“You’re probably going to say no,” he said, veering away from his script. “And that’s fine. Saying no is absolutely fine. It’s expected, actually. I’d be, to be honest, I’d be stunned if you said, you know … yes. So I realise that that’s not going to happen. So please, please don’t feel bad. The last thing I want is to make you feel bad.”
“Thank you, Omen.”
He laughed, even as the pit in his stomach opened wider. “No problem,” he said. “But, again, I have to, you know, at least try.”
“Of course.”
“So … um … The thing I was wondering was maybe, and, not expecting a yes to this at all, in the slightest, but the thing I was wondering was maybe you would, um, like to, you know …”
“Yes.”
His heart burst into fireworks in his chest. “Yes?” he repeated, laughing. “Really?”
Axelia reached out, touched his arm, a look of grave concern on her face. “What? No, I was just … I said ‘yes?’”
His laughter died instantly. “Right.”
“I didn’t say ‘yes’,” she said, “I said ‘yes?’, you know? Although it may have come out as ‘yes’, without the question mark after it. I’m sorry, Omen, English is not my first language.”
“You’re really good at it.”
“Thank you.”
“You know so many words.”
“I interrupted you,” she said. “I’m sorry. Please say what you need to say.”
Omen chewed his lip and nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Right. Uh … I think we both know how it’s going to go, though, don’t we? I think we … I think we do.”
“Probably,” Axelia said. “We could stop, if you like?”
Omen nodded, doing his best to consider it even though his brain appeared to be broken. Then he shook his head. “Actually, I feel I have to try. If I don’t at least say the words, then … then it’ll be hanging over me. Are you OK with that?”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
He forced a laugh. “Hey, Axelia, will you go out with me?”
“No,” she said sadly.
His world crashed down and he said, “Yeah.”
“I do like you,” she said, “and I don’t want to say ‘as a friend’, but …”
“As a friend,” Omen said, and nodded again. “That’s fine. I expected it, I really did. I hope this doesn’t make things weird between us. Does it?”
“Of course not.”
“Because it means a lot to me that we’re friends.”
“I know. It means a lot to me, too.”
“Well, um … I suppose I’ll see you around.”
“I suppose so.” Axelia smiled, gave his arm a squeeze, and walked away. Omen went round the corner, sat on a bench and was sad.
They came through, three abreast, the adults laden down with bulging bags and the children clutching raggedy dolls and carved wooden animals. Their footsteps were heavy, their shoulders stooped, their spines curved with exhaustion.
They weren’t too tired to look scared, however. Their eyes flickered over everything, trying to spot the differences between this reality and theirs, but avoided the gaze of Valkyrie or anyone who stood watching. This was a battered people. All they wanted was to stop walking, to lay down their packs, to get some sense of a journey completed, but that wasn’t about to happen just yet. As they came through the portal, the doorway sliced from their universe to this one, they were directed to follow a trail of flags to the makeshift town of tents that had sprung up along the outside of Roarhaven’s west wall. Shrinking away from the grey-suited Cleavers on either side, the mortals trudged onwards in a broad, unbroken line.
“Thirteen thousand in thirty-six hours,” Skulduggery said.
“What are we going to do with them?” Valkyrie asked. “China wouldn’t send them back to their own reality, would she? We send them back and Mevolent’s army will either execute them or use them as slaves. Maybe they could stay in Roarhaven. There are plenty of uninhabited districts. Loads of empty houses.”
“Roarhaven is a city for sorcerers,” Skulduggery said. “I don’t know how welcoming its citizens would be to mortal families moving in beside them.”
“What’s wrong with them moving in? We’re supposed to live in peace, aren’t we? That’s why Sanctuaries exist.”
“Roarhaven has a Sanctuary,” Skulduggery pointed out. “It isn’t itself a Sanctuary.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” she said. “It’s not like we can send them to live in Dublin or London or anything. They’re mortals, but they’re not like our mortals. They’ve lived their entire lives in a reality ruled by sorcerers.”
Skulduggery nodded. “It would definitely require a period of adjustment.”
“I think China’s going to do the right thing. She knows she has to set an example as the Supreme Mage, so I reckon she’ll hand over all those empty houses to these nice people from Dimension X.”
“That’s not what it’s called.”
“We can’t call it the Leibniz Universe. It’s boring, and nobody knows who Leibniz is.”
“He was a German philosopher and physicist back in the late seventeenth—”
“Exactly,” said Valkyrie. “No one’s ever heard of him. And I think I should be the one to name it because I’m the one who discovered it.”
“You didn’t discover it.”
“Well, OK, maybe not discovered it, but I found it.”
“It wasn’t lost, Valkyrie. It had billions of people living in it.”
“And I found them, too.”
He shook his head. “Silas Nadir shunted you over there. By your rationale, he should be the one naming it.”
“He’s a serial killer. He’d pick a stupid name.”
Temper Fray walked through the portal, saw Skulduggery and Valkyrie and immediately started over. One of the Cleavers moved to block his way, but he flashed his City Guard badge and the Cleaver backed down.
“What did you find out?” Skulduggery asked.
Temper frowned. “No hug?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Skulduggery. “Valkyrie, hug him.”
“I’m hugging him with my mind.”
“You two are weird,” Temper said. “It’s telling that I get back from a twelve-hour trip to an alternate dimension and you two are the strangest things I’ve seen all morning. How was your little jaunt to the mountains, by the way? Meet anyone interesting? And by interesting I mean anyone tall, green and ugly?”
“Not quite so tall or so green any more,” Valkyrie said, “but Nye is still as ugly as I remember. We chatted, yes. We have a lead, a man named Quidnunc.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Neither have we,” Skulduggery said. “We’re hoping once we get to him, he’ll lead us