean that, for me, being part of everything, it’s been good. I’ve liked being part of a team.”

“Right.”

“So, I mean, I was thinking, I was wondering, do you think he’d let me tag along on your cases?”

Valkyrie took a sudden breath. “I … I really don’t know.”

“I’d be pretty useful, you have to admit. No more driving everywhere in that ancient car of his.”

“He loves the Bentley. And so do I.”

“I know, I know, but still, maybe you could mention it to him, when he’s back.”

“I will,” she said. “I’ll mention it.”

“Unless you don’t want me around.”

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. “Did I say that?”

“No, but … Actually, yes, you have said that, a lot.”

She shrugged. “That’s only when you annoy me.”

“Have I annoyed you lately?”

“You’re annoying me now…”

Fletcher grinned and Valkyrie held out her hand. “Downstairs.”

He took her hand and bowed. “Yes, m’lady.”

Instantly, they were in the backroom of Bespoke Tailor’s.

“You can let go of my hand,” said Valkyrie.

“I know I can,” Fletcher responded. “I just choose not to.”

She rotated her wrist, forcing him to release her in a relatively painless manner.

They smelled coffee and heard conversation, and emerged into the shop to find Tanith and Ghastly Bespoke sitting at the small table by the wall. Ghastly was shaking his scarred head in disgust.

“What’s wrong?” Valkyrie asked.

“Dreylan Scarab got out of prison yesterday,” Tanith told her.

“Who’s Dreylan Scarab?” asked Fletcher.

“He’s the assassin who killed Esryn Vanguard.”

“Who’s Esryn Vanguard?” asked Fletcher.

Valkyrie was thankful Fletcher was around. Finally, somebody who knew even less than she did.

“Vanguard was an ex-soldier who became a pacifist,” Ghastly said. Valkyrie noticed the edge of a bandage poking out beneath his shirt collar. She didn’t mention it. “This was, what, maybe 200 years ago? He talked about a peaceful resolution to the war with Mevolent, one that didn’t require one side vanquishing the other.”

“Common sense in other words,” said Tanith. “This was well before my time, but I remember my parents talking about him.”

Ghastly said, “Mevolent grew tired of him constantly chipping away at his troops’ morale and conviction, so he sent Scarab to assassinate him.”

“And 200 years later,” Tanith said, “Scarab completes his sentence and is freed. I’m surprised he lasted that long actually. After a couple of years in a bound cell, sorcerers start ageing again. I think everyone expected old age to finish him off.”

“He should be dead,” Ghastly said quietly. “He murdered a great man.”

“Do you know who else should be dead?” Fletcher asked brightly. “Valkyrie. Someone attacked her last night.”

Tanith and Ghastly stared and Valkyrie sighed, then told them about Crux.

Ghastly narrowed his eyes. “Wreath just happened to be passing while all this was taking place? For all we know he could have orchestrated the whole thing just so he could swoop in and save the day.”

“He didn’t save the day,” Valkyrie said somewhat defensively. “I’d have stopped Crux. Somehow.”

“Ghastly’s right,” said Tanith. “We don’t know what Crux has been up to since Aranmore. That glimpse he caught of the Faceless Ones snapped his mind, Val. He could very well have fallen under Wreath’s influence.”

“Solomon Wreath’s on our side,” Valkyrie said, already tired of this argument. It was one they’d had a dozen times before.

“And why would he send Crux after me? What would he have to gain?”

Tanith shrugged. “We’re close to getting Skulduggery back, and he’s close to losing his prized pupil. He gains your trust, and your confidence, and if he’s lucky, you choose Necromancy over Elemental magic.”

Valkyrie felt the ring on her finger. She hadn’t taken it off all night. “We’ll worry about that later,” she said.

“A lunatic attacks you in the middle of the night,” Tanith said with a raised eyebrow, “a lunatic who, even when he was sane, detested you and you want us to forget about it?”

Fletcher peered at Ghastly and then said, with his usual tactfulness, “Hey, what’s with the bandage?”

Ghastly adjusted his collar. “It’s nothing,” he said gruffly.

“Did you cut yourself shaving? Did you cut yourself shaving a lot?”

Ghastly sighed. “I asked China if she could help me blend into a crowd. I’m sick of disguises. So she came up with a façade tattoo. That’s all.”

“What’s a façade tattoo?” Tanith asked.

“It’s not important.”

“Then tell us what it is so we can get on to something important.”

“It’s a false face,” he said, trying to hide his embarrassment with impatience. “She tattooed two symbols on my collarbones and when they’ve healed, in theory, they’ll make me look like I’m normal for a short period of time.”

“Normal?”

“No scars.”

“Wow.”

“Like I said, it’s not important.”

“When can you try it out?”

“Another few hours. It mightn’t work, but … it’s worth a try. It’s better than having to a wear a scarf every time I go out. I think we should get back to the matter at hand. Chabon’s plane lands in an hour, right?”

“He’d be here by now if he’d let me pick him up,” Fletcher said.

“He doesn’t trust us,” Valkyrie told him. “He buys and sells and the people he deals with aren’t always as honest and trustworthy as we are.”

Fletcher shrugged. “I’d have just nicked the skull off him and teleported back here.”

Valkyrie sighed. “Do we have the money?”

Tanith kicked a duffel bag on the floor beside her. “A bit each from our various bank accounts. Good thing money doesn’t mean a whole lot to people like us.”

“Speak for yourself,” grumbled Fletcher.

“You didn’t contribute anything,” Tanith frowned.

“Is contributing time not enough?” Fletcher replied archly.

“Not when you’re trying to buy something, no.”

“Oh.”

Tanith looked back to Valkyrie. “And Val, relax, OK? We’ve thought of everything.”

“Skulduggery told me once that only he can think of everything, but he doesn’t do it very often because it spoils the surprise.”

This raised a smile on Tanith’s lips. “Then we have thought of everything that we four are capable of thinking of, and we can’t think of anything else. There is absolutely no reason to think that this won’t be as easy as meeting up, handing over the money, getting the skull and saying thank you. This afternoon we take a trip up to Aranmore Farm and Fletcher opens the portal. Then we go in, find Skulduggery and bring him back. Easy as proverbial pie.”

“Unless something goes wrong,” Valkyrie said.

“Well, yes. Unless something goes horribly, dreadfully wrong. Which it usually does, of course.”

habon had picked a café on Duke Street for the exchange to take place. Valkyrie and Tanith sat facing the door. Fletcher was beside the window, reading a comic and drinking a Coke and doing his best to look inconspicuous – not an easy feat with that hair. Only Ghastly was absent. His scars were too difficult to conceal from the public for any length of time.

A little after midday, a man with a suitcase entered. He spotted them immediately and approached. He wasn’t what Valkyrie had been expecting. His clothes were casual and he didn’t have a pencil-thin moustache for a start.

“Afternoon, ladies,” he said, smiling politely. “Do you have my payment?”

“Show us the skull,” said Valkyrie.

Chabon put the suitcase on the table and patted it. “You’re not seeing the merchandise until I know you have my payment. That’s how it works. That’s how these things happen.”

Tanith lifted the duffel bag and opened it, allowing Chabon a peek at the money within. She closed it and held it on her lap.

Valkyrie reached for the case, but Chabon grabbed her wrist.

“You’re very eager,” he said, his voice cold. He turned her wrist, eyes narrowing when he got a closer look at the ring. “You’re a Necromancer? I thought you people didn’t even leave the Temple until you were twenty-five.”

She took her hand back. “I dabble,” she said. “Your turn.”

Chabon flattened his palm on the case and the locks sprang open. He raised the lid, enough for Valkyrie and Tanith to see what it contained.

“That’s the Murder Skull?” Tanith asked. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“If you’re lying to us …” Valkyrie began.

