She made a note of the street names as she went by. Gorgon Street. Titan Street. Bellower Road. She crossed Meritorious Square and took the narrower streets now, away from the staring, whispering people. She walked down Blood-drenched Lane, took a right on to Decapitation Row. At least they were easy to remember.

She smelled food and her tummy rumbled, so she followed the smell and then abruptly lost it in a dead end that went by the charming name of Putrid Road. She turned, and stopped.

Three people stood there – two men and one woman – staring at her with a special kind of look in their eyes. Valkyrie had seen that look before. She was well used to that look.

That look meant that, at some point in the next few minutes, they were going to try to kill her.

10

Sebastian watched it all from the rooftop.

He watched the three of them follow her away from the crowds, away from anyone who might step in. He would have expected more from Valkyrie Cain. He would have expected her to be a lot more alert. But there she was, in jeans and a T-shirt instead of her usual black, walking like a zombie, just going where the streets took her, like she had a thousand different things on her mind and she didn’t want to think of a single one of them. He watched her reach the dead end and turn, and freeze.

He crouched low, and bit his lip beneath his mask. He had his mission. He shouldn’t be wasting his time on things like this.

Below him, Valkyrie waited for the three people to say something. When they didn’t, she spoke. “I’m not Darquesse.”

Sebastian’s ears were covered, but he heard her perfectly.

“You look like Darquesse,” said the woman. “You look the way she did when she killed my family. Except you’re not smiling. Darquesse was smiling.”

Valkyrie hesitated. “I’m not her.”

The man on the left was packing some extra weight, but he looked strong, like those clenched fists would hurt. “Darquesse killed my daughter,” he said. “Burned her to nothing. I doubt she even noticed she’d done it.”

“My brother tried to fight her,” the second man said. “I begged him not to, but he thought if he could sneak up behind her, while the Skeleton Detective and everyone was distracting her, he could snap her neck before she knew what was happening. My brother, who had never snapped a neck in his life. He never even got close.”

“I’m sorry for your pain,” Valkyrie said slowly. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, and for what your loved ones went through. But I’m not Darquesse.”