She looked back, willing Skulduggery to appear. “No. We have to do something. If they’re in there, maybe I can, I don’t know, delay them.”

“You have no magic.”

“I have the tranq guns. And I have my shock stick. It’s fully charged. If I’m lucky, I can take out three or four of them.”

“I do not like this plan,” said Gordon.

“It’s barely a plan.”

“That doesn’t make it better. Please. Wait here. For all we know, Foe and his friends took a wrong turn somewhere and there’s no one even in there.”

Valkyrie stood. “Then there won’t be any harm in taking a look.”

She crept out and, when nothing bad happened immediately, she started jogging. Gordon was swept along with her.

“There,” he whispered.

She saw it. A crack in the cavern wall. No more than a fissure. She reached it, breathing slightly more heavily, and listened. No sounds from within. No light in the dark.

She squeezed into the fissure.

Once she was past the opening, the tunnel widened slightly, enough for her to walk normally. The gloom lifted. There was light ahead. She slowed.

The tunnel opened into a cave the size of her back garden. Shafts of sunlight, squinting through the gaps in the ceiling, reflected off the Source Fountain, which was no wider than a paddling pool. Vincent Foe sat with his back against a rock. Samuel, the vampire who dressed like an accountant, lay asleep, head resting on a folded jacket of burnished red. Stephanie’s jacket. Mercy was playing a game on her phone. The quiet little beeps were the only sound in the cave apart from the occasional gurgle of water.

Samuel turned his head and opened his eyes. “The girl is here.”

Valkyrie bit back a curse, then decided what the hell, and stepped into plain view, tranq gun in hand. But instead of charging at her, Foe merely nodded, and Mercy didn’t even look up from her game.

This was not what Valkyrie had expected.

“You took Stephanie’s body,” she said, after another few seconds of relative silence.

“Yeah,” said Foe.

That was it. Nothing more.

Valkyrie inched forward, till she could see into the fountain. Stephanie’s corpse lay in the water, still clad in her black T-shirt and burnished red trousers, weighed down with rocks.

Valkyrie stepped back again. “You’re preparing the body for Darquesse.”

Foe nodded. Then he got up, slowly, and stretched, like he’d been sitting there for hours. “What’s the matter, Valkyrie? Not sure what to do without the Skeleton Detective around to issue orders?”

She narrowed her eyes. “How do you know he’s not around?”

Mercy laughed, and finally put her phone away. “Because that was the plan, silly girl.”

Valkyrie didn’t like that. Oh, she didn’t like that one little bit. She backed up further. “What plan? You were expecting us?”