Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 40 - The Murder Skull

Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

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Chapter 40

For Christmas, there was only one real gift Valkyrie could think of for Crow. He had a lot of things, as did all the Dead Men, as they had had four hundred years each to acquire the objects of their dreams. She couldn't quite afford to buy them all Ferrari's – well, that might have been a lie, but she still wasn't wasting her money on Ferrari's in Ireland – but she had found everyone something they wanted and would like. For Crow, it wasn't so easy.

It had taken weeks, several talks cross meetings with Echo-Gordon, consultations with Nadia and finally, a figurative slap to the back of the head to work it out.

Two weeks prior to the Ball

"Mr Pleasant?" Fletcher asked. Crow was in a bad mood with him, so he had told Fletcher to call him that. When he got bored of that name, he'd 'forgive' Fletcher and have him switch to Skulduggery again.

"Yes?" He asked from his place at the table, reading his newspaper while they ate lunch.

"Is it true that's not your real skull?"

Crow slowly put his paper down and looked up at him. "What makes you think it is not my head? Is this head not good enough?"

"Err, I don't know, I was just told by someone that it isn't your real–"

"Who is your source?"

"It was one of Kenspeckle's assistants. I forget his name. But he said that it's not your real one."

Valkyrie watched as Crow sighed and nodded. "Unfortunately, yes, he is right. My real skull was stolen while I was sleeping, or meditating as some like to point out, and I never got around to tracking it down. I'm certain it's out there but this one works fine. I won it in a poker game in the late eighties right after the original was stolen. Gordon thought it was hilarious."

"Yeah, but, like, that's really weird to have someone else's skull on."

Crow sniffed and turned back to his newspaper. "It's a fine skull. Nothing beats the original, obviously, but it is fine. I'll get around to it when I don't have annoying teenagers pestering me every few moments."

And that was how Valkyrie knew what to get him.

Cut to two days after the Ball, Valkyrie stood on the side of a rainy street, looking into the trees and waiting.

No cars were around, and the buildings had either no lights on or something to shut the light out from the outside, a curtain in some but usually just a blanket or clothes rack hung with clothes.

Caelan, the person she was meeting, walked slowly out the trees and headed straight for her. He was soaked through, unlike her as she had waterproof clothes on, her usual protective ones. Her hair and face were dripping wet to match him though. As he got closer, Valkyrie could see he had been maybe nineteen or twenty when he died, bitten by a vampire some hundred years ago, with dark hair and eyes, a fairly good-looking face and too pale skin.