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“You’ve just eaten. How was school, by the way? Anything interesting happen?”
“Alan and Cathy broke up.”
“Are either of them anyone I should care about?”
“Not really.”
“Well, OK then.” He narrowed his eyes. “How about you? Do you have any … romances I should know about?”
“Nope. Not a one.”
“Well, good. Excellent. There’ll be plenty of time for boys when you leave college and become a nun.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you have such ambitious dreams for me.”
“Well, I am the father figure. So, anniversary present?”
“How about a weekend away? Spend your anniversary in Paris or somewhere? You can book it tomorrow, head off on Saturday.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea. That’s a really good idea. You’d have to stay with Beryl though. Are you all right with that?”
The lie came easily. “Sure.”
He kissed her forehead. “You’re the best daughter in the world.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“You know the way I love you so much?”
“I do.”
“Will you go out and get some more milk?”
“No.”
“But I love you.”
“And I love you. But not enough to get you milk. Have some toast.”
He walked out of the kitchen and Valkyrie sighed in exasperation. She went to put on some toast, but they were out of bread, so she took some hamburger buns and slid them into the toaster. When they popped up, she covered them with freshly microwaved beans and took the plate up to her room, closing the door behind her.
“OK,” she said, putting the plate on her desk, “you can go back in the mirror.”
The reflection slid out from beneath the bed and stood. “There are a few homework questions still to do,” it said.
“I can do them. Are they hard? Never mind. I can do them. Anything else happen today?”
“Gary Price kissed me.”
Valkyrie stared. “What?”
“Gary Price kissed me.”
“What do you mean? Like, kissed you kissed you?”
“Yes.”
Her anger made her want to shout, but Valkyrie kept her voice low. “Why did he do that?”
“He likes you.”
“But I don’t like him!”
“Yes, you do.”
“You shouldn’t have kissed him! You shouldn’t be doing anything like that! The only reason you exist is to go to school and hang around here and pretend to be me!”
“I was pretending to be you.”
“You shouldn’t have kissed him!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m supposed to!”
The reflection looked at her blankly. “You’re upset. Is it because you weren’t around for your first kiss?”
“No,” Valkyrie shot back.
The reflection sighed and Valkyrie looked at it sharply. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“You sighed, like you were annoyed.”
“Did I?”
“You did. You’re not supposed to get annoyed. You don’t have any feelings. You’re not a real person.”
“I don’t remember sighing. I’m sorry if I did.”
Valkyrie opened the wardrobe to show the reflection the mirror.
“I’m ready to resume my life,” she said, and the reflection nodded and stepped through. It stood there in the reflected room, waiting patiently.
Valkyrie glared at it for a moment, and then touched the mirror and the memories came at her, flooding her mind, settling alongside her own memories, getting comfortable in her head.
She had been at the lockers, in school, and she’d been talking to … No, the reflection had been talking to … No, it had been her, it had been Valkyrie. She’d been talking to a few of the girls, and Gary had walked up, said something that everyone laughed at, and the girls had walked off, chatting. Valkyrie remembered standing there, alone with Gary, and the way he smiled, and she remembered smiling back, and when he leaned in to kiss her, she had let him.
But that was it. There was the memory of the thing, of the act, but there was no memory of the feeling. There were no butterflies in her stomach, or nerves, or happiness, and she couldn’t remember liking any of it because there was no emotion to accompany it. The reflection was incapable of emotion.
Valkyrie narrowed her eyes. Her first kiss and she hadn’t even been there when it happened.
She left the beans on toasted buns on the desk, her hunger fading, and sorted through the rest of the memories, sifting through to the most recent. She remembered watching herself climb through the window, then she remembered sliding beneath the bed, waiting under there, and then crawling out when she was told.
She remembered telling herself that Gary Price had kissed her, and the argument they’d just had, and then she remembered saying, “You’re upset. Is it because you weren’t around for your first kiss?”, and the sharp “No” that followed. And then a moment, like the lights had dimmed, and then she was saying, “I don’t remember sighing. I’m sorry if I did.”
Valkyrie frowned. Another gap. They were rare, and they never lasted for more than a couple of seconds, but they were definitely there.
It had started when the reflection had been killed in Valkyrie’s place, months earlier. Maybe it had been damaged in a way they hadn’t anticipated. She didn’t want to get rid of it and she didn’t want to replace it. It was more convincing than ever these days. If all Valkyrie had to worry about was a faulty memory, she figured that wasn’t too high a price to pay.
(#ulink_4c3a0b15-1f8c-5a1a-b229-f203a8f2af18)
he narrow roads twisted like snakes, and on either side rose the tallest trees Valkyrie had ever seen. Now and then there was a break in the treeline and she could see how far up they were. The mountains were beautiful and the air was crisp. Clear.
