“But I don’t like them!” she whined.
“The fate of the world may depend on whether or not you can bring yourself to visit your relatives.”
She turned her head, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. “It may depend?”
“Valkyrie—”
“Fine, I’ll go.”
“Good girl.” She crossed her arms and didn’t respond.
“Are you sulking now?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered curtly.
“OK.”
THE EXPERIMENT
Serpine stepped into the light and the Cleaver’s eyes flickered to him. They were glassy and dull, without any of the fierceness that had met his gaze when the Hollow Men had brought the Cleaver to him and removed the helmet. Then, even as Skulduggery Pleasant made good his escape, Serpine had been given a new captive and he knew what he would do with him.
It was time. Serpine held up the dagger he was holding, let the Cleaver see it. No reaction. No wariness, no fear, no recognition. This man, this soldier, who had lived his entire life with blind obedience to others, was now about to enter into death, equally as blind. A pathetic existence. Serpine held the dagger in both hands and raised it above his head then brought it down, and the blade plunged into the Cleaver’s chest and he died.
Serpine removed the blade, wiped it clean and put it to one side. If this worked some changes would obviously need to be made, some alterations, some improvements. The Cleaver was a test subject after all, no more than an experiment. If it worked, a little refinement would be in order. It wouldn’t take long. An hour at most.
Serpine waited by the Cleaver’s corpse. The warehouse was quiet. He’d had to abandon the castle, but he had been well prepared for that eventuality. Besides, it wouldn’t be for long. In a matter of days, his enemies would be dead, and there would be no one left to fight him, and he would have everything he would need to usher in the Faceless Ones – a feat his old master Mevolent had never managed.
Serpine frowned. Had it been a trick of the light, or had the Cleaver moved? He looked closer, searching for the rise and fall of the chest, searching for a sign of life. But no, no sign of life. The Cleaver’s pulse, when he checked it, was absent.
And then the Cleaver opened his eyes.
THE FAMILY CURSE
“Are you ready to resume your life?” it asked.
Stephanie, who was finding it very disconcerting to hold a conversation with herself, merely nodded. The reflection went to the mirror and stepped through, then turned and waited. Stephanie touched the glass and a day’s worth of memory flooded into her mind. She watched the reflection change, the clothes Stephanie was wearing appearing on it. And then it was nothing more than a reflected image in a mirror.
Stephanie woke the next morning, not happy with what she had to do. Dressed in jeans and T-shirt, she thought about calling on the reflection to imitate her again, then decided against it. The reflection gave her the creeps.
Realising that she could not put it off any longer, Stephanie trudged over to her aunt’s house and knocked on the door. The sun was shining and the birds were singing and Stephanie forced a smile on to her face, but it wasn’t a smile that was returned when the door opened and Crystal looked out at her.
“What do you want?” her cousin asked suspiciously.
“Just thought I’d call round,” Stephanie said brightly. “See how you all are.”
“We’re fine,” Crystal said. “We’ve got a stupid car and a stupid boat. How’s your house?”
“Crystal,” she said, “I know you’re probably angry about the inheritance and everything, but I don’t know why I was left all that either.”
“It’s because you were sucking up to him,” Crystal sneered. “If we’d have known that all it took was just to be all smiles and have conversations with him, then we’d have done that stuff too.”
“But I didn’t know—”
“You cheated.”
“I didn’t cheat.”
“You had an unfair advantage.”
“How? How could I have even known he was going to die?”
“You knew,” Crystal said. “You knew that sooner or later he was going to die, but you got in so early, the rest of us didn’t stand a chance.”
“Did you even like him?”
There was that sneer again. “You don’t have to like someone to get something from them.”
Stephanie resisted the urge to punch Crystal’s smirking face long enough for Beryl to pass the doorway. She saw Stephanie and her eyes widened in surprise.
“Stephanie,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
“She thought she’d call round,” Crystal said, “to see how we are.”
“Oh, that’s very nice of you, dear.”
Crystal took this opportunity to walk away without saying goodbye. Stephanie focused on Beryl.
“You’re not wearing the brooch Gordon left you?”
“That horrid thing? No, I am not, and I don’t think I ever will. It doesn’t even sparkle for heaven’s sake. People know something is cheap if it doesn’t sparkle.”
“That’s a shame. It looked pretty, though, from where I was standing; it would have looked nice with one of your cardigans—”
“We saw you yesterday,” Beryl interrupted.
“I’m sorry?”
“In a horrid yellow car, with that dreadful Skulduggery Pleasant.”
Stephanie felt the instant flutters of panic in her belly, but she made herself frown and give a puzzled laugh. “Um, I think you may be mistaken. I was home all day yesterday.”
“Nonsense. You passed right by us. We saw you quite clearly. We saw him, too, all covered up like last time.”
“Nope, wasn’t me.”
Beryl smiled piously. “Lying is a sin, did you know that?”
“I’d heard the rumour…”
“Fergus!” Beryl shouted back into the house and a few moments later