Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 7 - 9

“I have to be strong to do what I do. If I wasn’t involved in all this, I’d be just like you guys.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d still be tall, for a start, and you’d probably be swimming every day or horse-riding or something.”

“Well, that’s all you need to do. Whenever I’m not working on a case with Skulduggery, I train really hard. I practise magic, I fight, I lift weights, I work out. Every few months Skulduggery brings in another friend of his who’s an expert in some fighting style I’ve never heard of and I get thrown about the place. Whatever muscles I have I got through hard work and sweat. And I hated most of it. But all you have to do is find the activity that you enjoy and you won’t care about how hard the work is.”

“I’ve... I might have found an activity.” Carol looked away. “I’ve been, kind of… I’ve been practising magic.”

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. “I see.”

“Just the fire stuff,” Carol said quickly. “I’m not really good with the air, and I don’t know about the water and earth, but I can click my fingers and sometimes things go on fire.”

“Sounds... dangerous.”

“I keep a bucket of water beside me when I do it.”

“Listen, I don’t want to tell you not to practise. I don’t have that right. You have magic in you, it’s part of your heritage, just like it’s a part of mine. But you’re taking a risk every time you do it. What if your mum sees you? Or your dad? They’d freak out, Carol. They’d call every emergency service they could think of. You could get into a lot of trouble.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“Can you at least try not to set fire to anything? That’s going to raise some suspicions sooner or later.”

“I won’t do it in the house any more.”

“OK. Thank you.”

“Do you want another chip?”

Valkyrie smiled, and took one.

“Are you working on a case at the moment?” asked Carol.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Anything exciting?”

“A few days ago I wrestled an Abominable Snowman.”

“No way!”

Valkyrie grinned. “Yep. That was pretty cool. Really bad breath, though. Like, disgusting.”

“Eww.”

“And I’ve been to an alternate universe.”

“Seriously? Like on Star Trek?”

Valkyrie laughed. “Since when do you know about Star Trek?”

Carol looked around, like someone might be listening, then leaned in. “Don’t tell your parents, but Mum loves Star Trek. When we were kids, we used to watch the reruns of the original series, Next Generation, DS9... She liked Voyager more than we did, and none of us liked Enterprise... But she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s a Trekkie, so...”

“I promise I won’t tell, no matter how amused it might make me.”

“Thank you. So what was the alternate universe like? Are there evil versions of everybody? Is there an evil version of me?”

Valkyrie laughed. “Sadly, no. Our histories ran parallel up to a few hundred years ago, so none of us have been born.”

“Oh. That sucks.” Carol ate another chip. “Wouldn’t it be cool to find out what your evil version would be like?”

Valkyrie made a face. “Not really...”

She walked Carol back to her house and they finished off the bag of chips. Carol told her about this guy she liked in college, and they giggled and laughed and when Carol walked to her front door, she had a bounce in her step, and looked lighter than her frame would suggest. Smiling to herself, Valkyrie took the little lane down to the beach and walked back to her house along the sand. She got to her room, the reflection went back into the mirror, and she stripped down to underwear and a T-shirt and climbed into bed. Sleep came quickly.

She didn’t know what time it was when the throbbing in her arm woke her, but it was still dark as she lunged out of bed. She grabbed her phone and her ring off the bedside table and stumbled to the wardrobe. The world flickered around her and a wave of dizziness sent her into the mirror. Her ring fell from her grip. She reached for her black clothes as the reflection stepped out and then the bedroom was gone and Valkyrie was falling through empty space. She hit the ground and rolled, sprawling on to her back.

Her house was gone. She sat up, groaning, looking down towards the pier as the waves crashed and churned. The modern houses were gone. Old walls crumbled beside dirt tracks instead of roads.

She sat there on the untamed grass, in her underwear and a T-shirt, her phone clutched in her hand. She didn’t have her protective clothing. She didn’t have her Necromancer ring. The only thing she’d managed to do right was release her reflection, so at least her family wouldn’t notice her departure. That was something, at least.

“Looks like we’re in trouble,” her own voice said, and she whipped around to see her reflection sitting behind her.

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he town of Haggard was gone, and in its place stood a small village. Thin shacks of rotting wood squatted in the darkness, black voids against the star-filled sky. It was an unsettling sensation for Valkyrie to walk the ground she knew so well and for it to be so utterly different. They circled the village’s perimeter. Small stones dug into her feet with every step. The reflection matched her pace but showed no sign of discomfort.

“You should have given me space,” Valkyrie said, her voice tight.

“I’m sorry,” said the reflection.

“The whole point of your existence is to stay behind, for God’s sake. What use are you if we’re both missing? Mum’s going to freak out.”

“Or she might just assume that you left for school early.”

Valkyrie glared. “Have we ever done that before?”

“No,” it admitted, “but with all the talk of exams lately, she might believe you’re taking it seriously.”

“So she’s going to believe I got up an hour earlier because I wanted some study time?”

The reflection shrugged. “People believe what they want to believe so long as it’s reasonable. But I’m sorry. I should have waited in the mirror until you were gone. I don’t know why I tried to help you up. There might be something wrong with me again.”

Valkyrie didn’t say anything. She was being unfair and she knew it.

“OK,” she said at last, “the plan. The plan is to stay out of sight until we’re pulled back. We need to stay within arm’s reach at all times, all right? I don’t know how long we’ll be here.”

“You’re cold. You need clothes.”

“You need clothes, too. I don’t want you running around in a strange dimension half naked. I have my modesty to protect.”