She looked up, half expecting to see a giant foot descending, but the sky was blue and clear and free of gods. She waited, nonetheless.
Then she stood, and took the trail back through the trees. She used to walk this path as a child, side by side with her uncle. They talked about nature and history and family and he told her stories and she did likewise. They competed as to who had the goriest imagination, but even when he conceded defeat, with a look of mock-horror on his face, she knew he was holding back. Of course he was. Gordon was the writer of the family.
She remembered walking through this woodland with him. She could recall, quite distinctly, as if looking at a photograph, the angle at which she’d seen him. She was small and he was a grown-up, and his hair was brown and thinning where hers was long and black, but they had the same eyes, the same brown eyes, and when he laughed he had a single dimple, just like she did. It had been twelve years since Gordon had been murdered, twelve years since she’d tumbled into this twilight world of sorcerers and monsters and magic. She’d been twelve when it happened, not even a teenager when she’d started her training. The years, they had thundered by, heavy and unstoppable, a boulder rolling downhill. Bruises and broken bones and bloody knuckles and screams and laughs and tears. A lot of tears. Too many tears.
The house Gordon had left her sat on the hill, visible through the trees ahead. Even after it had officially passed into her ownership, she had been unable to think of it as anything other than Gordon’s house. Every room, and there were many, reminded her of him. Every Gothic painting on the walls, and they were plentiful, brought to mind some comment or other he had once made about it. Every brick and piece of furniture and bookcase and floorboard. It was Gordon’s house, and it would always be Gordon’s house.
Then she’d gone away. Five years she’d spent on a sprawling farm on the outskirts of a small town in Colorado. She had a dog for company, and occasionally company of the human variety, but she kept that to a minimum. She didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts, but she deserved to be. She deserved a lot of horrible things.
And then she’d come home to Ireland, and realised that in those intervening years Gordon’s house had changed, somewhere in her thoughts. Now it was just a house, and so she called it by its name, for names were important. Gordon’s house became Grimwood House, just as Stephanie Edgley had once become Valkyrie Cain.
She started up the hill, stopped halfway to turn and look beyond her land, to the farms that spread across North County Dublin like a patchwork quilt of different shades of green and yellow. Here and there the patchwork failed, replaced by neighbourhoods of new families and the roads that linked them. There was talk of a shopping mall being built on the other side of the stream that acted as a border to her property – a stream that Gordon liked to call a creek and that Valkyrie liked to call a moat. Maybe she’d get a drawbridge installed.
She climbed the rest of the hill, approaching the house from the rear. Xena saw her coming and perked up, came trotting over to greet her. With her fingers scratching the German shepherd behind the ears, Valkyrie unlocked the back door and let the dog go in ahead of her. She closed the door once she was inside. Locked it again.
Her phone was on the kitchen table. She had three missed calls. One message. She played the message. It was from her mother.
“Hey, Steph, just calling to let you know that I’m doing a roast chicken for Sunday, if you want me to make enough for you. I know it’s only Tuesday right now, but I’m planning ahead and, well, it’d be good to see you. Alice is always asking where her big sister is.” She introduced a little levity into her voice there, to pass it off as no big thing. “OK, that’s all. Give me a call when you can. We know you’re busy. Love you. And please stay safe.”
The call ended, and Valkyrie checked who the other calls were from, though she needn’t have bothered. They were both from him.
She left the phone where it was and showered, and when she came back downstairs the phone was ringing again. She answered.
“Hey,” she said.
His voice, smooth and rich, like velvet. “Good afternoon, Valkyrie. Are you busy?”
She was standing barefoot in the warm kitchen, her hair still wet and water trickling down the back of her T-shirt. “Kinda,” she said.
“Would you be able to spare some time? I could do with your help.”
She didn’t answer for a bit.
“Valkyrie?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m ready. Give me a few weeks. In a few weeks, I’ll have myself sorted out and then I’ll be able to lend a hand.”
“I see.”
“Listen, I have to go. I’ve got things to do and I haven’t charged my phone so it’s going to die at any moment.”
“You’ll be ready in a few weeks, you say?”
She nodded to the refrigerator like it was he himself standing there. “Yep. Give me another call then and we’ll meet up.”
“I’m afraid things are a bit more urgent than that.”
She bit her lip. “How urgent?”
“Me-driving-through-your-gate-right-now urgent.”
Valkyrie went to the hall and looked out of the window, watching as the gleaming black car came up the long, long driveway. She sighed, and hung up.
She stayed where she was for a moment, then unlocked the front door. It took a few seconds, as she had installed many new locks, and she pulled it open just as the 1954 Bentley R-Type Continental rolled to a stop outside. He got out. Tall and slim, wearing a charcoal three-piece suit, black shirt and grey tie. He didn’t feel the cold so didn’t bother with a coat. His hair was swept back from his forehead, but his hair didn’t matter. His eyes were sparkling blue, but his eyes didn’t matter. His skin was pale and unlined and clean-shaven, but his skin, that didn’t matter, either. His hands were gloved, and as he set his fedora upon his head – charcoal, like his suit, with a black hatband, like his shirt – his hair and his eyes and his skin flowed off his skull, vanishing beneath the crisp collar of his crisp shirt, and Skulduggery Pleasant, the Skeleton Detective, turned his head towards her and they looked at each other in the cold sunlight.
