'I'd heard the rumor. ...'
'Fergus!' Beryl shouted back into the house, and a few moments later her husband walked out of the living room. He was at home every day now after suffering a 'serious fall' at work. He was in the process of suing his employers, claiming that it was their negligence that resulted in his debilitating injuries. He didn't look too debilitated as he approached the door.
'Fergus, Stephanie here says she wasn't in the car with that awful Mr. Pleasant.'
Fergus scowled. 'She's calling us liars?'
'No,' Stephanie said with a half laugh. 'Just that it must have been somebody else.'
'Stephanie,' Beryl chided, 'let's not play games. We know it was you. It's such a tragic thing to see, a dear sweet innocent child like you falling in with the wrong crowd.'
'Wrong crowd?'
'Weirdos,' Fergus said with a sneer. 'I've seen their kind before. Gordon used to surround himself with people like that, people with . . . secrets.'
'And why does he hide his face, anyway?' Beryl asked. 'Is he deformed?'
'I wouldn't know,' Stephanie said, fighting to keep her voice even.
'You can't trust people like that,' Fergus continued. 'I've been around them my whole life, seen them coming and going. Never wanted anything to do with them. You never know who you're dealing with, or what sordid little things they get up to.'
'He seemed all right to me,' Stephanie said, as casually as she could. 'He seemed quite nice, actually.'
Beryl shook her head sadly. 'I don't expect you to understand. You're only a child.'
Stephanie bristled. 'You've never even spoken to him.'
'Adults don't have to speak to other adults to know if they're bad news or not. One look, that's all we need.'
'So anyone different from you is bad news?'
'Anyone different from us, dear.'
'My parents always told me never to judge someone by how they look.'
'Yes, well,' Beryl said primly. 'If they think they can afford to live in ignorance, then that's their mistake.'
'My parents aren't ignorant.'
'I never said they were, dear. I just said they lived in ignorance.'
Stephanie couldn't take this anymore. 'I need to pee,' she said suddenly.
Beryl blinked. 'I'm sorry?'
'Pee. I need to pee. Can I use your bathroom?'
'I... I suppose ...'
'Thanks.'
Stephanie stepped past them both and hurried up the stairs. She went into the bathroom, and when she was sure Beryl wasn't going to follow her up, she crept into the master bedroom and went straight to the jewelry box on the dresser. It was a massive thing, each of its compartments bulging with tacky trinkets that sparkled and twinkled and glittered. She found the brooch in a slide-out compartment at the base of the box, where it nestled with a single hoop earring and a pair of tweezers. She stuck it in her pocket, closed the jewelry box, and left the room, then flushed the toilet in the bathroom and bounded down the stairs.
'Thank you,' she said brightly, and Beryl opened her mouth to continue their conversation, but Stephanie was already halfway down the garden path.
Stephanie sat on one of the boulders that sealed off the north end of the beach, waiting for Skulduggery. The weather forecasters had been predicting an end to the dry spell, but the morning sky was blue and cloud free. There was a shell on the boulder next to her, a pretty shell, a shell she suddenly found herself loving.
It moved. The air didn't do that cool rippling thing around her hand, but the shell still moved, and it wasn't because of the breeze, either. Stephanie's heart quickened, but she didn't let herself celebrate. Not yet. It could have been a fluke. If she could do it a second time, then she could celebrate.
She concentrated on the shell. She held her hand up, seeing the space between her hand and the shell as a series of interlocking objects waiting to be moved. Her fingers uncurled slightly and she felt it, she felt the air against her palm, solid somehow. She pushed against it, and the shell shot off the boulder.
'Yes!' she exclaimed, sticking both arms up in the air. Magic! She'd done magic! She laughed in delight.
'You look happy.'
She turned so suddenly, she almost fell off the boulder, and her dad grinned as he approached.
She blushed deeply and dug her phone out of her pocket without him seeing, then held it up.
'Got a good text message,' she said, 'that's all.'
'Ah,' he said as he sat beside her. 'Anything I should know about?'
'Probably 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 ...'
She 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 realized. 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 or they 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 fifty 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 than 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 said to herself.
'Beryl called,' her father said. 'She said you'd just been to see her.'
Stephanie nodded. She couldn't have noticed already that the brooch was missing, could she? 'I felt like calling around, seeing
