Skulduggery Pleasant_ Death Bringer - Derek Landy [17]
“Where are they?” he asked.
“Back in the box,” Valkyrie told him. “Did you find out anything?”
“China wasn’t at the library,” he said, the rain flattening down his hair. “Nobody there could help me. How did you beat them?”
“With unimaginable skill,” Skulduggery said. “Valkyrie, I’ve got a two-hour drive back to Dublin where dry clothes await me.”
She nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
He walked to the Bentley. Fletcher turned to Valkyrie, hands loosely holding her arms. “I didn’t want to leave,” he said quietly.
She smiled. “I know.”
“You should have come with me.”
“Let’s not ruin a nice moment by arguing, OK?” She kissed him.
He sighed, and instead of rain on her face there was sunshine, and instead of being outside a small cottage with a broken window they were behind a tree in her back garden. “Much better,” she murmured. Dripping wet and covered in mud, she took Fletcher’s hand and they stepped out from behind the tree.
Her parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbours, people she’d known all her life and people she’d never met stood around the barbecue pit and stared, their chatter dying away.
“Uh,” said Valkyrie.
Chapter 6
China’s Secret
n Monday morning, China Sorrows walked the weed-strewn gap that led to the Church of the Faceless. She entered without knocking, found the head of this little chapel on his knees with his eyes closed, praying. A small man who greatly resembled a weasel – Prave, his name was. She didn’t know his first name and she didn’t care. She’d been here only once before, and by the time she left she had blood on her hands and a gun to dispose of.
“Curiosity,” she said, and Prave’s bulbous eyes snapped open and he jumped to his feet. “That’s what brought me here. Who, I wondered, would be audacious enough to summon me to a squalid little house of worthless worship such as this? Surely, I told myself, it can’t be this man Prave, this snivelling little toad-person with a penchant for bad suits and terrible shirts.”
“What… what’s wrong with my shirt?” he burbled in a Yorkshire accent, his voice a nasal whine that triggered a primal urge within China’s psyche to hit something.
“It’s orange,” she told him. “It can’t be him, I thought. The man has no backbone to brag about, no spine to speak of. Who, then? Who is pulling the strings of the weasel-faced toad-person? So it is curiosity that brings me here, Mr Prave. Unveil your hidden master or risk me growing bored. I do terrible things when I grow bored.”
Prave stared at her with those round, wet eyes of his, and China heard slow, measured footsteps in the other room – high heels on wood. China knew who it was instantly.
Eliza Scorn walked through, dressed in black trousers and a jacket. She had left her long red hair to fall round her face, framing those cheekbones, those lips. Many men had fallen in love with Eliza Scorn, and then instantly forgotten her when China walked into the room. That was only the start of the animosity between them.
“China,” Scorn said, smiling.
“Eliza. What a surprise.”
“Please. I bet you’ve known I was back for months, haven’t you?”
“I may have heard talk.”
“And you didn’t try to get in touch? We could have met up, talked about the old days, traded gossip. Who’s alive, who’s dead, who’s about to die, that kind of thing.”
“My apologies, Eliza. I’ve been very busy.”
“Of course, of course, with the library. I must call round, see how it looks. How have you been? You’re still as beautiful as ever.”
“As are you, my dear. I love your shoes.”
“Aren’t they delightful? I saw them and just had to have them. Their previous owner wasn’t too keen to let them go, but I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
“Is that her blood on the left one?”
“And no amount of scrubbing will get it out, either. I hear you are still a treacherous heathen, then? Your back is still turned to the Dark Gods?”
“Both firmly and resolutely. I met some of them, a few years ago. Not very nice, to heathen and disciple alike.”
Scorn shrugged.