Valkyrie walked back into the house. Skulduggery followed.
Xena had taken up her usual spot on the couch in the living room, but when she saw Skulduggery she jumped down and ran over. He crouched, ruffling her fur, allowing her to lick his jaw.
“I always feel vaguely threatened when she does this,” he muttered, but let it continue until Valkyrie called her away. He straightened, brushing some imagined dust from his knee. “You’re looking well,” he said. “Strong.”
Valkyrie folded her arms, the fingertips of her right hand tapping gently against the edge of the tattoo that peeked out from the short sleeve of the T-shirt. “Gordon had his own personal gym installed in one of the rooms on the second floor.”
Skulduggery tilted his head. “Really? I’ve never been in there.”
“Neither had Gordon, from what I can see. The equipment was never used. It’s pretty good, though. State of the art twenty years ago. I had similar stuff in Colorado.”
“So that’s how you’re spending your time?” Skulduggery asked, walking over to the bookcases. “Lifting weights and punching bags? What about the magic? Have you been practising?”
“Just stopped for the day, actually.”
“And how’s that going?”
She hesitated. “Fine.”
“Do you have any more control over it?”
“Some.”
“You don’t sound overly enthused.”
“I’m just rusty, that’s all. And it’s not like I can ask anyone for advice. I’m the only one with this particular set of abilities.”
“The curse of the truly unique. But yes, you’re absolutely right. We don’t even know the limits to what you can do yet. If you’d like me to work with you, I’d be happy to do so.”
“Ah, I’m grand for now,” she said, watching him ex
amine the books. “Why are you here?”
He looked round.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to sound so … unwelcoming. You said there was trouble.”
“I did. Temper Fray has gone missing.”
“OK,” she said, and waited.
“That’s, uh, that’s the trouble I mentioned.”
“Temper’s a big boy,” Valkyrie told him. “I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”
“Barely.”
“Well, he seemed really competent to me.”
“You met him once.”
“And during that meeting he struck me as someone you don’t have to worry about.”
“I sent him undercover. I think they might have figured out that he’s not on their side.”
Valkyrie sat beside Xena, whose ears perked up, expecting a cuddle. “I can’t do this, Skulduggery. I’m not ready to go back.”
“You’re already back,” he countered. “You made the decision to return, didn’t you?”
“I thought it’d be easier than it has been. I thought it’d be like I’d never left. But I can’t. So much has changed, and not only with me. After Devastation Day, after the Night of Knives … so many of our friends are dead and I don’t understand how things are now. I just need more time.”
Skulduggery sat in the chair opposite, elbows on his knees and hat in his hands. “You’re freezing up,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen. In war. In conflict. Soldiers see things; they do things … I don’t have to tell you about the horrors of combat, of taking lives, of people trying to take yours. With that kind of trauma, there is no easy fix. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. You get past it however you can.
“But one thing I do know, from my own experience, is that the longer you leave it, the harder it gets. Fear is cold water rushing through your veins – if you don’t start moving, that water will turn to ice.”
“How do you even know I can still do this?” Valkyrie asked. “Physically?”
“You proved that you could when Cadaverous Gant and Jeremiah Wallow went after you.”
“That was five months ago,” she responded.
“I’m not worried about the physical,” he said. “Your instincts will come back to you. Your training will kick in.”
She looked at him, her eyes to his eye sockets. “Then what about the mental? I’ve been through a lot. Might not take much more to break me.”
“Alternatively, as you’ve been through a lot, there might not be much more that could break you,” Skulduggery said “I’m going to need you with me on this, Valkyrie. I’m a better detective with you as my partner, and I’m a better person with you as my friend. The world is a lot different to the one you walked out on. The Sanctuary system has changed, Roarhaven has changed … sorcerers have changed. There are very few people I can trust any more, and there’s something coming. Something big and something bad. I can feel it.”
“There’s always something big and something bad coming,” Valkyrie said. “Sometimes it’s you. Sometimes it’s me.”
“And sometimes you and me are the only people who can stand against it. You’re not meant to hide away here, Valkyrie. You’re not built for it. You’re built to be out there helping people, doing what you can because you don’t trust anyone else not to mess it up.”
“That was the old me. These days I can quite happily leave the big jobs to others.”
“Prove it,” Skulduggery said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand. “Come with me for twenty-four hours. If you can walk away after that, I’ll let you go and won’t ask you again until you tell me you’re ready.”
She hesitated, then sighed. “OK. But I’m not taking your hand. It’s silly and I’d feel stupid doing it.”
Skulduggery nodded. “See? You’re already making me a better person. Grab your coat, Valkyrie – Roarhaven awaits.”
3
The city passed beneath him, and he landed on the lower rooftop, stumbling slightly. He turned, his black coat whipping around him. No one there. No one chasing him.
