“Oh, dear. Oh, dear me. Well, we knew this would eventually happen. Um… The important thing is to remember the good times, but not dwell on them… Dwelling leads to miserable thoughts and the playing of bad music. It is to be avoided at all costs. Fletcher… There will be another Fletcher, and another one after him, and another… It’s not the end of the world, Valkyrie. You know what the end of the world looks like – by all accounts you’re the cause of it.”
He chuckled. She didn’t. He stopped chuckling.
“He didn’t dump me,” she said. “I broke up with him.”
“Oh,” said Gordon, much brighter now. “Well, that is completely different! Excellent. Bravo. Well, not excellent. I liked the boy. He seemed nice. But obviously, you had a good reason for ending it.”
“It just felt like the time. I was getting… bored.”
“The death knell for many a mediocre relationship. I can’t tell you how many beautiful women have broken up with me because they were bored. I can’t tell you because it never happened. They all adored me.”
“It was your humility, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sure that had something to do with it. You’re like me, Valkyrie. You’re never going to be content until you find that one person, that one single person, who fills you with delight every time you hear their name.”
“Did you ever find that person?”
He hesitated. “Yes. I did.”
“And what happened?”
“Does it matter? What matters is you. You can’t let this get you down.”
“I wasn’t. I’m upset about it, I suppose, but… There’s other stuff happening too.”
“There always is.”
“Skulduggery kept a secret from me.”
“I see. You think that was wrong of him?”
“No, not wrong, but it’s a pretty big secret, and it’s… it’s bad.”
“Is he still your friend?”
Valkyrie sighed.
“Has he moved against you in any way? Has he hurt you?”
“No.”
“Then is he still your friend?”
“I suppose.”
“This secret, how long has he had it?”
“Hundreds of years.”
“Then it has nothing to do with you. It’s quite simple, isn’t it? He kept something from you, something about his past, and now you know it, and now you deal with it and move on.”
She filled her cheeks with air, then blew it out. “It sounds really easy when you say it. It doesn’t feel easy.”
“Everyone has secrets, Valkyrie. I don’t need to tell you that. So long as he hasn’t used this secret to intentionally hurt you, however, I don’t see the problem. Friends stick by each other. That’s what they do.”
She looked at him. “You are a wise and noble man, Uncle Gordon.”
“And good-looking. You forgot good-looking.”
“That’s taken for granted.”
“As well it should be. Now then, do you have any other problems I can help you with?”
“There’s a vampire who’s in love with me.”
“Dump him. Any other problems?”
Valkyrie laughed. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“In that case, be off with you. I have a book to write, characters to kill, and a party to plan.”
Chapter 37
The Wisdom of Leonard Cohen
hastly checked his watch as he walked the corridors of the Sanctuary, resigning himself to the fact that, once again, it looked like he’d be spending the night in his office instead of going home. He yawned heavily as he rounded the corner, and saw Fletcher Renn sitting outside his door.
“Fletcher,” Ghastly said.
The kid looked up. His jeans were tattered, his boots were scuffed, and his T-shirt was a faded advertisement for a band Ghastly had never heard of. It was the eyes, though, that marked him out as truly tired. The eyes, and the hair. Usually so meticulously untamed, tonight it hung long and flat and swept back off his forehead.
“Hi,” Fletcher said. “I know it’s late, but… And I’m sorry if you’re busy.”
Ghastly was always busy these days. He had closed his shop and embraced the duties of an Elder, letting his new responsibilities wash over his old life and consume him completely. “I have some free time,” he lied. “What can I do for you?”
Fletcher got up slowly, stiffly, like he’d been sitting there for hours. When he didn’t say anything, Ghastly spoke again.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Around,” Fletcher said.
Ghastly nodded, but the floodgates of conversation didn’t burst open. This in itself was unusual. For as long as Ghastly had known him, Fletcher had never known when to shut up. To see him standing there in the corridor, hands in his pockets, eyes cast to the floor and giving one-word answers, was more than a little unsettling.
“Come inside,” Ghastly said, unlocking the office door and walking in. He removed his robe, hung it on a hook on the wall and loosened his tie. He went to the side table and plugged in the kettle. “Cup of tea?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Fletcher,” he said, “I’m not one of life’s great conversationalists, so you’re really going to have to help me out here. Start talking about something.”
Fletcher looked at him. “Have you found a cure for Tanith yet?”
“Start talking about something else.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“You’re mad that you don’t know how to help her,” Fletcher said, “and you’re mad that you haven’t found her yet, aren’t you?”
“Is that what you wanted to talk about? Because I don’t see what this conversation will lead to, other than annoying me.”
“You asked her out.”
“Fletcher, I have things to do.”
“You asked her out, finally, and she said yes. She kissed you, then went away. And that’s the last you saw of her before the Remnant got into her. And now she’s out there somewhere, no one knows where, but she’s out there with Billy-Ray Sanguine.”
