“Not yet,” Skulduggery muttered, focusing on his task. “What happens if I do it wrong?”

“Geoffrey gets eaten,” China said. “Am I on loudspeaker?”

“Yes, sorry, should have told you. Valkyrie and Geoffrey are here.”

“Can they hear me?”

“Yes, they can.”

“Hello, Valkyrie,” China said.

“Uh, hi,” Valkyrie said back. “Is this going to take long? The shark’s coming for him.”

China said something in response but Scrutinous didn’t hear it. The shark came at him like a torpedo, its mouth open impossibly wide and all those teeth biting in at him. Scrutinous shrieked, dimly aware of Skulduggery gesturing, and then he was sent deeper into the water, tumbling head over heels, the shark missing him by inches.

Scrutinous turned, twisted, saw the shark flick its great tail and shoot back towards him, coming in for another go. In desperation, knowing it was useless but doing it anyway, he started to swim away from it. But there was nowhere to swim to, nowhere to hide, and then something snagged his right wrist.

An invisible force yanked him to the surface, the shark passing so close that its rough skin scraped like sandpaper across his leg. He broke the surface, gasping, realising that Valkyrie had grabbed his arm and pulled, and for a moment he saw the both of them, the alarm in Valkyrie’s eyes, Skulduggery still working on the pen, the room around them, and then he dropped again, below the surface, and Valkyrie and Skulduggery disappeared and there was only the shark down there in the middle of the ocean.

Oxygen bubbles filled his vision and he jerked his head from side to side, trying to get his bearings, trying to work out what direction the shark would attack from. Then he saw it, that huge mouth, those huge teeth, coming in on top of him and there was no way out, not this time, and the massive jaws closed over him just as the water went away and Scrutinous fell to the floor.

“There,” Skulduggery said. “I think that did it.”

Scrutinous sat up, gasping, looking around in astonishment.

“Is he dead?” China asked from the phone.

“Not even remotely,” Skulduggery said. “He’s back on dry land. Many thanks, China.”

He hung up as Valkyrie helped Scrutinous to his feet. The water was gone, the shark was gone. Scrutinous wasn’t even wet any more.

“It had me,” he said. “The shark had me. I was, literally, about to be torn in two. You saved me. In the nick of time, you saved me.”

“You’re welcome,” Skulduggery said.

“I was talking to Valkyrie.”

Skulduggery’s head tilted. “But I’m the one who worked the whole thing out.”

Valkyrie grinned. “You’re very welcome, Geoffrey, although I can’t take all the credit. China helped, you know.”

“But I carved the right symbol,” Skulduggery said.