They had their first big scare on Valkyrie's 21st birthday.

Skulduggery had surprised her with two first class plane tickets to Las Vegas and they'd spent happy hours alternatively doing logic puzzles and reading paperbacks that, if the hostess had looked, would have seemed like vintage props — or sipping champagne and watching films on the high-tech computer screen in the front of her seat, in Valkryie's case.

It had been nice enough, and Elemental magic was useful in winning any and all bets, but it had all gone to hell when they'd walked out of their hotel one night to be greeted by a horde of undead raised with a Nevadan sorcerer with a grudge.

It had been a difficult fight that had lasted hours, not including clean up afterward. Fighting gods and a super-powered figment of your subconscious was one thing - for sheer length, Valkyrie had never been in a fight like it. Not for the first time, she fervently thanked whatever (benevolent) god that was up there for letting her be born centuries after the war with Mevolent.

"I can't believe someone could have found us so easily like that," she panted afterward, covered in bone and flesh and mouldering skin pieces, as she trooped to the suite's massive wet room and turned everything on full blast, not even bothering to shed her clothes. In the living room of the suite, Skulduggery could be heard banging around and rattling the furniture as he packed and tried to calm down at the same time.

De-squicked, Valkyrie turned down the 'power' on the 'power-shower' long enough to rid herself of the last of her completely inappropriate zombie-fighting clothes and then turned the shower off, flopping into the jacuzzi that she had magically filled whilst frantically trying to scrub off zombie blubber.

Valkyrie, privately, thought that the best thing about America was the bathrooms. Obviously Skulduggery disagreed - he was apathetic to plumbing in general, and this trip had been for culture, fast cars and gambling, after all - but nice as Gordon's house was, bathrooms had not been his strong point. And every time she used Skulduggery's house she felt guilty about the whole thing. A hotel in America, she decided, was the perfect kind of limbo.

The banging outside the bathroom door stopped, and the steam in the room suddenly rose and became completely opaque before the door cracked open and Valkryie heard Skulduggery poke his head in. "I'm starting to think that nowhere is safe - I didn't even know who Vulpine Oleaginous was until today, and we still put lives in danger."

Valkyrie smiled into the thick white, knowing Skulduggery couldn't see it or her, and then stopped. "Doesn't Vulpine mean fox-like?"

"Well done, give the legal adult a prize."

"And…. Doesn't his second name basically mean oily?"

"Right in one."

"So we were nearly killed by a man who basically calls himself the Greasy Fox?"

"I'd try not to mention it to anyone back in Ireland, but yes. I suspect it's because he's american and therefore classless- you wouldn't believe the names some of the older sorcerers from the US come up with."

"You're a massive snob, you know that?"

"I was aware, yes. Now, I've decided we're leaving. Not right away, but very soon, and then we're going to lay very low and very still until I can be sure that Vulpine hasn't any accomplices. We're in America, where almost every sorcerer hates us, we have no readily available backup and no easy means of contacting friends. I confess I don't know how people found us so easily. I put you in danger, and I'm sorry."

Valkyrie thought privately that if he wanted to be truly anonymous he should probably stop using skeleton-related puns as fake names to check into hotels, but Valkyrie had long given up on the business of mages being insufferable wordplay addicts. She blamed the whole taken name business - if every mage didn't need to reject their perfectly good given names there wouldn't be 'Bison's running around or easily-guessed fake names galore.

"That's fine, Skulduggery. Could you, uh, shut the door? It's cold and I need to be actually able to see my own arm to find the taps or, you know, do anything really."

She heard rather than saw the smile in his voice. "Would you rather I got rid of the fog? But fine, I'll be packing in case we need to make a quick getaway."

The door closed, the fog suddenly thinned into translucency, and Valkyrie sank under the bubbles like a surfacing kraken in reverse.

It had been a long day.

—

(Six rings of a phone, then silence.)

"This is Skulduggery Pleasant, and I can't answer your calls right now. I'm probably saving the world or fighting monsters, or some other equally important activity. Leave a message after the tone."

