Death Bringer (25 page)

Valkyrie said nothing.

“I don't want you teaching my daughters anything,” he said.

“I don't want to either, I swear I don't. They saw me do something last year, and they've been at me ever since. I think I can convince them that they don't have any magic, and then hopefully they'll stop trying.”

“Do I have your word on that?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I'm holding you responsible if anything…
magical
ever happens to them.”

“OK,” she said.

He nodded, looked out to sea, and then back to her. “I'm sorry I shouted at you.”

“It's fine. Really.”

“Are you going to be teaching Alice any of this? When she's old enough?”

“I… don't know. I'd prefer not to.”

“Then you understand why I don't want my girls taught?”

“Yes.”

He nodded again, then looked down at his feet. “Give our best to your mother,” he said.

“Sure.”

He turned, started to walk away.

“Gordon couldn't do magic,” she called after him, “but what about you?”

He didn't stop walking, and he didn't answer. He just held up his left hand, and clicked his fingers. Even in the bright sunlight, Valkyrie saw the spark between his fingertips.

Chapter 36
Confiding in Uncle Gordon

he taxi driver peered out through the windscreen. “I know this place,” he said. “This is where that writer lived. What's his name? Edgley.”

Valkyrie gave a murmur of affirmation from the back seat. “I read his books, you know. Some of them. He wasn't the best, was he? I mean, he was OK. He was readable. He was no Stephen King, but he was fine. Didn't like the way he'd kill off his characters, though. That was never nice.”

“Suppose not,” Valkyrie muttered.

“He wrote those books about the army deserter, didn't he? Corporal Fleece, getting into all those mad adventures with the ghosts of dead wizards and whatever.”

“Dead sorcerers,” she corrected automatically.

“Same thing, isn't it? Did you read any of them? In the first book you meet him, you think he's the brave hero. But he's not. He's a selfish little coward. Didn't like that. It was funny enough, in its own way, but I didn't like it. I like my heroes to be, you know, good guys.”

Valkyrie sat forward. “You can let me out here,” she said. “I'll walk the rest of the way.”

She paid the man and got out, then walked up the long driveway. She missed being able to call Fletcher, have him teleport her wherever she needed to go. He could be annoying, he could be
very
annoying, but he always smiled when he saw her, and it was like he'd been saving up that smile all day until they were together. She liked that feeling, as much as she hated to admit it. She liked being around someone who was genuinely happy to be around her.

It wasn't the same feeling she got when she was with Caelan. There was too much pressure there, too much expectation. He looked at her like she belonged to him, like they belonged together. He was handsome – he was
so
handsome – and he was smooth and dark and dangerous. But beyond that, there wasn't much to him. Valkyrie really didn't see that lasting. She needed someone fun, someone who could make her laugh, who could take her places she'd never been. If she didn't have anyone like that, then what was the point of being with anyone less?

Valkyrie let herself into Gordon's house, deactivating the alarm. She went through, passing the rooms she normally visited, noting how clean everything looked and how fresh everything smelled. She pushed open the double doors into the ballroom, turned on the light. Brand-new chandeliers hung from the ceiling, sparkling like diamonds. The floor was polished, with tables and chairs stacked up on one side, ready to be set out. It was quiet right now, her every footstep echoing around the empty space, and she tried imagining what it would look like filled with people. The last time the house had been full was at Gordon's funeral.

She climbed the stairs to Gordon's study where he'd done all his writing when he was alive. In here Valkyrie flicked the switch and the bookcase opened. She walked through into the hidden room. Gordon Edgley looked round, smiled, and held up a hand while he finished speaking.

“… it lunged, this thing of claws and fangs and muscle, and with a swipe, it opened the belly of the prison guard, spilling his entrails across the rough stone floor. Recording end.” The electronic device on the table beeped, and Gordon grinned. “The new book is going really well.”

She nodded appreciatively. “It sounds it.”

“I dare say it's better than anything I wrote when I was alive. It has pathos. It has emotion. It has entrails. It has everything you could want in a posthumous bestseller, recently uncovered in a hidden archive. This is going to make you a lot of money, my dear niece. But then, what do
you
care about money? When have you
ever
cared about money?”

Valkyrie shrugged. “I'm sure it'll come in useful. Probably more for Mum and Dad than for me, though.”

