where is your Bentley?” Cadaverous said, unlocking the Cadillac. “Is it back in Roarhaven? It is? Then I guess, all things considered, that my car is the superior vehicle.”
He got in behind the wheel. A moment later, Pleasant curled his long frame into the passenger seat. He put his hat on his lap and buckled his belt.
“This is an odd sensation,” he said. When Cadaverous didn’t respond, he continued. “I’m used to driving, that’s all. Of course, this is a left-hand drive car so I’m still sitting on my usual side, which alleviates the problem somewhat. But even so, I’m used to being in control. It’s quite discomfiting to not be in control. It’s not a feeling I’m used to. Maybe it would be a good idea if I drove?”
“Only I drive this car,” Cadaverous said, pulling away from the kerb.
Pleasant nodded. “And I totally understand that. I do. However, I’m used to driving on this side of the road, so maybe it’d be safer for us both if I—”
“Only I drive this car.”
Pleasant looked at him, then shrugged. “OK.” He settled back into his seat. “Fine.”
They turned left at the junction, joined the fast-moving traffic.
“If you tell me where Tanner Rut is living,” Pleasant said, “I could just fly there. I can do that, you know. Fly. I could fly there, grab him, take him back, or fly there and wait for you, if you really want to be involved …”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Cadaverous said. “I don’t trust you, skeleton.”
“I am deeply offended by that, Cadaverous. I have been a loyal member of this team for almost twenty-three hours now. Does that bonding-time mean nothing to you?”
“Abyssinia doesn’t trust you, either.”
“Abyssinia and I have history. Did she tell you about that? No? Ah, so she’s keeping something from her minions. That’s interesting.”
“I don’t care.”
“No? Are you sure? It’s salacious. I stole her heart, you see. I stole it and I put it in that box. My point is, yes, she may have some trust issues with me, but time heals all wounds, Cadaverous. I have a feeling when we bring her back all will be forgiven, and, once that happens, you’re really going to want to be on my good side. So what do you say? Will we be friends?”
“That will never happen.”
“Do I detect a hint of growing admiration in your voice?”
“You’re a ridiculous creature,” Cadaverous said. “You’re a bad vaudeville act. You belong on stage.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“I’ve known people like you my entire adult life,” Cadaverous said. “Puffed up with their own sense of importance, inflated by their own so-called genius. Arrogant and pompous.”
“You have formed an opinion of me.”
“I have.”
“I have formed one of you. Would you like to hear it?”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“I know you, Cadaverous. You think I don’t, but I do.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“No?” Pleasant said. “But maybe I knew someone just like you. Except his name wasn’t Cadaverous Gant – it was Charles Grantham, a retired professor of English at a semi-prestigious New England university. He’d written a few books of poetry, but nothing that set the world on fire. Truth be told, his poetry was lazy and uninspired. Hackneyed, I believe was the popular opinion among his peers.”
Cadaverous’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“At age seventy-eight, Charles apparently flew into a fit of rage after listening to a so-called ‘street poet’ reinterpret the works of Keats. Charles tried, unsuccessfully, to strangle this street poet, and suffered a heart attack as a result. While he was recovering in hospital, police raided his home. Interesting thing about his home – he’d had it built by three different builders. None of them knew what the others were doing, but Charles knew. There were corridors that went nowhere, doors that opened on to brick walls. There were secret passageways and pits. How many people did you kill in that house over the years, Cadaverous? Was it more than the police believed? Was it more than forty-seven? How many of them were your students?”
“You think you know it all,” Cadaverous said.
“I know Charles Grantham disappeared,” Pleasant replied. “The house had been searched illegally – everything in there was inadmissible in court. A few months later, Professor Grantham was gone. Is that when Abyssinia first spoke to you? Is that when Cadaverous Gant was born?”
Cadaverous slowed at the lights. A part of him, a significant part, had no desire to answer. Satisfying the skeleton’s questions was not something that interested him. Another part, however, had been snagged, as if Pleasant’s words were a hook cast into the still lake.
“It was the heart attack,” he said, accelerating again. “When I woke up, I could feel magic. I could feel it. Do you have any idea what that’s like, to get old, to watch your own body betray you, only to find out that you could have stopped it? That you could have stayed young forever?”
“I’d imagine that would have upset just about anyone, let alone a serial killer.”
“You can’t reduce my life down to a label like that.”
“Why not? You reduced forty-seven lives down to nothing.”
“They were cattle,” Cadaverous said. “Each of them had a sad little existence that I ended. Each of them had stumbled through their lives with blinkers on. They didn’t appreciate the world. They didn’t appreciate art, or poetry, or the beauty in the everyday. Every single person I killed, every single one of them, deserved to die. They were small. They were meaningless.”
“Unlike you.”
Cadaverous nodded. “Unlike me.”
“And then Abyssinia spoke to you, did she? And took you under her wing …”
“Is that what you did?” Cadaverous asked. “After we went after Valkyrie Cain, you investigated me?”
“After she sent you packing, yes, I did.”
“You were coming after me, were you? For daring to harm your precious Valkyrie?”
“But I couldn’t find you,” said Pleasant. “So I waited. And finally here we are.”
“Are you going to kill me now, skeleton?”
“I’m not sure,” Pleasant said. “It would certainly be easy enough. According to Valkyrie, you’re stronger and faster than you look, but outside your home, you’re just as vulnerable as anyone else.”
“You
