Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 134 - Detective-ing

Chapter 134

"Aren't you sweet," Corrival smile softly at the three day old infant in his arms. He was sat on the parlour sofa, Tanith next to him and wearing his Elder robes. "Yes, you'll be a very smart girl. Pretty, too. You have your sisters' nose."

Valkyrie smiled brightly. She'd noticed Laila's nose looked like hers too. Tanith rolled her eyes. She was convinced the nose was identical to her biological brothers, but Valkyrie knew better. Genetics definitely didn't work that way. Just as she knew her new haircut following her run-in with the burning building had left her with an awful haircut that was way too short and it didn't suit her face. Tanith didn't know what she was on about.

Laila chose then that she didn't like to be with Corrival, and he was very quick to hand the squirming baby back to her mother. Slapping his knees, Corrival pulled himself up. "She's a beau, Tanith. But I think it's time myself and Valkyrie get to the Sanctuary. Much to do, after all."

"Of course," Tanith said, pulling Laila's clothes off for a nappy change. "Have you found anything out on the Spiders?"

"We know they evacuated where they were," he said with a sigh. "We knew they would as soon as Mr Wreath was liberated, of course, but we have had a team go in and check. There was nothing but a few tools and an old furnace that was probably there in wartime, and a whole lotta blood. We suspect they've been capturing mortals for sport. They knew enough to stay away from the nearby town, so that's why we hadn't connected it with them previously."

"Hmm," Tanith said, wiping Laila clean while the baby did a big yawn. "I'm assuming there were no bodies then?"

"Nothing. I had expected them to leave some note, or warning, or something along those lines, but no."

"I'm surprised Craven wasn't there," Valkyrie said. "I mean, he didn't bring Skulduggery back when he should have, he was the last to see Solomon seconds before he was rescued, and I doubt he's making life easy for the Spiders with how annoying he is with his superiority complex. Seemed like they'd want to get rid of him."

"Maybe they need a Necromancer?" Nadia asked, giving Valkyrie her bag of food for lunch. She was so cute, giving her food and stuff. Valkyrie grinned at her.

"There is a chance, but Spiders are quite particular in how they do things. Manipulating the Necromancer Temple for a distraction, yes. Use others to do terrorist acts, yes. But work alongside someone for their magic when they could do everything themselves? I very much doubt that," Corrival said. "Regardless, we must look down every avenue, so your contributions, Miss Robin, are not unwelcome. Are you ready to leave, Valkyrie dear?"

.*****.

Valkyrie, some six hours of straight desk work reading and signing off on paper later, cracked her knuckles and sat back in her chair.

It had been a bad day. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but it had been hard on her. With the crimewave still happening, now about two months into it, Valkyrie had a ton of paperwork to keep on top of and with her having time off for so long, there was just so much. She wished she could bring people in to help her.

Her team had been debriefed a second time for the point of it in terms of her interaction with Skulduggery. They seemed slightly more satisfied that she wasn't going to help him escape the country, and they had concluded that he wasn't leaving for the foreseeable future.

Their predictions on that had been for these reasons, the ones stuck on the pinboard in the office: Skulduggery was in an awful place mentally and probably didn't want to leave home; Skulduggery kept vendettas and those he loved on equal priority and right now, all of those priorities were in Ireland; Skulduggery would likely try to contact Solomon again; Skulduggery may have become actually insane and may suddenly turn up at the house or the Sanctuary as if nothing happened, or else to continue to do mentally unstable things; or the worst of all, Skulduggery may turn evil on them.