The morning after the Night of Knives, Skulduggery had called Valkyrie in Colorado to let her know what had happened. She’d spoken to him while wrapped in a towel. The house was quiet apart from the faint splashes coming from the shower. By the time she’d hung up, the water had been turned off and the shower door was opening. She sat on the edge of her bed, tears in her eyes. She didn’t go to the funerals.

They rolled up to Cassandra’s cottage a little after 2 pm. Valkyrie had mixed feelings about the place. On the one hand, Cassandra had always reminded her of the grandmothers she’d lost when she was a kid. She’d been warm, and funny, and fascinating. She’d had stories to tell about each and every facet of her life. Just to be in her company had brought a glorious feeling of being welcome. Of coming home.

But the cottage had a cellar, and in that cellar there was a floor that was a metal grille over a bed of coals. And when the steam swirled and Cassandra played her visions out in 3D, like holograms, the warmth vanished, despite the rising heat, replaced by the cold dread of the horrors to come. It was in those steam clouds that Valkyrie had first seen the rubble of Roarhaven during Devastation Day, and her own face, mere moments before she went on to kill her baby sister.

Valkyrie let Xena roam, and eyed the cottage. “Why are we really here?” she asked.

“I have a theory that needs to be tested,” said Skulduggery. “No more questions. I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

He found the key beneath an old pot and opened the front door, and Valkyrie took a dry leaf from the battered packet she kept in her jeans, popping it into her mouth as she stepped through. The cottage was just as she remembered – the comfy sofa, the faded rug, the guitar on a stand in the corner – but the dream whisperers which had hung from the rafters were gone. Valkyrie was glad. They were creepy little things.

“Are you OK?” Skulduggery asked.

The leaf had started to dissolve on her tongue, but she chewed the rest to get rid of it faster. They were great for numbing pain, be it from a broken leg, a gunshot wound, or a mere headache, but no one had yet bothered to make the damn things taste better. “Another headache,” she said as she wandered over to the guitar. “Nothing to worry about.” She picked it up.

Skulduggery’s head tilted. “Perhaps.”

She strummed. Badly. “Perhaps what? It’s a headache. People get headaches all the time. Especially after they’ve been punched in the face.”