“Why should I be scared? This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.”

“This?” Skulduggery said. “Really? Look around, Davos. We’re in the middle of a supermarket. The greatest thing that has ever happened to you and you choose to trash a supermarket? Are you really that limited?”

“I didn’t do this.”

“No? Who did?”

“My friends.”

Stephanie couldn’t help herself – she had to look round.

“And where are your friends now?” Skulduggery asked.

Rhadaman shrugged. “Close by. They don’t wander off too far. There were loads of them around after the various battles, and I found a group and adopted them. They don’t say a whole lot.”

Stephanie picked up a faint whiff in the air. “Hollow Men?”

“I’ve given them names,” Rhadaman told her. “I’ve given them names and I’ve dressed them in clothes. I’ve called them after my friends, the ones Darquesse killed. I think they like having names, not that they’d ever show it.”

“Hollow Men don’t like anything,” Stephanie responded. “They don’t think. They don’t feel.”

“Reflections aren’t supposed to feel, either,” Rhadaman said. “But you say you do. What makes you any different to them?”

“Because I’m a real person.”

“Or you just think you are.”

“If you surrender,” Skulduggery said, “I promise we’ll take your friends in and treat them well. Once the effects of the Accelerator wear off, they’ll be returned to you. Do we have a deal?”

“You know what they do enjoy?” Rhadaman asked, as if he hadn’t even heard Skulduggery. “They enjoy beating people to a pulp. They enjoy watching the blood splatter. They love the feel of bones breaking beneath their fists. That’s what my friends enjoy. That’s what will make them happy.”

“You don’t want to do this,” Skulduggery said.

Rhadaman smiled, curled his lip and gave a short shriek of a whistle.

Skulduggery ran at him, and with a flick of the wrist he sent the Sceptre flying into Stephanie’s hands. Rhadaman caught him and threw him and leaped after him, and before she could run to help the Hollow Men came at her, stumbling through a mountain of cereal boxes. Hollow Men dressed in clothes, ridiculous in badly fitting suits, ludicrous in flowing floral dresses.

Black lightning flashed from the crystal set into the Sceptre, turning three of them to dust without even a sound. Lightning flashed again, and again, but they kept coming, and there were more Hollow Men behind her, and they were closing in. They had that knack. They were slow and clumsy and stupid, but it was when they were underestimated that they were at their most dangerous.