Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12. Derek Landy

I’m taking you back.”

      Scapegrace grinned, and looked over at the Torment.

      “Why are you looking at me?” the Torment asked.

      Scapegrace’s smile faded. “What?”

      “There was nothing in our bargain concerning you.”

      “But I can’t go back!” Scapegrace cried. “He’ll put me in jail!”

      “You seem to think I care.”

      “Scapegrace,” Pleasant said, in a voice devoid of any human emotion. “Get back to the car. Start walking.”

      Scapegrace looked around desperately, but there was no one to help him. Trying not to cry, he shuffled off.

      “I wish to thank you, Detective,” the Torment said. “I look around at this world, at what it’s become, I look around at my fellow sorcerers as they huddle in shadows, and I realise now that I have been waiting. Do you see? I have been waiting for a reason to live again, to emerge from my dank and squalid cellar. I have a reason now. I have a purpose now. For years I have slumbered, but now I am awake. You have awoken me, Detective. And we shall meet again.”

      “Count on it,” Pleasant responded. The Torment smiled then turned his back and walked away.

      Scapegrace was betrayed. Let down. Abandoned. Pleasant walked beside him, carrying the dead girl in his arms. Scapegrace doubted he would survive the journey back to the Sanctuary. He had heard tales of the Skeleton Detective’s fury, and there was no one else around for him to take it out on. Scapegrace couldn’t reason with him, he couldn’t bargain with him. There was no hope. No hope left.

      They got to the car and Pleasant laid the girl’s body carefully in the boot then looked back at the town. The Torment was gone from sight and the town looked empty now, as night fell.

      “Well, we did it,” Pleasant said, sounding relieved. Scapegrace frowned, but didn’t say anything.

      “This has been a good day so far, all things considered,” Pleasant continued. “I have the location of the Grotesquery and I got to kill Valkyrie, which admittedly is something I’ve been wanting to do since I met her. She can be incredibly annoying. Had you noticed that?”

      “Um.”

      “She hardly ever shut up. I pretended to be friends with her, but honestly, I just felt sorry for the poor girl. Not the brightest, you know?”

      “You’re such a goon,” said a voice from behind, and Scapegrace whirled around and squealed as Valkyrie Cain walked up, hands in her pockets and a smile on her face.

      

      alkyrie knew it was a bluff, she just knew it, and Skulduggery confirmed it when he uttered the code words.

      “Be brave.”

      He was gripping her arm tightly. Her knees were sore from where she had dropped. Her performance was pretty impressive, she had to admit. Hopefully, it was also pretty believable.

      “Let go of me!” she shouted.

      Skulduggery looked over at the Torment. Scapegrace was standing beside him, enjoying every second of what he thought was going on.

      “Give us a minute,” Skulduggery said.

      “A minute,” the Torment replied. “Nothing more.”

      Valkyrie let Skulduggery pull her to her feet and led her away. “Keep shaking your head,” he said softly.

      “What are we going to do?” she asked. “The only way he tells us what we want to know is if you kill me.”

      “I’m not going to kill you.”

      “Oh, good.”

      “I’m going to kill your reflection.”

      “What? How?”

      “Where is it right now?”

      “Half-day in school, so it should be at home.”

      “Call it, tell it to step back inside the mirror.”

      To keep up the act, Valkyrie tried, and failed, to pull away. When Skulduggery pulled her back to him, she continued. “But if you do kill it, what will happen? Will it, like, actually die?”

      “It doesn’t live,” Skulduggery reminded her, “so it can’t die. It will, however, appear to be dead. I think if we return it to the mirror afterwards though, it should be fine.”

      “You think?”

      “This hasn’t been done before. No one has bothered, simply because sorcerers can tell a reflection from a real person with ease. The only way this will work is if the Torment is as out of practice as we’re hoping.”

      They reached the corner of the Roarhaven Sanctuary and Valkyrie took out her phone. Skulduggery stepped behind the corner and hunkered down out of sight. He started to dig a hole with his hands.

      Valkyrie dialled her home phone and it was answered after two rings.

      “Hello,” her own voice said.

      “Are you alone?” Valkyrie asked.

      “Yes,” the reflection answered. “Your parents are still at work. I’m sitting in your room, doing your homework.”

      “I need you to step into the mirror, OK? We’re going to try something.”

      “All right.”

      “And leave a note for Mum. Tell her I’m spending the night at a friend’s.”

      “What friend?”

      “I don’t know,” Valkyrie said impatiently. “Pick one.”

      “But you don’t have any friends.”

      Valkyrie glowered. “Tell her I’m sleeping over at Hannah Foley’s.”

      “Hannah Foley doesn’t like you.”

      “Just do it!” Valkyrie snapped, and hung up. Skulduggery was scooping out handfuls of earth, making a shallow hole about a metre in diameter.

      She hesitated. “It’ll be OK, won’t it? Once we put it back in the mirror, it’ll come back to life, right? I know it’s not ‘life’ life, but …”

      “Valkyrie, me shooting the reflection is just the same as me tearing up a photograph of you. There is absolutely no difference.”

      She nodded. “OK. Yes, I know. OK.”

      He smoothed out the base of the hole and with his finger he drew a large circle in the dirt, and in that circle he drew an eye with a wavy line through it.

      “Are they looking?” he asked.

      Valkyrie held a hand to her face like she was crying, and glanced back. “No, they’re talking. The Torment is looking annoyed.”

      Skulduggery stood and held out a hand. The air around him became damp, and droplets of moisture began to form. A rainbow appeared in this mist and cloud, and abruptly vanished when Skulduggery drew it all in tighter and let it fall, as rain, into the hole.

      He said, “Surface speak, surface feel, surface think, surface real,” and then his fingers curled. The puddle became a mini-whirlpool that erased the pattern at its base. Skulduggery calmed the water and nodded to Valkyrie.

      She stood directly over the puddle and looked down, then dipped her toe in