Skulduggery Pleasant_ Death Bringer - Derek Landy [101]
“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