talking about. Valkyrie checked the time, forcing her attention back to the here and now.
“Are you getting me anything for Christmas?” Fletcher asked, and Valkyrie found herself grinning despite everything.
“Yes. You better be getting me something.”
He shrugged. “Of course I am.”
“It better be amazing.”
“Of course it is. Hey, this time next year, you’ll have someone else to buy presents for. When’s your mum due?”
“Middle of February. I’m going to be asked to babysit, you know. How am I supposed to do that?”
“Get your reflection to do it.”
“I’m not leaving the baby with the reflection. Are you nuts? But I don’t even know how to hold a baby. Their heads are so big. Aren’t babies’ heads abnormally large? I’m not sure I’m going to be a good big sister. I hope she doesn’t take after me. I’d like her to have friends.”
“You have friends.”
“I’d like her to have friends who weren’t hundreds of years older than her.”
“Have you realised that you’re referring to the baby as ‘her’?”
“Am I? I suppose I am. I don’t know. It just feels like it’s going to be a girl.”
“Do you think she’ll be magic?”
“Skulduggery says it’s possible. Of course, that doesn’t mean she’ll ever find out about magic. Take my cousins, for example.”
“Ah, the infamous Toxic Twins.”
“They’re descended from the Last of the Ancients the same as I am, but we’ll never know if they can do magic, because they don’t know magic even exists.”
“So if you don’t want your sister involved in this crazy life of yours, you can just not tell her. And in twenty-five years, she’ll be looking at you, going, ‘Hey, sis, how come we look like we’re exactly the same age?’ Will you tell her then that magic slows the aging process?”
“I’ll probably just tell her that my natural beauty makes me look eternally young. She’s my little sister – she’ll believe anything I tell her.”
“To be honest, Val, I love the fact that this is happening. Once you have a sister, or a brother, that looks up to you and needs you, it might make you stop and think before rushing into dangerous situations.”
“I do stop and think.”
“And then you rush in anyway.”
“There’s still stopping and thinking involved.”
Fletcher smiled. “Sometimes I just worry about you.”
“Your concern is touching.”
“You’re not taking me even a little bit seriously, are you?”
“I can’t take you seriously, Fletch, you have a dollop of ice cream on your nose. Besides, we can have this conversation a thousand times – it’s not going to stop me going out there and doing what I do.”
Fletcher finished off the cone and wiped the ice cream from his face.
“Are you so determined to be the hero?” he asked softly.
She kissed him, and didn’t answer. He was wrong, of course. It wasn’t about her being the hero – not any more. It was just about her trying not to be the villain.
Solomon Wreath was confident that he could be just such a destabilising influence. Leaving many of his decisions open to chance, he had approached the tattoo parlour three times already, and by the toss of a coin he had walked on by. The fourth toss of the coin, however, brought him to the door, and had him climbing the narrow stairs, black bag in one hand, cane in the other. No sound coming from above him. No whine of the tattooist’s needle. No chat, laughter or yelp. He could practically sense the trap waiting for him, but this didn’t slow his step.
At the top of the stairs he turned and walked through the doorway, and that was when the skinny man with the Pogues T-shirt came at him with a cushion. Not being the world’s deadliest weapon, the cushion bounced softly off Wreath’s shoulder, and the skinny man did his best to run by. Wreath dropped his cane, caught the man and threw him against a chair that looked like it belonged in a dental surgery. The skinny man fell awkwardly over it.
“Finbar Wrong,” Wreath said, putting the black bag on a nearby table. “May I call you Finbar? I assume you know who I am.”
Finbar sprang to his feet, hands held out in front of him, fingers rigid. “I do,” he said, “and I feel I have to warn you, man, you can’t beat me. I’ve seen this fight already, and I know every move you’re gonna make.”
Shadows curled around Wreath’s cane, and brought it up off the floor and into his waiting hand.
Finbar nodded. “I knew you were gonna do that.”
Wreath went to walk around the chair. Finbar moved in the opposite direction. Wreath turned, went the other way, and so did Finbar.
Wreath sighed. “This is ridicul—”
“Ridiculous!” Finbar interrupted quickly. “See? I’ve already lived through this encounter. You’d better walk away now, dude, save yourself a whole lot of pain.”
“If you have seen this fight, if you knew precisely when I would arrive, then why did you attack me with a cushion?”
Finbar hesitated. “I’m … I’m toying with you, is what I’m doing. Hitting you with a cushion instead of my fists of fury is gonna, like, take longer, draw out your agony. Kinda like water torture, with cushions. Cushion torture.”
“It doesn’t sound very painful.”
“Well, I haven’t really settled on a name for it …”
“You’re a trained fighter, I take it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You’re a bit thin, aren’t you? You’re practically malnourished.”
“Looks can be deceiving, man. After all, the strongest muscle in the human body is the brain.”
“Well then, as along as you don’t hit me with your brain, I should be OK.”
Finbar suddenly broke for the door. Wreath came up behind him, whacked the cane into the back of his legs. Finbar crashed into the wall.
“Ow,” he moaned.
Wreath took a hold of him and dragged him back, threw him into the dentist’s chair. “When did you first have a vision that I would be paying you a visit?”
“Last night,” he moaned.
“And what did you do?”
“I sent Sharon and my kid away. I was gonna join them, but the vision changed, and you weren’t gonna come.”