“At age seventy-eight, Charles apparently flew into a fit of rage after listening to a so-called ‘street poet’ reinterpret the works of Keats. Charles tried, unsuccessfully, to strangle this street poet, and suffered a heart attack as a result. While he was recovering in hospital, police raided his home. Interesting thing about his home – he’d had it built by three different builders. None of them knew what the others were doing, but Charles knew. There were corridors that went nowhere, doors that opened on to brick walls. There were secret passageways and pits. How many people did you kill in that house over the years, Cadaverous? Was it more than the police believed? Was it more than forty-seven? How many of them were your students?”

“You think you know it all,” Cadaverous said.

“I know Charles Grantham disappeared,” Pleasant replied. “The house had been searched illegally – everything in there was inadmissible in court. A few months later, Professor Grantham was gone. Is that when Abyssinia first spoke to you? Is that when Cadaverous Gant was born?”

Cadaverous slowed at the lights. A part of him, a significant part, had no desire to answer. Satisfying the skeleton’s questions was not something that interested him. Another part, however, had been snagged, as if Pleasant’s words were a hook cast into the still lake.

“It was the heart attack,” he said, accelerating again. “When I woke up, I could feel magic. I could feel it. Do you have any idea what that’s like, to get old, to watch your own body betray you, only to find out that you could have stopped it? That you could have stayed young forever?”

“I’d imagine that would have upset just about anyone, let alone a serial killer.”

“You can’t reduce my life down to a label like that.”

“Why not? You reduced forty-seven lives down to nothing.”

“They were cattle,” Cadaverous said. “Each of them had a sad little existence that I ended. Each of them had stumbled through their lives with blinkers on. They didn’t appreciate the world. They didn’t appreciate art, or poetry, or the beauty in the everyday. Every single person I killed, every single one of them, deserved to die. They were small. They were meaningless.”

“Unlike you.”

Cadaverous nodded. “Unlike me.”

“And then Abyssinia spoke to you, did she? And took you under her wing …”

“Is that what you did?” Cadaverous asked. “After we went after Valkyrie Cain, you investigated me?”

“After she sent you packing, yes, I did.”

“You were coming after me, were you? For daring to harm your precious Valkyrie?”

“But I couldn’t find you,” said Pleasant. “So I waited. And finally here we are.”

“Are you going to kill me now, skeleton?”

“I’m not sure,” Pleasant said. “It would certainly be easy enough. According to Valkyrie, you’re stronger and faster than you look, but outside your home, you’re just as vulnerable as anyone else.”