LITMIR.BIZ

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himself to sit in the Grand Mage’s chair and act like a professional. Only Madame Mist didn’t seem like she cared.

      Valkyrie told them what had happened, the exact same story she had told Skulduggery, minus a few swear words and sidebars. She had almost reached the point where Remit had mentioned Mevolent’s name when Tipstaff entered, apologised unreservedly, and hurried over to whisper in Ravel’s ear. Ravel listened, sighed, and thanked him.

      “I have to go,” he said. “Pressing matters, all that stuff. Valkyrie, I’m glad you’re OK, I really am, and I need to hear the rest of the story, but for the moment, business calls. Ghastly tells me you have a plane waiting to take you over the Alps.”

      Skulduggery tilted his head. “We’re not going.”

      Ravel frowned. “You’re not?”

      Valkyrie frowned. “We’re not?”

      “We can’t,” Skulduggery said. “We need to get Nadir to reverse whatever he did.”

      “The search for Argeddion takes precedence,” said Ravel. “We have to stop whatever he’s doing, before any more mortals acquire magical powers. You said yourself that Xebec was probably killed by one of them. This is the priority.”

      “For you, maybe. But Valkyrie could be pulled back into that other reality at any time, and we need Nadir to stop that from happening.”

      Ravel shook his head. “Don’t make me pull rank on you, Skulduggery. Behind all the jokes and amusement I am still the Grand Mage. You persuaded us to take this job, remember? It’s because of you that I’m here, and it’s because of you that I’m forced to order you to keep Argeddion as your priority. If Valkyrie gets pulled back in, she can take care of herself. She came back here once, right? She’ll do it again. Valkyrie, all you have to do is stay out of trouble.”

      “There’s something we haven’t told you yet,” Skulduggery said, “about where she went.”

      “Over there,” Valkyrie said, “Mevolent is still alive.”

      Ravel’s eyes widened.

      “Their timeline could have been identical to ours,” Skulduggery said, “right up to the point where Mevolent died. Obviously, over there, he survived. And now he’s in charge.”

      “You should have seen it,” Valkyrie said. “Sorcerers control everything over there. The mortals are terrified. People disappear and are never seen again. There’s torture and executions and Sensitives patrol the streets, listening out for guilty thoughts.”

      “What if Valkyrie is pulled back over there,” said Skulduggery, “and she’s captured? What if Mevolent questions her? And when she returns, if she returns, what if he’s touching her, and she brings him back with her? Do we want Mevolent walking the streets of our reality? We got rid of him once, but now he’s had another hundred years to grow even more powerful.”

      Ghastly sat back. “He could invade,” he said, his voice quiet. “He could set up an Isthmus Anchor between dimensions. He could open and close a portal any time he wanted.”

      “And he already has a Teleporter,” said Valkyrie.

      “He wouldn’t need one,” said Mist. “The Diablerie required Fletcher Renn to open their portal because their Anchor stretched between this world, in this dimension, and another world, in another dimension. But Mevolent’s Anchor would only need to serve as a link between alternate versions of the same world.”

      “Which means,” Ghastly said, “it would be easier. Which means he could transport whole armies at a time.”

      Ravel hesitated, then shook his head. “We’re talking about possibilities,” he said, “but Argeddion is a certainty. We only have a few days before the Summer of Light begins, whatever that is, and even less time to prove to the Supreme Council that we can handle things without their ‘help’. I’ll arrange to have Nadir transported here so you can talk to him when you get back, but Argeddion is our most immediate threat, and he must be dealt with using everything and everyone we have. Skulduggery, Valkyrie, I’m sorry, but we can’t do this without you.”

      Skulduggery started to speak, but Valkyrie put her hand on his arm. Finding Argeddion meant finding his prison, and finding his prison meant Valkyrie’s family had a chance of survival.

      “We understand,” she said. “We’ll take care of Argeddion first.”

      Skulduggery looked at her, and didn’t say anything.

      ife was simple, for a head in a jar.

      Scapegrace didn’t need trousers, for one thing. Or shoes. Or shirts. In fact, clothes as a concept were now completely irrelevant to his wants and needs – with the possible exception of hats. He could wear hats. He could wear an assortment of hats of different shapes and styles. Boater hats, cowboy hats, bowler hats. The list went on. Pork-pie hats, bucket hats, trilbies and panamas. Top hats, straw hats, trapper hats. Wide brim, narrow brim, stingy brim. He could wear a fez. Fezzes were cool. Hadn’t someone once said that fezzes were cool? He was pretty sure they had. And they were. They were cool. And he could wear them. He could wear them all.

      Not while he was in the jar, of course. It was far too narrow, and filled with a formaldehyde solution to stop what remained of his flesh from rotting away. He could wear a woolly hat, he supposed, or a beanie, if he didn’t mind getting it wet. He decided he wouldn’t wear baseball caps. Zombie Kings, he reckoned, should not wear baseball caps or trucker caps. Such hats were beneath them. As it were.

      As a head, he would have also had the option of wearing sunglasses were it not for the fact that he only had one ear still attached, and his nose had fallen off. That had happened only recently, while Thrasher had been away, so Scapegrace had been forced to watch his nose drift around his head for three hours. It was unsettling, to say the least. No man should be forced to see his nose like that.

      When Thrasher returned, he had been all apologies, of course. He wept with shame as he struggled to scoop the nose out of the jar with a little fishing net he’d picked up at a pet store. Every time he’d jabbed Scapegrace he’d let out a howl of anguish. Not for the first time, Scapegrace wished he’d chosen someone else to be the first zombie he’d ever turned.

      To make matters worse the jar had been sitting on a table, which meant that Scapegrace was forced to look straight at Thrasher’s belly while all this was going on. Several months earlier, the idiot had somehow disembowelled himself with a can opener. The accident, while at first highly amusing, soon became hugely distressing to Scapegrace, as Thrasher’s guts kept falling out. In an attempt to keep himself in one piece, Thrasher had tied a sheet round his midsection, and now seemed completely oblivious to how stupid it made him look. Aside from anything else, it wasn’t even very effective, as a small piece of dried and shrivelled intestine had escaped its confines and swung merrily every time Thrasher made a move.

      Walking up to the Sanctuary, therefore, made it swing with a rhythm that was almost hypnotic – a fact that Scapegrace could attest to as the idiot was carrying him the wrong way round. They stopped suddenly.

      “What the hell are you?” asked a sorcerer.

      “I’m a zombie,” said Thrasher, “and this is my master.”

      “Your master’s a jar?”

      “No, my master’s in the jar.”

      Scapegrace tried to look up, but all he could see was Thrasher’s belly.

      “Oh, God, that’s disgusting,” said the man. “What are you doing here? Why did you come? Do you want us to put you out of your misery?”

      “No!”

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