Skulduggery Pleasant

Skulduggery Pleasant
Derek Landy

Meet Skulduggery Pleasant: detective, sorcerer, warrior.Oh yeah. And dead.Stephanie's uncle Gordon is a writer of horror fiction. But when he dies and leaves her his estate, Stephanie learns that while he may have written horror, it certainly wasn't fiction.Pursued by evil forces intent on recovering a mysterious key, Stephanie finds help from an unusual source – the wisecracking skeleton of a dead wizard.When all hell breaks loose, it's lucky for Skulduggery that he's already dead. Though he's about to discover that being a skeleton doesn't stop you from being tortured, if the torturer is determined enough. And if there's anything Skulduggery hates, it's torture… Will evil win the day? Will Stephanie and Skulduggery stop bickering long enough to stop it? One thing's for sure: evil won't know what's hit it.

DEREK LANDY

Skulduggery Pleasant

Copyright (#ud181e78f-86f7-5bc1-afdb-36f4b0d1225e)

HarperCollins Children’s Books A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

Skulduggery Pleasant rests his weary bones on the web at: www.skulduggerypleasant.com (http://www.skulduggerypleasant.com/)

First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2007

Copyright © Derek Landy 2007

Cover illustration © Tom Percival;

Illuminated letters © Tom Percival;

Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy; Skulduggery Pleasant logo™ HarperCollins Publishers

Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007241613

Ebook Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN: 9780007279005

Version: 2018-10-04

Dedication (#ud181e78f-86f7-5bc1-afdb-36f4b0d1225e)

This book is dedicated to my parents, John and Barbara.

Dad – this is for your bizarrely unwavering support and unflinching faith.

Barbs – this is for that look on your face when I told you the good news.

I owe you absolutely everything and, y’know, I suppose it’s entirely possible that I feel some, like, degree of affection towards the two of you…

Contents

Title Page (#ub930e76e-4b0c-56e8-9c99-82ee0b1015a7)Copyright (#u11eb5a0a-1dc5-56cb-b728-be8bd054a574)Dedication (#ua31ba70c-32da-5298-8aad-37e9d2a8f823)Chapter One: Stephanie (#ua41771b1-2106-5ed4-94a3-3d6638a429be)Chapter Two: The Will (#u599eff4e-0c25-57fe-9a3b-a5b94efc320b)Chapter Three: Little Girl, All Alone (#u9d540ec3-00aa-507f-a826-559cb0558c65)Chapter Four: The Secret War (#u381a1f89-7142-5323-98df-1646a307aef9)Chapter Five: Meeting China Sorrows (#u40eb6503-cf41-547f-a09d-ece682f606eb)Chapter Six: A Man Apart (#udd577cd4-5af1-5a59-8acb-b910155a55c8)Chapter Seven: Serpine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight: Ghastly (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine: The Troll Beneath Westminster Bridge (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten: The Gal In Black (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven: The Little Bit Of Crime (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve: Vampires (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen: The Red Right Hand (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen: Elemental Magic (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen: The Torture Room (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen: What’s In A Name? (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen: A Fabulous Rescue Indeed (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen: On The Roof, At Night (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen: The Experiment (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty: The Family Curse (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty One: The Cave (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Two: The Sceptre Of The Ancients (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Three: Thoughts On Dying Horribly (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Four: Planning For Murder (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Five: The White Cleaver (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Six: The Last Stand Of… (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Seven: No Calm Before The Storm (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Eight: Carnage (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Nine: Deep In Dublin, Death (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty: An End, A Beginning (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1 (#ud181e78f-86f7-5bc1-afdb-36f4b0d1225e)

STEPHANIE

Gordon Edgley’s sudden death came as a shock to everyone – not least himself. One moment he was in his study, seven words into the twenty-fifth sentence of the final chapter of his new book And The Darkness Rained Upon Them, and the next he was dead. A tragic loss, his mind echoed numbly as he slipped away.

The funeral was attended by family and acquaintances but not many friends. Gordon hadn’t been a well-liked figure in the publishing world, for although the books he wrote – tales of horror and magic and wonder – regularly reared their heads in the bestseller lists, he had the disquieting habit of insulting people without realising it, then laughing at their shock. It was at Gordon’s funeral, however, that Stephanie Edgley first caught sight of the gentleman in the tan overcoat.

He was standing under the shade of a large tree, away from the crowd, the coat buttoned up all the way despite the warmth of the afternoon. A scarf was wrapped around the lower half of his face and even from her position on the far side of the grave, Stephanie could make out the wild and frizzy hair that escaped from the wide brimmed hat he wore low over his gigantic sunglasses. She watched him, intrigued by his appearance. And then, like he knew he was being observed, he turned and walked back through the rows of headstones, and disappeared from sight.

