“I’m not talking to you until this is cancelled,” Valkyrie told him, and went back to eating cereal.
Her father sagged. “But what if I go over there and Aaron answers the door? Then I’ll have to tell him that my beautiful daughter wants nothing to do with him. Something like that, it’d crush a fragile soul like his.”
“You should have thought about that when you arranged this whole thing,” said Melissa. “And until it’s done, I’m not talking to you, either.”
He looked at his wife with big imploring eyes, but she ignored him and focused her attention on Alice. Up to that point, Valkyrie’s sister had been gurgling away quietly, but even she stopped talking. That was the final straw. Valkyrie’s dad got up.
And then the doorbell rang.
“No,” Valkyrie said.
“Ah,” said her dad, checking his watch. “He’s a bit early.”
Valkyrie jumped to her feet. “You told them to call round this morning?”
“Tommy’s got things to do this afternoon. I thought it’d be best. What do you want me to do? Will I tell them to go away?”
“Yes! Tell them I’ve gone horse-riding, or something.”
“You haven’t ridden a horse in years.”
“They don’t know that!”
“Aaron will be very disappointed.”
“Dad!”
He went to the front door. Valkyrie heard a murmured conversation, then her dad returned to the kitchen table. “Well, I hope you’re happy,” he said. “I’ve just turned away a boy and his father and they both looked very disappointed.”
“Well, that couldn’t be helped. Did you tell them I was horse-riding?”
“No, I couldn’t find a way to make that believable. I just told them you had diarrhoea.”
Valkyrie closed her eyes. “Mum?”
“Yes, Steph?”
“Kill him for me, will you?”
“With pleasure, dear.”
Valkyrie went upstairs. She checked for messages on her phone, then took a shower. She stood under the spray and closed her eyes. It had been twelve months since she’d split up with Fletcher – a split that hadn’t exactly broken her heart, since she’d been the one who’d dumped him. In the weeks that followed, however, she’d been surprised to realise she missed him. She missed the obvious things about having a boyfriend, naturally, but more than that, she missed the friendship he brought.
It was around that time, though, that the reflection had stopped malfunctioning and started behaving the way it should, and Valkyrie began to see other advantages to its continued existence. One of these advantages was simply having someone to talk to, someone she didn’t have to hide anything from. Someone she couldn’t hide anything from. It was liberating, in a way.
It could also be disturbing. There were things Valkyrie didn’t want to think about, didn’t want to talk about or even admit to herself. Things like Darquesse, and how good it felt to let her take control. But the reflection had no sense of shame, and so it spoke without fear until Valkyrie told it to shut up. Which it did, immediately and without any feelings to hurt.
Valkyrie dried herself off, walked to her room with her dressing gown bunched in her hand while her mother continued to scold her father downstairs, and touched the mirror. The reflection stepped out, smiling. Valkyrie knew it wasn’t a real smile, that the reflection wasn’t actually amused, but it was doing what it was made to do, pretending, and so she didn’t mind that much.
“Poor you,” the reflection said. “What is your dad like?”
“He’s something else,” said Valkyrie as she dressed. “Definitely doesn’t live in the same world as the rest of us.” She pulled on her boots and zipped up her jacket. “There. How do I look?”
“Amazing.”
“You’re not biased?”
“That’s entirely possible, but you still look amazing.”
Valkyrie laughed, and jumped out of the window.
The Sanctuary squatted on the edge of town, a low, circular building like a rusted hubcap that had come spinning off a passing car and then had just fallen over. The building itself went five floors beneath the surface, and was riddled with tunnels and secret passageways. Everything was dark and damp and smelled vaguely of mould. On the third floor down there was a large room filled with cabinets, and it was to this room that Valkyrie and Skulduggery were headed, to look for information about this Argeddion guy the werewolf had dreamed about.
“I’m so excited right now,” Valkyrie said as they neared.
“Stop complaining.”
“Finally, a reason to go into the fabled Mystical Hall of Magical Cabinets.”
Skulduggery looked at her. “That’s not what it’s called.”
“A chance to sort through millions of files and really do some good old-fashioned detective work. This is where the job gets glamorous. This is where I come alive.”
“You can stop being sarcastic any time now.” He led the way through the doors, and they walked along the rows of cabinets.
Valkyrie sighed. “Wouldn’t it be simpler if this was all on a computer somewhere? It’d take up a bit less space, for a start.”
“Computers crash,” said Skulduggery. “Electronic information can be hacked. Sometimes, hard copy is the way to go.”
“But there’s so much of it,” she whined. “Please tell me that there’s some sort of cool magical search system where the name we seek will suddenly appear to us.”
“Yes,” said Skulduggery. “It’s called Alphabetical Order.” He opened a cabinet, skimmed over the files, then opened another one.
Valkyrie thought about helping, then decided against it. She’d probably just get in the way. “Is Argeddion really a problem?” she asked.
“You don’t think everything that’s happened has been a problem?”
She shrugged. “It’s been an inconvenience, and it’s been unfortunate, because of the people who have been hurt or killed. But if Argeddion was really going to affect the world, or if this Summer of Light thing is bad news, the Sensitives would have seen something, wouldn’t they?”
“They don’t see everything,” Skulduggery murmured, and looked up. “In fact, they see very little. In the past they have missed huge, world-changing events. In 1844, a psychic called Ethereal Ethel – yes, she chose that name herself – had a vision. She saw into the future, to Sunday the twenty-eighth of June, 1914. Do you remember why this date is significant?”
“Did Ireland win a big football match that day?”
“You would have learned about this in school. I also went over it as part of your close-protection training.”
“Oh, was this about Ferdie?”