“The longest ten minutes of my life.”
“Is that why you went back to reading the paper?”
“I needed something to distract me.”
Valkyrie smiled at them both. “Well, I’m really sorry for any distress I may have caused. I’ll try not to let it happen ever again. But now, Mum, is there any dinner left? I’m starving.”
She ate, looked in on her little sister, and put her black clothes in a pile on the floor beside her before she went to bed. She kept her Necromancer ring on. She lay in the darkness for a few minutes, then reached for her phone. She dialled.
Skulduggery answered immediately. “Are you shunting?”
“No,” she said, “no, everything’s fine. But what if I do shunt again tonight?”
“I considered that,” he answered. “And without wishing to alarm you, I’m in your back garden.”
She laughed. “You’re what?”
“If your arm starts to hurt, open the window for me and we’ll go together.”
“You can’t stand in the garden all night,” she said, and got up, wrapped a sheet round herself and opened the window. A moment later, he was perched on her sill. She went back to bed, and snuggled under the covers. “Come in,” she whispered.
“I’m fine out here.”
“Don’t be dumb. You might be seen.”
He considered it, then climbed through, closing the window behind him. “And what if your parents walk in?”
“Then I’ll tell them I borrowed the skeleton from the school lab and dressed it in a nice suit as a prank.”
“You’re not known for your pranks.”
“Maybe it’s time for that to change.”
He went to the wall opposite the bed, and slid down until he was sitting. With the light off, all she could see was the outline of his hat. “Do you want me to tell you a bedtime story?”
She smiled. “No thank you. You can sing me a lullaby if you want.”
And that’s what he did. In a voice so soft it barely reached her through the darkness, he sang her ‘Me and Mrs Jones’, and she fell asleep to his voice.
Valkyrie sat up, yawned, stretched both arms above her head.
“I’m still here,” Skulduggery told her, and she yelped, almost fell out of bed. “Sorry,” he said. “You looked like you’d forgotten about me.”
“I had,” she said, glaring. “Did we get a call?”
“Yes, we did. One of the mages stationed at St Brendan’s School saw someone answering Kitana Kellaway’s appearance in the vicinity. We may as well drop by on our way to the Sanctuary to check it out.”
He stayed in her room while she took a shower, then she dressed in her school uniform and went down to the kitchen. She had a quick breakfast, said goodbye to her folks, and left the house. She hurried round the corner, rose up to her window and climbed through. Skulduggery turned his back while she pulled on her black trousers and boots. She pulled on a black top, really missing her jacket. Then they both dropped down to the garden. Sixty seconds later, they were in the Bentley, driving for Haggard’s Main Street.
Behind St Brendan’s Secondary School there was a closed-down supermarket, and at the rear of that there was a small car park. It was here that they found the dead sorcerers. Five of them, their bodies torn and ruptured. Skulduggery muttered something Valkyrie couldn’t hear and she turned away, went to the brick wall that acted as a boundary between the car park and the school grounds. She used the air to hoist herself to the top and straddled the wall.
“It looks quiet,” she said.
Skulduggery rose into the air until he was standing on the wall. “We’ll have reinforcements here in ten minutes. We should wait.”
“That’s what we should do,” Valkyrie agreed, swinging her leg over and dropping down on to school grounds.
Skulduggery drifted down beside her as she walked. “It really doesn’t seem fair,” he said, checking his gun. “Those sorcerers trained for years to develop their powers, and these kids wake up one morning and they’re able to tear them apart with a gesture.”
“They’re not kids,” Valkyrie said. “They’re the same age as me. Do you think of me as a kid?”
“No, but then I’ve never defined you by your age.”
“Then don’t define them by their age, either. They’re not kids, they’re murderers.”
“If you’re telling me not to go easy on them because they’re under eighteen, you don’t have to worry.”
“So you’re going to be your usual ruthless self?”
“It’s been working well for me so far.”
She glanced behind them. “Did you know any of the sorcerers back there?”
“I knew all of them,” he said. “You knew three – but you wouldn’t have recognised them.”
The empty feeling in Valkyrie’s chest expanded slightly.
They reached the football pitch and looked across at the school buildings. No alarms, no screaming, no explosions.
“Maybe they changed their minds,” Valkyrie said.
“I doubt it,” Skulduggery responded, putting his gun away.
“Do we have a plan?”
“We do, but it’s not very good.”
“Any plan at all would be a reassurance.”
“Very well. We go in there and we evacuate each room as quietly as possible.”
“That actually sounds like a good plan.”
“It does, until you realise it’s very light on details, such as how we evacuate them and how we manage to do it without causing a panic.”
“We could set off the fire alarm.”
“Which would cause the panic I just mentioned, which in turn could set off Kitana and her friends. If this turns bad, we’re going to have to forget about hiding magic from the mortals. If you have to throw fire right in front of them, then that’s what you do. Focus everything you’ve got on defending yourself and the people inside, do you understand?”
“Yes. This really isn’t going to be pretty, is it?”
“It’s really not,” Skulduggery said.
They approached the school from the rear. Skulduggery disconnected the alarm on the fire doors and they slipped inside. The corridor was long and empty. Still no screaming. A face slid upwards from Skulduggery’s collarbones, and he opened the door of the first classroom they came to. The teacher, standing at the board, looked round.
“Can I help you?”
“I’d like a word, please,” Skulduggery said.