Chabon shook his head. “Don’t threaten me, girl. I’ve been threatened by professionals. I had this discussion with your vampire friend, and all the facts we established then are still true today. So, unless you’re planning on double-crossing me, and using that fella with the stupid hair by the window, what do you say we conduct our business and part ways? I’ve got a plane to catch.”

Valkyrie glanced at Tanith, who put the duffel bag on the table. Chabon reached in and touched the money.

“It’s all there,” Tanith said.

After a moment, Chabon nodded. “Yes, it is.” He withdrew his hand and stood, taking the bag with him and leaving the case on the table. “Been a pleasure,” he said and they watched him walk out.

Fletcher came over and Valkyrie raised the lid slightly. The case was lined and cushioned, the skull sitting comfortably within. A huge smile suddenly broke across Valkyrie’s face.

They had it. They had it, and in a few hours they’d pass through the portal and get Skulduggery back. All her hard work would pay off and, by the end of the day, her life would be allowed to resume. She closed the case.

“I just want to make sure,” she said and hurried to the door. She stepped out and saw Chabon just as he turned the corner on to Grafton Street.

“Hey!” she roared, a furious look on her face.

Chabon turned. If the skull was the Murder Skull, he would have no need to panic. If it wasn’t … Chabon panicked and broke into a sprint.

“It’s a fake!” she shouted to the others and bolted after Chabon, with Tanith and Fletcher following.

Valkyrie barged into the crowd, fighting to keep Chabon in sight. She leaped over a busker’s coin tray and dodged around a man painted silver. Chabon turned right, into a long, bright lane, the duffel bag swinging wildly.

If the lane had been empty, Valkyrie would have wrapped a tendril of shadow around his ankles and pitched him forward on to his face. But there were maybe a dozen people wandering by shop windows, and a woman begging for spare change just ahead of her. Out of the corner of her eye, Valkyrie saw Tanith dart into an alcove and run up the side of the building. Valkyrie chased Chabon to the next street, where he glanced up and saw Tanith moving over rooftops to cut him off. He knocked over an old man and ran into the Powerscourt Centre. Valkyrie took the street adjacent, moving parallel to him. Through the windows she saw him crash through the lunch crowd at the restaurant, slowing him down.

She reached South William Street as Chabon staggered out of the Powerscourt Centre. He saw her, cursed and kept running, through Castle Market and straight into the old Victorian building that housed the George’s Street Arcade. She knew she had him. He didn’t have a hope of getting away now.

The stalls were set up down the middle of the arcade, funnelling the shoppers down paths on either side. There were clothes stalls and jewellery stalls and a fortune-teller behind a red curtain. Chabon chose the left path, knocking people out of his way. He stumbled over a box of old paperbacks and Valkyrie piled on the speed and jumped, her knees slamming into his back. He sprawled to the ground and she ignored the startled looks from the people around her. He reached for the fallen bag and she stomped on his hand. He shrieked, kicking, and her feet swept from beneath her. She landed just as he got up, the bag in his uninjured hand, but she grabbed one of the straps and wouldn’t let go, and Chabon remembered too late that she wasn’t alone.

Tanith came flying over Valkyrie and her boot-heel connected with Chabon’s sternum. There was a crack and he went down and rolled a few times before curling up. Valkyrie got to her feet as Fletcher joined them, puffing and panting like someone who hadn’t needed to run anywhere in quite a while.

“Here you go,” Valkyrie said as she pressed the duffel bag into Fletcher’s arms. She smiled at the crowd. “This poor boy got his bag snatched by that nasty man.”

Fletcher glared at her as the crowd applauded, and Tanith picked up Chabon and escorted him away. Valkyrie and Fletcher followed.

“That was unnecessary,” Fletcher seethed.

“If you’d been faster,” she said quietly, “maybe you could have been the hero – but you weren’t, so you’re the innocent victim. Get over it.”

Tanith took Chabon far enough away from passing pedestrians so that they could talk without being overheard. She pressed him back against the wall. He was holding his hand against his chest, obviously in a great deal of pain.

“Where’s the real Murder Skull?” Valkyrie asked, keeping her voice low.

“I gave it to you,” Chabon tried. She prodded his hands and he hissed. “OK! Stop! I had it, I swear I did. When I talked to you on the phone, I had it.”

“So what did you do with it?”

Chabon was looking quite pale. His injury was making him sweat. “There’s a … Look, there’s a rule, in what I do. If you find something that one person is willing to pay for, odds are there’s someone else who’s willing to pay more.”

“You advertised?”

“I didn’t know anyone would be that interested, so yeah, I mentioned it here and there, and someone came to me with a better offer.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Valkyrie made a fist and crunched it against Chabon’s hands. Tanith struggled to keep him standing upright.

“A woman,” he gasped. “I met with her an hour ago. She paid me triple. I didn’t think you’d ever know. It’s the Murder Skull. What’s so important about it?”

“What did this woman look like?” asked Tanith.

“Dark hair. Pretty enough. All business.”

“A name,” Valkyrie said. “A number, address, anything.”

“She called me. Kept her number private. We met in the arrivals area in the airport. She had the money so I gave her the skull. I brought a second one for you lot.”

“You’d better give us something we can use to find her,” Fletcher said, “or I’m teleporting you to the middle of the Sahara and I’m leaving you there.”

Chabon looked at him, like he was gauging whether or not the threat was serious. He obviously decided it was.

“She’s American – Boston by the accent. And she’s got that eye thing – one green eye, one blue.”

“Heterochromia,” Tanith said. “Davina Marr.”

Valkyrie’s stomach dropped. Davina Marr had been brought in by the Irish Sanctuary to assume the role of Prime Detective. Valkyrie had had a few run-ins with her already, and had found her to be ambitious, patronising and ruthless.

“If she bought the skull,” Valkyrie said grimly, “then Thurid Guild has it by now, and he’s going to lock it away to make sure Skulduggery never gets back.”

“So what do we do?” asked Fletcher.

“We steal it,” said Valkyrie.

t was raining. Again.

Scarab didn’t like Ireland. Every great misfortune in his life had happened here. Every major defeat. Even though he had done his time in an American prison, he’d been arrested here in Ireland – and it had been raining then too.

The castle was cold and there were draughts everywhere. Most of the doors had recently been blocked off, sealing away the dungeons and various unsavoury places. They were still accessible through the many secret passages, but it was proving quite difficult to get around. Also the plumbing was terrible. The cell that had been his home for two centuries had kept him alive, kept him nourished, kept his body clean and his muscles from atrophying. For 200 years he had not even needed to visit a bathroom. Where did all the waste go? Was there any waste to begin with? He didn’t know and no one had come around to tell him.

And now, suddenly, he had to eat and wash and visit the bathroom at worryingly frequent intervals, and the toilet wouldn’t flush. He’d searched for another bathroom and had quickly got lost. He had stumbled around in the dark for half an hour before finding his way back to where he started.

“Where have you been?” Billy-Ray asked, hurrying by. “They’re here.” He disappeared into the next room.

Scarab shuffled to the door and heard Billy-Ray welcoming their guests. Scarab’s bladder was still full, and he wondered if he had time to find a potted plant or something. Not that a place like this would have a potted plant.

“You’re wonderin’ why I called you here,” he heard Billy-Ray say. “You’re lookin’ at the guy sittin’ next to you and you’re goin’, hey, don’t I hate that guy? Didn’t that guy try to kill me once? The fact is, yeah, we all probably tried to kill each other a few times over the years, but y’know what? So did plenty of other people.

“And that, gentlemen, is why we’re here. That is the bond we share. This is our common affliction and so it provides us with our common goal. I got someone I want to introduce. You may have heard of him. He’s the man who killed Esryn Vanguard. Boys, I’d like you to meet the man, the legend, Dreylan Scarab!”

Scarab straightened up and walked in, keeping his steps purposeful and strong.

