LITMIR.BIZ

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think it was going to do, shake your hand? You could have pulled your stitches. You must remain still while you heal. I explained this to you.”

      Sanguine grabbed Nye’s coat, pulled the creature in close. “Why,” he said through gritted teeth, “is there a goddamn head in a jar talkin’ to me?”

      “You talked to me first,” Scapegrace pointed out.

      Sanguine lay back. “Somebody shut it up. It’s freakin’ me out.”

      “It’s your own fault,” Scapegrace said.

      “On principle alone, I refuse to have a conversation with a decapitated head.”

      “You’re the one who killed me!”

      Sanguine looked around. “I make it a point of rememberin’ who and how I killed, and I ain’t never chopped someone’s head off.”

      “My head was on when you killed me. I am Vaurien Scapegrace.”

      “I’m happy for you.”

      “You murdered me and your father turned me into the walking dead!”

      Sanguine frowned. “Hey, I remember you now. You’re that guy...”

      “Yes.”

      “The idiot.”

      “What? No.”

      “You’re the moron who pretended he was an assassin, and then you lost control of your own zombies.”

      “I didn’t lose control of them,” Scapegrace said. “They lost control of me.”

      Thrasher stepped forward. “He’s the Zombie King now.”

      “Good God,” Sanguine said. “It’s another one. How many of these things do you have here?”

      “Two too many,” Nye said absently.

      “Well, at least this one has his head on. But how do you stand the smell?”

      Nye pressed its fingers against Sanguine’s stomach. “I don’t have a nose. Does this hurt?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Good.”

      “Why is he here?” Scapegrace asked. “The last I heard, this man was wanted for a variety of crimes. At the very least he killed me.”

      Nye looked up. “You and I have a deal, zombie. You give me what I want, and I give you what you want. I have the same sort of deal with Mr Sanguine here. I expect discretion from all my patients.”

      “I think we should flush him down the toilet,” Sanguine said.

      “Don’t you dare!” Thrasher screeched, jumping in front of the jar so that now all Scapegrace could see was the way the back of his trousers sagged.

      “Oh, God,” Sanguine said, disgust in his voice. “Is that his intestine? It is, ain’t it? Look at it swingin’ there. For God’s sake, man, put it away. That’s disgustin’.”

      Scapegrace closed his eyes in embarrassment.

      “I am who I am,” Thrasher proclaimed proudly.

      “Hey, you go fly your freak flag high, but you just tuck that little bit of yourself back in so you don’t scar no minds. Have some dignity.”

      Thrasher turned away dramatically, hands on his hips, and his little piece of shrivelled intestine slapped against Scapegrace’s jar. “You don’t tell me what to do. Only Master Scapegrace, the Zombie King, can order me around.”

      “Put it away, Thrasher,” Scapegrace said.

      Thrasher blinked down at him. “Sir?”

      “Tuck it in, you idiot.”

      Thrasher’s lower lip quivered, and he rushed out of the room. Scapegrace sighed, and looked at Sanguine and Nye as the doctor finished its inspection.

      “You’re lucky,” it said. “But if you move off this bed again, I’ll snip every last one of your stitches myself.”

      It walked to the door, and Sanguine frowned after it. “Hey, you just gonna leave this head talkin’ to me? Hey, Nye, at least turn it so that it’s lookin’ the other way or somethin’!”

      But Nye was already gone. Sanguine glowered, and lay back.

      Minutes ticked by. Finally, he looked over. “So what happened?”

      “What happened when?”

      “I mean how’d you lose your head?”

      “I didn’t lose my head,” said Scapegrace. “I lost my body.”

      “How’d you lose your body, then?”

      “The White Cleaver cut it off.”

      Sanguine nodded, and it went quiet again. Then he said, “Wanna play I spy?”

      Scapegrace would have shrugged if he’d had shoulders. “Sure,” he said.

      ow much do you know about Roarhaven?”

      Valkyrie and Skulduggery sat in the mountain facility’s living room, around the large table with Lament, Plight, Lenka and Kalvin on the other side.

      Skulduggery sat back, hands clasped over where his belly would have been, tapping his fingertips together. “The very fact that you ask us that leads me to believe there is something important that we don’t know about Roarhaven. Valkyrie will tell you what we do know.”

      “Uh, OK,” said Valkyrie, doing her best to remember. “Most magical communities establish themselves in towns or cities and kind of blend in and go unnoticed. But the people of Roarhaven built up their town in the middle of nowhere. They isolated themselves on purpose, and because of that their hostility towards normal people grew. They didn’t agree with official Sanctuary policies – they believed sorcerers should be ruling the world, not hiding in it. So they hatched a plot to destroy the Sanctuary and steal control.”

      “And what was the plot?” Lament asked.

      “No idea.”

      Skulduggery looked at her. “I told you this.”

      “No, you didn’t.”

      “Yes, I did. I told you about the bomb that didn’t go off and the failed coup and the arrests.”

      “Oh,” she said. “Yeah, that sounds familiar.”

      Skulduggery sighed.

      “The coup was only the start of it,” Lament said. “From what we’ve gathered, the Roarhaven mages had much bigger plans. Did you know that since the war with Mevolent ended, hundreds of sorcerers from all over the world have gone missing?”

      “Sorcerers go missing all the time,” Skulduggery pointed out. “You went missing, after all.”

      “Very true,” said Lament, “but we didn’t meet with representatives from Roarhaven right before we disappeared.”

      Skulduggery’s chin tilted downwards. “So what happened to these missing sorcerers?”

      “We don’t know,” said Plight. “This is just another sliver of information we picked up about that town and its people. They had big plans, and I doubt those plans have been abandoned. After all, they got what they wanted, didn’t they? The Sanctuary is now in Roarhaven.”

      “But that wasn’t because of a coup,” Valkyrie pointed out. “That

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