After the service, Stephanie and her parents travelled back to her dead uncle’s house, over a humpbacked bridge and along a narrow road that carved its way through thick woodland. The gates were heavy and grand and stood open, welcoming them into the estate. The grounds were vast and the old house itself was ridiculously big.

There was an extra door in the living room, a door disguised as a bookcase, and when she was younger Stephanie liked to think that no one else knew about this door, not even Gordon himself. It was a secret passageway, like in the stories she’d read, and she’d make up adventures about haunted houses and smuggled treasure. This secret passageway would always be her escape route, and the imaginary villains in these adventures would be dumbfounded by her sudden and mysterious disappearance. But now this door, this secret passageway, stood open, and there was a steady stream of people through it, and she was saddened that this little piece of magic had been taken from her.

Tea was served and drinks were poured and little sandwiches were passed around on silver trays, and Stephanie watched the mourners casually appraise their surroundings. The major topic of hushed conversation was the will. Gordon wasn’t a man who inspired, or even demonstrated, any great affection, so no one could predict who would inherit his substantial fortune. Stephanie could see the greed seep into the watery eyes of her father’s other brother, a horrible little man called Fergus, as he nodded sadly and spoke sombrely and pocketed the silverware when he thought no one was looking.

Fergus’s wife was a thoroughly dislikeable, sharp-featured woman named Beryl. She drifted through the crowd, deep in unconvincing grief, prying for gossip and digging for scandal. Her daughters did their best to ignore Stephanie. Carol and Crystal were twins, fifteen years old, and as sour and vindictive as their parents. Whereas Stephanie was dark-haired, tall, slim and strong, they were bottle-blonde, stumpy and dressed in clothes that made them bulge in all the wrong places. Apart from their brown eyes, no one would guess that the twins were related to her. She liked that. It was the only thing about them she liked. She left them to their petty glares and snide whispers, and went for a walk.

The corridors of her uncle’s house were long and lined with paintings. The floor beneath Stephanie’s feet was wooden, polished to a gleam, and the house smelled of age. Not musty exactly but… experienced. These walls and these floors had seen a lot in their time, and Stephanie was nothing but a faint whisper to them. Here one instant, gone the next.

Gordon had been a good uncle. Arrogant and irresponsible, yes, but also childish and enormous fun, with a light in his eyes, a glint of mischief. When everyone else was taking him seriously, Stephanie was privy to the winks and the nods and the half-smiles that he would shoot her way when they weren’t looking. Even as a child she felt she understood him better than most. She liked his intelligence and his wit, and the way he didn’t care what people thought of him. He’d been a good uncle to have. He’d taught her a lot.

She knew that her mother and Gordon had briefly dated (“courted”, her mother had called it), but when Gordon had introduced her to his younger brother, it was love at first sight. Gordon liked to grumble that he had never got more than a peck on the cheek, but he had stepped aside graciously, and had quite happily gone on to have numerous torrid affairs with numerous beautiful women. He used to say that it had almost been a fair trade, but that he suspected he had lost out.

Stephanie climbed the staircase, pushed open the door to Gordon’s study and stepped inside. The walls were filled with the framed covers from his bestsellers and shared space with all manner of awards. One entire wall was made up of shelves, jammed with books. There were biographies and historical novels and science texts and psychology tomes, and there were battered little paperbacks stuck in between. A lower shelf had magazines, literary reviews and quarterlies.

Stephanie passed the shelves which housed the first editions of Gordon’s novels and approached the desk. She looked at the chair where he’d died, trying to imagine him there, how he must have slumped. And then, a voice so smooth it could have been made of velvet:

“At least he died doing what he loved.”

She turned, surprised, to see the man from the funeral in the overcoat and hat standing in the doorway. The scarf was still wrapped, the sunglasses still on, the fuzzy hair still poking out. His hands were gloved.

“Yes,” Stephanie said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “At least there’s that.”

“You’re one of his nieces then?” the man asked. “You’re not stealing anything, you’re not breaking anything, so I’d guess you’re Stephanie.” She nodded and took the opportunity to look at him more closely. She couldn’t see even the tiniest bit of his face beneath the scarf and sunglasses.

“Were you a friend of his?” she asked. He was tall, this man, tall and thin, though his coat made it difficult to judge.

“I was,” he answered with a move of his head. This slight movement made her realise that the rest of his body was unnaturally still. “I’ve known him for years, met him outside a bar in New York when I was over there, back when he had just published his first novel.”

Stephanie couldn’t see anything behind the sunglasses – they were black as pitch. “Are you a writer too?”

“Me? No, I wouldn’t know where to start. But I got to live out my writer fantasies through Gordon.”

“You had writer fantasies?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”