Four men sat at a table, with Billy-Ray taking the fifth seat. Scarab strode forward but didn’t sit. He knew each of the men, though they’d never met. His son’s descriptions were more than adequate.

Remus Crux was the ex-Sanctuary Detective, now a raving lunatic who didn’t bother washing. He was a recent convert to the Faceless Ones, according to Billy-Ray, and he’d developed a murderous fixation on the girl called Valkyrie Cain after she’d killed a couple of his Dark Gods with the Sceptre of the Ancients. Scarab had always believed the Sceptre to be a fairytale, and he’d never had much time for the Faceless Ones. He’d agreed to Crux’s inclusion, however, because while having a madman on board was a risk, sometimes risk was all you had.

The dark-haired man beside Crux was pale and dressed in black. Cain, a girl who was sounding more and more like a real and viable threat, had cut a slash across Dusk’s face with Billy-Ray’s straight razor, scarring him for life. Vampires were known for their grudges. Dusk was another unpredictable entity, for a vampire was more creature than man. But for sheer physical power he was an asset that could not be discounted.

Sitting across from Dusk was the self-proclaimed Terror of London, Springheeled Jack. His lanky frame curled into the chair, one knee drawn up to his chest. His suit was old and ragged, and his top hat was perched at an unsteady angle on his head. Hardened fingernails drummed a slow rhythm on the tabletop. Scarab didn’t know what manner of monster this was, but he knew that Jack had been driven out of England and was being hunted across Europe. Scarab liked people that had nowhere else to turn. Those were people he could rely on.

The fourth member of this little society, this Revengers’ Club, was the one about whom they knew the least. Billy-Ray had informed Scarab that this man claimed to be a killer beyond compare, who had suffered at the hands of the skeleton detective and his partner, but that was all they knew about the mysterious and deadly Vaurien Scapegrace.

Scarab stood at the head of the table and summoned all the dreadful authority he could muster.

“You’ve heard of the things I’ve done,” he said. They looked at him without speaking. “You’ve heard of the people I’ve killed. Most of these stories are true. I have killed and laughed and killed again. As have all of you.

“Gentlemen, we are a dying breed. A hundred years from now, people like us will be taken down before we’ve done anything wrong. We will be put in prison for the thoughts we think and the things we feel. We are the last of the truly great and the truly free. And they want to take that away from us.

“Sanguine was talking to you about a bond we share, a burning desire that lights within us all. We are free men, and to be free we must reject the rules and the laws that do not define us and do not apply to us. We must strike against our enemies, bring them down and grind them beneath our boots.”

“I am here because I am curious,” Dusk said. He spoke calmly, without effort or emotion. “Why should I help you?”

“I busted you out of prison for this,” Billy-Ray said. “You owe me, vampire.”

“I owed Baron Vengeous,” Dusk said. “But to you, I owe nothing. So I ask again – why should I help you? Why should I help any of you? I don’t think everyone here can be trusted anyway. Seated at this very table is someone who saved the life of Valkyrie Cain, after all.”

Springheeled Jack smiled. His teeth were narrow and sharp and many. “I stopped you from killin’ her cos I didn’t like you lot lyin’ to me, and I didn’t like your boss. The chance to mess up your plans, therefore, was too sweet to resist. Tell me, you still sore from that hidin’ I gave you?”

Dusk met his eyes. “If we were to meet on equal ground, I’d tear you to bloody, quivering pieces. Here for instance.”

“It ain’t even night yet,” Jack grinned. “You sure you can be let off your leash so early?”

Dusk launched himself across the table and Jack laughed and rose to meet him. They crashed to the ground, knocking Scapegrace out of his chair. They flipped and rolled and went at each other again, snarling deep in their throats.

“Quit it!” Scarab roared and the scuffle broke. He pressed on before they had a chance to resume. “We’re fighting ourselves? That’s how you want this to go? This is an opportunity to shake the world to its foundations, and you want to kill each other? Let me tell you – and I’m speaking from experience here – there are always more deserving people out there to kill.

“This is our opportunity to strike back against our enemies. We have a chance to succeed where everyone else has failed. We’ve seen those failures. We’ve seen where people like Mevolent and Serpine have gone wrong, and we have learned from their mistakes.”

“I nearly killed Valkyrie Cain last night,” Crux announced.

They all stared at him.

“You what?” said Billy-Ray.

“My hands,” Crux said, “around her throat. Squeezing. I could see fear in her eyes. Real fear. Almost had her.”

Dusk turned to him. “You know where she lives?”

Crux nodded. “Can’t get there now though. Saw a lot of mages marking symbols around the town. Got a perimeter there now. Can’t get in without alerting the Cleavers. Don’t like the Cleavers.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Billy-Ray snarled. “We could’ve gone in, got her, torn her to pieces—”

“I kill Cain,” Crux said, pointing a finger back at himself. “Me. Not you, not the vampire, not the idiot.”

Scapegrace frowned. “Who’s the idiot?”

“She killed the Dark Gods,” Crux continued, “but they will rise again.”

Scarab could see the anger growing in Billy-Ray and Dusk. He could use his own knowledge of the language of magic to bypass this magical perimeter, but in doing so he’d lose most of his team before they’d even started on his mission. He needed them to stay thirsty for revenge. He spoke quickly to calm the situation. “Mr Crux, if you want the Faceless Ones to return, you’ve got to make it happen. And the first thing we do is get rid of the opposition. And we have a plan to do just that.”

Dusk took his eyes off Crux. “You have a plan,” he said.

“Yes, it is my plan,” Scarab said, “but it belongs to all of us. We’re going to steal the Desolation Engine.”

Three of the men smiled. One of them looked confused.

“What’s a Desolation Engine?” asked Scapegrace.

“It’s a bomb,” Billy-Ray said. “There’s no big explosion or loud bang, just the instant disintegration of every single thing in its radius. It all turns to dust. So we’re goin’ to steal it an’ we’re goin’ to use it to destroy the Sanctuary.”

“The other Sanctuaries around the world have always looked at Ireland with envy,” Scarab took over. “They’d like nothing better than to come in here and take over, ransack everything magical from this little pipsqueak of a country and take it all back home with them. We’re going to make sure they get their wish, and we’re going to kill a few of our most annoying enemies right along with it.”

“They’ve dismissed us in the past,” Billy-Ray said. “They don’t rate us – not compared to Vengeous or the Diablerie, any of those guys. We’re the hired help. But we’re goin’ to show ’em. We’re going to show ’em that they should’ve been scared of us all along.”

“They think they know what’s coming?” Scarab asked. “They think they know what to expect? They have no idea.”

kulduggery had once told Valkyrie that the best plans are the simple ones. Her plan was not a simple plan, but it was the only one they had, so they were stuck with it.

“Here’s what we do,” Valkyrie said as she paced the floor of Ghastly’s shop. “We go to the Sanctuary and ask to see Guild. Guild will keep us waiting, as he always does, because he won’t want anything to appear different until he knows for sure that we know he has the skull.”

Tanith, Ghastly and Fletcher looked at her and nodded.

“However,” she continued, “he’ll also be assuming that we do know, so he’ll be waiting for us to make a move. Fletcher won’t be with us, which will make Guild suspect that he’s already teleported in.”

“And where will I be?” Fletcher asked excitedly.

“I don’t know, fixing your hair or something. The point is his attention will be in two places – where we are and where the skull is.”

“And how do we find out where the skull is?” Tanith asked.

“The reasonable place to put it would be the Repository,” Ghastly said. “Put it with all the other artefacts and magical objects and keep it there. But he’s not going to do that.”

“It’s too obvious,” agreed Valkyrie. “That’s the first place we’d look. It’s also the first place we’re going to look.”

Fletcher frowned. “But it’s not going to be there.”

“No, but the cloaking sphere is.”

