“Don’t even joke about that.”
Skulduggery picked up the wooden box and they started back towards the cottage. “I’m not joking. The fact is we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it’s a decent girl?”
“Wouldn’t I know which one I was?”
“Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”
“You have an amazing ability to depress me sometimes, you know that?”
“I try my best.” Skulduggery gestured, and his mud-soaked hat rose into his hand. He gazed at it forlornly. “How are you feeling?”
“Headachy. But fine. Bad man got away.”
“Yes, he did.”
“He killed Paul Lynch and now the little old lady Lynch confided in. Somebody doesn’t want us to know anything about the Passage. You think he was a Necromancer?”
“Even though dressing in black is in no way an indication – yes, I quite do.”
She nodded. “Me too. Plus, he had a ridiculous beard. I should probably ask Solomon about him.”
“I should probably help.”
“No hitting.”
“A small amount of hitting.”
Fletcher lunged out of thin air before them, his eyes wide, fists clenched, ready to fight. He looked at them, spun round, spun back again.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“Back in the box,” Valkyrie told him. “Did you find out anything?”
“China wasn’t at the library,” he said, the rain flattening down his hair. “Nobody there could help me. How did you beat them?”
“With unimaginable skill,” Skulduggery said. “Valkyrie, I’ve got a two-hour drive back to Dublin where dry clothes await me.”
She nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
He walked to the Bentley. Fletcher turned to Valkyrie, hands loosely holding her arms. “I didn’t want to leave,” he said quietly.
She smiled. “I know.”
“You should have come with me.”
“Let’s not ruin a nice moment by arguing, OK?” She kissed him.
He sighed, and instead of rain on her face there was sunshine, and instead of being outside a small cottage with a broken window they were behind a tree in her back garden. “Much better,” she murmured. Dripping wet and covered in mud, she took Fletcher’s hand and they stepped out from behind the tree.
Her parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbours, people she’d known all her life and people she’d never met stood around the barbecue pit and stared, their chatter dying away.
“Uh,” said Valkyrie.
“Curiosity,” she said, and Prave’s bulbous eyes snapped open and he jumped to his feet. “That’s what brought me here. Who, I wondered, would be audacious enough to summon me to a squalid little house of worthless worship such as this? Surely, I told myself, it can’t be this man Prave, this snivelling little toad-person with a penchant for bad suits and terrible shirts.”
“What … what’s wrong with my shirt?” he burbled in a Yorkshire accent, his voice a nasal whine that triggered a primal urge within China’s psyche to hit something.
“It’s orange,” she told him. “It can’t be him, I thought. The man has no backbone to brag about, no spine to speak of. Who, then? Who is pulling the strings of the weasel-faced toad-person? So it is curiosity that brings me here, Mr Prave. Unveil your hidden master or risk me growing bored. I do terrible things when I grow bored.”
Prave stared at her with those round, wet eyes of his, and China heard slow, measured footsteps in the other room – high heels on wood. China knew who it was instantly.
Eliza Scorn walked through, dressed in black trousers and a jacket. She had left her long red hair to fall round her face, framing those cheekbones, those lips. Many men had fallen in love with Eliza Scorn, and then instantly forgotten her when China walked into the room. That was only the start of the animosity between them.
“China,” Scorn said, smiling.
“Eliza. What a surprise.”
“Please. I bet you’ve known I was back for months, haven’t you?”
“I may have heard talk.”
“And you didn’t try to get in touch? We could have met up, talked about the old days, traded gossip. Who’s alive, who’s dead, who’s about to die, that kind of thing.”
“My apologies, Eliza. I’ve been very busy.”
“Of course, of course, with the library. I must call round, see how it looks. How have you been? You’re still as beautiful as ever.”
“As are you, my dear. I love your shoes.”
“Aren’t they delightful? I saw them and just had to have them. Their previous owner wasn’t too keen to let them go, but I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
“Is that her blood on the left one?”
“And no amount of scrubbing will get it out, either. I hear you are still a treacherous heathen, then? Your back is still turned to the Dark Gods?”
“Both firmly and resolutely. I met some of them, a few years ago. Not very nice, to heathen and disciple alike.”
Scorn shrugged. “If the Faceless Ones deemed those disciples to be unworthy, so be it. We’ll just have to make sure that the rest of us are worthy of their love the next time they return.”
“The next time? Oh, my dear Eliza, you’re not going to carry on with this, are you? The Faceless Ones had their chance. They returned, and they were sent away again. It’s time to move on. Time to take up another hobby, like crocheting, or serial-killing.”
“Nonsense. Their return, however brief, was a signal that it can be done. We just need better organisation.”
“And you are going to provide that?”
“Naturally. The Church of the Faceless is going to have to expand, of course. We can’t be seen to be congregating in run-down old chapels like this. We need to appeal to a higher level of patron. Which is where you come in.”
“Now this should be fascinating.”
“We need your resources to get us started. Not just money, although we’ll be taking that too, but your contacts. The people you know, China. They are what we want. They can get us what we need. It’s going to be glorious, let me tell you.”
“Eliza,