(There is a beep.)

"Skulduggery, it's Ghastly. where are you? I know you'd been planning something for Val's birthday, but you were scheduled to come back a fortnight ago. The Elders need you - there's been some trouble in America. If you're still there, we'd like you to take a look."

—

(Two rings of a phone, then silence again.)

"Hi. I can't come to the phone right now, so please leave a message after the beep. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Bye!"

(Beep.)

"Valkyrie, this is the reflection speaking. You've been absent for three weeks longer than you instructed me to prepare for, and your parents are worried you're having 'a young person's midlife crisis.' Fletcher called round with his new girlfriend. She's extremely pretty. And blonde, and she specialises in marine magic. He said to tell you that you're being-

(The voice lowers in an impression of Fletcher Renn.)

'A bloody idiot who's irresponsible and doesn't spend time with her family when she needs to and also I'm a little bit worried about you - don't look at me like that, Daria - and everyone in the Irish community is freaking the hell out, so come home as soon as possible bye.'

(The voice returns to normal.)

Mr. Vex came to visit me at Gordon's house and left some flowers. If you don't return home soon I'll be forced to take him up on the offer of dinner. End report."

—

(Phone rings straight to voicemail.)

"This is Skulduggery Pleasant, and I can't answer your calls right now. I'm probably saving the world or fighting monsters, or some other equally important activity. Leave a message after the tone."

(Beep.)

"In all my centuries of knowing you, Skulduggery, I had no bloody idea you were this stupid. Why didn't you tell us about Vulpine? There were hundreds of zombified sorcerers destroyed in the middle of a mortal's famous tourist destination! You didn't even bother to clean up! America's Sanctuary PR team were working around the clock! There's internet conspiracy theorists! Do you even know what that means, Skulduggery? It means that hundreds of nutters have access to photographs, footage, eye witnesses. No matter how idiotic and inebriated they sound.

Assuming it's you, which it had better well not be — if you're not dead now you will be when you get back, you short-sighted, arrogant man. I'm going to damn well throttle you, and I don't care if it doesn't do anything. I'll turn you into an umbrella stand for my nice office instead, hmm? See how you like that.

Oh, and tell Valkyrie that I say hello."

(Click.)

—-

"I don't understand why he doesn't just marry the barmaid."

"Sometimes I forget you weren't raised anywhere near aristocracy. Times like this, however, sadly remind me."

"Snob! Snob! My partner's a snob!"

"We're the perfect comedy cop duo."

"Hah, yeah. Dempsey and Makepeace, look out."

"…. Valkyrie, I'm surprised at you."

"What, you didn't think I knew who they were?"

"No," Skulduggery admitted. He and Valkyrie had snuck onto the nearest flight home after playing a high-stakes game of poker - Valkyrie had insisted on 'living the dream' at least once, and he hadn't had the heart to refuse her - and were now holed up in a small but plush flat in the wilds of Scotland, where everyone was so grumpy and irritated by the presence of 'Bloody Irish tourists' that Skulduggery hadn't had to use his facade even once.

With Valkyrie at his captive mercy Skulduggery had taken the opportunity to decide that now was the perfect time for a huge movie marathon and with barely disguised glee had set up internet connection, spending a huge chunk of his ill-gotten gains on downloading all of his favourite 'old guy' movies, including The Student Prince, every Grace Kelly movie known to man and My Fair Lady. Since he neither required sleep or food it had been pretty intense - Valkyrie had stocked up on the unhealthiest food she could find as a sort of rebellious gesture, thumbing her nose both at her diet of healthy food and all of the sleepovers and uni all-nighters she had missed out on at school.