“And little sister,” Gordon said. “Don't forget the new addition. I was thinking, I might write a book for younger readers when I'm finished with this one – give her something to read when she's a little older. Oh, the possibilities. To think, if it wasn't for you
insisting
that I reveal my existence to Skulduggery and the others, I'd be spending my days in the Echo Stone, waiting for you to drop by for a visit.”

The stone lay in its cradle on the desk, the cradle itself standing on a symbol that China Sorrows had carved into the wood. It fooled the stone into thinking there was a living person in the room at all times, meaning Gordon's image could stay active. In this room he had voice-activated televisions and computers, gadgets of all kinds. He was loving this second chance at life.

“I like the chandeliers,” said Valkyrie.

“You don't think they're too over the top? I was worried they might be. This is going to be a big night for me. This is the first time I get to meet most of these amazing people, and I don't want anyone to think I'm showing off.”

“They're lovely.”

“I'm glad you think so. There have been cleaning crews in here for the last few days, getting everything ready for Sunday. Do you have your dress picked out?”

“I don't know if I'm going.”

Gordon frowned. “What? But you have to go. This is your house.”

“It's
your
house, and you don't need me.”

He looked at her. “Tell me what the matter is.”

“I just had an interesting conversation with Fergus.”

“Oh?”

“Why didn't you tell me that he knew about magic?”

Gordon blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I was giving the twins a lesson on the beach. He saw us, sent them away, started on a whole tirade about refusing to let me drag them into magic because magic had torn his family apart.”

“Really?”

“Very really.”

“That… that surprises me.”

“It caught me a little off guard too. He gave me the whole family history on the subject.”

“That must have been nice.”

“It was a bonding moment.”

“To be honest,” Gordon said, “I thought he'd convinced himself that none of it was real. He did such a good job with your dad, I thought he genuinely believed it himself. Once we got into our twenties, you see, we never argued about actual
magic
. We argued about the weirdos and the freaks I associated with, we argued about my lifestyle and my attitude, but by then he had stopped using words like
sorcerers
. I didn't realise he was still… aware of it all.”

“Well, he was, and he still is. He even has some himself.”

“Fergus? Fergus has
magic
?”

“There's definitely something there,” she said. “Without proper instruction he wouldn't be able to do anything more than generate a spark, but even so…”

“Even so,” Gordon finished, “it shows he has magic. How I would have envied him if I had known while I lived.”

“You don't envy him now?”

Gordon smiled. “I have so many other things to envy him for, my dear, such as living, that magic becomes insignificant. How did you leave it?”

“He told me not to teach the twins anything, and I agreed.”

“That's it?”

“Pretty much.”

Gordon shook his head. “That brother of mine is a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a cardigan.”

“Oh, there is something else. He said he regrets not speaking to you for four years.”

Gordon smiled sadly. “Mm. Well. Yes. Regrets. I've had a few. That's all very interesting, I have to say. All very interesting indeed. Do you have any other bombshells to drop on me today? You may as well get it over with while I'm still partly in shock.”

There was a single chair in the room, and Valkyrie slouched into it, crossing her legs. “I've got one or two. The least of which is that I've broken up with Fletcher.”

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear me. Well, we knew this would eventually happen. Um… The important thing is to remember the good times, but not dwell on them… Dwelling leads to miserable thoughts and the playing of bad music. It is to be avoided at all costs. Fletcher… There will be another Fletcher, and another one after him, and another… It's not the end of the world, Valkyrie. You
know
what the end of the world looks like – by all accounts you're the cause of it.”

He chuckled. She didn't. He stopped chuckling.

“He didn't dump me,” she said. “
I
broke up with
him
.”

“Oh,” said Gordon, much brighter now. “Well, that is completely different! Excellent. Bravo. Well, not excellent. I liked the boy. He seemed nice. But obviously, you had a good reason for ending it.”

“It just felt like the time. I was getting… bored.”

“The death knell for many a mediocre relationship. I can't tell you how many beautiful women have broken up with me because they were bored. I can't tell you because it never happened. They all adored me.”

“It was your humility, wasn't it?”

“I'm sure that had something to do with it. You're like me, Valkyrie. You're never going to be content until you find that one person, that one single person, who fills you with delight every time you hear their name.”

“Did you ever find that person?”

He hesitated. “Yes. I did.”

“And what happened?”

“Does it matter? What matters is you. You can't let this get you down.”

“I wasn't. I'm upset about it, I suppose, but… There's other stuff happening too.”

