Skulduggery Pleasant

The leaf had started to dissolve on her tongue, but she chewed the rest to get rid of it faster. They were great for numbing pain, be it from a broken leg, a gunshot wound, or a mere headache, but no one had yet bothered to make the damn things taste better. “Another headache,” she said as she wandered over to the guitar. “Nothing to worry about.” She picked it up.

Skulduggery’s head tilted. “Perhaps.”

She strummed. Badly. “Perhaps what? It’s a headache. People get headaches all the time. Especially after they’ve been punched in the face.”

Skulduggery took a small bag of rainbow dust from his pocket, held out his hand and let it sprinkle through his gloved fingers. It fell as golden particles. “Do you remember what gold means?”

“Gold means psychic. Which is to be expected, right? Even though Cassandra’s been dead for two years?” She played the first few bars of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, got it wrong and tried again.

“You are quite correct,” he responded, sealing the bag and putting it away. “This cottage contains an abundance of residual psychic energy, enough so that anyone with Sensitive tendencies would be vulnerable to their influence.”

“OK. So?”

“We were nearing Testament Road when you got the headache earlier,” he said. “The part of town where Sensitives can’t go.”

Valkyrie laughed. “Oh, wow. This is your theory? You think I’m a Sensitive?”

“I think it’s a possibility. The full range of your abilities has yet to be explored. Most sorcerers are restricted to one discipline – I’m one of the rare exceptions, being both an Elemental and a Necromancer. But you? You might be something else entirely.”

“I think I’d know if I was a psychic, though.”

“Would you?” Skulduggery asked, and took the guitar from her hands. He walked away from her, playing ‘Heroes’ by Bowie. “Tell me something – have you experienced anything unusual recently?”

“You mean apart from you? Listen, I don’t have clairvoyance. I can’t read people’s minds or see into the future.” She faltered on the last word, then shook her head. “This is silly. I’m not a Sensitive.”

“You don’t know what you are,” he said, turning and starting to sing.

Xena wandered in and he sang to her while she sat, head cocked to one side, and when he was done he twirled the guitar and thrust it away from him, and it floated back to the corner to settle into its stand. The show over, Xena got up, wandered back outside.

“I didn’t know you played,” Valkyrie said.

“Cassandra taught me,” he responded, and looked around like he’d just realised she wasn’t here any more.

Valkyrie let the silence continue for a bit, then broke it. “So we’re here,” she said. “Remembering Cassandra. Singing. She really would have liked that. What’s next? We head back to Dublin and get matching tattoos in honour of Finbar?”

“If you like,” he said. “But, since we’re here, we may as well go downstairs.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

But he was already opening the narrow door beside the cupboard. “Come on,” he said, and went down.

Valkyrie hesitated a long moment before following.

It was dark down there. Cold. Old pipes ran up the bare walls. A straight-backed chair stood in the middle of the metal floor.

“I’m not sure what you’re hoping to achieve with all this,” she said.

He clicked his fingers, summoning flame into his hand. “Your, what do you call it, your ‘aura-vision’ is a psychic ability. How do you know that it doesn’t go deeper? Indulge me this once.”

“I’m always indulging you.”

“Then indulge me once more.” He dropped the ball of fire to the floor. The flames lit the coals beneath and heat immediately started to rise.

“What do you think is going to happen here?” she asked. “I’m suddenly going to have a vision? I don’t have visions.”

“Not yet, but the energy all around you could trigger something, and, if it does, we’ll be able to see it played out in the steam.”

“Or we’ll just be standing here getting a cheap sauna that will wrinkle your suit and ruin my hair.”

“Nothing will wrinkle this suit,” said Skulduggery. “Ghastly made sure of it.”

“We saw him in Cassandra’s vision,” Valkyrie pointed out. “We saw Ghastly with Tanith. We saw them kiss on Devastation Day – only he died before that could happen. Even if I did have a vision, so what? Ghastly’s death proves that visions of the future mean nothing.”

“No,” Skulduggery replied, taking a yellow umbrella from a hook on the wall and passing it to her. “His death proves that the future can be changed if you know what’s coming. And we have no idea what’s coming. We don’t even know who we’re up against, not really, so we don’t know what we have to avoid. Try, Valkyrie. At least try.”

She sighed, then sat in the chair. It was quickly turning hot in here. When the first bead of perspiration formed on her temple, she opened the umbrella as Skulduggery turned the red wheel. Water rushed through the pipes, gurgling like the belly of a ravenous beast. The sprinklers started up, tapping a growing applause on the umbrella. Steam rose, getting thicker, becoming mist, becoming fog. She lost sight of Skulduggery, but heard the wheel turn again, and the water cut off. She collapsed the umbrella, shook it and laid it on the floor before standing.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now focus,” Skulduggery said. “Or don’t focus. Empty your mind, or maybe fill it.”

“You’re a great help.”

“I don’t really know how this works.”

“Hush,” she said.

She stood there, eyes fixed on the empty space in front of her. She tried to relax her thoughts, but they were in as big a jumble as ever. Her head buzzed. The headache was coming back.

“I don’t think this is working,” she said.

And then something moved ahead of her.

13 (#ulink_a47d00da-ffbd-5cb2-8269-384de725d6a1)

A shadow in the billowing steam. Valkyrie narrowed her eyes. “Did you see that?”

“I saw something,” Skulduggery said.

“What was it? It looked like—”

Something flared in the distance, a sudden fire or explosion. Valkyrie walked towards it.

“Careful,” said Skulduggery, but he sounded so far away. “There’s a wall in front of you.”

She knew that. Behind the steam and the shadows, she knew there was a solid wall. She knew she was still in the cellar. She knew what was real and what wasn’t.

Only there was no wall. Frowning, she kept walking, hands out in front, and with each step she expected to come into contact with the wall and yet each step brought her deeper and deeper into the steam. She turned, looked back.