Chapter 160
"Alright, group meeting!" Valkyrie called. They were scattered around the ground floor of Corrival's mansion. It was clean and beautiful, but also almost exclusively made of dark oak or walnut and only a few dark shades of deep red, purple and green. The green was only in the handful of fake plants scattered about too. All the furniture was soft, and the rugs were plush, so it still felt cosy despite the sombre first impression.
Her family came in from the three bottom rooms they'd slept and rested in that day. They sat on the sofas and waited patiently.
"I've given it some thought, and I think it's time to put on paper exactly how the next two months are going to go," Valkyrie told them.
"Is the contract two months?" Fletcher asked.
"Yes, didn't you read it?" Valkyrie asked. He shook his head and checked his stupid hair in the massive mirror again. "Oo-kay. Well, we have until tomorrow and then we have to get back to America, then the two months start. Bear in mind it's about to be December so we need to choose how we want to do for Christmas."
"Together," Tanith voted immediately.
"Yeah, Val, we want Christmas together!" Dexter said in pretend anger.
"Shut up. I meant, when are we meeting and how much time off are we asking for. There's always stuff going down on Christmas and we might be needed," Valkyrie reasoned.
"It's been a big year for us all," Nadia said. "We all deserve time together for Christmas."
"Okay, we'll ask for those days off. My suggestion for the time goes like this then. We go over tomorrow. We then spend the first week and a half working lightly, training and trying not to piss off the Sanctuary. I am then abandoning you and taking Nadia with me. You'll be working still, so nothing will change. After the week me and Nadia are gone for, we'll meet you back wherever you are and we have another week of work and then we'll take Christmas Eve, Christmas and then Boxing Day off. We won't be allowed New Year's because there's always way more trouble then than on Christmas."
"True," Saracen nodded.
"After that, it's going to be a stream of work I expect. Probably some travelling. We'll still get time off between missions and we are allowed full access to all the information first-hand from now on which is nice. Plus the contract is only two months, whereas before we had another three months there. We'll be working on trying to track down the American Spider den while we are working. Hopefully being on the big-shot missions and getting to talk to the criminals will reveal some secrets."
"I'm not sure what we'll do about the house though," Nadia said, her voice a little higher with panic. "It won't be ready in two months! We'll have nowhere to go!"
"Baby, we'll stay here," Valkyrie comforted her. "If we're lucky the house will even be done."
"It won't be," Erskine said and the others chuckled at her expense. "The designer and architect had to make a bunch of changes to our original plans so that the structure will, you know, not fall down. It's going to take even longer than we thought. It might not be done until June or July."
"What will happen after the two months," Solomon took over seriously, "is me and Valkyrie going away for probably a month alone. I need to continue researching the Necromancer artefact the Spiders possess, and Valkyrie needs to keep training with her new magic. Norma and Helana, the Necromancer's I've been working with, have found a place we can train and research more seriously, as well as eventually do perform the Magic Keeping ritual. From there it'll be a handful of days in recovery. We can't risk going to someone like Kenspeckle or we risk the procedure being noticed."
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Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain
Fanfiction(This story is written as a fanfiction, but can be read as a story without having read any of the books.) Valkyrie Cain, the adoptive daughter of the Dead Men, has had a life full of love and magic. But as she gets older, times become scarier and sh...