Somehow Skulduggery had gotten the monster of a television in the little holiday cottage hooked up to play the full month's worth of movies non-stop, veering wildly between beautiful movies about high class aristocrats to pulp sci fi flicks of various decades and qualities that Valkyrie had picked out. Ever since Tanith had introduced her to Star Wars she'd been quite the fan - at all her time in mortal uni, she only ever turned up in the reflection's place for midnight cinema showings or her campus' sci fi club, and Skulduggery had mocked her about it ceaselessly until she had sat him down to watch Forbidden Planet. They had both been as captivated as each other since.

The second day straight Valkyrie had begun to tire of snacks and relaxation, and had dozed off against skulduggery's bony shoulder whilst they both sat on the single sofa bed in the cottage watching Dune. She'd been unspeakable embarrassed when she woke up, drooling, on the surprisingly comfortable, cushioned shoulder of a meditating skeleton who had paused the movie in the middle of a battle with a giant sand worm, the actors' faces frozen in permanent masks of comical horror.

By the time she was half way into the second week straight without having seen anyone (save on a telly screen) apart from Skulduggery and the surly Tescos deliverer that visited every second day to chuck their groceries at the door and drive away, Valkyrie was pretty blase about the whole thing, re: personal space. Of course, she and Skulduggery had never had any problem with getting things done in battle without worrying about contact or anything like that, but there was so much that Val still didn't know about Skulduggery when he wasn't on the job, she reckoned. He'd been alive for centuries before her, of course, and by the time she'd crashed into this life he seemed to have alienated all of the people who had personal relationships with him save Ghastly. China didn't count. Valkyrie knew they had history, and he hadn't exactly been bosom buddies with her for the last six years, either.

By the end of the second week Skulduggery had broken out the board games, the movie of the minute playing in the background to be tuned into whenever something interesting happened or he beat her at yet another family-rated logic game or advanced Cluedo. Whenever Valkyrie was hungry, she'd wander into the tiny kitchen and fix herself some food, and whenever she wanted to sleep she would curl up in the corner of the sofa, for some reason not wanting to convert it to a bed even though her back complained in the morning. The cycle continued with intervals for Valkyrie's magically-weighted air training or arguments over the movie currently playing. After a heated discussion on Logan's Run, Valkyrie had confiscated Skulduggery's luggage case and had proceeded to taunt him by creating a shield of air so that he could only watch as she tried on each and every one of the hats nestled inside the case.

He'd gotten her back for that one later, when one — morning, night, at this point her sleep cycle was utterly broken — she had woken up with every single item of clothing in her luggage sopping wet. That had ended with two burnt pairs of socks, a charred fedora and a sulking match that lasted four hours on Skulduggery's part.

Now, well rested ("You slept for sixteen hours. Is that jet lag or just the lifestyle? Asks the curious man who hasn't been around someone who sleeps for a while, no offence meant.") Valkyrie was watching the fifties movie entitled "The Student Prince" in which a lot of cheesy singing and manufactured suspense was happening rather than anything much in the way of a plot. It also had a lot more scenes involving the title character's sweetheart and the object of her profession than was necessary - Valkryie's stomach growled in the memory of the martinis she had spiritedly consumed in Las Vegas "for the symbolism". She was going to have to watch that she didn't become an alcoholic - all her training and use of her powers left her with a strong constitution, but it wasn't magic.

Valkyrie grinned inwardly at the pun.

"How long have we been hiding out, anyway? I haven't had any calls, and I can't even remember the last time the grocery guy visited us."

Skulduggery's silence and pointedly turned head was his guilty look, and Valkyrie immediately noticed it out of the corner of her eye. Turning away from the screen to confront him, she added, "Have you been in contact with anyone at all? Has anyone tried to contact us?"

"There hasn't been any phone network signal up here in the wilds of Scotland, no. However I'm sure if something important were happening, Ghastly or Erskine would have shot off a quick email to let me know."

"And… Have we been getting any emails?"

"I haven't the foggiest," Skulduggery answered. "Shall we find out?"

For the first time in however long, they paused the movies and used the televisions's monitor to check Skulduggery's email address.

A hundred new messages.

"Oh bugger," Valkyrie said quietly.