“I am. Or I was. I evolved. My name is Stephanie. How do you do?”

“This is a trick.”

“No,” said Stephanie. “A trick would be much cleverer than this.”

“I should… I should kill you.”

“Why would you want to do that? I’m working with the Sanctuary. The war is over, right? You do remember that? We’re all back on the same side, although you guys kind of lost and we’re in charge. So if I tell you to surrender, you have to surrender. Agreed?”

“No one gives me orders any more,” said Rhadaman.

“Davos, you don’t want to do something you’ll regret. The Accelerator boosted your magic, but it made you unstable. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I’m thinking very clearly. Killing you may not bring my friends back, but it’ll sure as hell make me smile.”

“Now that,” Skulduggery Pleasant said, pressing the barrel of his gun into Rhadaman’s temple, “is just disturbingly unhealthy.”

Rhadaman froze, his eyes wide. Skulduggery stood there in all his pinstriped glory, his hat at a rakish angle, his skull catching the light.

“I don’t want you getting any ideas,” Skulduggery said. “You’re powerful, but not powerful enough to walk away from a bullet to the head. You’re under arrest.”

“You’ll never take me alive.”

“I really think you should examine what you say before you say it. You’re not sounding altogether sane. Stephanie, you seem to have dropped your shackles. Would you mind picking them up and placing them on—”

Rhadaman moved faster than Stephanie was expecting. Faster even than Skulduggery was expecting. In the blink of an eye, Skulduggery’s gun was sliding along the floor and Skulduggery himself was leaping away from Rhadaman’s grasping hands.

“You can’t stop me!” Rhadaman screeched.

Skulduggery’s tie was crooked. He straightened it, his movements short and sharp. He was annoyed. “We wanted to take you in without violence, Davos. Do not make this any harder than it has to be.”

“You have no idea what it’s like to have this kind of power,” Rhadaman said, anger flashing in his eyes. “And you want me to give it up? To go back to being how I was before?”

“This power level isn’t going to last,” Skulduggery said. “You know that. It’s already starting to dip, isn’t it? In fifteen days, there’ll be more dips than peaks, and by the end of the month you’ll be back to normal. It’s inevitable, Davos. So do yourself a favour. Give up before you do any serious damage. We’ll get you the help you need, and when it’s all over, you’ll return to your old life. The alternative is to keep going until you hurt someone. If you do that, your future will be a prison cell.”

“You’re scared of my power.”

“As you should be.”