“The invisibility ball?” said Fletcher.

“Cloaking sphere,” insisted Valkyrie.

“Invisibility ball sounds better.”

“Invisibility ball sounds stupid.” She turned to the others. “Once we get it, we call Fletcher. He arrives, we let them close in on us and then we use the sphere.”

“And they think we’ve teleported out,” Tanith finished, smiling.

Valkyrie nodded. “And then, hopefully, Guild sends someone to check on the skull. We follow, grab it and then we teleport out. If it doesn’t pan out like that, we can at least search for it without being seen.”

“China will have to be ready,” said Ghastly. “Once they realise what’s happened, Davina Marr and the Cleavers will come after all of us.”

“Can I just point something out?” Fletcher asked. “That is an awful plan. On a scale of one to ten – the Trojan Horse being a ten and General Custer versus all those Indians being a one – your plan is a zero. I don’t think it’s a plan at all. I think it’s just a series of happenings that are, to be honest, unlikely to follow on from each other in the way in which everyone’s probably hoping.”

“Do you have a better plan?” Valkyrie asked.

“Of course not. I’m a man of action, not thought.”

Valkyrie nodded. “You’re definitely not a man of thought.”

“Why are you in charge anyway? What do you know about organising something like this?”

“I have faith,” Tanith said.

“As do I,” said Ghastly.

Valkyrie smiled at them gratefully. “So you think the plan will work?”

“God, no,” said Ghastly.

“Sorry, Val,” said Tanith.

Valkyrie stood with Tanith outside the old Waxworks Museum, letting the rain drench her hair. The windows were boarded up and there was a rusted gate pulled across the door. Even before the museum had closed down, it had never been impressive. She remembered school visits, trudging through dark corridors, gazing blankly at wax statues of boring politicians. She often wondered how things would be now if, as a little girl, she had wandered away from the tour group and found the hidden door.

If she had entered the Sanctuary then, would she have been taken under Skulduggery’s wing that much earlier? Or would the Cleavers merely have chopped her head off the moment they saw her? Probably the latter.

At least, back then, Eachan Meritorious had been Grand Mage of the Council of Elders. These days they didn’t even have a Council, only the Grand Mage, Thurid Guild, whom Skulduggery had once suspected of treason. Even now that Valkyrie knew he wasn’t guilty of that charge, she still viewed him as a dangerous individual with his own agenda.

And Guild had the skull.

Needing a replacement for Remus Crux, Guild had poached Davina Marr and her subordinate, Pennant, from one of the American Sanctuaries, and provided them with whatever they needed to do their job. Guild’s first decree had been that the portal never be opened again, lest more Faceless Ones come through. He had known Valkyrie and the others were hunting for the skull, and until today they had managed to stay one step ahead of him. But now, it seemed, Guild had overtaken them at the last hurdle.

The wind took the rain in at an angle and Valkyrie pulled her collar tight. She had called China, who had listened to the plan, such as it was, and assured her that if it did in fact work, then she would be available to help. She also said that there were two Sanctuary agents watching her at all times, and another two at Aranmore Farm. She had barely been able to send out her students to set up that perimeter around Haggard without the agents noticing. Valkyrie didn’t care. Only one thing mattered.

A bald man in a nice coat smiled as he passed them. Tanith ignored him, but Valkyrie returned the smile politely. There was something very familiar about him. He walked on and she looked around, wary of anyone trying to sneak up behind them.

“Ladies.”

She looked back. Ghastly stood where the bald man had been a second ago. Valkyrie was about to ask him what was going on, but Tanith figured it out before she spoke. “The façade tattoo,” she said, astonished. “It works!”

Ghastly smiled. “No more hat and scarf disguises for me, thank you very much. I can only use it for half an hour each day, but China’s working on a way to extend that.”

“Show me!” Valkyrie demanded, unable to stop her own smile from spreading.

Ghastly pulled apart the collar of his shirt and she saw the small tattoos, freshly burned into either side of his neck. He touched them and unblemished skin flowed upwards, rippling over his scars until it covered his whole head.

“Oh my God,” she said.

Ghastly smiled. “What do you think?”

“Oh my God,” she said again.

His features were strong, his jaw square and his skin, though slightly waxy, was clear and unscarred.

“China wanted to give me hair, but I thought that would be just a little too much, you know?”

“Oh my God.”

“You keep saying that. Tanith, what do you think?”

“I like it,” Tanith said. “But I dig scars too.”

He smiled, and touched the tattoos, and the perfect skin melted back into them, revealing the scars once again.

“Are we ready?” he asked, looking at the Waxworks Museum.

“I don’t like going anywhere without my sword,” Tanith grumbled. “You do realise that if the Cleavers come for us, they won’t care that we’re on the same side. They’ll cut us into itty-bitty pieces just because they can.”

“If that happens,” Ghastly said, “you’ll at least die comforted by the fact that you had the moral high ground.”

“Well, that’ll be nice,” she muttered.

They went around the back of the Waxworks Museum and entered through the open door. It was dark and the corridor they walked along was narrow. They passed three wax statues. Valkyrie wasn’t surprised they’d been left here when the museum closed down. They weren’t very good and only one of them had a head.

They finally came to a wax statue that looked like the person it was supposed to be – Phil Lynott from the band Thin Lizzy. It turned its head as they approached.

“Hello,” it said.

“Hi, Phil,” replied Valkyrie.

Tanith, who had actually known the real Phil Lynott when he was alive, found the figure too unnerving, so she stayed at the back and didn’t look at it.

“We request an audience with the Grand Mage,” Ghastly said.

“Do you have an appointment?” the figure said, looking down at a page it had stuck to the back of its guitar. “You’re not on the list.”

“We don’t have an appointment, but we request to be seen.”

The wax head of Phil Lynott frowned. It didn’t like its new role. It was originally supposed to only open and close the door, but now that the Sanctuary didn’t have an Administrator, its job description had expanded.

“I’ll tell him you’re here,” it said and closed its eyes.

While they waited, Valkyrie became aware of how fast her heart was beating. If this didn’t work, they could all be arrested and it would be her fault. Worse, their one opportunity to get Skulduggery back would pass, and she’d never see him again.

The wax figure opened one of its eyes. “Any of you going to the final?” it asked.

Valkyrie took a moment. “I’m sorry?”

“The All-Ireland,” the figure said. “Dublin versus Kerry. Going to be a good one. I asked if I could go. I’ve never been to Croke Park. The Grand Mage said no. He said it would raise some questions if I’m recognised.”

“He’s probably right,” said Valkyrie slowly.

The figure opened both eyes. “The Grand Mage has been informed,” it said. “He has instructed a guide to take you to the Greeting Room, and he will be with you as soon as his schedule allows.”

“Thank you,” Valkyrie said, and the wall beside them rumbled and parted, and they went through.

They got to the bottom of the stone stairs and a sour-looking man beckoned to them impatiently. Valkyrie glanced at the grey-clad Cleavers as she passed them, their faces hidden behind visored helmets. She used to find them threatening, but compared to the White Cleaver who stood with the Necromancers, they were positively cuddly.

The impatient sorcerer herded them quickly through the corridors.

“I don’t have time to be doing this,” he griped. “I’ve got work to do, for God’s sake. Don’t they know I have work to do? Showing you people where to go is an Administrator’s job. Do I look like an Administrator to you?”

“No,” Tanith said. “You look like a remarkably grumpy man.”

He glared at her and she narrowed her eyes. He looked away.

“In there,” he said, pointing to a room. “The Grand Mage will be with you when he’s with you. If you want anything, tea or coffee, get it yourself and don’t bother me any more.”

He stalked off and they looked at each other.

“Guild wants us left alone so that we’ll go after the skull,” Ghastly said quietly. “He wants us arrested and thrown in the cells. He’s just waiting for us to make a wrong move.”

