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“And why would he send Crux after me? What would he have to gain?”
Tanith shrugged. “We’re close to getting Skulduggery back, and he’s close to losing his prized pupil. He gains your trust, and your confidence, and if he’s lucky, you choose Necromancy over Elemental magic.”
Valkyrie felt the ring on her finger. She hadn’t taken it off all night. “We’ll worry about that later,” she said.
“A lunatic attacks you in the middle of the night,” Tanith said with a raised eyebrow, “a lunatic who, even when he was sane, detested you and you want us to forget about it?”
Fletcher peered at Ghastly and then said, with his usual tactfulness, “Hey, what’s with the bandage?”
Ghastly adjusted his collar. “It’s nothing,” he said gruffly.
“Did you cut yourself shaving? Did you cut yourself shaving a lot?”
Ghastly sighed. “I asked China if she could help me blend into a crowd. I’m sick of disguises. So she came up with a façade tattoo. That’s all.”
“What’s a façade tattoo?” Tanith asked.
“It’s not important.”
“Then tell us what it is so we can get on to something important.”
“It’s a false face,” he said, trying to hide his embarrassment with impatience. “She tattooed two symbols on my collarbones and when they’ve healed, in theory, they’ll make me look like I’m normal for a short period of time.”
“Normal?”
“No scars.”
“Wow.”
“Like I said, it’s not important.”
“When can you try it out?”
“Another few hours. It mightn’t work, but … it’s worth a try. It’s better than having to a wear a scarf every time I go out. I think we should get back to the matter at hand. Chabon’s plane lands in an hour, right?”
“He’d be here by now if he’d let me pick him up,” Fletcher said.
“He doesn’t trust us,” Valkyrie told him. “He buys and sells and the people he deals with aren’t always as honest and trustworthy as we are.”
Fletcher shrugged. “I’d have just nicked the skull off him and teleported back here.”
Valkyrie sighed. “Do we have the money?”
Tanith kicked a duffel bag on the floor beside her. “A bit each from our various bank accounts. Good thing money doesn’t mean a whole lot to people like us.”
“Speak for yourself,” grumbled Fletcher.
“You didn’t contribute anything,” Tanith frowned.
“Is contributing time not enough?” Fletcher replied archly.
“Not when you’re trying to buy something, no.”
“Oh.”
Tanith looked back to Valkyrie. “And Val, relax, OK? We’ve thought of everything.”
“Skulduggery told me once that only he can think of everything, but he doesn’t do it very often because it spoils the surprise.”
This raised a smile on Tanith’s lips. “Then we have thought of everything that we four are capable of thinking of, and we can’t think of anything else. There is absolutely no reason to think that this won’t be as easy as meeting up, handing over the money, getting the skull and saying thank you. This afternoon we take a trip up to Aranmore Farm and Fletcher opens the portal. Then we go in, find Skulduggery and bring him back. Easy as proverbial pie.”
“Unless something goes wrong,” Valkyrie said.
“Well, yes. Unless something goes horribly, dreadfully wrong. Which it usually does, of course.”
(#ulink_642d183c-0611-5495-abd4-9a667b3a6fd9)
habon had picked a café on Duke Street for the exchange to take place. Valkyrie and Tanith sat facing the door. Fletcher was beside the window, reading a comic and drinking a Coke and doing his best to look inconspicuous – not an easy feat with that hair. Only Ghastly was absent. His scars were too difficult to conceal from the public for any length of time.
A little after midday, a man with a suitcase entered. He spotted them immediately and approached. He wasn’t what Valkyrie had been expecting. His clothes were casual and he didn’t have a pencil-thin moustache for a start.
“Afternoon, ladies,” he said, smiling politely. “Do you have my payment?”
“Show us the skull,” said Valkyrie.
Chabon put the suitcase on the table and patted it. “You’re not seeing the merchandise until I know you have my payment. That’s how it works. That’s how these things happen.”
Tanith lifted the duffel bag and opened it, allowing Chabon a peek at the money within. She closed it and held it on her lap.
Valkyrie reached for the case, but Chabon grabbed her wrist.
“You’re very eager,” he said, his voice cold. He turned her wrist, eyes narrowing when he got a closer look at the ring. “You’re a Necromancer? I thought you people didn’t even leave the Temple until you were twenty-five.”
