Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 145 - Some explaining

Chapter 145

Valkyrie sat in the car by the pier waiting for Crystal to arrive. She was alone and seething mad. Nadia had disappeared quickly when Valkyrie said she needed some time alone, which was when she phoned her sister and started screaming about the idiotic thing she had done and that she'd been seen by her mortal cousin.

That was when Valkyrie had learnt that Nadia had known Tanith was going to be 'teaching Hagan a lesson'.

Valkyrie hadn't bothered to find Nadia and be mad at her. She'd just hung up the phone, got in the car, and told Crystal to meet her.

She was snapped out of her thoughts by Crystal opening the car door and sitting down. She didn't say anything or look at Valkyrie. Valkyrie drove back to Grimwood Manor.

"Come in," she said when she was parked in the garage. Crystal nodded silently and got out the car, following Valkyrie in. She took her to the snug which was now clean and back to what it was before the party. "What did you see?"

Crystal shook her head. "I don't know. I – I just saw your friend Tanith standing on the side of a wall, and someone else was throwing fire from their hands. I didn't know what to do. It looked like magic! I was going to call the police but then I saw Tanith so I called you..."

"Thank you," Valkyrie said sincerely. "It wouldn't have done any good if you had told the police what you saw."

"What do you mean?" Crystal whispered, eyes big and scared, but also incredibly curious.

Valkyrie had to smile. "They were doing magic Crystal. You were right."

"What?" Crystal said after a long pause.

"They did magic. We can all do magic. I wouldn't be surprised if you could do magic," Valkyrie told her very calmly. In her head, she was going the math. Crystal was not much older than her. She had time to learn and be a sorcerer if she wanted. And very, very suddenly, Valkyrie desperately wanted her cousin to join her in the magical community.

"They did? I could do that?"

"I mean, if you want to. Tanith's power, I guess you could call it, is walking on walls. That other person you saw? They're what we call an Elemental. The magic world is split, for the most part, in two – you can be an Elemental or an Adept. Elementals have the ability to manipulate the elements, that being water, air, fire and earth, just like that man you saw with the fire. The Adepts are pretty free to have essentially any magic they want, but it tends to be small. Like, Tanith can only walk on surfaces, but an Elemental could potentially, theoretically, have as much unlimited ability to manipulate the elements as they want, so long as they train and practice. There are magics people are born with, and branches that change people on a really deep level, but in general those are the big two. Does that make sense?"

"I guess?" She said.

"Good. I learnt to do both because I'm young and can do that. But when you get to about the age we are now, you have a Surge, where you pick just one magic and stick with it for life."

"So you can throw fire too?"

"I could, but I chose to be an Adept," Valkyrie said, not wanting to talk about the whole ordeal that led to her having weird, white power throwing abilities. "So is Tanith, Anton, Dexter and Saracen. We all have different powers from each other. The others, that being Erskine, Skulduggery and Ghastly, are Elementals. Oh, and my friend Solomon is an Adept, on a large branch called Necromancy. And Nadia knows everything still, she hasn't had her Surge."

"But she's older than you?" Crystal asked, trying very hard to take it all in.

"Yes, but things don't always go by who's oldest, you know?" Valkyrie smiled. "Tanith was seventeen when she had her Surge, but I know Dexter was almost twenty-one when he had his, and I was sixteen. It's not really set in stone when it will happen."