Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 169 - The Idiots do The Talk? Why?

Chapter 169

"Valkyrie?" Erskine called from the attic room. Valkyrie sighed and slid off her bed – just a sofa bed they'd opened next to a single bed so close that she, Nadia, Laila and Tanith may as well just share one massive bed. She followed the sounds of Erskine repeating her name in different tones up the stairs.

"What?" She asked him, crossing her arms sternly. Only the three Idiots were up here. And now her as well.

"Can I not just want to see you?" He asked innocently.

"I don't know, can you?" She raised an eyebrow.

He snorted a laugh. "Come in, we want to talk to you about something. Close the door!"

Valkyrie closed it with a sigh. She sat at the end of one of the two double beds in the room – it was the length of the whole house and quite a large space – and the men all sat at the pillow end with big grins. "This doesn't feel like a good idea," she said in a deadpan voice.

"Don't be silly, relax," Erskine said in a not-relaxing way. "We only want to talk to you, don't we Dexter?"

"Yeah, just a little talk," Dexter grinned. His smile was so wide he nearly reminded her of the Cheshire cat. She told him of the resemblance and the grin got worse.

"Look. Tell me what you want or I'm going to leave," she told them, crossing her arms again.

Erskine huffed. "Why are you so aggressive? Are you like this with Nadia?"

Valkyrie couldn't help the eyebrow that went up. "Nadia doesn't act stupid, unlike you."

"We only wanted to have a proper conversation," Saracen said, obviously trying hard to be the voice of reason. "Ignore them two, they're taking the piss. We actually do have something to say."

"And that is?"

"Sex," Erskine said seriously, clapping his hands together and pointing his fingers at her like he was in a business meeting. He was almost sprawled on his back and had his legs open to see her between them, Dexter on his knees like he'd pounce on her and Saracen hovering on his other side like he could just get up to assist her at any time. More likely to stop her leaving.

"Not a chance," she said with a shake of her head. "And before you argue, Tanith already did it! It was as intensive as it was intrusive. So there. You have nothing left to say."

"Like hell we don't!" Dexter laughed. "Come on, don't act like a kid. We know you have sex now, and that's okay! You're a young woman and it's totally normal. We just want to make sure you don't do anything stupid."

"I'm not doing anything stupid," she said, resorting to glaring at him.

"I'm not sure he said that right," Erskine said, shaking his own head and settling back a little to talk. God, they were actually, really serious. "What we want to say is, we care about you, and sex is normal, and you do that now. And because we care about you, and you do the normal act of sex, we want to make sure you're doing nothing stupid."

"That's what he just said," Valkyrie pointed out, fighting down a blush out of sheer embarrassment. It was different talking about sex verses talking about her having sex with Nadia!

Dexter looked at him. "I literally just said that."

He rolled his eyes. "Shut up. What Tanith told you as a sister might not be what we'd tell you as brothers."

She had a thought, hesitated to say it, and then decided to even though she didn't like it. "Well, that would make sense, except I'm not having sex with a man, so not really."