“I don’t mind, really,” Thrasher said, blushing.
“You should mind,” said Clarabelle. “Scapey, it’s just not nice, the way you treat Gerald. He’s your best friend in the whole entire world and you two are my best friends in the whole entire world and best friends shouldn’t treat each other like that.”
It had been a long day. All Scapegrace wanted to do was have a shower and go to bed. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
They stood there and blinked at him.
“You’re sorry?” Thrasher asked.
Irritation flared in the back of Scapegrace’s mind, then sputtered out. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“You … you’ve never said that to me before,” Thrasher said, tears in his eyes. Dear lord, he was going to cry.
“Then I’m not sorry,” Scapegrace said hastily, in an effort to hold off an embarrassing display of emotion. “Does that make you feel better?”
Thrasher’s hands went to his mouth as tears spilled down his perfect cheekbones. “You’ve never cared about how I feel before.”
Scapegrace went to roll his eyes, but lost his enthusiasm halfway through and ended up looking at the ceiling.
“Are you feeling OK?” Clarabelle asked.
For the second time in the last few minutes, Scapegrace sighed. “I’m fine.”
“But are you really?”
“Of course. The pub is doing good business. We have a loyal customer base. Most of them are in every night. What’s to complain about?”
“I don’t know,” said Clarabelle. With natural grace, she sprang on to the kitchen table and sat there, cross-legged, while the dishes she’d knocked off crashed to the floor around her. “You tell me.”
Scapegrace hesitated. He’d always viewed himself as an old-fashioned type of guy, not the kind to talk about whatever was troubling him. But circumstances, he supposed, had changed. One glance at his reflection in the window proved that.
“I always wanted to do something important,” he said. “I wanted to be someone important. I wanted to make a difference.”
“You make a difference to me,” said Thrasher.
The old Scapegrace would have thrown something at him for that. The new Scapegrace didn’t bother.
“I never wanted to be normal,” he continued. “But here, normal is all I am. In Roarhaven, I’m … unexceptional.”
Clarabelle frowned. “Do you want to leave?”
“No. Nothing like that …”
“But if you do leave,” Clarabelle said, “do you promise to take me with you?”
“I’m not leaving.”
“OK,” Clarabelle said happily. “Just don’t decide to leave one morning before I get up. Then I’ll get up and you’ll be gone and Gerald will be gone and I’ll be all alone in this house and I’ll have no friends.”
Thrasher wrapped his gigantic arm round her shoulders. “We’re not going anywhere.”
She nodded. “Because I have trouble making friends. People think I’m weird, just because sometimes I see things that aren’t really there, and just because I say things they don’t understand. They don’t want to be my friends. But you guys don’t care about things like that. You two are really nice.”
“I’m not leaving,” Scapegrace said. “I’m just feeling sorry for myself, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I … I suppose I can just see myself living out the rest of my life as an ordinary person.”
“You’re not ordinary,” Clarabelle said. “None of us are.”
“I get sad, too,” Thrasher said. “I don’t like to bother anyone with it, but … I mean, my new body is very nice. It really is. But every time I look in the mirror, I see someone that isn’t me. I don’t think that feeling is ever going to go away.”
Scapegrace nodded. “You’re always looking into the face of a stranger.”
“That gets to you,” said Thrasher. “After a while, the novelty wears off and you just want to see your own face again.”
“You forget where you came from,” Scapegrace said softly. “You forget who you are.”
Clarabelle leaned forward. “Would it make you feel better to remember?”
“It would.”
She smiled. “Then the news I have is good news. I went exploring today. I’ve never been to the left side of the Medical Wing before because, when I walk in the door, I always turn to the right.”
Scapegrace frowned. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to turn left, but I never do. I think I turned left once in a previous life and I was beheaded or something, so I’ve never even wanted to walk down that side. But today was different. I was playing with a Cleaver and we were both taking it in turns to spin around really fast. I was winning, because he kept forgetting to spin, and he just stood there and I spun and spun and spun, and by the end of the game I was really dizzy and I think I threw up on him a little bit. Just on to his coat, though. I don’t think he minded much. He just stayed standing there. He probably thought we were playing musical statues.”
She hesitated. “Maybe we were. Oh, I think we were. If we were, then he won, because statues aren’t supposed to spin around. Anyway, I was dizzy, and when I walked into the Medical Wing I started to fall. It took me ages to fall, and I knocked over a few people along the way, but when the dizziness went away I was in the left corner of the Medical Wing. It was amazing! The sights that were on show … You know the way tables seem really different if you look at them from a different angle?”
“Clarabelle,” said Scapegrace, “it’s been a long day. Could you get to the point?”
“Right, sorry. Anyway, there are all these rooms in the Medical Wing, so I went into a few of them. And in one of them there was a big glass tank full of green water, and there were two people floating in that tank. It was you. It was the two of you.”
Scapegrace frowned. “What?”
“Your old bodies,” she said. “They still have your old bodies.”
