There was a quiet beep from the triangular piece of metal on Fletcher’s belt. “Time to go,” he said. “We’re going to have to follow a load of complicated directions to this Necropolis place. Sure, we’ll be teleporting instead of walking, but we still have to travel slowly or else we’ll miss clues or turns or whatever. Skulduggery reckons we’ll be searching for at least a day.”

“You’d better get going, then. Thanks for the lift home.” On impulse, she hugged him. “You’re going to be fine,” she whispered.

He smiled, and vanished.

Valkyrie changed into jeans and pulled on a warm top. Then she took a few deep breaths, and went downstairs. Her parents were in the living room, playing with Alice. The mood was unusually sombre for playtime.

“Hi,” Valkyrie said.

“Ste’nee!” Alice cried, and hurtled over.

“Didn’t hear you come in,” said her mum. She stayed on the floor, her feet tucked beneath her.

Valkyrie scooped up Alice. “Fletcher dropped me off. We teleported.”

Her mum sighed. “Yes. Of course.”

“Tanith said she’d been keeping in touch with you.”

Valkyrie’s dad nodded as he sat into his armchair. “She called over, then rang to tell us you were out of your Surge. Am I getting that right? Surge?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, good. She said you were in huge amounts of pain.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“She told us a lot about what sorcerers do,” her mum said. “Told us stories. She told us about a man who can make people believe whatever he tells them.”

“That’s Geoffrey.”

“You could have asked Geoffrey to brainwash us, couldn’t you? Made us forget about this magic thing?”

“Yes,” said Valkyrie. “I thought about it. But I didn’t want to lie to you any more. It’s just too hard. Too complicated. I think you have a right to know. No one else thinks that, by the way. If you have a mortal family, the generally accepted rule is that you keep them in the dark for as long as you can.”

“And then what?”

“Then you leave. You come up with an elaborate story, or you disappear, or you fake your own death …”

“They wanted you to fake your own death?”

Valkyrie hesitated. “Sorcerers live longer than other people. They live for hundreds of years. Providing the world doesn’t end in the next few days, and providing I survive, I’ll probably stay looking eighteen until I’m at least forty or fifty.”

Her mum had tears in her eyes as she stood. “You’re never going to grow up?”

Valkyrie smiled. “I am grown up, Mum. I’m just going to age really slowly from here on out. I’ll be the youngest looking forty-year-old you know.”

“You’ll be missing out on a normal life.”