Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12. Derek Landy

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СКАЧАТЬ not.” She looked around as casually as she could, praying that she wouldn’t see the Canary Car suddenly pull up. “Why aren’t you at work?”

      Her dad shrugged. “I have a big meeting this afternoon but I left the house without something important, so I thought I’d nip back during lunch.”

      “What did you forget? Architect’s plans or something?”

      “Something like that,” he said with a nod. “Actually, nothing like that. I forgot my underwear.”

      She looked at him. “What?”

      “When I was getting dressed my mind was on other things. It happens sometimes. Usually it wouldn’t bother me but these trousers really itch—”

      “Dad, ew, don’t want to know!”

      “Oh, right, sorry. Anyway, I saw you walking down here so I thought I’d say hi. You used to come down here all the time when you were younger, sit here and look out there, and I always wondered what was going through your mind…”

      “Lots of clever little things,” she responded automatically and he smiled.

      “Your mother’s worried about you,” he said after a while.

      She looked up at him, startled. “What? Why?”

      He shrugged. “You just, you haven’t been yourself lately.” So they had noticed the difference between her and her reflection.

      “I’m fine, Dad. Really. I’ve just, you know, I’ve been going through some moods.”

      “Yes, yep, I understand that, and your mother explained the whole thing to me, about young girls and their moods… But we still worry. Ever since Gordon died…”

      Stephanie kept her frown to herself. So this wasn’t just about the reflection.

      “I know you were close,” he continued. “And I know you got on so well, and I know that when he died, you lost a good friend.”

      “I suppose I did,” she said quietly.

      “And we don’t want to stop you from growing up, even if we could. You’re growing into a fine young woman and one that we’re really proud of.”

      She smiled awkwardly and didn’t meet his eyes. Gordon’s death had changed her, but the change was far more drastic than even her parents realised. It had set her on the course she was on now, the course that had led to her becoming Valkyrie Cain, the course that would lead to whatever fate was waiting for her. It had changed her life – given it direction and purpose. It had also put her in more danger than she could have ever imagined.

      “We just worry about you, that’s all.”

      “You don’t have to.”

      “It’s a parent’s job. You could be forty and we’d be stuck in the Old Folks’ Home, and we’d still be worrying about you. It’s a responsibility that never stops.”

      “Makes you wonder why anyone has kids.”

      He laughed softly. “You’d think that, yes. But there is nothing more wonderful then watching your child grow up, nothing more fulfilling. Of course, there’s a certain age you wish they wouldn’t go beyond, but there’s not a whole lot you can do about that.”

      Not unless you have magic on your side, Stephanie thought to herself.

      “Beryl called,” her father said. “She said you’d just been to see her.”

      Stephanie nodded. She couldn’t have noticed that the brooch was missing already, could she? “I felt like going around, seeing how everyone was. I think, you know, Gordon’s death has made me value the family we have left, or something. I think it’s important that we stay close.”

      He looked at her, a little startled. “Well, that’s… that’s a really lovely thing to be able to say, Steph, it really is. It’s a beautiful sentiment.” There was a brief pause. “I don’t have to go round, do I?”

      “No.”

      “Oh, thank God.”

      She didn’t like lying to him. She had made it a point, years before, to be as honest as she could where her parents were involved. But things were different now. She had secrets. “So what else did Beryl say?”

      “Well… she seems to think she saw you with Skulduggery Pleasant yesterday.”

      “Yeah,” Stephanie said, as casually as she could, “she told me. That’s weird.”

      “She thinks you’ve fallen in with the wrong crowd.”

      “You should hear her, Dad, the way she talks about him, and she doesn’t even know him. She probably thinks I’m part of a cult or something…”

      “And are you?”

      She looked at him, appalled. “What?”

      Her father sighed. “Beryl has good reason to think that.”

      “But it’s insane!”

      “Well, insanity runs in the family.” She could see something in his eyes, a reluctance, but also a resignation.

      “My grandfather,” he said, “your great-grandfather, was a wonderful man – us kids loved him. Me, Fergus, Gordon, we’d sit around and he’d tell us all these fantastic stories. My father, however, didn’t have a lot of time for him. All the stories he was telling us, he’d told my father when he was a kid. And when my dad grew up, he realised it was all nonsense, but my granddad refused to see it. My grandfather believed… He believed that we were magic.”

      Stephanie stared at him. “What?”

      “He said it’d been passed down, this magic, generation to generation. He said we were descendants of a great sorcerer called the Last of the Ancients.”

      The sound of the sea faded to nothing, the sun dimmed and the beach vanished, and the only thing that existed in the world was her father, and the only sounds were the words he was speaking.

      “These stories, this belief, has followed the family for centuries. I don’t know how it began or when, but it seems like it’s always been a part of us. And now and then, there have been members of our family who have chosen to believe it.

      “Gordon believed. A rational man, an intelligent man, and yet he believed in magic and sorcery and people who never age. All the stuff he wrote about, he probably believed in most, if not all, of it.

      “And because of this, he got involved in things that were… unhealthy. The people he mixed with, people who fed into his delusions, who shared his madness. Dangerous people. It’s a sickness, Steph. My granddad had it, Gordon had it… and I don’t want you to get it.”

      “I’m not mad.”

      “And СКАЧАТЬ