Oh yes, she’d said. Do you want to talk to my dad?

“Actually, I want to talk to you. I felt I had to call, out of a sense of fair play. Your aunt and uncle arrived at my office a few days ago, accompanied by their own solicitor. They requested an examination of the Will. There seems to be a… a possible loophole, in the wording of the document. I am certain your uncle didn’t mean it but, nonetheless, it is there.”

What’s the loophole?

“It seems that you only inherit if you are actually living at home, with your parents, on your eighteenth birthday.

“They were quite insistent that this point be accurate, and they repeatedly proposed the unlikely scenario that if you were not living at home when you turned eighteen, the inheritance would be divided between your parents, and them. I just thought you ought to know.”

And that’s when it all started to make sense. The constant rumour-mongering, the casting of all those aspersions, planting the seeds of doubt in her parents’ minds. They were out to ruin her life, weren’t they? Ruin her reputation, ruin her image, and cause rifts between herself and her folks. How wicked. How delightfully Machiavellian in scheme and ambition. They really were to be applauded.

And what could poor old Stephanie do? No one was talking to her, and no one would believe her anyway. She had taken so many trips down to the police station that it was becoming a second home to her. She was notorious, the villain of Haggard. Her crimes grew with each rumour, her sins multiplying with each whisper.

She didn’t even have the Bentley to retreat into. Her good and dear friend Skulduggery Pleasant had a lot of cleaning up to oversee. Meritorious had returned and assumed control once more, but his authority was shaky at best. He had, after all, fled at a time when his leadership was needed the most. Around the world, Serpine’s allies had resurfaced and struck, and then vanished again when the news of his demise had reached them. Their coup may have failed, but because of it the Cleavers’ numbers had been decimated, and their duties stretched them thin. Confidence in the rules and rule-makers was at an all time low. The Sanctuary had been breached, after all. Nothing, and no one, was safe.

Stephanie wasn’t involved in these matters, of course. She’d needed time off, time to heal, to mend, and to pretend to be normal. Not that she was fooling anyone. Not any more.

And that was the worst part, wasn’t it? She could no longer hope to blend in with the boring and the banal. They knew her now. They knew she was different.

But they still didn’t know just how different she was.