“There always is.”

“Skulduggery kept a secret from me.”

“I see. You think that was wrong of him?”

“No, not
wrong
, but it's a pretty big secret, and it's… it's bad.”

“Is he still your friend?”

Valkyrie sighed.

“Has he moved against you in any way? Has he hurt you?”

“No.”

“Then is he still your friend?”

“I suppose.”

“This secret, how long has he had it?”

“Hundreds of years.”

“Then it has nothing to do with you. It's quite simple, isn't it? He kept something from you, something about his past, and now you know it, and now you deal with it and move on.”

She filled her cheeks with air, then blew it out. “It sounds really easy when you say it. It doesn't
feel
easy.”

“Everyone has secrets, Valkyrie. I don't need to tell you that. So long as he hasn't used this secret to intentionally hurt you, however, I don't see the problem. Friends stick by each other. That's what they do.”

She looked at him. “You are a wise and noble man, Uncle Gordon.”

“And good-looking. You forgot good-looking.”

“That's taken for granted.”

“As well it should be. Now then, do you have any other problems I can help you with?”

“There's a vampire who's in love with me.”

“Dump him. Any other problems?”

Valkyrie laughed. “Nothing I can't handle.”

“In that case, be off with you. I have a book to write, characters to kill, and a party to plan.”

Chapter 37
The Wisdom of Leonard Cohen

hastly checked his watch as he walked the corridors of the Sanctuary, resigning himself to the fact that, once again, it looked like he'd be spending the night in his office instead of going home. He yawned heavily as he rounded the corner, and saw Fletcher Renn sitting outside his door.

“Fletcher,” Ghastly said.

The kid looked up. His jeans were tattered, his boots were scuffed, and his T-shirt was a faded advertisement for a band Ghastly had never heard of. It was the eyes, though, that marked him out as truly tired. The eyes, and the hair. Usually so meticulously untamed, tonight it hung long and flat and swept back off his forehead.

“Hi,” Fletcher said. “I know it's late, but… And I'm sorry if you're busy.”

Ghastly was always busy these days. He had closed his shop and embraced the duties of an Elder, letting his new responsibilities wash over his old life and consume him completely. “I have some free time,” he lied. “What can I do for you?”

Fletcher got up slowly, stiffly, like he'd been sitting there for hours. When he didn't say anything, Ghastly spoke again.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Around,” Fletcher said.

Ghastly nodded, but the floodgates of conversation didn't burst open. This in itself was unusual. For as long as Ghastly had known him, Fletcher had never known when to shut up. To see him standing there in the corridor, hands in his pockets, eyes cast to the floor and giving one-word answers, was more than a little unsettling.

“Come inside,” Ghastly said, unlocking the office door and walking in. He removed his robe, hung it on a hook on the wall and loosened his tie. He went to the side table and plugged in the kettle. “Cup of tea?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Fletcher,” he said, “I'm not one of life's great conversationalists, so you're really going to have to help me out here. Start talking about something.”

Fletcher looked at him. “Have you found a cure for Tanith yet?”

“Start talking about something else.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“You're mad that you don't know how to help her,” Fletcher said, “and you're mad that you haven't found her yet, aren't you?”

“Is that what you wanted to talk about? Because I don't see what this conversation will lead to, other than annoying me.”

“You asked her out.”

“Fletcher, I have things to do.”

“You asked her out, finally, and she said yes. She kissed you, then went away. And that's the last you saw of her before the Remnant got into her. And now she's out there somewhere, no one knows where, but she's out there with Billy-Ray Sanguine.”

Ghastly looked at the kid and said nothing while he waited for the flash of anger to fade. He saw the hurt in Fletcher's eyes. “This is about Valkyrie?” he asked.

The boy looked at the floor again. “We broke up. She broke up with me. I'm sorry. I know it's different. I know Valkyrie hasn't been possessed and she's not gone, not like Tanith is. But… you loved Tanith, and then all that happened. You had her, you finally had her, and you lost her. How do you deal with that?”

“I drink a lot of tea. Fletcher, I've been around for a long time. I've been in love too many times to count. I'd like to say it gets easier, but it doesn't. The pain you're feeling now is the pain you're going to feel again and again. The advantage of having lived through this is that I do know I'll come out the other side. The pain lessens. You manage to distract yourself until the distractions become more important than the thing you're distracting yourself
from
.”

