Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 7 – 9: The Darquesse Trilogy. Derek Landy

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      Valkyrie blinked. “I’m sorry?”

      “My brother was a tool. He was a bully. He’d bully whoever he could get away with bullying. He had loads of enemies. Everyone wanted to hurt him. I’m telling you, there’ll be a load of happy people today once this gets out.”

      “Are you happy, Doran?”

      “Me? No. He may have been a bully but he was still my brother.”

      “Did he ever bully you?”

      “Yeah.”

      “That must have been tough.”

      A shrug.

      “Do you know who did this?”

      “No. I got home late last night, came in the back door, went straight up to bed.”

      “Do you have any suspects?”

      “Like I said, he had lots of enemies. Could have been anyone.” A sliver of a smile played across his mouth, so quick Valkyrie wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it. “You know who it could have been?” he asked, leaning forward. “Mark Boyle. He was Tommy’s best friend, ever since they were little. Boyle was as bad as Tommy. They might have had an argument about something, and it got out of hand.”

      “It got out of hand?” Valkyrie said doubtfully. “Doran, have you actually seen your brother’s body?”

      “What there is left of it, yeah.”

      “And how do you think Mark Boyle would have done that?”

      “I dunno. Knife? Maybe a chainsaw.”

      “That’s a possibility,” Valkyrie said. “Listen, will you be OK here for a moment? I’ll have to start a search for Mark Boyle. If he’s running, we’ll have to act fast.”

      “Go get him,” Doran said.

      Valkyrie walked out, approached Skulduggery.

      “I think we have our killer,” she said quietly.

      Skulduggery’s false eyes flickered over her shoulder, looking back at Doran.

      “He might be in shock,” Valkyrie said, “so I might be reading this completely wrong, but he’s practically dancing with joy now that his brother’s dead. He also smells of soap.”

      “He’d need to have a shower to wash off all that blood,” Skulduggery murmured. “Then it’s another one of Argeddion’s infections, you think?”

      “Only this time the mortal with the magic is a psychopath.”

      “It was bound to happen. We can’t take him down here. Someone that powerful, it’d be too unpredictable in a public place. We need to get him isolated.”

      “What’ll we do?”

      “Let him go, and follow him. Hopefully, he’ll lead us to his accomplices. We’ll assemble a team, take them all down at once, and no one needs to get hurt.”

      “What a lovely plan.”

      “Thank you.”

      “How likely is it to actually work?”

      “With our luck? Not very.”

      Three hours later, her arms were folded and her brow was furrowed. “I hate this car.”

      Skulduggery dropped into a lower gear. “What’s wrong with it?”

      “It’s orange.”

      “But a nice shade.”

      “It’s horrible. It’s an Orange-mobile. We’re driving around in an Orange-mobile trying to be inconspicuous.”

      “We are being inconspicuous,” Skulduggery said. “The Bentley, while the height of good taste in and of itself, is not suited to tailing somebody. This car, with its thoroughly unexceptional bodywork and engine capacity, blends in with the other cars on the road.”

      “Blends in?” Valkyrie repeated, looking around them. “Do you see any other orange cars out there? Do you? I don’t. This doesn’t blend in, it sticks out.”

      “And yet instantly fades from memory.”

      “I doubt it’ll fade from my memory,” she grumbled.

      “Has Doran Purcell noticed us yet? No, he hasn’t. Do you know why? Because the people he passes are not pointing at a beautiful black Bentley as it follows him slowly up the street. You should learn to appreciate the unexceptional, Valkyrie.”

      “But why does the unexceptional have to be such an awful colour?”

      He shrugged. “It amuses me.”

      Doran Purcell walked into a café, and the Orange-mobile pulled in to the side of the road.

      “I could do with some coffee,” Valkyrie murmured.

      “He might be meeting someone in there.”

      “I’ll check,” she said, reaching for the door handle.

      “He knows you,” Skulduggery said. A fresh face covered his head. “He doesn’t know me. Stay here.”

      “Get me a coffee.”

      “No.”

      “Get me one.”

      He got out, crossed the road and entered the café. Valkyrie yawned, turned on the radio. An Imelda May song was playing – ‘Big Bad Handsome Man’. Valkyrie started singing along. She’d just got to the bit about his rugged good looks when Skulduggery came crashing out through the café window.

      Valkyrie cursed, slid over to the driver’s seat, started up the car and swerved out on to the road. Skulduggery staggered to his feet, ignoring the shocked looks from the people around him. Doran Purcell and two others – a boy and a girl – stepped out through the broken window behind him, grinning.

      Valkyrie snapped her palm against the air, shattering the glass on the passenger side door. She sped past him and Skulduggery lunged at the car, using the air to take him to the window. He slid in and a stream of sizzling energy took out the wing mirror. Valkyrie cursed again, glanced in the rear-view and saw the three teenagers step into the middle of the road. The girl raised her arm and there was a flash of light and the car flipped and the world tilted and spun, then the car hit the road and flipped forward again. Everything blurred and roared.

      When the world quietened down, the car was on its side and Valkyrie was in the back seat with blood in her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue.

      Skulduggery’s false face came into view. “Are you OK?” he asked, his voice distant.

      She murmured, and nodded. Her clothes had absorbed the multiple impacts.

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