She took her hand back. “I dabble,” she said. “Your turn.”
Chabon flattened his palm on the case and the locks sprang open. He raised the lid, enough for Valkyrie and Tanith to see what it contained.
“That’s the Murder Skull?” Tanith asked. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“If you’re lying to us …” Valkyrie began.
Chabon shook his head. “Don’t threaten me, girl. I’ve been threatened by professionals. I had this discussion with your vampire friend, and all the facts we established then are still true today. So, unless you’re planning on double-crossing me, and using that fella with the stupid hair by the window, what do you say we conduct our business and part ways? I’ve got a plane to catch.”
Valkyrie glanced at Tanith, who put the duffel bag on the table. Chabon reached in and touched the money.
“It’s all there,” Tanith said.
After a moment, Chabon nodded. “Yes, it is.” He withdrew his hand and stood, taking the bag with him and leaving the case on the table. “Been a pleasure,” he said and they watched him walk out.
Fletcher came over and Valkyrie raised the lid slightly. The case was lined and cushioned, the skull sitting comfortably within. A huge smile suddenly broke across Valkyrie’s face.
They had it. They had it, and in a few hours they’d pass through the portal and get Skulduggery back. All her hard work would pay off and, by the end of the day, her life would be allowed to resume. She closed the case.
“I just want to make sure,” she said and hurried to the door. She stepped out and saw Chabon just as he turned the corner on to Grafton Street.
“Hey!” she roared, a furious look on her face.
Chabon turned. If the skull was the Murder Skull, he would have no need to panic. If it wasn’t … Chabon panicked and broke into a sprint.
“It’s a fake!” she shouted to the others and bolted after Chabon, with Tanith and Fletcher following.
Valkyrie barged into the crowd, fighting to keep Chabon in sight. She leaped over a busker’s coin tray and dodged around a man painted silver. Chabon turned right, into a long, bright lane, the duffel bag swinging wildly.
If the lane had been empty, Valkyrie would have wrapped a tendril of shadow around his ankles and pitched him forward on to his face. But there were maybe a dozen people wandering by shop windows, and a woman begging for spare change just ahead of her. Out of the corner of her eye, Valkyrie saw Tanith dart into an alcove and run up the side of the building. Valkyrie chased Chabon to the next street, where he glanced up and saw Tanith moving over rooftops to cut him off. He knocked over an old man and ran into the Powerscourt Centre. Valkyrie took the street adjacent, moving parallel to him. Through the windows she saw him crash through the lunch crowd at the restaurant, slowing him down.
She reached South William Street as Chabon staggered out of the Powerscourt Centre. He saw her, cursed and kept running, through Castle Market and straight into the old Victorian building that housed the George’s Street Arcade. She knew she had him. He didn’t have a hope of getting away now.
The stalls were set up down the middle of the arcade, funnelling the shoppers down paths on either side. There were clothes stalls and jewellery stalls and a fortune-teller behind a red curtain. Chabon chose the left path, knocking people out of his way. He stumbled over a box of old paperbacks and Valkyrie piled on the speed and jumped, her knees slamming into his back. He sprawled to the ground and she ignored the startled looks from the people around her. He reached for the fallen bag and she stomped on his hand. He shrieked, kicking, and her feet swept from beneath her. She landed just as he got up, the bag in his uninjured hand, but she grabbed one of the straps and wouldn’t let go, and Chabon remembered too late that she wasn’t alone.
Tanith came flying over Valkyrie and her boot-heel connected with Chabon’s sternum. There was a crack and he went down and rolled a few times before curling up. Valkyrie got to her feet as Fletcher joined them, puffing and panting like someone who hadn’t needed to run anywhere in quite a while.
“Here you go,” Valkyrie said as she pressed the duffel bag into Fletcher’s arms. She smiled at the crowd. “This poor boy got his bag snatched by that nasty man.”
Fletcher glared at her as the crowd applauded, and Tanith picked up Chabon and escorted him away. Valkyrie and Fletcher followed.
“That was unnecessary,” Fletcher seethed.
“If you’d been faster,” she said quietly, “maybe you could have been the hero – but you weren’t, so you’re the innocent victim. Get over it.”
Tanith took Chabon far enough away from passing pedestrians so that they could talk without being overheard. She pressed him back against the wall. He was holding his hand against his chest, obviously in a great deal of pain.