He breathed out slowly, hearing the slight rattle the mask made. He was going to have to get used to that sound. The mask was snug, and covered his whole head, and it was heavy. The carved beak weighed the whole thing down. He took off his wide-brimmed hat, examined it. He looked equal parts ridiculous and intimidating – but he didn’t mind that. Throughout history, plague doctors had always looked strange.
It was a clear day, cold, with only a few clouds in the sky, and below him Roarhaven’s streets were alive with people. They talked and laughed and shopped and complained and went about their business. He’d forgotten that, sometimes, this could actually be a nice city in which to live. Funny how violence and terror and death could taint your opinion of a place.
He’d lost friends here. He’d seen them die, seen the life leave their eyes while he held them in his arms. He’d seen destruction on an almost unimaginable scale. The screams had burned their way into his memory. The images had seared themselves into his thoughts.
But that was why he was here. That was his mission. Sebastian Tao put his hat on. He wanted to find Darquesse. He needed to. In a world gone mad, bringing her back was the only sane thing to do.
4
Devastation Day, that’s what they were calling it now, the day Darquesse had stormed through Roarhaven, levelling its buildings, murdering its inhabitants: 1,351 people had died in those few hours at the hands of an almost-god wearing Valkyrie’s face.
Not just her face, of course. Before the murder and the mayhem, Darquesse had been a part of her. Her true name, the source of her magic made flesh. And now Valkyrie was going back there. Because of course she was.
They joined the M1, then the M50, then turned south-east and drove for half an hour, leaving motorways and service stations behind them. Xena lay on the back seat of the Bentley with her head resting on her paws.
“German shepherds shed their coats,” Skulduggery said. “Is she shedding now?”
“She’s always shedding,” Valkyrie replied.
“Your dog is the only dog that has ever been in this car, you know.”
“She’s honoured.”
“It was meant as a complaint.”
Valkyrie shrugged. “You have me for twenty-four hours. She can’t go twenty-four hours without being fed.”
“We could have left her with your parents.”
“She doesn’t know them.”
A pause.
She could feel him watching her. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.
“When was the last time you were in Haggard?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. She could feel the sharpness coming on.
“You’ve been back in the country for five months. How many times have you seen your sister? Three?”
“Let’s not talk about this right now, OK?” she said. “I’m not in a sharing mood.”
Skulduggery nodded, and Valkyrie felt bad, but she was used to that feeling.
They passed a few signs warning of a flood ahead, then drove by some announcing LOCAL ACCESS ONLY, then about half a dozen PRIVATE PROPERTY signs, before turning on to a long, narrow road that led into the empty distance. An elderly farmer opened a rusted gate and allowed them through, muttering into his lapel as they went. The road seemed to be pockmarked with potholes, some wide enough to swallow a wheel, but the Bentley sped over them without even a rumble. Just another illusion to keep the mortals out.
Advancements in cloaking technology meant that not only were magical elements within the cloaked area rendered undetectable, but what passed for a normal image could also be extrapolated and projected in real time. Skulduggery had explained all this on her first trip back. He’d talked about the marvels of what had been achieved and what was now possible for the future. Valkyrie hadn’t paid attention. Her focus then, as now, was to try to spot the shimmering air of the cloaking field before they passed through it. But now, as then, she failed miserably, and Roarh
aven appeared before her in an instant – a vast, walled city exploding into being where a moment ago there had been nothing but dead trees and lifeless scrub.
They slowed as they neared Shudder’s Gate. Named after a friend of theirs who had lost his life to a traitor whose name Valkyrie refused to say aloud, the gate was supposedly the only way in and out of the city – although Valkyrie had her doubts about that. The Supreme Mage was a woman who understood the merits of a good secret entrance, after all. Or, at the very least, a good escape route.
The Bentley prowled forward, reflected in the visored helmets of the grey-suited Cleavers who stood guard, and they joined the traffic that flowed through the city streets like blood through the veins of a giant. Here, on the outskirts, the streets formed a tightly packed grid, and the traffic moved easily. But the closer they got to the centre, the more erratic the design became, and the slower they travelled. They were closing in on what had become known as Oldtown: Roarhaven in its original incarnation, with its narrow streets and narrow houses. The city around it had been constructed in a parallel dimension, then dropped here, on top of and around the original. It was a masterpiece of design by its architect, Creyfon Signate, and a testament to his genius, if not his choice of associates. A lot of bad people were involved in the evolution of Roarhaven. Most of them were dead now.
The city had changed a lot since Valkyrie had been away, rebuilt after the battle with Darquesse. The eastern quarter had been obliterated in the fighting, but fortunately it had been mostly uninhabited at the time. It was still largely uninhabited, though, even with brand-new buildings and roads. Those who had to live there, because of the massive influx of residents over the last five years, reported crippling psychic stresses and traumatic dreams. Those sorcerers whose abilities lay on the Sensitive spectrum couldn’t go any further east than Testament Road, for fear of permanent neurological damage.