“I don’t know,” Valkyrie said mysteriously. “Am I?”
Oblivious frowned. “I’m not sure what you’re—”
“Super!” Skulduggery exclaimed, and Oblivious yelped as Skulduggery shoved the door open and barged through. Valkyrie hurried down the narrow steps after him.
“I didn’t give you permission!” Oblivious raged. “Guards! Guards! We have intruders!”
Two Necromancers appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Skulduggery waved to them. “We’re not really intruding,” he called down. “This is all a big misunderstanding.”
“Stop right there!” shouted one of them.
Skulduggery held his hand to an ear he didn’t have. “What’s that?”
“Stop!”
“Keep going?”
“Stop!”
“OK, we’ll keep going.”
The Necromancer guards backed off as Skulduggery and Valkyrie reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Is Solomon in?” Skulduggery asked. “We’d like to give him a present that Valkyrie got for the Death Bringer. It’s a small gift, just to say congratulations, the best woman won, et cetera et cetera. Valkyrie, show them the gift.”
Valkyrie smiled at them, searched through the pockets of her jacket and came out with a half-empty packet of Skittles.
Oblivious came charging down the stairs. “You do not have permission to be here! You are trespassing!”
“Only a little bit,” Skulduggery said. “We’ll wait here for Wreath, if you wouldn’t mind calling him.”
Oblivious jabbed a finger into Skulduggery’s chest. “I demand that you leave!”
“But that would defeat the whole purpose of coming here.”
“We can do this the easy way,” Oblivious snarled, “or the hard way.”
“What’s the easy way?”
“You leave immediately.”
“And what’s the hard way?”
“We make you leave.”
Skulduggery’s head tilted. “What’s the easy way again?”
“Let them through,” said a voice from behind the guards. Solomon Wreath walked towards them, dressed in a black suit with a black shirt, cane in hand.
“But they’re trespassing,” Oblivious protested weakly.
Wreath waved a hand. “Only a little bit.”
“But our orders are from the High Priest himself. Now that we have the Death Bringer, we can’t allow any outsiders into the Temple, for her safety.”
“Then they’ll stay here in the Antechamber. They’re practically already outside.” Wreath’s good humour faded for a moment. “Now go away.”
The guards dispersed, and Oblivious swallowed thickly and backed off.
“Sorry about that,” Wreath said, turning to them.
“Quite all right,” Skulduggery responded.
Wreath smiled. “I wasn’t talking to you. Valkyrie, I wanted to speak to you before this, I really did, but things have been hectic here, and—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, shrugging. “Melancholia gets to save the world. That’s cool. Saves me from having to do it, right?”
“Still, I should have been the one to tell you. No one was more surprised than I when Craven brought her forward as the Death Bringer. But we’ve run some preliminary tests on her powers and they exceed anything we’ve ever seen, so she certainly qualifies. I’m not sure how it happened, it defies explanation, but … well. It happened.”
“Really, Solomon, it’s OK. You’re not going to ask for the ring back though, are you?”
Wreath smiled. “No. Just because you’re not the Death Bringer doesn’t mean you won’t make a powerful Necromancer.”
“But if this Passage thing happens, and I’m not trying to mock your beliefs or anything, won’t we be living in a paradise?”
“Am I to take it that you don’t yet believe the world is about to change?”
“Sorry. It’s just kind of hard to imagine. Again, it’s your belief and I don’t want to offend you …”
Wreath smiled. “You could never offend me.”
“I bet I could,” said Skulduggery. “Solomon, we want to talk to you about a friend of yours we ran into yesterday. Absolutely charming fellow – bald, he was, with a terrible goatee. He set the Jitter Girls on us while he made his escape.”
“That’s dreadful,” Wreath said. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t ring any bells. Anything else? Any other distinguishing marks or specific traits?”
“He was killing an old woman because she knew something about the Passage, and a few days earlier he’d killed a homeless man for the same reason,” Skulduggery said. “Is that specific enough for you?”
“That all sounds terrible,” Wreath said. “And yet, again, no bells are ringing.”
“Solomon,” Valkyrie said, “come on. He was a Necromancer. He was one of you.”
“That doesn’t mean I know anything about what he was doing.”
“But you do know him, yes?”
He looked at her. “Bald, with a goatee? I might.”
“The people he killed were of no threat to anyone. Paul Lynch was a Sensitive with a history of mental health problems. The only person who was ever going to listen to him was the old lady who was killed next.”
Wreath nodded. “It does seem quite … excessive.”
“What’s the bald man’s name?” Valkyrie asked.
Wreath sighed. “Dragonclaw.”
She frowned. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“That’s a ridiculous name.”
“We are quite aware of how ridiculous it is, thank you. He’s used for black ops, but not very often. He tends to … go too far. Using the Jitter Girls as a delaying tactic is a perfect example of this.”
“And you know nothing about it?” Skulduggery asked.
“Not a thing,” Wreath said. “I’ve been busy lately, in case you haven’t noticed. I was ready to take Valkyrie to the next stage of her training – but now it seems as if Melancholia will be taking up everyone’s time. Joy of joys.”
Valkyrie heard the main door open again as someone else entered the Temple. She heard footsteps coming down the stairs.
“So when might we get to experience this wonderful and world-changing Passage?” Skulduggery asked.
“Soon enough,” Wreath said. “Don’t you worry about it.”
“We heard we had until Sunday. Would that be about right?”
Wreath did an impressive job of keeping the frown off his face. “Where did you hear that?”
“So it is Sunday, then.”
Wreath scowled. “Maybe. By our calculations, Sunday would seem to be the best time to attempt it. Whether or not things work out the way we’d like remains to be seen.”
“On