'Oh yes, the reason I'm here. I don't have a clean one.'
'Behind the door.'
He turned, saw the crisp white shirt hanging on the coat hook, and rubbed his hands together. He took it off the hook and put it on, sliding the collar up beneath the tie as he buttoned it. He didn't like wearing ties — he owned a construction company, so he'd always thought he'd be in work boots and jeans. But every now and then he had to dress up and pretend
— as he put it — to be civilized.
'So Steph,' he said, 'looking forward to a great day in school?'
'Oh yes,' she said with mock enthusiasm.
'What do you think you'll learn today?'
'I can't begin to guess. Maybe how to subtract.'
He waved his hand dismissively. 'Subtraction's overrated. It's like adding, only backward.
You're not ever going to need it.'
'Desmond!' Beryl said sternly. 'You shouldn't take that attitude. Stephanie is at an easily influenced age, and she needs to be taught that everything she learns in school is valuable.
Joking around is all well and good, but some things just have to be taken seriously. How can you ever expect Stephanie to be responsible when all you ever do is set a bad example?'
'I don't know,' he answered. 'Luck, I suppose.'
Beryl sighed in exasperation and looked like she was about to try to give a lecture.
Valkyrie and her father both pounced on the same opportunity before Beryl could utter another word.
'I'm going to school,' Valkyrie said quickly, shoveling the last spoonful of cereal into her mouth.
'I'm going to work,' her dad said, only a millisecond behind.
Valkyrie slipped her bowl into the dishwasher and walked for the door.
'But Desmond, you haven't had any breakfast,' Valkyrie's mother said with a frown.
'I'll get something on the way,' her father said, following Valkyrie out.
They got to the hallway and Valkyrie turned for the stairs as her dad picked up his keys off the small table. They looked at each other and nodded their silent good-byes. Then they both smiled, and he walked out and she went to her room.
Not for the first time, she wondered how her father would react if he knew that the family legends were true, that they were descended from the Ancients, that his grandfather and his late brother had been right. But she didn't tell him. If he knew the truth, he'd try to stop her from going out every day, try to protect her from people like Serpine, and Vengeous, and whoever else wanted to kill her. Or worse, maybe he'd want to get involved. She didn't think she'd be able to cope with her father putting himself in danger. She wanted her family to be normal.
Normal was good. Normal was safe.
She closed the door, then took off her school sweater and dropped it on the bed. She touched her mirror, and a moment later her reflection stepped out. She had forgotten about the logo rule once, and the reflection had gone to school with the school crest on the wrong side and the school motto written backward. Valkyrie hadn't made that mistake again. She waited until her reflection had pulled on the sweater, then handed it her schoolbag.
'Have fun,' she said, and the reflection nodded and hurried out of the room.
Not for the first time, Valkyrie grinned to herself. She'd hardly been to school since Skulduggery had worked his magic on that mirror, yet she was up to date on all the classes, all the gossip, all the day-to-day workings of an ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill thirteen-year-old. Without having to actually set foot through a classroom door.
Sure, there were times when she wished she'd been there to experience something firsthand instead of reliving it through the reflection's eyes. It wasn't the same merely having the memories of, say, a joke being told, instead of actually having been around for the real thing. Just another price to pay, she reckoned.
Moving quietly, Valkyrie took off the rest of her uniform, hid it under her bed, and dressed in the black clothes that had been made especially for her. She'd grown a bit since Ghastly Bespoke had designed them, but they still fit, and for that she was thankful. They had saved her life on more than one occasion, and it wasn't as if she could ask Ghastly to make her any more.
In a fight with the White Cleaver he had used the earth power as a last-ditch defense, and turned himself to stone. She hadn't known him that well, but she missed him, and she knew that Skulduggery did too.
She slipped into her coat and opened the window. She breathed deep and slow. Checking to make sure she wasn't being watched, she climbed out onto the sill and paused there for a moment, focusing her mind. Then she slipped off the edge,
displacing the air beneath her to slow her descent. It wasn't graceful, and her landing was still a little too hard, but it was a lot better than it had been.
She hurried down the road to the pier. When she was younger, she used to join her friends there. They used to sprint for the edge and leap as far as they could over the rocks right below them, splashing down into the sparkling water. Yes, it was dangerous, and yes, poor J. J. Pearl once shattered his knee on those rocks, but the danger gave the exercise a certain extra kick.
These days, J. J. walked with a slight limp, and she'd long since drifted apart from her childhood friends. She missed swimming, though. She didn't get to do a whole lot of that lately.
The Bentley was waiting for her, parked beside a rusty old Fiat. It stood out by a mile —
but then, it stood out by a mile wherever it went.
'Good morning,' Skulduggery said when she got in. 'Well rested, are you?'
'I had two hours' sleep,' she said.
'Well, no one said being a great detective leading an action-packed life was easy.'
'You said it was easy.'
'I said it was easy for me,' he corrected. 'Was that your lovely aunt's car I saw outside your house?'
'Yeah, it was,' she said, and told him about her brief run-in with Beryl.
'Family reunion?' Skulduggery said when she had finished. 'Are you going?'
'And, what, leave you to stop the bad guys without me? No way. I'll send the reflection in my place, thank you very much.'
'A reunion might be fun.'
'Right. Fun. Because I have so much fun with that side of the family. I wouldn't mind so much if it was Mum's side — I have a laugh with them. Dad's side is just. . . weird, you know?'
'I do. Gordon spoke of them often. Never forget, however, that you're weird too.'
She glared at him. 'I'm not weird like that. I'm good weird. I'm cool weird.'
'Yes,' he said doubtfully. 'Yes, you are.'
'Shut up. But anyway, all of Dad's cousins will be there, with their families, people I hardly know, and of course Beryl and Fergus and the Toxic Twins, and it's pretty much going to be horrible, so there's no way in hell that I'm going.'
'Well, that's good enough for me.'
He started the engine, and she sat low in her seat as he pulled out onto the road and started driving.
'So have you found out anything about Vengeous?'
'One of our people at the docks hasn't reported in yet,' he said. He was wearing his usual disguise: wide- brimmed hat, overlarge sunglasses, fuzzy wig, and a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face. 'It might be nothing, but...'
'But Vengeous might already be here?'
'Well, yes.'
'That's bad.'
'It's not good.'
They were driving down Main Street, and Valkyrie glanced out as they passed the bus stop. Five bored- looking teens stood in school uniform.
'My reflection's not there,' she said with a frown.
