alkyrie woke. It was getting dark outside, and as usual, it was cold in Skulduggery’s house. Her clothes, ripped to shreds as they were, didn’t exactly help. She stood and stretched, eased a crick out of her neck and went to the mirror, checking for scars. As much as she hated to admit it, Nye had done an excellent job. She was tired but feeling good, confident that a night in her own bed was all she needed to make a full recovery.

She called for a taxi, went out to meet it and sat in the back. If she had called Fletcher, she’d be home already, but she would have also had to listen to him disapprove of the many injuries she sustained over the course of any given month. She just wasn’t in the mood for him, not this evening.

The taxi dropped her in Haggard and she cut through the park. She could almost have predicted who would step out in front of her.

“I failed you,” Caelan said.

“Hi Chuckles,” she responded. She didn’t stop walking.

“I should have been faster,” he said from beside her. “I should have torn that Necromancer’s throat out. But she took you away before I… I will not fail you again.”

“Don’t worry about it. What’re you doing in town?”

“I’m here for you.”

“Did you drive? Get the bus? Do vampires get buses?”

He stepped in front of her. “You make jokes,” he said. “But I see nothing to laugh at. The Death Bringer, Lord Vile, the end of the world… none of that would be as bad as losing you.”

“I’m sorry? No more smooches is worse than the world ending? Seriously? You really want to stand behind that statement? You don’t think it’s a teensy bit melodramatic?”

“Without our love, Valkyrie, there is no world left to save.”

“And that statement actually makes less sense than the one before it. Caelan, you’ve got to cop on to yourself. I’ve read Wuthering Heights, OK? I know the whole gloomy-tortured-romantic figure thing. Everyone knows it. It’s not as romantic as you’d think. Where’s the fun? Where’s the laughter? I couldn’t be with anyone I couldn’t have a bit of craic with. I know you hate him but for God’s sake, at least Fletcher is fun to be around.”

Caelan’s face shifted, becoming cold. “Do you love him more than you love me?”

“I never said the word love. I said the word fun.”

“We have fun.”

“We have a certain kind of fun, yes, but we don’t laugh. When was the last time we laughed together?”

“You laugh with Fletcher?”

“All the time.”

“Then the boy has his uses. When you need to laugh at something, you have him to laugh at. When you need to be fulfilled, you have me.”