“I really like you, Valkyrie,” he managed to mumble.

“I really like you, Ryan,” she said back to him.

Ryan smiled and tried to kiss her again, this pretty girl with the dimple, what was her name again, Valkyrie, that was it, seventeen years old and cute as a button, the kind of girl who had never even noticed Deacon when he was that age. He grinned and leaned in and felt her hand against his chest, keeping him back, and then her eyes were narrowing.

“Ryan?”

“I’ll be whoever you want me to be,” Deacon said, and she hit him so hard the whole world spun.

She stood over him. “Get rid of that face,” she said. “Stop using Ryan’s face right now or I swear to God I’ll batter you.”

“OK!” he cried. “Just don’t hit me again!”

Deacon got to his feet, his jaw aching. “Ain’t that something?” he muttered, and at those words, the image around him flickered and withdrew, and suddenly he was back to his old self again.

Valkyrie’s eyes sparkled with tears. She was looking at him like she was going to hit him again anyway.

“I just want to thank you,” he said before she did. “I was in a serious bind and you, you came in and you really helped me. I was in over my head, I don’t mind admitting it. If it makes any difference, I never intended for the Machine to end up in enemy hands. The moment I sold the key, I was going to alert the Sanctuary and get an army of Cleavers in here to—”

“You risked the lives of everyone on the planet,” Valkyrie said, her voice tight.

“I did,” he said, nodding sadly, “and I truly regret that. It was stupid. It was short-sighted, and selfish. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have tried it. But we all make mistakes, isn’t that right? And I made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake that could have had untold consequences for—”

He didn’t even see the punch. He saw her shoulder shift and then he was toppling backwards. He hit the ground and his face felt three sizes too big. Good God, she hit hard.

“You better get up,” she said, standing over him. “The Cleavers are coming, and if you’re here when they arrive, you’ll get arrested too.”

He blinked. “You’re letting me go?”

“We’re letting Ryan go,” Skulduggery Pleasant said, walking up behind her. “Ryan was a friend of ours. He deserved better than to be you, Deacon.”

“I know he did,” Deacon said, rising slowly to his feet for the second time in the last sixty seconds. “I only hope I can make it up to him somehow, maybe by being a better person, by treating people with the same kind of—”