“Let’s not disappoint him then,” Tanith responded. They ignored the Greeting Room and took the first corridor to their right. The people they passed didn’t even glance at them.

They passed the Gaol, where the sickest, most evil sorcerers in the country were kept in cages hanging off the ground. An average criminal would be sent to one of the maximum security prisons, but the Gaol was reserved for the worst of the worst.

Beyond the Gaol was the Repository. Making sure no one was watching, Tanith pushed open the double doors and they crept inside. Ghastly held up his hand and read the air, feeling any disturbances.

“We’re alone,” he announced and all three of them immediately strode among the dimly-lit shelves, looking for a wooden sphere about twice the size of a tennis ball.

Valkyrie hurried to the place where the cloaking sphere had been kept the last time she was here, but the space was empty. She quickly checked the rest of the shelf, her eyes skimming over the arcane objects. The collection of magical artefacts in this room was enough to make collectors like China Sorrows envious.

They searched for five or six minutes and came up with nothing.

“This isn’t good,” Ghastly muttered when Valkyrie passed him.

She clicked her fingers to summon a flame into her hand and searched the darker recesses of the room. This wasn’t good at all.

“Do we have a Plan B?” Tanith called out from behind a stack of scrolls.

“We barely have a Plan A,” Valkyrie muttered.

Ghastly had his ear to the door and he stepped away. “They’re coming,” he said.

Furious, Valkyrie whipped out her phone and called Fletcher. Her plan hadn’t worked. The only thing they could do now was get out before they were caught.

“The Repository,” she said into the phone and Fletcher appeared behind her. Symbols flashed on the walls and blue lightning darted to where he was standing. He screamed as the lightning danced through him. When the symbols faded, he collapsed with a moan.

It was a trap and, right on cue, the double doors swung open and a dark-haired woman walked in, a squad of Cleavers behind her.

Ghastly and Tanith converged on Valkyrie as she knelt by Fletcher.

“Get us out of here,” she ordered, but tremors coursed through Fletcher’s body.

“Can’t,” he mumbled.

Davina Marr looked at them and smiled. “Welcome to the Sanctuary. You are all under arrest.”

he Interrogation Room was bound. Valkyrie could feel the low ebb of her magic, just out of reach. She didn’t like that feeling. It added to her uneasiness.

She sat across from Marr and did her best to ignore Pennant, standing beside the door. Having the door in front of her was their mistake. Anytime Skulduggery had used this interview room, he’d positioned the suspects with their backs to it. It meant they had to crane their necks to see whoever walked in. The way Marr had arranged it, it was almost like this was Valkyrie’s office and she was sitting at her own desk.

Valkyrie worked at looking calm and hiding the panic she was feeling. This had been their one chance to get Skulduggery back. If Guild hid the skull or worse, destroyed it, their one chance would disappear. She went cold inside thinking about it.

“Valkyrie,” Marr said eventually, raising her different coloured eyes from whatever it was she was reading. Valkyrie doubted the file had anything to do with her. It was probably just some random collection of pages Marr thought might intimidate her. “You’re in quite a lot of trouble.”

Valkyrie said nothing and rubbed the fingers of her right hand against each other. Her Necromancer ring had been taken. She missed it.

Marr had dark hair, cut short at the neck. She was pretty, in an unremarkable way. “You were caught trying to steal Sanctuary property. Do you know how serious that is? Do you know how long you could be put in prison for?” Marr sighed as if disappointed. “This isn’t a game, Valkyrie. You’re part of something that is turning out to be very dangerous. Ghastly Bespoke and Tanith Low are looking at twenty years in prison at the very least. Twenty years, Valkyrie. What is it you were trying to steal anyway?”

Valkyrie fixed her eyes on a speck of lint on Marr’s collar and didn’t answer.

“We have Skulduggery Pleasant’s head. I know you’re here to steal it, and let me assure you, we do understand. Skulduggery was a friend of yours.”

“Is a friend,” corrected Valkyrie.

“Was I referring to him in the past tense?” Marr asked, looking ashamed. “Oh dear, I’m very sorry. Yes, he is a friend of yours and I’m sure you consider him a very good friend. We all have good friends and we would do a lot for those friends – within reason, naturally. But this crusade of yours, to open up the portal, it’s … quite frankly, it is not within reason.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Valkyrie said.

Marr’s smile was becoming as irritating as her manner. “Of course you don’t,” she whispered conspiratorially. “But let’s pretend you did. Let’s pretend, and this is without incriminating yourself – that means to get yourself into trouble – that you did want to open the portal to try and bring your friend back. It would mean that you’d also be opening the portal for the Faceless Ones. Do you see that? Do you understand?”

Valkyrie was becoming fixated on Marr’s little nose. It was like a target, begging to have a chair smashed into it.

“The only reason they came through the last time was because they had been signalled,” Valkyrie said. “Hypothetically speaking, if we were to open that portal now, they wouldn’t be waiting. But Skulduggery would.”

“The Grand Mage has expressly forbidden that portal to ever be opened again. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t work for the Grand Mage.”

“The Sanctuary polices the entire magical community in Ireland – not just the people who work there. Valkyrie, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your friend is most likely dead.”

“Of course he’s dead. He’s a skeleton.”

“For almost a year he’s been trapped on a world with the Faceless Ones. We can only imagine the horror and the agony he must have been put through before they finally decided to end his existence. We can only imagine what they reduced him to – the screaming, the crying, the begging. Sweetheart, in a way you’re lucky he’s gone. If he ever did return, I’m sure you’d find him a little … pathetic.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart.”

Marr blinked, surprised. “Oh. OK.”

“And never call him pathetic.”

Marr leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table between them. “I can help you. I want to help you. Tell me who planned this and you can walk away. We’ll drop all charges against you. Help us punish the people who deserve to be punished – Ghastly, Tanith and China. Oh, yes, we know she’s involved. She’s mixed up in every seedy little operation in the country. Sanctuaries all over the world want Miss Sorrows behind bars for the things she’s done in the past. You’ll be doing everyone a great service.”

When she didn’t get a response, Marr shook her head. “This is a one-time offer, Valkyrie. The moment I walk out that door, you’ll be taken back to your cell to await transport to a Gaol. You’ll go to prison, sweetheart. Please, I don’t want to see that happen to you. Talk to me, let me help you and you can walk away.”

Valkyrie met her eyes. “And Fletcher?”

Marr nodded. “Mr Renn is doing fine. We installed that security system to temporarily disrupt certain electrical impulses in his mind. He can’t teleport if he doesn’t have a clear head, now can he? But I assure you, he’s fine now.”

“Are you going to offer the same deal to him?”

“Do you want us to? Is there some kind of … connection between the two of you? I’ll be honest, Valkyrie, if you help us, I think I can persuade the Grand Mage to release him. I think I can do that.”

“And Guild will let him go? He won’t want to hang on to him? Fletcher is the last Teleporter alive after all.”

“I really, really don’t know, sweetheart, what the Grand Mage has in mind. If you’re asking would he like Fletcher to work for this Sanctuary, then yes, I’m sure he would. Fletcher has a unique and sought-after ability. Maybe, how about this, maybe you both could sign up? Would you like that? Become an official Sanctuary agent? You might make a good team.”

“Why doesn’t Guild want us to get Skulduggery back?”

Marr shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand. The Grand Mage has to weigh up everything about this. He has to evaluate the risk against the reward. It’s a big, important decision that he’s made and I think he’s made the right one. Skulduggery made a sacrifice. He died so that we could live. The Grand Mage is respecting that and we should too.”

“Guild said Bliss made the sacrifice. He said Bliss saved us all.”

“Mr Bliss gave his life, Valkyrie.”

