on the thinning steam, and Skulduggery plunged through, scattering it completely.
“Did you see that?” Valkyrie asked.
“Some of it,” he said, helping her up. “Not all.”
“Her, I mean. Did you see her? The woman with the silver hair?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t,” he said, guiding Valkyrie to the chair.
She slumped down on to it, her limbs leaden. “She spoke to me.”
“To a future version of you.”
“No, Skulduggery – to me. She was speaking to me, now, just a few seconds ago. She touched my chin. I could feel it.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I know that. But I’m telling you it happened. She said she knew my secret. What secret? Do I even have any secrets? She said she was the Princess of the Darklands and that she’s coming for all of us. You didn’t see her? Hear her?”
“All I saw were the lines of people, the fire, Saracen, and then China. You’re sure she touched you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I mean … I’m pretty sure. I could feel – or at least I think I could feel …” She sighed. “I don’t know. The whole thing was kind of overwhelming.”
“What else did you see?”
“Tanith. She was fighting someone – big surprise. I saw Cadaverous Gant, that Plague Doctor guy, and Omen and another boy – I think it was his brother. You know what that means, don’t you? Omen stays involved. We can’t let that happen. Asking him to keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour is one thing, but actually mixing him up in this stuff is just too much. He thinks this is all a grand adventure, but we’re going to get him killed.”
“Did you see him die?”
“No, but that’s hardly the point, is it? We can’t endanger the lives of two innocent boys.”
“I’m afraid we might not have a choice with Auger. The Darkly Prophecy relates directly to a King of the Darklands – obviously a relation to the woman you saw. He’s already involved, and it’s got nothing to do with us.”
“But Omen isn’t. There’s nothing in that stupid prophecy about Omen, right? Skulduggery, promise me you’ll fix this.”
“I’ll speak to him,” Skulduggery said.
“You need to make sure he stops. He has to understand that we don’t want his help any more.”
“I’ll pay him a visit.”
“Let him down gently, though, OK? He seems … I don’t know. Fragile.”
Skulduggery tilted his head. “Does he?”
“You don’t think so?”
“No, actually. He doesn’t have your strength, but I detected a certain durability about him.”
“He can be durable on his own time, then, because I don’t want him to take one step further into this thing.”
“Very well.”
He watched her take the packet of leaves from her jeans.
“Are you sure you want another of those?”
“My head is splitting.”
“I’m not surprised. But an over-reliance on painkillers is not something you want to develop.”
She folded one, put it in her mouth. “They’re leaves, Skulduggery. I’m not exactly going to get addicted to leaves, am I? It’s not like they make me feel good. They just stop my head from exploding.”
“Non-exploding heads is something we want to encourage,” he admitted, and helped Valkyrie up.
By the time she’d climbed the stairs, her strength had come back to her. She stepped outside and the cold air froze her through her damp clothes. She hurried to the Bentley, let Xena in and got in after her.
Skulduggery slipped behind the wheel. “Congratulations,” he said, starting the engine. “You have looked into the future. You are a bona-fide psychic.”
“Yay,” she said without joy. “I’m not going to start reading people’s minds, am I? I find it unbearable enough reading their faces.”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ve never seen such a range of abilities in one person before. We don’t know your limits yet. We don’t even know if you have any. This is actually quite exciting.”
“Then you can be quite excited and I’ll just sit here and worry.”
He turned his head to her slightly. “Did you see anything else?”
“I saw enough,” she said, and looked out of the window.
The First Years were playing basketball on the outside court. Omen could see them from his desk. No magic was allowed, though, so it looked like a pretty dull game. He watched Rubic and Duenna walk across the small courtyard, deep in discussion. Not an unusual sight, the principal and vice-principal talking and walking, and certainly not enough to arouse Omen’s suspicions – but what better recruiters could the anti-Sanctuary have than the leaders of the school?
Omen sat back in his chair. The last class of the day was geography. The teacher’s name was Valance. He was an Adept, though Omen didn’t know which discipline he’d specialised in. So far, there didn’t seem to be anything suspicious about Valance’s behaviour. He just talked about geography a lot.
Omen cast a surreptitious eye over his classmates. They all looked pretty normal – bored and impatient for the lesson to be over. Apart from Chocolate, but then Chocolate loved geography. She was weird like that.
He smiled to himself. He liked this. Having a secret. Having a mission. Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain had come to him. Not to Auger, not to anyone else. To him. That meant something. A moment like that, he reckoned, a moment that singles a person out, validates their entire existence, gives their life meaning … Well. Something like that could be the start of something amazing.
“Omen.”
Omen looked up. “Wuh?”
“Did you get all that, Omen?” Valance asked, clearly aware that Omen had not. “Could you repeat it back to me?”
“Uh …”
“I don’t believe that’s a part of it.”
“No, sir,” said Omen. “What I meant was … I didn’t actually catch it, sir.”
Valance
