“We can protect you.”
“Don’t need protection,” Fletcher shrugged. “Don’t need anything from anyone. I’ve got this really cool power and I intend to use it to do whatever I want.”
“You’re in danger,” Skulduggery insisted. “Most of the other Teleporters in the world are dead.”
Fletcher frowned. “So I’m one of the last?” He took a moment to absorb this information, and when he shrugged, it was with the beginnings of a smile. “Then that just makes me even cooler.”
He vanished with a soft pop, as the air around him rushed in to fill the sudden vacuum.
“Damn it all to hell,” Sanguine muttered.
Valkyrie clicked her fingers and summoned a single flame into her palm, then pressed it into Sanguine’s leg. He yelped and his hold loosened. She grabbed his right wrist and held the straight razor away from her as Skulduggery moved in. Sanguine cursed and pushed Valkyrie into Skulduggery’s path.
“I really hate you guys,” he said, sinking down into the ground.
They waited for a few moments, making sure he wasn’t going to jump out at them from somewhere.
“Are you all right?” Skulduggery asked as he crossed to Valkyrie and tilted her chin to one side. “Did he cut you?”
“Not with his razor,” Valkyrie said, reclaiming her chin. She knew she’d been lucky. Scars left from that blade never healed. “We lost Fletcher. He’s probably miles away by now. After this, how are we ever going to find him again?”
There was a sound from the bathroom and they both looked at the closed door. Skulduggery walked over and knocked. A few seconds later it opened, and Fletcher Renn looked out at them sheepishly.
“Oh,” Valkyrie said. “Well, that was easy.”
Valkyrie sat opposite Fletcher, neither of them saying anything. He had adopted an air of complete boredom on the drive over, and this obvious attempt at nonchalance was starting to bug her. She dabbed a wadded clump of napkins to her cut cheek, making sure the bleeding had stopped. Her hands still stung from the dozen splinters that had lacerated them.
The diner they’d come to was a tacky attempt at 1950s America – blue and pink, miniature jukebox on every table and a neon Elvis jerking his hips from left to right on the wall. It was a little past three on a Thursday afternoon and there were more than a few curious glances at the tall, thin man with the scarf, sunglasses and hat, who joined them at the table. Skulduggery waved away the waiter even before he approached.
“The man with the razor was Billy-Ray Sanguine,” he said. “We believe that he is either working with or working for a man named Batu. Have you ever heard this name?”
Fletcher shook his head lazily.
“In the last month, there have been four murders – all Teleporters like you. Now there are only two of you left.”
“But that guy wasn’t after me to kill me. He said he wanted my help.”
“And I can assure you that if you did help him, you’d be dead soon after.”
“He’d try to kill me,” Fletcher said with another one of his shrugs, “but I’d just teleport a hundred miles away.”
“If that were true,” Skulduggery said, “then why did you only teleport as far as the bathroom?”
Fletcher hesitated. “Sometimes, like, I have to be calm to teleport more than a few metres …” He brushed his hand through his hair, like he was checking that it was still ridiculous. Valkyrie could have saved him the effort. “Anyway, you’re wasting my time here, all right? So let’s get this over with.”
Skulduggery tilted his head. “Excuse me?”
“You want to give me the talk, don’t you? Just like those old guys?”
“What old guys?”
“Two old guys came up to me a few months back, and they were all, ‘you’re one of us, you have power and blah, you can now join this magical community and something else about wonder and awe,’ I don’t know, I wasn’t really listening. They were trying to recruit me into this little world within a world that you guys have and they were none too happy when I told them I wasn’t interested. And I’m still not interested.”
“Did they tell you their names?”
“One of them was, I think, Light something.”
“Cameron Light.”
“That was it, yeah. He dead too?”
“Yes, he is.”
“That’s a shame. I’m sure somebody, somewhere, cares.”
“Did they say anything else?”
“They said that without the proper training I could be dangerous. Said I could attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“We usually try not to attract any kind of attention,” Valkyrie said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
Fletcher looked at her. “Is that what we try?”
“Fletcher,” Skulduggery said, and once again Fletcher’s eyes flickered to him. “I’m sure that the idea that known killers are after you is one that, at the very least, is causing you some worry.”
“Do I look worried?”
“No, but neither do you look intelligent, so I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
Fletcher glared at him, and sat back and said nothing.
“If Batu is behind these murders,” Skulduggery continued, “then he wants to use your powers to open a gateway that will enable the Faceless Ones to return. Do you know about the Faceless Ones?”
For a moment, Valkyrie thought Fletcher might be too sullen to respond, but eventually he nodded. “The old guys told me about them. But that’s just a story, right? None of that stuff ’s real.”
“I used to think the same way,” Skulduggery said. “But my mind has been changed.”
“So if these Faceless Ones come back, the world ends?”
“It probably won’t end immediately. They’ll come back, inhabit indestructible human bodies, tear down the cities and the towns, burn the countryside, kill billions, enslave billions more, work them until they die, and then the world will end. Are you OK, Fletcher? You’re suddenly looking very pale.”
“I’m fine,” Fletcher mumbled.
Skulduggery went quiet for a moment, thinking it all through. “But if Batu needs a Teleporter to make this all happen, why didn’t he go for someone with experience? You don’t even have any formal training. You may be a natural, as I’ve heard, but compared to Cameron Light, your powers are practically nothing.”
“If Cameron Light’s so bloody good,” Fletcher said with a sneer on his lips, “how come he’s so bloody dead?”
There was nothing Valkyrie wanted more in the world than to reach across that table and smack Fletcher Renn. Skulduggery, for his part, remained as impassive as ever.
“Even though this will go against your instincts,” he said, “for your own safety I think you should be put in protective custody.”
Fletcher’s grin was back. “Ground me, you mean? Not a chance, skeleton-man.”
Valkyrie scowled. “He has a name.”
“Oh, yeah, Skulduggery, right? Skulduggery. That’s an unusual one. Were you born a skeleton or were your folks just disturbingly hopeful?”
“Skulduggery is my taken name,” Skulduggery said evenly.
“That’s