Ghastly looked at the kid and said nothing while he waited for the flash of anger to fade. He saw the hurt in Fletcher’s eyes. “This is about Valkyrie?” he asked.
The boy looked at the floor again. “We broke up. She broke up with me. I’m sorry. I know it’s different. I know Valkyrie hasn’t been possessed and she’s not gone, not like Tanith is. But… you loved Tanith, and then all that happened. You had her, you finally had her, and you lost her. How do you deal with that?”
“I drink a lot of tea. Fletcher, I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve been in love too many times to count. I’d like to say it gets easier, but it doesn’t. The pain you’re feeling now is the pain you’re going to feel again and again. The advantage of having lived through this is that I do know I’ll come out the other side. The pain lessens. You manage to distract yourself until the distractions become more important than the thing you’re distracting yourself from.”
“Do you think she loved you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know. If she did love me, then I wasted a lot of time thinking about it instead of doing something.”
“I don’t think Valkyrie loved me,” Fletcher said, and suddenly laughed. “I’m sorry, this is so stupid. You probably think I’m just a stupid kid. I don’t know anything about love or any of that.”
“You know enough for it hurt.”
The smile faded. “Yeah. She said she loved me. She made a joke, said something and then said ‘and that’s why I love you’ and I latched on to it. Like an idiot. I decided to believe that this was her way of telling me how she felt. But she was making a joke. And I knew she was making a joke. But I wanted to believe it so much.”
The kettle boiled. Ghastly made two mugs of tea while Fletcher talked on.
“It’s pathetic,” Fletcher said. “I went from thinking I was top geezer, the last Teleporter in the
world, to someone who followed her around like a puppy. All she had to do was call, and I’d be there. The last two years of my life, of my life, have revolved round her. That’s two years of me living for someone else. How sad is that? Nothing was more important than her. I offered her everything because I could give her everything. I could take her anywhere. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her and she knew that. She accepted it. I’d become, like, a part of her life, but not in a good way. Not in a healthy, happy, boyfriend kind of way. She knew she had me, faithful old Fletcher, and she knew that all she had to do was click her fingers and she’d get whatever it was she needed. I made her life easier.
“And whenever she or Skulduggery, or even Tanith, was in danger of taking something too seriously, they turned to the easy target. They turned to me and made a joke. I was OK with it, actually. It meant something, at the time. It meant I was part of the group, I was one of the gang.”
“And it meant you could spend more time around her,” Ghastly said, sitting on the edge of his desk, “which is all you really wanted.”
“Yeah,” Fletcher murmured. He looked at the mug of tea in his hand, but didn’t drink from it. “But all that’s gone now. She’s with Caelan. Did you know that? She was seeing him behind my back.”
Ghastly hid his surprise. “That… doesn’t sound like Valkyrie.”
“Well, there you go. She cheated on me with a bloody vampire. A vampire. Are… are you smiling?”
“Yes,” Ghastly said sadly. “I am. I never thought we’d have so much in common, to be honest. The girl you love is in the arms of another, and that other happens to be a murderous monster. And the woman I love is in the arms of a psychopathic hitman. What a pair we make.”
“I can’t help it,” said Fletcher. “Images of Valkyrie and that… thing, of the two of them together, keep coming into my head.”
“I’ve been living with something like that for the past few months. It makes your insides go cold, doesn’t it? It makes you want to kill someone.”
“I want to kill the vampire,” Fletcher said softly.
“The feeling is natural. I don’t blame you for that at all. And while I know you’re a good kid, and you’re not a killer, I am going to say this – that’s a road you don’t want to go down.”
Fletcher put the mug on the worktable, spilling some of his tea. “I just need to show Valkyrie that she’s wrong,” he said. “I just need to show her that she’s made a mistake. I need to prove myself.”
“You want to make her beg to take you back.”
“No. No, of course not.”
“You want to punish her.”
“Fine,” Fletcher snapped. “Yes. Is that wrong? She’s the one who cheated on me.”
“It’s never going to happen,” Ghastly said. “This is Valkyrie we’re talking about. She doesn’t beg. If she changes her mind, she’ll come at you with a very practical reason why you’re getting back together. If you put her in a position where she’d have to beg, she’s going to walk away out of sheer principle.”
“So… how do I get her to take me back?”
“I don’t know. But my first suggestion is to take some time.”
Fletcher frowned. “What? No. The longer I leave it, the more Caelan will sink his fangs into her.”
“Caelan doesn’t matter. He’s never mattered. That’s not going to last. Guys like that never do. But you’ll do yourself no favours if you run up to her with tears in your eyes.”
“I never mentioned tears,” he said defensively.
“A friend of mine once said that a man never got a woman back by begging on his knees. Give yourself some time. Get over the pain. Man up. Then go back to her. Let her see what she’s missing. I’m not saying it’s going to work, but I’ll be honest, it’s your best shot.”
Fletcher nodded. “Thanks, Ghastly. I didn’t have anyone else to talk to. I’m pretty sure I don’t even have any friends. Valkyrie was my only friend.”