“I know he did. I was there. I saw it happen. You didn’t, but I did. I saw Bliss die and I saw what happened next. I saw Skulduggery get dragged through that portal. He reached out to me, but I couldn’t save him.”

“That’s very sad,” Marr said gently.

“But Guild ignored all that. He gave all the credit to Bliss because he didn’t want to admit that he was wrong about Skulduggery.”

“No, Valkyrie, that’s not what happened.”

“Guild doesn’t want us to even try to get Skulduggery back because Guild doesn’t want Skulduggery back. He hates him. He always has.”

Marr pinched the bridge of her nose. “China Sorrows has brainwashed you,” she said sadly. “I can’t take it any more. I’ll order her arrest immediately.”

“China’s done nothing wrong,” said Valkyrie angrily.

“You’d do anything she tells you to,” Marr sighed, gathering up her papers. “Detective Pennant will take you back to your cell.”

Pennant opened the door and Marr walked over to it.

“You’ll regret this,” Valkyrie said.

Marr turned. “Are you threatening me, child?”

“No. I’m just saying you’ll regret this. Anyone who stands against Skulduggery always regrets it. The Detective before you, for example. Remus Crux. Have you heard from him lately?”

Marr’s face went taut and she didn’t answer.

“He stood against Skulduggery,” Valkyrie continued, “and then his mind was torn to pieces. Everyone regrets it, Miss Marr. You will too.”

Marr turned to go, then turned again.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she announced. “I’ll escort you back to your cell personally. Detective Pennant, you may leave us.”

Pennant smiled and walked out without a word. Marr swept her hand to the door as an invitation. “After you, Valkyrie.”

Valkyrie got up and walked over, expecting Marr to shackle her wrists before she left the room, but she walked into the corridor unbound and felt her magic return to her. She led the way down towards the holding cells, Marr at her elbow, and tried to figure out what was going on. Had Marr simply forgotten the shackles? Did she not think Valkyrie was a legitimate threat? Or was it a trap? Was Marr waiting for Valkyrie to attempt an escape? The closer they got to the cells, the wilder her mind spun.

“You said those who stand against your skeleton friend regret it,” Marr said as they approached the corner to the cells. “But what about those who stand with him? What about Bliss, since you brought him up? How is he doing these days?”

Valkyrie said nothing and turned the corner. She frowned. There was usually someone on duty at the desk, but today the chair was empty.

Marr spoke right into her ear. “That skeleton got people killed – friends, people he loved, his own family. It’s a wonder he didn’t get you killed before he went. It’s a damn shame, if you ask me.”

Valkyrie turned quickly and Marr pushed her back and laughed.

“Don’t worry, sweetie. I know what it is. All those hormones raging, you have all these conflicting emotions …”

Valkyrie raised her hand to push at the air, but Marr was faster. The air rushed around her and Valkyrie hit the wall and dropped to the floor.

Marr strolled towards her. “You had a crush on him before he was pulled into hell, didn’t you? A little one? You can tell me. It’s sad and pathetic and highly amusing, but I promise I won’t laugh.”

Valkyrie clicked her fingers and Marr kicked her wrist. The fire went out and she was hauled up. She swung a punch that missed, and Marr sent her face-first into a cell door.

“No one likes an upstart,” Marr said. “If you start behaving, maybe I’ll even let you in to say goodbye to his head. It makes a very nice ornament for the Grand Mage’s office.”

Marr was close and Valkyrie reached out and grabbed her. She got one foot behind Marr’s, tried to throw her, but Marr bent her knees and moved. Valkyrie tumbled backwards over Marr’s hip. All her weight came down on her shoulder and she cried out. Marr took hold of her arm and twisted it as she kneeled on her ribs.

“Assault on a Sanctuary agent,” Marr said sadly. “If you were an adult, that would mean years in prison for you. But seeing as how you’re a child … I don’t know. Maybe all that’ll happen is that you’ll be branded with a few binding symbols, to permanently disable your magic. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it, you insolent little wretch?”

“Get off me.”

“Or what?” Marr smiled. “You’ll start crying? I can already see the tears in your eyes. Look at you. So helpless. So weak. You don’t even have your little ring, do you?”

With her free hand, Marr took the black ring from her pocket.

“Now what’s a nice girl like you doing studying a nasty discipline like Necromancy? We don’t like Necromancers around here, haven’t you realised that? Nobody likes them. They can’t be trusted.”

“Let me up.”

Marr let the ring fall to the floor and slapped Valkyrie across the face. “You do not tell me what to do.” She slapped her again. “You do not tell your elders what to do. Do you understand me?” Another slap. “Say you understand. Say you understand.”

Through gritted teeth, Valkyrie said, “I’m going to kill you.”

Marr pressed her knee in harder against Valkyrie’s ribs and Valkyrie cried out again.

“You want me to break your arm, you little brat? You want me to break your ribs? Puncture a lung? Because I can do it. I can do anything I want and no one will question me. So go ahead. Lie there and threaten me some more. See where it gets you.”

Fighting back the tears, Valkyrie glared but said nothing.

“Good girl,” Marr said, her eyes narrow. “Now apologise.”

Valkyrie clenched her jaw.

“I said, apologise. There’s no one here but us. You’ve got no one to impress. Apologise and I’ll let you up and put you in your cell. If you don’t apologise …”

Marr slapped her again and raised her hand for another strike.

Valkyrie worked to ignore her pride and the anger that humiliation brought. She swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

Immediately, Marr softened. “OK. OK, Valkyrie, that’s all I needed to hear.” The pressure on her ribs was removed. “Now ask me to let you up.”

Valkyrie took a moment then, “Can I get up?”

“Say please.”

“Please … can I get up?”

“Of course.”

Marr stepped back and Valkyrie turned on to her hands and knees, and started to rise. Suddenly the air was pushing down, keeping her hunched over.

“Say thank you,” Marr said, controlling the air with her hand. Valkyrie looked up at her. “Say thank you, Detective Marr, for letting me stand up.”

And Valkyrie said, “Thank you, Detective Marr, for giving me back my ring.”

Marr’s eyes flickered to the ground where the ring had fallen, but it wasn’t there any more, and before she could do anything about it, Valkyrie sent a fist of shadows slamming into the detective’s chest.

Marr stumbled and Valkyrie straightened, reaching out through the air for the desk. It shot forward and slammed into Marr’s legs, and she flipped and fell over it.

Valkyrie opened the desk, snatched the keys up and ran to the cells. She unlocked Ghastly’s door and he emerged, tackling Marr as she came at Valkyrie.

“Prisoners are escaping!” Marr roared.

Valkyrie unlocked the second door and Tanith came out, just as Cleavers appeared around the corner.

“Get Fletcher,” Tanith said in Valkyrie’s ear, “then get Skulduggery back,” and she launched herself at the Cleavers.

Valkyrie unlocked the last cell and hauled Fletcher out.

“Stop them!” Marr screeched. Already the Cleavers had Ghastly and Tanith on the ground, arms locked behind them.

“Guild’s office,” Valkyrie said to Fletcher. He nodded and closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down and picture their destination.

Then they were outside Guild’s door. Valkyrie barged through. The office was empty. The shelves groaned with heavy books and artefacts, and the desk was made out of what appeared to be solid gold. Beside the desk was a cabinet. Skulduggery’s skull lay inside.

Shadows curled around her fist and she punched through the glass and grabbed the skull. She felt Fletcher’s hand on her shoulder and she blinked.

They were now standing in the maze of bookcases in China’s library.

Fletcher looked at her. “Are you OK?”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. She could feel the side of her face burning from where Marr had repeatedly slapped her. “We have to get to Aranmore Farm.”

“We’re opening the portal?” Fletcher asked, concerned. “Just you, me and China? So who goes in with you?”

“No one. I go in alone.”

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s way too dangerous.”

