Skulduggery Pleasant. Derek Landy

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      Militsa blinked. “Ohh. OK.”

      “I’m sorry. I don’t want to offend you, but I’m trying to stay away from people until I get my head straight.”

      “Gotcha,” Militsa said. “No explanation needed. You’ve been through a lot and the last thing you need is someone to talk to.”

      “When you say it like that,” Valkyrie said, “it sounds stupid.”

      “Not at all. This is totally my fault – I just feel like I know you already. I’ve asked Fletcher so many questions.”

      Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. “You know Fletcher Renn?”

      Militsa looked surprised. “Well, of course. He’s a teacher here.”

      Valkyrie couldn’t help it – she grinned. “Fletcher? Seriously? What does he teach? What does he know well enough to teach?”

      Militsa grinned with her. “Teleportation. He’s only got three students, and only one of them can actually teleport, but he’s pretty good. I think you’d be impressed.”

      “That’s hilarious,” said Valkyrie. “Is he all strict and stuff?”

      “Very. He has a teacher voice.”

      “Oh, wow.”

      Valkyrie’s phone buzzed with a message from Skulduggery, saying he’d be delayed another ten minutes. As she slipped it back into her jeans, she noticed Militsa glancing at her watch.

      “You probably have work to do,” Valkyrie said.

      Militsa nodded. “I’m supposed to be teaching a class right now. If this was a mortal school, the kids’d be tearing up the place, but Corrival students tend to be so boringly well behaved that they’re probably cleaning the windows. The coffee offer will remain open, by the way, for as long as you need it to be. Or, you know, dinner. Whatever.”

      “Thank you. Really. I appreciate the gesture.”

      “No problem,” Militsa said, and beamed another smile. “It was so nice to meet you, Valkyrie. I hope we can get to know each other better.”

      Valkyrie smiled back, and Militsa turned with a swirl of her cloak and walked off. She wore a cloak. Valkyrie hadn’t known very many people who wore cloaks. Not even Skulduggery wore a cloak. What an odd girl. Valkyrie liked her.

      She left the school, with its magnificent arches and grand staircases, and walked the wide streets. Plenty of time to double back and meet Skulduggery. There was a guy on the corner, barefoot and dressed in sackcloth, holding a sign that warned her that the end was nigh. To reinforce the point he was making, he shouted it at anyone who was passing.

      “The end is nigh!” he screeched to Valkyrie, shaking the cardboard sign. “The end is nigh!”

      “Isn’t it always?” she asked, and left him shaking the sign resentfully.

      She made a note of the street names as she went by. Gorgon Street. Titan Street. Bellower Road. She crossed Meritorious Square and took the narrower streets now, away from the staring, whispering people. She walked down Blood-drenched Lane, took a right on to Decapitation Row. At least they were easy to remember.

      She smelled food and her tummy rumbled, so she followed the smell and then abruptly lost it in a dead end that went by the charming name of Putrid Road. She turned, and stopped.

      Three people stood there – two men and one woman – staring at her with a special kind of look in their eyes. Valkyrie had seen that look before. She was well used to that look.

      That look meant that, at some point in the next few minutes, they were going to try to kill her.

       10

      Sebastian watched it all from the rooftop.

      He watched the three of them follow her away from the crowds, away from anyone who might step in. He would have expected more from Valkyrie Cain. He would have expected her to be a lot more alert. But there she was, in jeans and a T-shirt instead of her usual black, walking like a zombie, just going where the streets took her, like she had a thousand different things on her mind and she didn’t want to think of a single one of them. He watched her reach the dead end and turn, and freeze.

      He crouched low, and bit his lip beneath his mask. He had his mission. He shouldn’t be wasting his time on things like this.

      Below him, Valkyrie waited for the three people to say something. When they didn’t, she spoke. “I’m not Darquesse.”

      Sebastian’s ears were covered, but he heard her perfectly.

      “You look like Darquesse,” said the woman. “You look the way she did when she killed my family. Except you’re not smiling. Darquesse was smiling.”

      Valkyrie hesitated. “I’m not her.”

      The man on the left was packing some extra weight, but he looked strong, like those clenched fists would hurt. “Darquesse killed my daughter,” he said. “Burned her to nothing. I doubt she even noticed she’d done it.”

      “My brother tried to fight her,” the second man said. “I begged him not to, but he thought if he could sneak up behind her, while the Skeleton Detective and everyone was distracting her, he could snap her neck before she knew what was happening. My brother, who had never snapped a neck in his life. He never even got close.”

      “I’m sorry for your pain,” Valkyrie said slowly. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, and for what your loved ones went through. But I’m not Darquesse.”

      “We know,” the woman said. “We know you’re Valkyrie Cain. We know all about you. We know Darquesse was your true name, and we know she inhabited the body of your reflection. We know all this. Everyone does. Everyone knows that none of it would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

      “Sensitives had dreams about her for years before she showed up,” the second guy said. “They warned you. All that time, you knew what would happen if you kept going. But you didn’t want to go back to a mortal life, did you? You wanted to be one of us. A sorcerer.”

      “So you let it happen,” the first man said. “You allowed it to happen just like the Sensitives predicted it would, because you were having too good a time going off on all your adventures.”

      “Nothing to say?” the woman asked, walking forward. Sebastian tensed. “For a girl with a reputation for being a smart-mouth, you’re awfully quiet.”

      “Leave me alone,” Valkyrie said.

      “You shouldn’t have come back.”

      “Leave me alone. Please. I don’t want any trouble.”

      The woman sneered. “Begging didn’t save my family. It’s not going to save you.”

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