Valkyrie ran her hands over the wall that opened to the secret room. She knocked, listening to the sounds, but none of them sounded hollow. Disappointed, she left the study and carefully descended the staircase. When she got back to the living room, the ghost was out of the mirror and standing beside Skulduggery.
He had calmed down an awful lot.
“The crystals are not in this cavern,” Mire was saying. His voice was unsteady. “I purposely detailed this part of the map incorrectly, to stop others from gaining from my work. But they are close.”
“Can you take us to them?” Skulduggery asked.
“I dare not leave this house. Whatever dark power lives in these caves, it sustains me, even in this spirit form. But I cannot venture from here.”
“Then will you tell us where the crystals are?”
“What is the point? You will be turned to ash as soon as you touch them.”
“We have a way around that. Will you help us?”
Valkyrie stepped in and Mire heard her and turned.
“She lives,” the ghost said, its face showing something akin to awe.
“I told you,” Skulduggery said.
“I had almost forgotten what one looked like.”
“One?”
“One of them. One of the living. These caves have been my home for so long. I have been dead for so long, alone down here. I stay away from the creatures of course. Some of them can hurt me, even in this form. These caves are cursed for sorcerers.”
He moved closer to Valkyrie.
“You are splendid,” he murmured.
She raised an eyebrow to Skulduggery and he quickly stepped between them. “Will you help us?” he asked again.
The ghost dragged its gaze away from Valkyrie and looked at Skulduggery. His head blurred with the movement. “Of course,” he said, and the wall behind him shifted and grew a door. The door opened. “Beware. The crystals kill.”
Mire stayed where he was as Valkyrie followed Skulduggery through to a tunnel with walls of rock. Embedded in those walls were thin veins of crystals, glowing with a black light.
Skulduggery looked at her. “And you’re absolutely sure you won’t be harmed?”
“Absolutely.”
“How do you know?”
She reached out and touched the nearest crystal. “See?”
He stared at her. “That was an amazingly foolish thing to do.”
“Potentially amazingly foolish,” she corrected. “It was a theory of Gordon’s I read about in his notes.”
“He could have been wrong, you know.”
“I have faith in his theories,” she said with a shrug. “Give me the chisel.”
He took the chisel from his jacket and handed it over. She lined it up against a crystal, then, using the butt of Skulduggery’s gun, she hammered at it, barely making a scratch.
“Hold it in place,” Skulduggery told her. He flexed his fingers and swung his hand, and a concentrated blast of air hit the chisel like a piledriver. A chunk of crystal flew free, a little bigger than the one that had been housed in the Sceptre. Valkyrie wrapped it in cloth. Skulduggery held out a small box and she placed it within, then he closed the box and put it in his jacket pocket. She gave him back his gun and chisel.
“Easy,” she said.
“Never do anything like that again. You could have been turned to dust, and then I’d have to explain to your parents why they were burying their beloved daughter in a matchbox.”
“Kenspeckle would never let you hear the end of it either.”
Skulduggery looked at her as he led the way back to the door. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, with everything Kenspeckle has been saying – do you think I should treat you differently?”
“No,” she said at once.
“Don’t be so quick to answer.”
“Nooo …” she said slowly.
“You are amusing to me, but the question remains. Maybe I should leave you in the car on occasion.”
“But I never stay in the car,” she reminded him.
“That’s because I’ve never insisted before.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference.”
“I can be very commanding when I want to be.”
“Yeah, but not really though.”
He sighed and they emerged into the living room. Mire’s body was still on the ground near the overturned chair and his ghost was standing, looking at them.
“You’re not dead,” he said. “That is a surprise.”
“Thank you for your co-operation,” Skulduggery said. “Is there anything we can do for you in exchange?”
“Waking me was enough.”
“What will you do now?” Valkyrie asked.
Mire smiled. “I will be happy, I think. Yes, I think I will.”
“I hope we meet again, Anathem,” said Skulduggery. “You are an … interesting being.”
Mire bowed and as he did so, he caught Valkyrie’s eye. She gave him a polite nod in return and followed Skulduggery to the front door.
“China owns the Sceptre,” he said as he stepped out of the house, “so she’ll be the only one able to use it. Assuming it works when we replace the crystal.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“If it doesn’t, I’m sure I’ll come up with something brilliant to—”
The front door slammed shut just as Valkyrie reached it and she whirled. Mire drifted to her, a smile that had been neglected for centuries struggling to form on the memory of his face.
“You are not leaving,” he said. “The skeleton can return to the surface, but you are mine.”
“I’m not yours,” she said to Mire. “I have to leave now.”
“You will never leave me,” Mire responded.
She stalked by him, into the living room, reaching the first window just as the wall melted into it. The other windows followed, enveloped by the walls, sealing off her escape.
She turned angrily. “You can’t keep me here!”
“But I can. You are living. You are breathing. This house hasn’t seen a living, breathing person for centuries.”
“This house doesn’t exist! You don’t exist! You’re a ghost!”
Valkyrie clicked her fingers, summoning fire.
“You cannot hurt me,” the ghost said.
She went over to Mire’s