Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 96 - You're not helping

Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

Corrival – Pa

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Chapter 96

Two weeks on, two weeks of dating Nadia again in the middle of the second heatwave of the year in early June, and she spent that time on cases.

Tanith's brother went home the day before, having taken Valkyrie hunting a few times. Their prey, serial murderers that were good at being quiet and laying low, had been entertaining and exciting to track and find, and she felt as if she learnt more from him then than the weeks she'd spent learning to track at the Sanctuary with the Dead Men. They were good, but they were more on the loud and psychotic end of the hunting spectrum which she took to naturally, unlike this type of tracking, which they avoided because they enjoyed the big stuff more. Now she knew both.

On that particular day, having just finished a particularly nasty case, she sat in one of Kenspeckle's beds and looked around at her family. Wolf and Weasel were sitting together as they usually were nowadays, inseparable. Raven had just arrived and was talking with Crow who at on his own bed with two broken thigh bones. Raven was over practically every night now and had been since the Ball. He'd immediately found a little spot in their family and settled himself in without question or ruffling any feathers, so to speak. As a couple, they were somewhat reserved, but they would look at each other over dinner with something in their eyes and it would fill Valkyrie's heart that they both might have fallen for the other.

She hadn't seen Nadia in that time, but they spoke every evening and texted in the day. Valkyrie worried about her. Sighing, she checked her phone with the hand that wasn't in a bowl of mud and saw she had a message. She smiled at it and send a cute one back before putting it away and looking up at Snake who had just come over and stood beside her.

"Hey, Cub," he said slowly, sitting down next to her. He was being quiet as the two couples in the room spoke to their partners. "How's your hand?"

"It's okay. Kenspeckle said it won't fall off. How's your head?" She asked.

He shrugged. "It's fine. Did you get to finish the case?"

"Yeah, the Cleavers got the criminals. As soon as we're healed, we can go home," she smiled.

He nodded. "Good, good."

She reached over and took his hand. "It's okay, Snake. Stop stressing."

He smiled softly at her and clutched her hand tightly. Since everything with the Spiders, he had good and bad days, and they were always there and ready for anything he said, did or needed. "Thanks."

They sat like that until Kenspeckle swept through the room and finished their healing and told them to leave, essentially, which they did, Valkyrie keeping a hold of Snake's hand. They picked up fast food for lunch since they all knew whatever Tanith made would be awful and really wanted to skip out on that - it was the cravings, but god, they didn't want any more samples than she could physically force in their mouths - and got home before it was cold.

"Whose car is that?" Wolf asked, looking at a car parked literally in the middle of everything and blocking them from getting passed properly. Crow parked the Bentley at the side of the driveway.