“It’s not ridiculous, it’s practical. I’ll do it if you don’t want to. You can call Skulduggery. We’ll need to hide the body.”

Valkyrie fought to get her breath back. “We’re not killing him, OK? We’re not killers. Or I’m not a killer, and that means you’re not a killer, either.”

The reflection looked at her. “He’s the one who broke in and attacked you. If your parents were here, he would have attacked them, too. For all we know, he might even have hurt Alice. We should kill him.”

“No, all right? We’re going to do this like normal people. I’m calling the Guards.”

“He’ll identify you as the person who attacked him in his cell.”

“And I’ll say he’s lying.”

“And what will you say when he mentions me?”

“I’ll say I hit him so hard he was seeing double. Nobody’s going to believe a word he says, especially when he starts talking about anything magical.”

“If you call the Guards, they’ll arrest him, put him on trial, throw him in jail. And what are you going to do when he gets out again? He’ll come back, you know he will, and you’re not going to be here.”

“No,” Valkyrie said, “but you are. And you’re going to protect my family.”

The reflection looked down at Moore. “If he comes back,” it said, “I’m going to kill him.”

Valkyrie kept her eyes on the reflection, and didn’t say anything. That sounded fair to her.

Chapter 42 - A New Mission

Chapter 42
A New Mission

capegrace threw open the doors to the pub, and nobody came in. The people of Roarhaven wrinkled their noses at his disfigured appearance as they passed. Not one of them said hello. Not one of them stepped inside. He turned, went back into the cool interior, away from the glare of the sun and the glares of the people.

Years ago, when he had first run the place, the bar had been split into two. There was a section for the regular people, and a section for the special guests, the VIPs. Now there weren’t any VIPs, but neither were there regular people. There was just Scapegrace, the owner and bartender, and Thrasher, the idiot who wiped the tables.

“Stop wiping the tables,” Scapegrace said. “There’s no one here. You keep wiping the damn tables. You do a loop of the room, humming away to yourself, wiping the tables one after another… It’s insane. You look like an insane person doing that.”

“Sorry,” Thrasher said, his head drooping.

“Go clean the toilets.”

“But they’re disgusting.”

“So are you. Clean them.”

Thrasher’s head dipped even lower, and he trudged away to do his duty.