Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12. Derek Landy

Skulduggery Pleasant,” he said. “I’ve heard about you. The Skeleton Detective.”

      “Season’s greetings,” Skulduggery nodded. “This is my partner, Valkyrie Cain. And you are …?”

      “My name is Ranajay. I live here with my … with my friends. It’s so nice, living next to all these normal people. We really liked living here. Me and my … Me and my friends …”

      Ranajay looked like he was going to start sobbing again, so Valkyrie cut in quickly. “Who did this? Who killed everyone?”

      “I don’t know. A big guy. Huge. He wore a mask, and spoke with an accent. His eyes were red.”

      “What did he want?” Skulduggery asked.

      “He came here looking for a friend of mine.”

      Valkyrie frowned. “Ephraim Tungsten?”

      “Yes,” Ranajay said. “How did you know?”

      “That’s who we want to talk to. We believe he’s been in contact with a killer we’ve been tracking for five months.”

      “Davina Marr, right? That detective who went bad, blew up the Sanctuary? That’s why the big guy wanted Ephraim too.”

      “Do you know if Marr has been in touch with Ephraim?” Skulduggery asked.

      “Oh, she has, yes. Paid him to make her a false ID and arrange to get her out of the country. That’s what Ephraim does. When people have to disappear, he takes care of it. Only this time he didn’t. I think after he realised what she’d done, he didn’t want any part of it. The detective, Marr, she came looking for everything she’d paid for after the Sanctuary fell into the ground, but he was gone. She tore this place up three times in the same month looking for him. Haven’t seen her since then. Haven’t seen Ephraim either. We all thought it’d be safer if we stayed away from him, you know? Fat lot of good that did my friends.”

      “The man who killed them,” Skulduggery said, “did you tell him where Ephraim is?”

      Ranajay shook his head. “Didn’t have to. I knew what he wanted to know. I think that’s the only reason he didn’t kill me. Ephraim had told me, ages ago, that the only thing he’d done for Marr was to set up places for her to stay in three spots across the city. That’s all the information the big guy wanted, just to know where Marr was staying.”

      “Can you tell us the three spots?”

      “Are you going after him?” asked Ranajay.

      “Our main priority is Davina Marr, but the man who killed your friends has just made it to number two on our list.”

      “You’ll stop him?”

      “If we can.”

      “You’ll kill him?”

      “If we have to.”

      “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll tell you.”

      

      e was a giant of a man, his thick-set muscles stretching the dusty black coat he wore, but he was quiet, she had to give him that. Smart too, to get this close to her without setting off the alarms. Probably dismantled them as he came, she thought as she flung herself through the window into the cold air. Taking his time, doing it right, the way any good assassin should. She knew who he was, of course. Killers that size tended to be conspicuous, and only one of them wore a metal mask over his scarred and misshapen face. The Russian, Tesseract.

      She hit the ground and rolled, shards of broken glass accompanying her down. She reached into her jacket, found the trigger device, flicked the safety off with her thumb and pressed the red button without even taking it out of her pocket. He was up there, right now, and she would only get one chance at this.

      But when there was no big explosion, she looked up to see him climbing out of the window overhead. He’d dismantled the explosives. Of course he had. Davina Marr didn’t even bother to curse. She just ran.

      The ground was wet with recent rain, and she slipped in the mud and scrambled up again. All that time and effort spent fortifying this pitiful excuse for a dwelling, all for nothing. The security measures she’d placed at every conceivable entrance to the disused construction site had turned out to be useless. The traps she’d set on the metal stairs to the foreman’s office in which she’d been living had turned out to be less than useless. The big brute had entered silently and it had only been pure luck that she’d happened to look up in time.

      She ran to her car, but if he was as meticulous as she thought he was, he’d already have sabotaged the engine, so she broke left, running for the tall fence that bordered the east side of the site. She heard quick footsteps behind her and decided to try to lose him in the maze of cargo containers. It was a moonless night, too dark to see much of anything, and she hoped he was finding it as difficult in this gloom as she was. There was a heavy clang, followed by footsteps on metal, and he was moving above her, across the top of the containers, aiming to cut her off before she reached the fence.

      Marr doubled back, wishing that she’d had time to grab her gun off the table before she’d made that jump. Magic was all well and good, she often thought, but having a loaded gun in your hand was a reassurance like no other.

      She ducked low and crept along, keeping her breathing under control. She couldn’t hear him any more. He was either still up there and not moving, or he was down here, in the muck and the mud and the dark, with her. Possibly sneaking up on her right now. Marr glanced over her shoulder, saw nothing but shadows.

      She tried to remember what Tesseract’s chosen discipline was. He was an Adept, she knew that much, but beyond that, his magic was a mystery to her. She hoped it wasn’t the ability to see in the dark. That would be just typical, and it’d fit right in with how her luck had been going these past few months. All she’d wanted to do was go home, for God’s sake. Marr was from Boston, born and raised, and that’s where she wanted to die. Not here, in wet and muddy Ireland.

      She got on her belly and crawled through a gap between pallets. She took another look behind her, to make sure he wasn’t reaching out to grab her ankle, and then considered her options. They weren’t great, and they weren’t many, and hiding wasn’t one of them. He’d find her eventually, probably sooner rather than later. She could try the east fence again, or she could go all the way back to the entrance at the south. Heading west was out of the question, seeing as how there was nothing there but acres of flat ground with no cover.

      Marr propped herself up on her elbows, the cold wetness seeping through her clothes, and looked straight out in front, due north. There was another fence there, higher than the east side, but it was closer, and at least there were pallets and machinery she could duck behind if she needed to.

      She inched forward, out through the gap, coming up on her hunkers. There were a couple of barrels stacked up on top of each other, and she hurried to them. Still no sign of Tesseract.

      Running bent over, she came up around a bulldozer and made a mad dash for the next piece of cover. The chain-link fence was maybe twenty strides away. It was tall, as high as a house, taller than she’d remembered, but Marr felt sure she could jump it. She allowed herself a moment to envy the Skeleton Detective and his newfound ability to fly. That would really come in handy right about now. She gauged the distance and felt the currents in the air, reckoning that she’d need a running start to clear the fence successfully.

      She looked back, making sure Tesseract wasn’t anywhere nearby. She scanned her surroundings carefully, methodically, pivoting her head slowly, on the alert for the slightest movement. It took her a full