“Do you think she loved you?”

“I don't know. I don't know if I want to know. If she did love me, then I wasted a lot of time thinking about it instead of doing something.”

“I don't think Valkyrie loved me,” Fletcher said, and suddenly laughed. “I'm sorry, this is so stupid. You probably think I'm just a stupid kid. I don't know anything about love or any of that.”

“You know enough for it hurt.”

The smile faded. “Yeah. She said she loved me. She made a joke, said something and then said ‘and that's why I love you' and I latched on to it. Like an idiot. I decided to believe that this was her way of telling me how she felt. But she was making a joke. And I knew she was making a joke. But I wanted to believe it so much.”

The kettle boiled. Ghastly made two mugs of tea while Fletcher talked on.

“It's pathetic,” Fletcher said. “I went from thinking I was top geezer, the last Teleporter in the world, to someone who followed her around like a puppy. All she had to do was call, and I'd be there. The last two years of my life, of my
life
, have revolved round her. That's two years of me living for someone else. How sad is that? Nothing was more important than her. I offered her everything because I could
give
her everything. I could take her
anywhere
. There was nothing I wouldn't do for her and she knew that. She accepted it. I'd become, like, a part of her life, but not in a good way. Not in a healthy, happy, boyfriend kind of way. She knew she had me, faithful old Fletcher, and she knew that all she had to do was click her fingers and she'd get whatever it was she needed. I made her life easier.

“And whenever she or Skulduggery, or even Tanith, was in danger of taking something too seriously, they turned to the easy target. They turned to me and made a joke. I was OK with it, actually. It meant something, at the time. It meant I was part of the group, I was one of the gang.”

“And it meant you could spend more time around her,” Ghastly said, sitting on the edge of his desk, “which is all you really wanted.”

“Yeah,” Fletcher murmured. He looked at the mug of tea in his hand, but didn't drink from it. “But all that's gone now. She's with Caelan. Did you know that? She was seeing him behind my back.”

Ghastly hid his surprise. “That… doesn't sound like Valkyrie.”

“Well, there you go. She cheated on me with a bloody vampire. A
vampire
. Are… are you smiling?”

“Yes,” Ghastly said sadly. “I am. I never thought we'd have so much in common, to be honest. The girl you love is in the arms of another, and that other happens to be a murderous monster. And the woman I love is in the arms of a psychopathic hitman. What a pair we make.”

“I can't help it,” said Fletcher. “Images of Valkyrie and that… thing, of the two of them together, keep coming into my head.”

“I've been living with something like that for the past few months. It makes your insides go cold, doesn't it? It makes you want to kill someone.”

“I want to kill the vampire,” Fletcher said softly.

“The feeling is natural. I don't blame you for that at all. And while I know you're a good kid, and you're not a killer, I am going to say this – that's a road you don't want to go down.”

Fletcher put the mug on the worktable, spilling some of his tea. “I just need to show Valkyrie that she's wrong,” he said. “I just need to show her that she's made a mistake. I need to prove myself.”

“You want to make her beg to take you back.”

“No. No, of course not.”

“You want to punish her.”

“Fine,” Fletcher snapped. “Yes. Is that wrong? She's the one who cheated on me.”

“It's never going to happen,” Ghastly said. “This is Valkyrie we're talking about. She doesn't beg. If she changes her mind, she'll come at you with a very practical reason why you're getting back together. If you put her in a position where she'd have to beg, she's going to walk away out of sheer principle.”

“So… how do I get her to take me back?”

“I don't know. But my first suggestion is to take some time.”

Fletcher frowned. “What? No. The longer I leave it, the more Caelan will sink his fangs into her.”

“Caelan doesn't matter. He's never mattered. That's not going to last. Guys like that never do. But you'll do yourself no favours if you run up to her with tears in your eyes.”

“I never mentioned tears,” he said defensively.

“A friend of mine once said that a man never got a woman back by begging on his knees. Give yourself some time. Get over the pain. Man up. Then go back to her. Let her see what she's missing. I'm not saying it's going to work, but I'll be honest, it's your best shot.”

Fletcher nodded. “Thanks, Ghastly. I didn't have anyone else to talk to. I'm pretty sure I don't even have any friends. Valkyrie was my only friend.”

“Then you need to get yourself a life, kid.”

“Yeah,” said Fletcher. “Yeah, I do.”