raised an eyebrow. He shrugged.
“No, you’re right. I’m none of those things. I’m angry, and ready for round two.”
“That’s what I figured,” she said. “Any word on Fletcher?”
“He’s conscious. Dr Synecdoche is optimistic that he’ll make a full recovery. Give him a few days. He’ll be fine.”
They ducked under a low branch.
“He saved us,” she said.
“Yes, he did.”
“We shouldn’t have gone in there.”
“In retrospect, no, we shouldn’t have. But we couldn’t have foreseen what happened.”
“That’s the problem,” Valkyrie said. “We didn’t know what we were going up against. We didn’t know who the enemy were. I’m trying to remember if we were always so …”
“Brash?”
She glanced at him. “I was going to say dumb.”
He shrugged. “We’ve walked into bad situations before. It’s how we find out who the enemies are, so we’re better prepared the next time.”
“If it wasn’t for Fletcher—”
“I know,” said Skulduggery. “I know.”
Xena was somewhere in the dark. Valkyrie had lost track of her.
“I thought you had him,” she said, coming to a stop. “Lethe. When it started, and he was bouncing around with all these fancy kicks, I said to myself, this’ll be over in a second.”
Skulduggery rubbed his arm. “And then he changed tactics. He’s better than me, I’ll give him that, but he took me by surprise. That won’t happen again.”
Xena came trotting back. She went right up to Skulduggery, tail wagging, and he crouched, scratching behind her ears.
“The Teleporter,” she said, folding her arms to keep herself warm. “Nero. He brought them all in, but they weren’t touching. I didn’t think that was possible. In order to teleport other people, you need to be touching them – that’s the rule, right?”
“As far as I know,” Skulduggery said. “But Neoterics don’t concern themselves with the rules.”
“And he followed Fletcher straight to Reverie. How did he do that? His powers … he can do a lot more than Fletcher – but Fletcher was almost a Neoteric, too, wasn’t he? I mean, he’s mostly self-taught.”
“But then Cameron Light found him,” said Skulduggery, straightening up. “And we gave him a book telling him how to harness his power. From that point on, his evolution was directed in the conventional way. If we’d left him alone, maybe he’d be able to do what Nero can do.”
“So are Neoterics more powerful than regular sorcerers?”
“Not necessarily. Our training makes us strong. Their unpredictability makes them strong.”
“They have a guy who can mess with time,” she said. “Any idea who he is?”
“I found no mention of him in the Neoteric Report, so I don’t know where Parthenios Lilt found him.”
“Lilt,” she said. “I’m assuming now is the time to go after him, yes?”
Skulduggery adjusted his hat slightly. “He has already been arrested,” he said. “Commander Hoc saw to it personally.”
“Have you interviewed him yet?”
“I doubt I’ll be able to.”
She frowned. “They wouldn’t stop you … would they?”
“Hoc is a smart man, and a good investigator, but when I was Commander we had our differences. Now that he’s in charge, I feel he would be disinclined to grant an interview request, even to an Arbiter.”
“But China would allow it.”
“No,” he said. “She wouldn’t.”
“Skulduggery, why did you quit?”
He took a moment before answering. “Politics.”
“China said you couldn’t handle being stuck behind a desk all day.”
“That was part of it.”
Valkyrie didn’t press it. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know.
“Shall we go back?” he asked. “You look cold.”
“Sure,” she said. “Come on, girl.”
She motioned ahead of them, and Xena ran on.
“So,” he said, as they followed the dog, “are you going to redecorate?”
“Sorry?”
“The house. You may have taken ownership, but it looks like Gordon still lives here. All those dramatic paintings. All that Gothic sensibility.”
“I like it,” she said. “It reminds me of him. I still miss him like crazy. At least I got to say goodbye the second time he died. And I know what you’re going to say. I know the Gordon in the Echo Stone was just a recording of his personality, but I don’t care.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“But he left you his house, Valkyrie. I think it’s safe to assume that he expected you to update it a little. It might be nice for you to make your own mark.”
“Honestly, Skulduggery, I don’t even know if I’m staying.”
He stopped walking.
She turned to him. “The nightmares came back last night,” she said. “I woke up and I couldn’t breathe. A panic attack. I haven’t had a panic attack in … a while. I thought I was over them. I don’t think I can go on with this.”
“You said I had twenty-four hours.”
“You’ve had twenty-four hours.”
“I didn’t think you literally meant twenty-four hours. I thought it was more of a metaphor than an actual measurement of time.”
“Well, I meant twenty-four hours.”
“But we’re only getting started, Valkyrie. We’ve just had our first life-or-death encounter. This is how things go. It’s how we do what we do. We have a life-or-death encounter, we stay on it, and then at the end we win and walk away triumphant.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s going to