12
THE CAULDRON
he lead came in a little after seven that evening. A sorcerer named Midnight Blue had turned it up, found a link to one of Billy-Ray Sanguine’s old friends, a gentleman called Axle. It was tenuous, this lead, but while they waited for Signate to shunt Ravel away and break the connection to Darquesse, tracking down Sanguine and Tanith was the only course of action open to them. The good news was that Axle lived right here in Roarhaven. So then it was back into the Bentley for Stephanie, and another quiet car ride through the streets.
They got to Axle’s house. Stephanie went round the back while Skulduggery knocked on the door. Sometimes people with dodgy pasts liked to sneak out of windows. She cupped her hands, blew on them. It was chilly out. Roarhaven was as dark and as quiet as ever. She heard the low murmur of Skulduggery’s voice. No alarm raised, no windows opening, no one trying to run.
She heard the front door close, and walked back to the Bentley. Skulduggery was already behind the wheel. They didn’t speak as they pulled away from the kerb. They drove for a few minutes, stopped outside a dingy little pub called The Cauldron.
Skulduggery led the way into the chatter and the laughter. Stephanie didn’t have his skills. She couldn’t glance at a room and notice every single thing, catalogue every single face, in one go. It took her a few seconds to notice the man sitting at the bar with an empty stool beside him. His work boots were dirty, his clothes not much better. He sat with his head down, shoulders slumped unevenly, staring into his drink. They walked up to him and for a few moments he didn’t notice them. He had a small cut on his jawline, another on his neck. There was a larger abrasion on his right hand and across his thick knuckles, and a plaster was wrapped clumsily round the thumb of his left.
“Mr Axle,” Skulduggery said, and Axle looked up sharply. He paled when he saw them, and when he finally spoke he could only manage one word.
“What?”
“Mr Axle, you know who we are, yes
? We don’t need to introduce ourselves, or tell you what we do. From the look on your face, you know all that.”
Axle swallowed. “So? What do you want with me?”
“When we walked in this door, all we wanted was the location of a friend of yours – Billy-Ray Sanguine.”
“Sanguine’s no friend of mine,” said Axle. “I know him, that’s all. Haven’t seen him in months. Maybe over a year. We’re not friends. Can’t help you.”
The bartender wandered over, and Axle went back to hunching over his beer.
“Can I get you folks something?” the bartender asked.
“I’m a skeleton,” said Skulduggery, “and she doesn’t drink.”
Stephanie frowned at him. “How do you know I don’t drink? I’m eighteen. I can drink if I want to.”
“Do you want to?”
She kept frowning. “Shut up.”
The bartender shrugged and wandered away again, and Axle watched him go.
“We’re looking for where Sanguine might go if he were in trouble,” Skulduggery said. “A safe house, something like that.”
Axle straightened with a pained expression, and shook his head. “Didn’t know him that well. Ask someone else. I haven’t even been in this dimension all that much over the last few years.”
The clothes, the cuts, the rough hands … construction work. “You helped build this city?” Stephanie asked.
He looked at her. “Helped build it? I practically built it myself. None of those other foremen could have done what I did. My crew built the best and we built the fastest. It’s because of us, because of me, that the city was ready to be unveiled by Grand Mage Ravel. Just in time for those bloody Warlocks to wreck half of it.”
“How’s the rebuilding going?”
Axle snorted. “You’d be surprised how a simple job can get complicated once you introduce a little red tape. When we were working in that other reality, we were below the radar. We were working in secret. Things got done. But now that it’s all out in the open you have committees and safety inspections and what have you, and immediately you’re behind schedule and waiting for approval and blah blah blah …”
Skulduggery tilted his head at the empty stool. “Waiting for someone?”
Axle stiffened again. “Yeah,” he said. “A friend of mine.”
“Is he late?”
“He is, yeah. He’ll be here, though.”
“Is this a regular thing? Going for a drink after work?”
Axle nodded. “End of a long day, yeah, it’s good to relax. That a crime?”
“No, it isn’t,” said Skulduggery. “Murder is, however.”
Stephanie raised an eyebrow, but left the question for Axle to ask.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Skulduggery took a pair of light handcuffs from his jacket and laid them on the bar. “What started the argument? Was it about work? Was the pressure getting to you?”
Axle gave a sharp, dry laugh. “What murder? Who’s dead?”
“Your friend.”
“You’re talking nonsense. He’s not dead. He’s just late.”
“What’s his name?”
“There! See? That’s how ridiculous this is! You don’t even know who he is and you’re saying he’s dead!”
“What’s your friend’s name, Mr Axle?”
Axle stared at Skulduggery. “Brock.”
“You’re incredulous, and yet you’re keeping your voice down. You’re scared of meeting the barman’s gaze, but you don’t want to take your eyes off him. You’re worried that he might have seen something last night – maybe he overheard your argument with Brock. You’re scared he’ll mention something about it in front of us.”
“This is ridiculous. I don’t have to sit here and listen to—”
He went to slide off his stool, but Stephanie stepped up close to him, blocking his way. Skulduggery leaned in from the other side.
“You have muddy water dried into the left leg and the right knee of your trousers. Also the left side of your jacket. It wasn’t raining last night, but it was the night before, and there are still puddles out the back of this pub, aren’t there? You had too much to drink, you got out there, the argument turned physical. You hit him. That’s when you cut your knuckles. He went down and you went down with him. You started strangling him. He managed to turn you over, and you fell on to your left side, into a puddle. But you pushed back, got on top, straddled him, hence the stain on your other knee. He clawed at your hands, leaving those scratches. And you choked him until he died.”
