Skulduggery took a small bag of rainbow dust from his pocket, held out his hand and let it sprinkle through his gloved fingers. It fell as golden particles. “Do you remember what gold means?”

“Gold means psychic. Which is to be expected, right? Even though Cassandra’s been dead for two years?” She played the first few bars of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, got it wrong and tried again.

“You are quite correct,” he responded, sealing the bag and putting it away. “This cottage contains an abundance of residual psychic energy, enough so that anyone with Sensitive tendencies would be vulnerable to their influence.”

“OK. So?”

“We were nearing Testament Road when you got the headache earlier,” he said. “The part of town where Sensitives can’t go.”

Valkyrie laughed. “Oh, wow. This is your theory? You think I’m a Sensitive?”

“I think it’s a possibility. The full range of your abilities has yet to be explored. Most sorcerers are restricted to one discipline – I’m one of the rare exceptions, being both an Elemental and a Necromancer. But you? You might be something else entirely.”

“I think I’d know if I was a psychic, though.”

“Would you?” Skulduggery asked, and took the guitar from her hands. He walked away from her, playing ‘Heroes’ by Bowie. “Tell me something – have you experienced anything unusual recently?”

“You mean apart from you? Listen, I don’t have clairvoyance. I can’t read people’s minds or see into the future.” She faltered on the last word, then shook her head. “This is silly. I’m not a Sensitive.”

“You don’t know what you are,” he said, turning and starting to sing.

Xena wandered in and he sang to her while she sat, head cocked to one side, and when he was done he twirled the guitar and thrust it away from him, and it floated back to the corner to settle into its stand. The show over, Xena got up, wandered back outside.

“I didn’t know you played,” Valkyrie said.

“Cassandra taught me,” he responded, and looked around like he’d just realised she wasn’t here any more.

Valkyrie let the silence continue for a bit, then broke it. “So we’re here,” she said. “Remembering Cassandra. Singing. She really would have liked that. What’s next? We head back to Dublin and get matching tattoos in honour of Finbar?”

“If you like,” he said. “But, since we’re here, we may as well go downstairs.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

But he was already opening the narrow door beside the cupboard. “Come on,” he said, and went down.

Valkyrie hesitated a long moment before following.

It was dark down there. Cold. Old pipes ran up the bare walls. A straight-backed chair stood in the middle of the metal floor.

“I’m not sure what you’re hoping to achieve with all this,” she said.