Stephanie frowned. “Why did he shave?”
“From what I can see, Brock was an Elemental. He tried to shove a handful of fire into Mr Axle’s face. He only barely missed, too. See how the skin is slightly paler around the cheeks and chin? You had a beard up until a few hours ago, didn’t you, Mr Axle? But you shaved it off. Nicked yourself a few times, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was getting rid of the singed beard. You even had to cut your own hair in a few places. You missed your left eyebrow, though.”
“You don’t know what you’re—”
“I’m arresting you for murder, Mr Axle. Please stand up and put your hands behind your back.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Axle said, but stood just the same.
“We’ll let the Sensitives take a peek inside your mind. Maybe they’ll see something that’ll get you a reduced sentence.”
“No,” said Axle, backing away, “please. I’ll help you. I’ll tell you everything I know about Sanguine. Do you know about his family home, in Texas?”
“The Americans are keeping an eye on that,” Skulduggery said. “He hasn’t visited.”
“I know others,” said Axle. “There’s a house in Dublin. I think it’s his. An ex-girlfriend of mine told me about it. He took her there once.”
“Where?” Stephanie asked.
“Stoneybatter, just off Norseman Place. That’s worth something, isn’t it? I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to kill him. It was a stupid argument. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“We’ll see you’re treated fairly,” Skulduggery said, reaching for him.
“No!” Axle shouted, snapping his palms out. The air rippled and Stephanie flew backwards, getting tangled up with Skulduggery. Tables and chairs scattered and people cursed and cried out, and she glimpsed Axle running out.
Skulduggery hauled her to her feet. “Outside,” he said. “I’ll lead him to you.”
And then he was off in pursuit.
Stephanie barged through the stunned patrons, forcing her way outside. She ran down the alley, her boots splashing in puddles. No sign of Axle. She went to double back and the window above her exploded. She cursed as Skulduggery and Axle landed beside her in a shower of broken glass. Axle staggered, his eyes wide and terrified, his hands already shackled. He fell to his knees.
Stephanie glared at Skulduggery. “What was wrong with the door? You could have just come down the stairs and walked out the door. Why did you have to jump out the window?”
“You know why,” Skulduggery said, walking away.
Axle looked up, tears streaming from his eyes. “Why did he do that? Why?”
Stephanie glowered. “Because doors are for people with no imagination,” she said, and led Axle to the car.
He moved on. The safe house was quickly becoming his least favourite place to be. Sure, it had its upsides. It was where Tanith was, so that was nice, even if she’d barely spoken to him the entire time they’d been hiding out there. But it was enough to be close to her, he reckoned. And once they were married, all this awkward tension would just drain away and leave them with the rest of their lives to get on with. Assuming the rest of their lives meant anything longer than a week.
And then there was the downside.
Darquesse.
Every time he returned to the place, he had to steel himself before he saw her. It was a good thing she usually stayed in the spare room these days, conducting her terrifying little experiments. Sanguine didn’t think he’d be able to handle it if she took to roaming about the—
Goddamn.
Darquesse was in the living room, sitting in the armchair with her legs crossed. The man on the sofa across from her would have looked like a normal, middle-aged college professor were it not for the black lips and all those black veins that he wasn’t bothering to hide.
“Billy-Ray,” Darquesse said, smiling brightly. “Allow me to introduce Nestor Tarry, my new best friend. Nestor was just telling me about his work in quantum mechanics.”
“That so?” said Sanguine, leaning against the doorframe, trying to appear casual and not at all intimidated. “Just your average, ordinary, everyday conversation about quantum mechanics, huh? You managing to keep up?”
“Actually,” Tarry said, “Darquesse is quite well versed in quantum theory.”
“I read a lot,” Darquesse said, shrugging, “and absorb information instantly. It’s a talent.”
Tarry smiled. “One of many, it seems. But I have taken you as far as I am able. The answers you seek are, I’m afraid, beyond me.”
“So who takes me further?”
“I could give you a list of names – but it would be a short list, made even shorter by events over the last few years. Actually, I think your next port of call is a book, not a person. The Hessian Grimoire is a collection of, essentially, theories about the next stages of magic. Where we can go from here, how we can expand our knowledge, the ways in which we can use what we know to delve deeper into the source of all magic. I don’t know who is currently in possession of the book, unfortunately, but if you can find it, I think it could help you.”
“The Hessian Grimoire,” Darquesse said, nodding. “OK then, sounds good. And after that? The list of names you were going to give me?”
Tarry raised his chin and moved his head from side to side, acknowledging the request, but see-sawing between options. “There are two or three people left alive who could help you. Really, the person who could have helped you the most would have been Walden D’Essai.”
“Argeddion.”
Tarry nodded. “His work was just … it was far beyond any of his contemporaries. I never liked the man, I was always far too jealous of his accomplishments. That’s something I could never have admitted without this Remnant inside me, by the way.” He chuckled, and didn’t seem to notice when Darquesse didn’t join in. “But his mind was an astonishing thing. His work, his research … Even the questions he posed in his field outshone the answers I got in mine. If you truly wanted to master this thing called magic, if you truly wanted to touch infinity … I would have said talk to D’Essai. Talk to Argeddion. But, of course, now it’s too late.”
“Argeddion is alive,” said Darquesse.
Tarry frowned. “No. He’s dead. Skulduggery Pleasant killed him when—”
Darquesse spoke over him, her words calm. “Officially, Argeddion died following the confrontation with those super-powered hooligans he’d created. Skulduggery finished him off. That’s the story that was circulated.”