Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked (7 page)

“Call Tommy,” Valkyrie said, “and cancel it.”

“Ah, Steph...”

“Des,” her mum said, “I know that you’re doing this because you love Stephanie and you want all her boyfriends to treat her with respect, but that isn’t up to us. We just have to trust our daughter to be a good judge of character.”

An image of Caelan popped into Valkyrie’s head and she beat it back with a big mental stick.

“But Aaron’s a lovely guy,” her dad whined. “And I can’t call Tommy. I just
can’t
. I don’t know his number.”

“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.

oarhaven sat beside a dark and stagnant lake, and was surrounded on all sides by barren lands of coarse grasses and dead trees. Nothing ever grew in Roarhaven. No birds ever sang.

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?”

“Please don’t call him that.”

“Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then.”

Skulduggery returned his attention to the cabinets. “Go on.”

“He was assassinated in Sarajevo. There was an attempt on his life with a grenade that didn’t kill him but injured the people around him. He wanted to visit the hospital on his way back, so he deviated from the agreed route and promptly got himself killed like an idiot, which basically kick-started World War One. So Ethereal Ethel had a vision of his assassination?”

“No. She had a vision of a woman in Greece who would invent a new kind of shoe.”

“Oh.”

“Every psychic missed the assassination. It changed the world, and they all missed it.”

“What about the shoe?”

“The Greek woman invented the shoe, then was run over by a train. Ethel missed that bit as well.”

“She wasn’t a very good psychic.”

“No, she wasn’t,” he said, searching through another cabinet. “But that’s what you get when you rely on prophecy to highlight oncoming threats – you’re going to be caught by surprise nine times out of ten. It’s a trap you must not fall into.”

“But psychics saw Darquesse’s arrival, and look at me, here I am.”

“You’re talking about it like it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, like the only reason you’re Darquesse is because they had a vision about you. That’s not what happened. Self-fulfilling prophecies don’t exist. The threat you pose as Darquesse did not come about because of what they saw. You didn’t learn your true name because of a vision. You learned your true name from the Book of Names, and once you became a threat, they started having the visions. When a psychic does have a vision, they are rarely wrong. The problem is they don’t see
everything
that’s going to happen.”

“Right.”

“You look confused.”

“I feel confused. The Death Bringer—”

“Was a scientific inevitability, not a prophecy. You’re not the Chosen One, Valkyrie. There is no Chosen One, there never was and never will be. The very idea is ridiculous. You’re your own person, independent and free to choose.”

“But we saw Darquesse. We saw what she does.”

“We saw a possible future, and if we’re very unlucky, that future will happen. But you’re not going to destroy the world just because people have
seen
you destroy the world. You’re going to destroy it for your own reasons.”

“That really fails to make me feel better.”

“I realised that halfway through. Sorry.” He slid the cabinet shut and stood there, tapping his fingers. “Nothing here. No files on Argeddion, no notes or cross-references or mentions of the Summer of Light. How annoying. We walked all the way in here and now have nothing to show for it. What a waste of walking. We could have walked somewhere else and be having a great time by now.”

“Yeah,” said Valkyrie as they started back, “it’s a real tragedy, all right. Maybe we should get the word out that we’re looking for him.”

“Already taken care of, but it could be days or weeks before we hear from anyone – if anyone out there
does
know him.”

They climbed the stone stairs into the main corridor network. “Do you think the Sensitives would have any information?” she asked. “Maybe we should call in on Finbar.”

“Finbar is out of the psychic business, Valkyrie, you know that.”

“But he’d do it for us. He
likes
us.”

“I’m sure he adores us, but it’s not that he
won’t
use his powers, it’s that he
can’t
. The Remnant possessing him like that, it overloaded his mind. And the mind is a delicate thing. If he tries opening it up to the psychic highways and byways, he may well never get it back. Besides,” Skulduggery continued, “I’ve already alerted a Sensitive to be on the lookout.”

“You
have
been busy.”

He shrugged. “What do you think I do at night while you’re sleeping? I asked Cassandra Pharos to let us know if she senses anything.”

Valkyrie’s smile faded. “Oh.”

“Do I detect reluctance? What’s wrong with Cassandra? You’ve only met her once.”

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with her. It’s just... You know that dream whisperer she gave me? I burned it.”

“You did what?”

“Oh, come on!” she exclaimed. “It was Blair Witch creepy and you know it! A little man-shaped bundle of sticks that
whispered
to you at night? How could you
not
burn something like that?” She quietened again. “But the problem is, with Cassandra being a psychic and all, the next time she sees me she’ll know instantly what I did.”

“She can’t read minds, Valkyrie.”

“She’d be able to read mine. I just know it.”

“I’m sure she’d understand.”

“Well, of course you think that. You have no idea about presents or what they mean. The last present you gave me was a stick.”

“You wanted a weapon.”

“It was a stick.”

“It had a bow on it.”