“A fire-breathing dragon!” Gracious said, clinging to Donegan’s arm. “We must see it! Where is it?”

“Down this bottomless pit.”

“Damn it! I hate bottomless pits! I was trapped down a bottomless pit for days once.”

“That wasn’t bottomless,” Donegan said.

“It felt bottomless.”

“You were at the bottom.”

“Well, it was a long way down.”

“This pit really was bottomless,” Valkyrie said. “I think it was anyway.”

“A fire-breathing dragon living in a bottomless pit,” Gracious said happily. “We should give it a name. All great dragons have names. Smaug. Drogon. Fin Fang Foom. Puff. They all have names.”

“Gordon,” said Valkyrie.

“Gordon the dragon?”

“He would have loved that.”

Gracious nodded. “Yeah. That’s nice. But how about Destructorface?”

“Gordon it is,” said Donegan, leading Gracious away.

“Spreading joy is a special gift in dark times,” Skulduggery said, his hand on Valkyrie’s shoulder. “And you have made those two the happiest Monster Hunters in the world.”

“I do what I can.”

“Come on,” he said. “Let everyone else worry and work for the next few hours. You deserve a night off.”

44

A BETTER PERSON

mell, someone had once told Valkyrie, was the single most powerful trigger of memories. Somewhat ironically, she didn’t remember who’d told her that, or why, or where she was when she was told, though she had no reason to doubt the truth of it. But when she woke from her bad dream and walked down the stairs of the house she’d grown up in and the smell of roast chicken was waiting for her, she wasn’t transported back to one particular time or one particular occasion. Instead, memory piled upon memory to form an indistinct sense of warmth and belonging and love and home, and a smile grew up from within her so that when she reached the kitchen she was beaming.

Her mother was at the table, eyes fixed on the laptop while her dad hovered over her shoulder, pointing at the screen.

“Click that,” he said. “That looks important. We should click it and see what it does.”

Her mum batted his hand away. “Go on, shoo. You’re not allowed near this.”

“But it’s mine.”

“Hiya,” Valkyrie said, crossing straight to the oven.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” her mum said. “Lunch will be another half an hour or so.”

Valkyrie opened the oven, inhaled the steam that billowed out, and closed it again, her mouth watering. “Oh, I’m starving,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Your father has a mission,” her mum said, sighing.

Her dad stood straighter. “That USB thing. It’s a video. We’re downloading something that’ll let us play it. Well, we think we are. We might not be. To be honest, we haven’t a clue what we’re doing.”

“I know what I’m doing,” her mum said, a little annoyed.