Axle shook his head quickly.
“You’re having trouble sitting up straight,” Skulduggery continued. “Did you do something to your back? Maybe as you were carrying his body through the back streets and alleys? You couldn’t have supported his weight for too long, not in your inebriated state, but you would have needed to take him somewhere you knew well, and somewhere you knew would be deserted. The construction site you’re working on isn’t too far away from here, is it? That’s where you dumped his body – probably in a pit scheduled to be filled in this morning.
“But you couldn’t leave – you couldn’t risk someone coming in early and discovering your crime. So you stayed. When your co-workers arrived, you poured in the concrete yourself – hastily, by the state of your boots. After that, you had to act as if nothing was wrong, so you put in a day’s work. A sloppy day’s work, judging by the more recent cuts on your hands. You had to stick to your routine, so you rushed home to shave, not bothering to change clothes, and then came here.”
Stephanie frowned. “Why did he shave?”
“From what I can see, Brock was an Elemental. He tried to shove a handful of fire into Mr Axle’s face. He only barely missed, too. See how the skin is slightly paler around the cheeks and chin? You had a beard up until a few hours ago, didn’t you, Mr Axle? But you shaved it off. Nicked yourself a few times, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was getting rid of the singed beard. You even had to cut your own hair in a few places. You missed your left eyebrow, though.”
“You don’t know what you’re—”
“I’m arresting you for murder, Mr Axle. Please stand up and put your hands behind your back.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Axle said, but stood just the same.
“We’ll let the Sensitives take a peek inside your mind. Maybe they’ll see something that’ll get you a reduced sentence.”
“No,” said Axle, backing away, “please. I’ll help you. I’ll tell you everything I know about Sanguine. Do you know about his family home, in Texas?”
“The Americans are keeping an eye on that,” Skulduggery said. “He hasn’t visited.”
“I know others,” said Axle. “There’s a house in Dublin. I think it’s his. An ex-girlfriend of mine told me about it. He took her there once.”
“Where?” Stephanie asked.
“Stoneybatter, just off Norseman Place. That’s worth something, isn’t it? I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to kill him. It was a stupid argument. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“We’ll see you’re treated fairly,” Skulduggery said, reaching for him.
“No!” Axle shouted, snapping his palms out. The air rippled and Stephanie flew backwards, getting tangled up with Skulduggery. Tables and chairs scattered and people cursed and cried out, and she glimpsed Axle running out.
Skulduggery hauled her to her feet. “Outside,” he said. “I’ll lead him to you.”
And then he was off in pursuit.
Stephanie barged through the stunned patrons, forcing her way outside. She ran down the alley, her boots splashing in puddles. No sign of Axle. She went to double back and the window above her exploded. She cursed as Skulduggery and Axle landed beside her in a shower of broken glass. Axle staggered, his eyes wide and terrified, his hands already shackled. He fell to his knees.
Stephanie glared at Skulduggery. “What was wrong with the door? You could have just come down t
he stairs and walked out the door. Why did you have to jump out the window?”
“You know why,” Skulduggery said, walking away.
Axle looked up, tears streaming from his eyes. “Why did he do that? Why?”
Stephanie glowered. “Because doors are for people with no imagination,” she said, and led Axle to the car.
13
MY FRIEND. MY FURNITURE.
anguine moved through the wall, stepping into the quiet kitchen. A man sat at the table. His name was Levitt. The chatty one, Maksy, was missing. That could mean one of two things – either Tanith had killed him out of sheer irritation, or Darquesse had needed Maksy’s Remnant to inhabit someone she wanted to talk to. Sanguine didn’t know what would have become of Maksy after that. Darquesse had probably killed him.
He moved on. The safe house was quickly becoming his least favourite place to be. Sure, it had its upsides. It was where Tanith was, so that was nice, even if she’d barely spoken to him the entire time they’d been hiding out there. But it was enough to be close to her, he reckoned. And once they were married, all this awkward tension would just drain away and leave them with the rest of their lives to get on with. Assuming the rest of their lives meant anything longer than a week.
And then there was the downside.
Darquesse.
Every time he returned to the place, he had to steel himself before he saw her. It was a good thing she usually stayed in the spare room these days, conducting her terrifying little experiments. Sanguine didn’t think he’d be able to handle it if she took to roaming about the—
Goddamn.
Darquesse was in the living room, sitting in the armchair with her legs crossed. The man on the sofa across from her would have looked like a normal, middle-aged college professor were it not for the black lips and all those black veins that he wasn’t bothering to hide.
“Billy-Ray,” Darquesse said, smiling brightly. “Allow me to introduce Nestor Tarry, my new best friend. Nestor was just telling me about his work in quantum mechanics.”
“That so?” said Sanguine, leaning against the doorframe, trying to appear casual and not at all intimidated. “Just your average, ordinary, everyday conversation about quantum mechanics, huh? You managing to keep up?”