and his eyes opened and water trickled from his mouth.
“Help me,” he said.
The Sea Hag looked annoyed. “They cannot help you, corpse. They are here to ask you questions.”
“Why do you need our help?” Skulduggery asked.
“I want to go home,” the corpse told him.
“You are home,” the Hag interjected.
The remains of the man shook his head. “I want to be buried. I want to be surrounded by earth. I want to be dry.”
“Tough,” said the Sea Hag.
“If you help us,” Skulduggery told the remains, “we’ll see what we can do. Fair enough?”
The corpse nodded. “I will answer your questions.”
“Are you Trope Kessel, the Teleporter?”
“I am.”
“We are here because four Teleporters have been killed in the past month. There is a possibility, however faint, that those murders are somehow linked to yours. How were you killed?”
“With a knife, in my back.”
Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. The other Teleporters had been killed in exactly the same way. Maybe there was a link after all.
“Who killed you?” she asked.
“He said his name was Batu.”
“Why did he kill you?” Skulduggery pressed.
“I was, I suppose, a scholar,” the dead man said. “Eons ago, the Faceless Ones were driven from this reality, and even though I had no wish to see them return, the mechanics behind their exile, the magic, the theory … It was a puzzle and I became obsessed trying to solve it. I died because of my curiosity and my blind trust. I believed people were, by nature, good and decent and worthy. Batu, it transpired, was none of those things. He killed me because I knew how to find the thing he desired, and once I had told him, he had to protect his secret.”
“What did he desire?”
“The gate,” the corpse said. “The gate that will open and allow the Faceless Ones to return.”
There was a moment where nothing was said. Valkyrie realised she had taken a breath and had yet to release it. She made herself breathe again.
“Such a gate exists?” Skulduggery asked. He spoke slowly, cautiously, as if the answers were a dog he didn’t want to disturb. He actually sounded worried.
“It does, but I merely worked out how to find it – I never had the chance to put that theory into practice. The wall between our realities has weakened over time. Their darkness and their evil have bled through. A powerful enough Sensitive should be able to trace the lines of energy in our world to their weakest point. It is here that the gate will open.”
“So why haven’t the Faceless Ones come through already?” Valkyrie asked.
“Two things are needed,” the corpse told them. “The first is an Isthmus Anchor, an object bound by an invisible thread travelling from this reality into the next. This thread is what keeps the gate from closing forever. But the Anchor is useless without someone to force the gate open, and only a Teleporter can do this.”
Valkyrie frowned. “But all the Teleporters are being killed.”
Skulduggery looked at her. “So what does that suggest?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. Unless … I don’t know, unless the killer doesn’t want the Faceless Ones to return, so he’s killing all the Teleporters to make sure they never open the gate.”
“Which would mean?”
“It’d mean that maybe he’s not a bad guy at all – maybe he’s just a really twisted good guy.”
Skulduggery was quiet and then nodded to the corpse. “Thank you. You have done the world a great service.”
“And you will help me now?”
“Indeed we will.”
The Sea Hag laughed. “You will never leave this lake, corpse.”
Skulduggery looked at her. “What do you want in exchange for him?”
The Hag curled a lip. “I want nothing. He belongs to me. This lake is the place of his death. Its waters have already claimed him.”
“There must be something you want, something we can give you in exchange.”
“I want nothing you can offer. I am a Maiden of the Water. I am above temptation.”
“You’re not a Maiden of the Water,” Valkyrie said. “You’re a Sea Hag.”
The Hag’s eyes narrowed. “When I was younger, I was a Maiden of the—”
“Don’t care,” Valkyrie interrupted. “You may have been beautiful once, but now you’re an ugly old fish-woman.”
“Do not raise my ire, girl.”
“I have no intention of even touching your ire, but we’re not leaving without the dead man. So hand him over or things are going to go bad for you.”
“It seems you do want to drown after all,” the Hag snarled, and lunged, and in an eye blink her bony hands were gripping Valkyrie’s shoulders. She reared back and Valkyrie was lifted off the ground, high into the air and tossed, like a rag doll. She hit the water hard and went under. She twisted and through the bubbles, she saw the Sea Hag’s long serpent-like body tapering off into a tail. And then the body coiled and the Hag was beside her, eyes wide and triumphant, grabbing her again and holding her under.
Valkyrie tried to punch, but her fist moved way too slowly underwater. The Hag laughed, the lake filling her mouth, running down her throat, and for the first time Valkyrie saw the lines of gills on either side of her neck.
Valkyrie’s lungs were already burning. She hadn’t had time to take a breath. She went for the Hag’s eyes, tried to jab at them, but those bony fingers closed over her wrists. The Hag was too strong for her.
And then something moved towards them, and Valkyrie saw Skulduggery, shooting through the water like a torpedo. He was right up beside them before the Hag even realised he was close.
The Hag tried clawing at him, but Skulduggery took hold of Valkyrie’s wrist, the wrist that the Hag had released, and Valkyrie was yanked free.
She clutched Skulduggery tight, feeling the water part in front and boost them from behind. The Hag was after them, her body undulating as she gave chase, her face furious. She drew close and reached out, but Skulduggery veered, taking them into the murky depths of the lake, and then they rolled, changing course, heading back, passing right by the Hag, who screamed her rage in escaping bubbles.
The lake bed was close as they passed over it and getting closer. Valkyrie could have reached out and touched the pebbles and the rocks and the silt and the sand.
And then Skulduggery kicked upwards and they burst free of the water, rising high through the air and falling now, falling to the treeline. Then there was a screech, and the Sea Hag erupted from the churning waves behind them and grabbed Skulduggery, her thin arms encircling his waist, pulling him back under.
Valkyrie dropped, grabbing for a tree branch. She couldn’t hold on. She hit the ground and grunted, barely aware that her hands were cut and bleeding, lacerated by splinters.
She groaned and moved her head slightly to look back at the water. She couldn’t see Skulduggery or the Hag, and the ripples were already spreading out and dying, as if the lake was trying to hide what was going on beneath its surface. Valkyrie rolled over, her dark hair hanging in front of her face, and got up slowly, grimacing when she saw her hands.
The corpse