“Then you need to get yourself a life, kid.”
“Yeah,” said Fletcher. “Yeah, I do.”
Chapter 38
Back at the Window Again
tapping woke her.
Valkyrie groaned, turned over in bed, cracking her eyes open to look over at the window. The morning sunlight framed the curtains, and through a sliver of an opening she saw Skulduggery’s gloved hand. Her parents were gone but she still lay where she was, unsure if she even wanted to talk to him. Then she got up, wrapped the sheet around herself, and walked over. She pulled the curtains apart and undid the latch, then returned to her bed. She was snuggling down again as the window opened and Skulduggery climbed in. Valkyrie turned so she was facing the wall.
“I’m in bed,” she told him. “I’m having a lie-in.”
“I can see that. Do you plan on rising any time soon?”
She shrugged.
“Oh,” he said. “So that’s it.”
She waited for him to continue.
“I was wondering how you were going to punish me for not confiding in you. Punishment, actually, is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. What form of punishment is enough for what I did? Imprisonment? Death? Something else? Something scarier? I could only think of so many horrible tortures before they stopped having meaning. But you, you’ve come up with a punishment I never considered. You’re going to sulk me to death.”
“I’m glad you find this amusing.”
“I’ve had years to see the funny side.”
“What do you expect me to do? It’s not the… This isn’t about the Vile thing. Yes, it’s awful, yes, it’s insane, but OK, it happened, it’s in the past.”
“Not as in the past as we’d like.”
“Shut up.”
“Of course. You were saying?”
“This is about you and me, and you not telling me the truth. It’s about—”
“May I interject?”
“No.”
“I’m going to interject anyway, simply to point out that you only told me about the ‘Darquesse thing’ after you had Nye seal your true name. You may continue.”
She turned over, and glared at him. “That was different.”
“Yes, it was. It was you.”
“I kept it from you because I was scared and confused and I didn’t know how you’d react…” She faltered. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the things we didn’t tell each other cancel each other out. You’re thinking if I keep on being angry with you, I’ll eventually realise that I don’t have a leg to stand on, and start to feel stupid. Well, you’re wrong. I do have a leg to stand on. And I never feel stupid.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“You should have told me about Vile.”
“And you should have told me about Darquesse. And please remember that when you did, eventually, get around to telling me, I accepted it with grace and understanding.”
Valkyrie narrowed her eyes. “Because you knew what it was like. That’s why you took it so well! I thought you were just being really nice!”
“I’m often nice, but rarely really. I couldn’t be angry with you, Valkyrie. I am many things, but I am not a hypocrite. Are you?”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Are you?”
She sighed, and sat up, holding the sheet against her. “OK. Fine. I forgive you. And now that we’re confessing, is there anything else you’d like to tell me? Any other huge big massive secrets you’ve been hiding?”
“Virtually none.”
“Virtually?”
“Practically. And you?”
“Being the psycho who kills the world is the only one worth mentioning.”
“Excellent. Then our consciences are clear.”
“Is that it? Do we go back to being friends now?”
“I certainly hope so. Unless you were enjoying sulking?”
“I hate sulki
ng.”
“You’re very good at it.”
“Thank you. I didn’t think it’d be this easy – going back to being friends, I mean. It’s a pretty big thing that just happened, isn’t it? There’s a part of you that’s… evil.”
“Yes.”
“Just like there’s a part of me that’s evil.”
He tilted his head. “You think we’re different from everyone else?”
“Aren’t we?”
“Every human being who has ever lived has the same potential in them for good and evil. Mortal or sorcerer, it doesn’t matter. Power has a way of bringing out the worst in people. Mevolent. Serpine. Hitler. Lord Vile. Darquesse. We’re all the same.”
“You just put me on a list with Hitler.”
“You’re going to start sulking again, aren’t you?”
“Hitler, for God’s sake.”
“Power corrupts, Valkyrie. You’re better off learning that now, so you can prepare for later.”
“But Hitler.”
“We may need to focus here.”
“Right. Yes. OK. Turn round.”
“Are you going to throw something at me?”
“What? No, I’m getting out of bed.”
“Ah,” he said, and turned.
She swung her feet to the floor, stood up and adjusted the sheet, then walked out of the room. “So what are we dealing with? Is Lord Vile your subconscious, or is it your old Necromancer power with a mind of its own?”
Skulduggery followed her on to the landing. “I think it’s both, to be honest.”
“Was he hiding inside you this whole time?”
“It certainly looks that way. I didn’t see him, of course. When you can turn to shadow, it’s easy enough to find places to hide, even in a skeleton. It’s all very unsettling, to be honest.”
She went into the bathroom while Skulduggery waited outside.
“And did you notice that he’s terribly unruly?” he asked through the door. “He completely ignored my commands.”
Valkyrie dropped the sheet and got in the shower, talking loudly over the water. “So how do we stop him? Do we just send you to a psychiatrist or something?”