“I can’t work with you when you’re like this!” it blurted. “To every one of my specimens, I am the last thing they see! Terror is what I am used to – terror is what I like! I prefer my subjects to scream and beg, not ask to see results!”

“I’ll scream my questions, if that helps.”

“It won’t,” it said sadly. “I’ll know you’re only trying to make me feel better.”

“Well then, it looks like you’re in for an uncomfortable few hours, Professor. Unless of course you’d like to tell Mevolent you were unsuccessful.”

Nye’s small eyes narrowed.

“Run your tests,” said Valkyrie. “When you’re done and you have an answer for me, I’ll behave.”

Elsewhere in Dublin-Within-The-Wall, Skulduggery Pleasant and Erskine Ravel were being tortured. She knew this. She didn’t give a damn about Ravel’s discomfort, but she was worried about Skulduggery. She just didn’t think it was fair. He’d been tortured so much in the course of his lifetime, after all. That’s how he’d died. Nefarian Serpine had tortured him for three days, using that red right hand of his, employing all manner of barbaric techniques and cruel instruments. Skulduggery had died screaming, looking into the face of the man who had killed his wife and child. And now he was back on the torture table while Mevolent or Vengeous or even Vile took turns.

“Curious,” Nye muttered.

Valkyrie looked up. “What is?”

“You said you’d pretend to be unconscious.”

“Well, now I’m pretending to wake up. What’s curious? What?”

Nye sighed. “It’s merely a theory, based upon the most rudimentary of tests already run, and I do not know how to explain it, exactly.”

“Please,” said Valkyrie, “use small words.”

“Your magic is, indeed, gone. When your true name was taken from you, all your magic went with it. But my tests did pick up something. And that something led to a thought, and the thought to an idea, to a theory, and lastly to a hypothesis. Our true names act as our link to the source of all magic, this we know, and every sentient being has such a name. In theory.”

“Only in theory?”

“Magic is too vast a subject to be mastered. We view magic one way, from one perspective. Who are we to say that ours is the only perspective? Warlocks and witches are virtually extinct thanks to Mevolent’s purges a hundred years ago, but they didn’t follow our rules and yet they had access to the source, and their access was arguably purer than our own. There could be a thousand different aspects to magic that we don’t know about, that are invisible to us, that we will never know about.”

“And what does this have to do with me?”