“We don’t have time to waste!” Valkyrie said, suddenly angry. “We have to do it now before they find us again and lock us away! This is my only chance to get him back!”

“Our only chance,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, that’s what I … Fletcher, listen, China has to stay with you, on the farm. She has to make sure that you’re able to reopen the portal for Skulduggery and me to get back. I’m going in alone and that’s all there is to it.”

Fletcher looked at her, his jaw clenched. “Fine,” he snapped and led the way through the maze.

Valkyrie didn’t know any of the sorcerers they passed among the stacks, and none of them raised their eyes from their open books. The library was considered to be a neutral place, where privacy was paramount.

China Sorrows was waiting for them, dressed in black trousers and a simple blue shirt. As usual, her unnatural beauty elevated her outfit to something beyond the ordinary. A delicate chain hung around her left wrist. Her hair, black as deepest sin, framed her face while her eyes, as pale a blue as her brother’s had been, watched them approach.

Valkyrie fought down the feelings that were stirring within her. Fletcher wasn’t quite so successful.

“I love you,” he whispered and was ignored.

“The plan didn’t work,” Valkyrie told her. “In fact, it probably made things worse. Ghastly and Tanith are under arrest, and agents are coming here to take you in.”

China sighed. “And we’re going to rescue Skulduggery now, I take it? With the full might of the Sanctuary bearing down on us?”

“Yes. Sorry about that.”

China shrugged. “You make life interesting, Valkyrie. Just give me a moment, I have two annoying spies to deal with.”

Valkyrie looked behind her as a man and woman advanced, shackles in hand.

China tapped her forearms and glowing tattoos rose to the surface of her skin. She flung her arms wide and a wall of blue energy slammed into the agents, knocking them back. They were unconscious even before they stopped tumbling across the floor.

An elderly sorcerer peered round a bookcase and scowled.

“My apologies for the disturbance,” China said gracefully. “They wouldn’t pay their late fees.”

The elderly woman shrugged and went back to her reading.

China held out her hands and both Valkyrie and Fletcher took one. “These shoes will probably be ruined,” she said, “but I’m sure one of you will inform Skulduggery of the sacrifices I have made getting him back. Take us to the farm, Mr Renn.”

The library vanished and the afternoon sun was without heat. A cold wind blew in across the fields of Aranmore and howled softly through the ruined walls of the farmhouse.

“This boy is handy to have around,” China said, but for once Fletcher didn’t seem to be taking notice of her. His eyes were on Valkyrie as they walked.

“Have you said goodbye to your parents?” he asked.

“Shut up, Fletcher.”

“I just thought you might like to, that’s all. One last goodbye before you get yourself killed.”

“The only way it would be a last goodbye is if you don’t have that portal open for me to get back.”

He laughed bitterly. “You’re walking into a world run by a race of evil gods. And for what? If Skulduggery isn’t dead, he’s insane. One glance at a Faceless One is enough to drive you nuts. He’s been there for almost a year, Val. How many glances do you think he’s had?”

“You don’t know him. He’s alive and he’s waiting for me.”

“We’re taking a big risk here, aren’t we? Like, a major risk? We’re opening a door to a universe of unspeakable evils and hoping they don’t notice. Is Skulduggery worth it if this goes wrong?”

“If you’re not going to help,” Valkyrie said, “I can’t make you. But if you are, then shut up. None of us would be here if it wasn’t for him, and he wouldn’t leave any of us over there. Not even you.”

They reached the farmhouse and froze. A Sanctuary agent ambled by inside, sipping a mug of tea. He frowned, and turned, and seemed surprised to find three people staring in at him through the gaping hole in the wall.

“Um,” he said.

Valkyrie snapped her palm. The air rippled and the sorcerer went skidding across the floor. She stepped inside, using her ring to gather the shadows in the house and bring them crashing down on his head. He didn’t get up.

China and Fletcher joined her, and they moved to the hole in the opposite wall, the one that opened up to the yard beyond. Across the yard, standing amid the rusted farm machinery, was the second sorcerer. He saw them and his hand dug into his jacket for his phone.

Fletcher vanished and reappeared instantly next to the mage. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and then they were both gone. A moment later Fletcher was back, standing right in front of Valkyrie. She was about to ask where he had put the Sanctuary agent when she heard a terrified yell, and the agent dropped from the sky and hit the ground hard. He moaned, then stopped moving.

Fletcher pulled Valkyrie towards him, and before she could protest he kissed her. She stiffened in his arms, but as his right thumb brushed her cheek, she relaxed into him. Her belly did flips. And then the kiss was over.

“If we’re going to go through with this,” he said gruffly, “then hurry it up. It’s not everyday I send someone into hell.”

China made a circle on the ground and Fletcher knelt in it, holding the skull in both hands. She carved protective symbols around him. If something did come out of the portal uninvited, she explained, these symbols would at least give Fletcher enough time to close it before he died. He didn’t look comforted, but he didn’t say anything.

She activated the symbols and red smoke drifted from them, swirling with the black smoke that rose from the circle. The smoke formed a column that grew more violent as it twisted into the sky.

Fletcher knew what to do this time. Eleven months ago, forced to open the portal, he had to learn as he went. He had to use the Isthmus Anchor – back then it was the Grotesquery, today it was the skull – without sufficient preparation and he said it was like tearing open his insides. Today, from the glimpses Valkyrie caught through the smoke, he had everything under control. He looked determined. Angry, but determined.

A yellow light appeared, like a flattened sun, the edges boiling with flame. It grew wider.

China took Valkyrie’s arm, leaning in close to be heard over the roar of the column of smoke. “You have one hour,” she shouted. “In exactly one hour that gate will open again. You’d better be ready – with or without him.”

“I’m not leaving him there,” Valkyrie shouted back. “You just make sure Fletcher’s still here when it’s time for us to come home.”

China looked at her, her blue eyes bright, and she hugged Valkyrie. “Thank you for doing this,” China said into Valkyrie’s ear.

China stepped away and Valkyrie turned to the portal. It was taller than she was now. She licked her lips and walked forward. The wind whipped her hair and she could feel the gravitational pull, eager to welcome her. Valkyrie hesitated and then ran, straight into the yellow.

pringheeled Jack missed London. He missed its rooftops and its towers and its parapets. He missed the way he could dance, high above it all, watching the people pass below him. He missed the way Londoners sounded as he killed them – like they were offended that anyone would even dare.

Jack hadn’t been home in over a year. They were hunting him there. He’d tried Paris, he’d tried Berlin, and he’d liked them well enough, but he knew he was homesick when he realised the only people he was killing were English tourists. That had sent him into a spiral of depression that lasted months. Finally, in an effort to confront this problem, he had made a list of everyone he viewed as being responsible for his exile, and he marvelled at the way the depression quickly turned to anger. Every name on that list worked for various Sanctuaries around the world, and suddenly Jack’s mission was clear.

Destroy the Sanctuaries.

And now here he was, serendipity be praised, back in Dublin, working with two men he had never expected to share the same space with again, Billy-Ray Sanguine and Dusk. But since Sanguine was no longer palling around with those Faceless Ones nutters, and since his fight with Dusk hadn’t been personal to begin with, Jack was willing to forgive and forget. They were all working towards the same goal after all – revenge on those who had wronged them.

“I want Tanith Low,” he said to that other bloke, Scapegrace, while they were lounging about in the castle.

Scapegrace looked up, startled that anyone was talking to him. “I’m sorry?”

“Tanith Low,” Jack repeated. “Her of the brown leather and the singing sword. I want to be the one to get her.”

“Oh,” Scapegrace said.

“In a way, you know, she’s responsible for me bein’ hunted. She arrested me – put me in that cell where Sanguine found me. If I hadn’t agreed to help him in return for freedom, I’d never have been hunted in the first place.”

“Right,” Scapegrace said.

“What about you then?”

“Me?”

