“Mortal female, forty-six years old,” Skulduggery was saying as he and Valkyrie walked through the Sanctuary. Stephanie trailed after them. “We’d been keeping an eye on her as she’d displayed some psychic tendencies in the past. Nothing too earth-shattering, but enough to register as an untrained Sensitive. Her body was found early this morning. Little more than a dried-out husk.”

“Darquesse?” Valkyrie asked.

Skulduggery nodded. “Looks like it. From what we can gather, Darquesse couldn’t have possessed her for more than three hours before she burned up.”

“Where was the body found?”

“In a field near Ashbourne. Her car was nearby.”

“So Darquesse possessed this woman and that’s as far as she could get?” asked Valkyrie. “What’s in Ashbourne?”

“Our operative on the scene noticed some fresh tyre tracks nearby. A motorbike.”

“Tanith?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t know,” Valkyrie said, and glanced back at Stephanie. “What do you think? Tanith was talking last night like she was ready to call it quits.”

“She could have changed her mind,” said Stephanie. “Darquesse could have called her after she left us, when she was still in this woman’s body, and convinced her to come back.”

“I don’t want to assume it’s Tanith until we’ve at least verified that the tyre tracks match her bike,” said Skulduggery. “Maybe it’s not her. Maybe it’s someone else entirely who’s got nothing to do with any of this.”

They met two sorcerers coming the other way, escorting a man in a nice suit with a harried look on his face. Skulduggery held up a hand, and all three slowed to a stop.

“Keir Tanner,” Skulduggery said. “Do you know who I am?”

The harried gentleman, Tanner, nodded distractedly. “Of course. Not too many living skeletons around, even in Roarhaven.”

“Indeed there aren’t,” Skulduggery said. “Valkyrie, Stephanie, Mr Tanner here is Chief Warden of Ironpoint Gaol, scene of the audacious midday escape by our old friend Doctor Nye. Any idea how this escape occurred, Warden Tanner?”

Tanner sighed. “Someone got in, bypassed the security protocol, sneaked Nye to the surface where, we think, it stowed away on a truck.”

“Forgive me, Warden,” said Skulduggery, “but you make that sound astonishingly easy.”

Tanner flushed. “We’re a low-security prison, Detective Pleasant. The Sanctuary knew that when they shipped Nye to us, but we were the only place with a cell big enough to accommodate it. And Nye wasn’t even a security risk, at least not according to the file I was sent.”

“That doesn’t mean we expected someone to be able to walk the prisoner out the front door,” Valkyrie said.

Tanner ground his teeth. Stephanie could almost hear it. “I assure you, we are conducting a thorough investigation into how this happened. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I came here to help with organising a search, not to be berated by a mass murderer.”