They arrived in Glendalough a little before ten. They were here to talk to someone who may have witnessed the murder of the Teleporter fifty years ago. Valkyrie had been complaining about the cold and Skulduggery told her she didn’t have to come along, but there was no way she was going to pass up this opportunity. After all, she’d never even seen a Sea Hag before.
Skulduggery parked the Bentley and they walked the rest of the way. He was wearing a dark blue suit, with a coat he left open and a hat pulled low over his brow. His sunglasses were in place and his scarf was wrapped around the lower half of his skull, obscuring his skeletal features from the hikers and tourists they passed.
Valkyrie, for her part, was once again dressed in the all too snug black clothes that Ghastly had made for her.
They got to the Upper Lake. It was like someone had reached down and scooped out a huge handful of forest, and then the rain had come and filled it with liquid crystal. The lake was massive, stretching back to the far shore, where the mountains rose again.
They walked along the edge, between the water and the trees, until they came to a moss-covered stump. Skulduggery hunkered down and dipped his gloved hand through the hollow at its base, while Valkyrie looked around, making sure they weren’t being watched. But there was no one around. They were safe.
From the tree stump, the skeleton detective withdrew a tiny silver bell, the length of his thumb, then straightened up and rang it.
Valkyrie arched an eyebrow. “Think she heard that?”
“I’m sure she did,” he nodded as he removed the sunglasses and scarf.
“It’s not exactly loud though, is it? I barely heard it and I’m standing right next to you. You’d think the bell to summon a Sea Hag would be big. You’d think it would be the kind of bell that tolls. That was more of a tinkle than a toll.”
“It was rather unimpressive.”
Valkyrie looked at the lake. “No sign of her. She’s probably embarrassed because her bell is so rubbish. What kind of a Sea Hag lives in a lake anyway?”
“I think we’re about to find out,” Skulduggery murmured as the waters churned and a wizened old woman rose from the surface. She was dressed in rags, and had long skinny arms and hair that was indistinguishable from the seaweed that coiled through it. Her nose was hooked and her eyes were hollow, and instead of legs she had what appeared to be a fish’s tail that stayed beneath the water.
She looked, in Valkyrie’s opinion, like a really old, really ugly mermaid.
“Who disturbs me?” the Sea Hag asked in a voice that sounded like someone drowning.
“I do,” Skulduggery said. “My name is Skulduggery Pleasant.”
“That is not your name,” the Sea Hag said.
“It’s the name I’ve taken,” Skulduggery replied. “As my colleague beside me has taken the name Valkyrie Cain.”
The Sea Hag shook her head, almost sadly. “You give power to names,” she said. “Too much of your strength lies in your names. Long ago, I surrendered my name to the Deep. Cast your eyes upon me now and answer truthfully – have you ever seen such happiness as this?”
Valkyrie looked at her, all seaweed, wrinkled skin and dour expression, and decided it best to contribute nothing to this conversation.
When it became clear that no one was going to answer, the Sea Hag spoke again.
“Why have you disturbed me?”
“We seek answers,” Skulduggery said.
“Nothing you do matters,” the Sea Hag told them. “In the end, all things drown and drift away.”
“We’re looking for answers that are a tad more specific. Yesterday, a sorcerer named Cameron Light was killed.”
“On dry land?”
“Yes.”
“That does not interest me.”
“We think the case may be connected to a murder, fifty years ago, that happened right here, by this lake. If the victim told you anything as he died, if you know anything about him or the one who killed him, we need to hear it.”
“You want to know another’s secrets?”
“We need to.”
“The girl has not spoken a word since I appeared,” the Sea Hag said, turning her attention to Valkyrie, “yet she spoke, with scarcely a pause, before that. Have you nothing to say now, girl?”
“Hello,” said Valkyrie.
“Words travel far beneath the waves. Your words about my bell travelled far. You do not like it?”
“Um,” said Valkyrie. “It’s fine. It’s a fine bell.”
“It is as old as I am, and I am far too old for beauty to reach. I was beautiful once. My bell, the sound it makes, is beautiful still.”
“It makes a pretty sound,” Valkyrie agreed. “Even if it is a bit small.”
The Sea Hag swayed on her giant fish tail, or whatever it was, and leaned down until she was an arm’s breadth away from Valkyrie. She smelled of rotting fish.
“Would you like to drown?” she inquired.
“No,” Valkyrie said. “No, thank you.”
The Sea Hag scowled. “What is it you want?”
Skulduggery stepped between them. “The man, fifty years ago?”
