dreadfully sorry. Next time, Elsie can run alongside me as I drive.”
She folded her arms and sulked.
He patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry I let someone adjust your seat. And I’m really glad you’re back.”
Valkyrie smiled. “See? Was that so hard to say?”
She got out, kicked the tattered boots into the sea, and ran barefoot to her house. She climbed through her window and changed quickly in her room, stuffing the brown clothes under her bed. She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked tired. She needed a shower. She reached out slowly and tapped the glass, but nothing happened. Her reflection was merely her reflection.
Tears came to her eyes without warning and she stepped back, muttering, wiping them away. This was not the time to break down, for God’s sake. She took a deep, deep breath, and blew it out. There. Much better. No more tears. All that fragility pushed aside. She put on a happy face, in much the same way that the reflection would have, and skipped lightly down the stairs.
“Hey, Mum,” she called.
Her mother appeared in the kitchen doorway at the same time as her dad popped out of the living room.
“Wow,” she said, jumping back. “You’re like ninjas.”
“Steph,” her mum said, saying the name like it was a sigh of enormous relief. “Where were you?”
There was a leaden weight somewhere in her chest that she ignored. “I told you I’d be at the library after school.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Valkyrie laughed. “Well, OK, I didn’t tell you but I wrote it on the note.”
“What note?”
She passed her mum, moving to the fridge. “This note. The one I left... oh. Where’s it gone?”
“I didn’t see any note,” said her mother.
“Me neither,” said her dad.
“Oh,” said Valkyrie, making a show of scanning the floor. “Oh, it must have fallen off. Must be under the cooker or something. And the battery on my phone died.” She turned to them, widening her eyes. “Oh my God, so that means you didn’t know I left this morning before you got up? Oh, I’m so sorry! Were you worried?”
Her mother laughed. “No, no, of course I wasn’t.”
“I was,” said her dad.
Her mum frowned at him. “You just noticed she wasn’t here ten minutes ago.”
“The longest ten minutes of my life.”
“Is that why you went back to reading the paper?”
“I needed something to distract me.”
Valkyrie smiled at them both. “Well, I’m really sorry for any distress I may have caused. I’ll try not to let it happen ever again. But now, Mum, is there any dinner left? I’m starving.”
She ate, looked in on her little sister, and put her black clothes in a pile on the floor beside her before she went to bed. She kept her Necromancer ring on. She lay in the darkness for a few minutes, then reached for her phone. She dialled.
Skulduggery answered immediately. “Are you shunting?”
“No,” she said, “no, everything’s fine. But what if I do shunt again tonight?”
“I considered that,” he answered. “And without wishing to alarm you, I’m in your back garden.”
She laughed. “You’re what?”
“If your arm starts to hurt, open the window for me and we’ll go together.”
“You can’t stand in the garden all night,” she said, and got up, wrapped a sheet round herself and opened the window. A moment later, he was perched on her sill. She went back to bed, and snuggled under the covers. “Come in,” she whispered.
“I’m fine out here.”
“Don’t be dumb. You might be seen.”
He considered it, then climbed through, closing the window behind him. “And what if your parents walk in?”
“Then I’ll tell them I borrowed the skeleton from the school lab and dressed it in a nice suit as a prank.”
“You’re not known for your pranks.”
“Maybe it’s time for that to change.”
He went to the wall opposite the bed, and slid down until he was sitting. With the light off, all she could see was the outline of his hat. “Do you want me to tell you a bedtime story?”
She smiled. “No thank you. You can sing me a lullaby if you want.”
And that’s what he did. In a voice so soft it barely reached her through the darkness, he sang her ‘Me and Mrs Jones’, and she fell asleep to his voice.
Valkyrie sat up, yawned, stretched both arms above her head.
“I’m still here,” Skulduggery told her, and she yelped, almost fell out of bed. “Sorry,” he said. “You looked like you’d forgotten about me.”
“I had,” she said, glaring. “Did we get a call?”
“Yes, we did. One of the mages stationed at St Brendan’s School saw someone answering Kitana Kellaway’s appearance in the vicinity. We may as well drop by on our way to the Sanctuary to check it out.”
He stayed in her room while she took a shower, then she dressed in her school uniform and went down to the kitchen. She had a quick breakfast, said goodbye to her folks, and left the house. She hurried round the corner, rose up to her window and climbed through. Skulduggery turned his back while she pulled on her black trousers and boots. She pulled on a black top, really missing her jacket. Then they both dropped down to the garden. Sixty seconds later, they were in the Bentley, driving for Haggard’s Main Street.
Behind St Brendan’s Secondary School there was a closed-down supermarket, and at the rear of that there was a small car park. It was here that they found the dead sorcerers. Five of them, their bodies torn and ruptured. Skulduggery muttered something Valkyrie couldn’t hear and she turned away, went to the brick wall that acted as a boundary between the car park and the school grounds. She used the air to hoist herself to the top and straddled