“Who do you want revenge on?”

“Oh, uh, Valkyrie Cain.”

“She’s a popular one to get revenge on. What age is she, fifteen? Fifteen years old and already four people want to kill her.”

“Well,” Scapegrace said, leaning forward, like he was confiding, “she’s responsible for foiling my plans, you see.”

“That so?”

“Oh, yes. I’m an artist. I make murder into art. That’s kind of what I do – that’s my whole thing. And she has repeatedly stopped me from doing that. Also, one time, she beat me up when I was already really badly injured.”

“A fifteen-year-old girl beat you up?”

“When I was badly injured, yes. And she was fourteen at the time.”

“Well, I suppose in the right environment, Elemental magic is hard to defend against.”

“Oh, she didn’t use any magic.”

“So she just … beat you up then?”

“When I was injured, yes.”

“How injured were you?”

“Very.”

“You were very injured?”

“Yes, I was. Have you ever been beaten up by a fourteen-year-old girl?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“It’s not very nice.”

“I wouldn’t say it is.”

“So that’s why I want revenge.”

“Listen, mate, I don’t mean to pick a fight or nothin’, but you call yourself the Killer Supreme, right? Have you ever actually killed anyone?”

Scapegrace erupted into horribly forced laughter, desperate and panicky, and Jack could have sworn he started to blush.

Jack didn’t much care of course. They were here to make up the numbers, to sit here while Scarab and Sanguine called the shots. And then, when it was time, they would strike.

Jack was looking forward to that bit.

he sky was red.

The sun, directly above her, was a ball of fire. It was big and hot, and closer than the sun back home.

Once the city would have been impressive. Its inhabitants would have lived in the towering cliff, using the caves as homes, carving doors and windows from the rock, before extending outwards. The stone houses that they built, on top of each other, jutted from the cliff face and reminded Valkyrie of pictures she’d seen of mountain towns in Brazil. She imagined that it had been a city teeming with life, energy and noise, with hundreds of thousands of people packed in together and forced to get along.

It was quiet now though. Quiet and dead.

The portal closed behind her and Valkyrie was in a narrow alley of white, sun-bleached stone that hurt her eyes. She followed the alley down, her footsteps crunching on the cracked ground. She peered into half-crumbled houses as she passed, but every room was empty, stripped bare by the elements and whatever else was around here.

The alley plateaued and opened into a square, and she walked to the middle and turned in a slow circle, scanning her surroundings. She looked up at the cliff face, the sheer size of it finally becoming clear. It wouldn’t have been hundreds of thousands of people living here, she realised – it would have been millions. A thought struck her. She was standing on an alien world.

Despite herself, Valkyrie grinned.

She shook her head. She had a job to do and a limited amount of time to do it in. She walked through a street that led to her right. The street curved and she was walking on sand that had blown in from the vast expanses of the dry valley around the city. The sand was a deep gold.

She walked for a few minutes, careful to move in a relatively straight line so she could be sure of finding her way back. Ghastly had claimed that her clothes would regulate her temperature no matter what, but something wasn’t working. She was perspiring. A trickle of sweat rolled down her face. She took off her coat and left it at a corner as a marker, and felt the sun on her bare shoulders. She opened her top to let the air in, but whatever breeze there may have been was being blocked by the labyrinth of streets. Then she turned another corner and saw the body.

It sat on the ground, propped up against the wall. Its chest was a gaping hole, the insides long since dried up. The head was smooth and featureless. This had been the body of the man called Batu, a body that had been commandeered by the last Faceless One to come through the portal. There was no sign of life in it now though. To the Faceless Ones, human bodies were mere vessels to be used and discarded. Batu’s body was nothing more than a leaky old boat or a rusted car. So much for his masterplan to become a god.

The body was holding something in its right hand, a bone, most of it covered by rags. Valkyrie didn’t want to imagine that it might be one of Skulduggery’s. She was desperate to call out his name, but the idea of breaking this eerie silence repelled her. She didn’t know what else to do though. She could spend months checking this city without finding him. No. No, the portal would have opened somewhere in Skulduggery’s vicinity. He was nearby. He had to be.

Valkyrie headed back the way she’d come, scooping up her coat and walking fast. She got back to the alley where the portal had delivered her. She followed it as far as she could, until the alley led into a cave. She dropped her coat again and summoned a flame into her hand. Then she stepped out of the sun into pitch-black.

As she walked, she saw shelves carved from the walls and a table that had once been a boulder. There were large areas of the cave where she didn’t even need the flame – the windows had been constructed to drink in the sunlight and spread it around. The cave ended at a wall. As Valkyrie turned to go back, she saw a bone in the dirt and beside it stone steps, leading up. She climbed them.

The sun came in through the three windows along the far wall and Valkyrie let the fire in her hand go out. She stood beside the steps and didn’t move. In the centre of the room a skeleton lay. Its clothes were shredded and hung off the frame that had been constructed to give the illusion of mass. From what she could see, the trouser-legs were empty and the skeleton’s right arm was missing. It lay on its back, its exposed ribcage dirty and covered in dust, and it didn’t move.

Something clutched at Valkyrie’s heart and wouldn’t let go. She made a sound, like a whimper, but when she tried to say his name, she couldn’t. Her first step was uncertain because her legs felt weak. She walked slowly, so very slowly, to the middle of the room.

“Hello?” she whispered. The skeleton lay on the ground and didn’t move.

“It’s me. I’ve come to take you back. Can you hear me? I found you.”

Not even a breeze stirred the ragged clothing.

She knelt by the skeleton. “Please say something. Please. I’ve missed you so much and I’ve worked so hard to find you. Please.”

She reached out to touch him, and Skulduggery Pleasant whipped his head to her and roared, “Boo!”

Valkyrie shrieked and scrambled back, and Skulduggery laughed hysterically, like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. He was still laughing when she got to her feet, and when she glared at him, he laughed even harder. Eventually, with bouts of laughter still rattling his bones, Skulduggery propped himself up on the only elbow he had left.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Now I’m deriving amusement from scaring my hallucinations. This can’t be good for me, psychologically speaking.”

“I’m not a hallucination.”

He looked up at her. “Yes, you are, my dear, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Being a hallucination is a state of mind, I always say.”

“Skulduggery, I’m real.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“No, I mean I’m really real, and I’ve come to take you home.”

“You’re an odd one. Usually my hallucinations do a lot more singing and dancing.”

“It’s me. It’s Valkyrie.”

“You’d be surprised how many figments of my imagination say that. You don’t happen to have an imaginary chessboard with you, do you? I’ve had a hankering to play for a while now, and since you’re an aspect of my personality, you’d probably be a worthy opponent.”

“How do I prove to you that I’m real?”

This made him pause. “Intriguing. It’s not as if you can tell me something only we would know because if I know it, my hallucination would know it. But, in the theoretical extension of that approach, if you were to tell me something only you would know, then that would prove to me that I’m not conjuring you up in my mind.”

“So … what will I tell you? My deepest, darkest secret? My earliest memory? My ultimate fear?”

“How about what you had for breakfast this morning?”

“Honey Loops.”

“Well, there you go.”

“So now you believe I’m real?”

“Not in the slightest. I may have just made that up.”

“I found your skull – the one the goblins took. Fletcher used it as an Isthmus Anchor to open the portal and I came through to take you back.”

“My skull?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s possible, right?”

“It’s … very possible actually.”

“Did you think of it? Did you imagine your skull could be used as an Anchor?”

“I didn’t, but then I have been preoccupied by the torture and the lack of good conversation.”

“So if this is something that you hadn’t thought of yet, how could I come up with it if I were just a figment of your imagination?”

“Well,” Skulduggery said slowly, “you could be a figment of my subconscious.”

“I’m not your subconscious. I’m Valkyrie. I’m real. And I’m here to rescue you.”

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