“Where’s the real Murder Skull?” Valkyrie asked, keeping her voice low.
“I gave it to you,” Chabon tried. She prodded his hands and he hissed. “OK! Stop! I had it, I swear I did. When I talked to you on the phone, I had it.”
“So what did you do with it?”
Chabon was looking quite pale. His injury was making him sweat. “There’s a … Look, there’s a rule, in what I do. If you find something that one person is willing to pay for, odds are there’s someone else who’s willing to pay more.”
“You advertised?”
“I didn’t know anyone would be that interested, so yeah, I mentioned it here and there, and someone came to me with a better offer.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Valkyrie made a fist and crunched it against Chabon’s hands. Tanith struggled to keep him standing upright.
“A woman,” he gasped. “I met with her an hour ago. She paid me triple. I didn’t think you’d ever know. It’s the Murder Skull. What’s so important about it?”
“What did this woman look like?” asked Tanith.
“Dark hair. Pretty enough. All business.”
“A name,” Valkyrie said. “A number, address, anything.”
“She called me. Kept her number private. We met in the arrivals area in the airport. She had the money so I gave her the skull. I brought a second one for you lot.”
“You’d better give us something we can use to find her,” Fletcher said, “or I’m teleporting you to the middle of the Sahara and I’m leaving you there.”
Chabon looked at him, like he was gauging whether or not the threat was serious. He obviously decided it was.
“She’s American – Boston by the accent. And she’s got that eye thing – one green eye, one blue.”
“Heterochromia,” Tanith said. “Davina Marr.”
Valkyrie’s stomach dropped. Davina Marr had been brought in by the Irish Sanctuary to assume the role of Prime Detective. Valkyrie had had a few run-ins with her already, and had found her to be ambitious, patronising and ruthless.
“If she bought the skull,” Valkyrie said grimly, “then Thurid Guild has it by now, and he’s going to lock it away to make sure Skulduggery never gets back.”
“So what do we do?” asked Fletcher.
“We steal it,” said Valkyrie.
(#ulink_f34145b7-74e7-5c86-8a4c-db028e231ae4)
t was raining. Again.
Scarab didn’t like Ireland. Every great misfortune in his life had happened here. Every major defeat. Even though he had done his time in an American prison, he’d been arrested here in Ireland – and it had been raining then too.
The castle was cold and there were draughts everywhere. Most of the doors had recently been blocked off, sealing away the dungeons and various unsavoury places. They were still accessible through the many secret passages, but it was proving quite difficult to get around. Also the plumbing was terrible. The cell that had been his home for two centuries had kept him alive, kept him nourished, kept his body clean and his muscles from atrophying. For 200 years he had not even needed to visit a bathroom. Where did all the waste go? Was there any waste to begin with? He didn’t know and no one had come around to tell him.
And now, suddenly, he had to eat and wash and visit the bathroom at worryingly frequent intervals, and the toilet wouldn’t flush. He’d searched for another bathroom and had quickly got lost. He had stumbled around in the dark for half an hour before finding his way back to where he started.
“Where have you been?” Billy-Ray asked, hurrying by. “They’re here.” He disappeared into the next room.
Scarab shuffled to the door and heard Billy-Ray welcoming their guests. Scarab’s bladder was still full, and he wondered if he had time to find a potted plant or something. Not that a place like this would have a potted plant.
“You’re wonderin’ why I called you here,” he heard Billy-Ray say. “You’re lookin’ at the guy sittin’ next to you and you’re goin’, hey, don’t I hate that guy? Didn’t that guy try to kill me once? The fact is, yeah, we all probably tried to kill each other a few times over the years, but y’know what? So did plenty of other people.
“And that, gentlemen, is why we’re here. That is the bond we share. This is our common affliction and so it provides us with our common goal. I got someone I want to introduce. You may have heard of him. He’s the man who killed Esryn Vanguard. Boys, I’d like you to meet the man, the legend, Dreylan Scarab!”
Scarab straightened up and walked in, keeping his steps purposeful and strong.
Four men sat at a table, with Billy-Ray taking the fifth seat. Scarab strode forward but didn’t sit. He knew each of the men, though they’d never met. His son’s descriptions were more than adequate.
