“Listen, I wasn’t told anything about this.”
“That would have ruined the surprise, don’t you think? Please do as I say.”
“Could I see some identification, or a badge or something?”
“I don’t need a badge, I have natural authority.”
The teacher frowned at Valkyrie. “And who are you? You’re a little young to be a cop, aren’t you?”
“I’m the student liaison,” she told him. “It’s my job to take notes on how the teachers interact with the pupils in a time of crisis.”
“So this is some kind of fire drill? Then why isn’t the alarm going off?”
“Because we want to observe each class one at a time,” Skulduggery said. “And speaking of time, we’re running out of it. If you don’t start the evacuation in the next thirty seconds, you will have failed the test.”
“Failed? Now just hold on there...”
“Twenty-five seconds.”
The teacher’s eyes widened. “But where do I evacuate them to?”
“Anywhere away from the school.”
“But where? We could go across the football pitch. There’s a car park at an old supermarket we could—”
“Not there,” Valkyrie said quickly. “Is there anywhere else?”
“There’s the trail down to the woods.”
“Is that out of sight of the school?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s where you take them. Eight seconds left. And tell them not to make a sound.”
The teacher darted back into the classroom. While Skulduggery waited, Valkyrie hurried to the next door and glanced through the glass panel. A full room. She hurried on, counting one empty room and two more full. She reached a room at the halfway point and stopped. The teacher was sitting rigidly at his desk. The students were also sitting bolt upright. She heard someone talking, too low to make out the words. She backed off, walked quickly back to Skulduggery as the last of the students left through the fire door.
“They’re here,” she whispered. “They’re in class. Everyone in that room is terrified.”
Skulduggery’s face grimaced. “We’re going to have to evacuate everyone out through the windows. Footsteps on this floor are just too loud.”
“We won’t be able to do it,” she said. “You’re talking about hundreds of students who are going to be giggling and laughing and once they’re outside you know there’s bound to be a few eejits who start shouting for joy at missing class. Once Kitana realises that something is wrong, she’s going to start killing people.”
“Then we forget about the evacuation. We focus on taking them down.”
“We’ll have to take them by surprise.”
“And I have just the thing,” he said, undoing a few shirt buttons. He reached his hand in and rooted around.
“What are you doing?”
“I keep a pouch in there now,” he said. “There’s a big empty space inside me, so why not use it for storage? It beats having unsightly bulges in jacket pockets. Ah, here it is.” He took out a wooden ball, and handed it to her. The cloaking sphere.
“You hold this,” he said. “You’ll have to adjust it accordingly, because we’re going in and bringing them out one at a time. Either that or we go in, get into position, and leap out at them. Or we do something else. I don’t know. It depends on what it’s like in there. Are you clear on the plan?”
“That’s not a plan.”
“Are you clear on what we’re hoping to do?”
“Barely.”
“Then let’s go.”
She twisted the sphere – one side clockwise, the other counter-clockwise – and they were enveloped in a bubble of haze that rendered them invisible to anyone standing outside it. She twisted the hemispheres back a little, drawing the bubble tighter around them. Sticking close together, they approached the door. Skulduggery turned the handle and pushed it open slowly.
“Who is it?” Kitana asked from the back of the class.
“No... no one...” the teacher said.
They stepped in. It was incredibly weird to be standing there in front of thirty people and not one of them able to see or hear them. Kitana and Doran were sitting beside each other at the very back, and Sean was lounging at his desk a little closer to the front. Everyone around them was terrified.
“Hey!” Kitana shouted. She was wearing Valkyrie’s jacket. “Come on in, whoever you are!”
“We’ll go for Sean first,” Skulduggery said.
Valkyrie nodded. She didn’t want to talk when they were being stealthy. It just felt wrong.
Kitana rolled her eyes. “Sean, would you please close the door? I want to get back to my speech. What was I saying? Hey, Mr Teacher, sir, what was I saying?”
Sean got up, started walking for the door while the teacher started stammering. “I... I don’t...”
“What was the last thing I said, Mr Teacher?” Kitana continued, her hand glowing with energy. “Don’t you remember? Weren’t you listening?”
The teacher looked at the open door and bolted, but Sean darted forward, caught him and threw him back over his desk. Kitana laughed and Doran whooped.
“Yay, Sean!” Kitana called. “You’re my hero! That’s a gold star for Sean in Teacher-Throwing, my favourite new subject!”
Sean laughed and Doran thumped his desk in amusement, but Kitana’s smile faded, and she leaned forward. “Hey, Sean... what’s wrong with your leg?”
Valkyrie looked down. The bubble curved over the side of Sean’s knee.
“Dude,” said Doran, “a chunk of your leg’s missing.”
Skulduggery nodded and Valkyrie twisted the sphere a bit more. The bubble grew, enveloping Sean completely. As everyone else in the classroom gasped at his apparent disappearance, Skulduggery slid an arm round his throat. Sean made a sound and his hands flailed as the sleeper hold tightened.
Doran leaped from his chair, eyes wide. “Seriously? We can turn invisible now? This keeps getting cooler!”
Skulduggery backed off and Valkyrie stayed with him. By the time they passed into the corridor Sean was unconscious. Skulduggery laid him on the floor and snapped handcuffs around his wrists.
“Sean?”
Kitana walked out of the classroom. “Sean?” she repeated. “Are you here?”
Skulduggery muttered a curse, picked Sean off the floor and dragged him further away.
Doran came out after her, his face red from straining. “Am I still here? Can you still see me?”
“I can still see you, you idiot,” Kitana said. “I don’t think he’s invisible.”
“Then where’s he gone?”
“I think he’s still here. I can feel him. He’s close. Can’t you feel him?”
Doran shrugged, then turned and looked right at Valkyrie. For a moment she thought he could actually see her, but his eyes moved on without focusing and she relaxed.
“They have him,” Kitana whispered.
Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery. “What do we do?” she asked, her voice sounding