China advanced on Valkyrie, sharp instruments winking in the Dublin afternoon sunlight that streamed gold through the Dublin windows of her apartment. Her eyes gleamed.
"Hold still, Valkyrie. This won't hurt a bit."
Valkyrie knew she was lying.
"You said the last time, and the time before that. Do you - do you think you need glasses?" Valkyrie snapped her head up to meet China's gaze and for a second China could see fear, real fear in those eyes. Even after over two decades working with, alongside and sometimes for China, Valkyrie still hadn't quite gotten the hang of mocking her yet.
"You do realise how precise my work is? If I needed glasses I would know immediately - but I have to cut back on pastries. Oh, what sacrifices I have to make for my ocular health. It's a wonder I picked the Adept discipline I did, it really is."
"You sound like an older woman." There was a beat, in which China fancied Valkyrie was imagining all of the ways China was plotting her death. "That's because I am, dear. Now, can we stop this circling as if we were common brawlers and will you just sit down, I need to fix the symbol on the left. Some people merely want a randomised face or clean skin to cover their scars, but you - "
"Want a growing and changing facade, yes, I know. I'm a horrible client, you've mentioned." Valkyrie didn't smile too easily, these days - not with her mouth. China could hear one in her voice now, though.
"Sit, before I make you."
"Fine." Still a petulant under-fifty as always, China noted to herself. She remembered her relatives being the same - of course, she hadn't ever acted in such an undignified way. Remembering her place, China lowered the instruments before the sorcerer in front of her, tunic unfastened to expose the woman's collarbones, where two finely etched, amazingly detailed faded up from invisibility to the greyed black of tattoos. Immediately China set to work, taking out a fat dewdrop of a jeweller's lens and taking turns at peering through it and then minutely scratching at the skin of Valkyrie's neck and chest. Valkyrie looked over China's shoulder to the sun-bathed Dublin outside her apartment's windows, breathing slowing dramatically and body growing corpse-still as she watched the sun edge toward the horizon.
"You're meditating. Is it that painful?"
Valkyrie didn't answer her immediately, but then again China hadn't expected her to. She busied herself with correcting and expanding on one of the right symbol's outer whorls.
"Hmm? Oh no, I just don't want to distract you. Plus, I wanted to take my mind away. It's-"
"Boring?" Valkyrie was still looking toward the window, and China hoped that she hadn't just seen her pull a long and thin pin from just under her collarbone; magically numbed as she was, it would upset the procedure.
"Not at all. I meant that I wanted to think about some… Things, you know. Stuff that's happening, like."
"Haven't sorted out this week's cover story, have we?"
Valkyrie scowled. "As usual, you hit the nail on the head. Are you joining me?"
"Gods, no."
"China…"
"I swear I never stop doing things for you, Valkyrie dear."
There was a stony silence - or at least, stony from Valkryie's end. China continued tapping away, stopping every so often to brush away crusted dust where a drop of blood had escaped, or excess ink from one of her calligraphic brushes. Eventually, she took a short breath. "Of course I'm joking."
Valkyrie let out a breath she didn't realise she was holding. "You did promise."
"That I did. And I don't break promises - not to people I actually tolerate. The right side's done, by the way. Drink this and test it." China handed her a small vial of clear liquid, which Valkyrie inspected before sloshing the liquid around her mouth experimentally and swallowing it. "That tastes exactly like woodsmoke."
"Does it? I always thought that it tasted like a funeral pyre. It's a sealant."
Valkyrie's face lightened a shade and she looked at the vial warily. "It's not actually made with-"
"No. Though after all you've been through, I'm not sure why that of all things would disgust you. It's made from bark shavings."
Valkyrie didn't look too convinced, and replaced the vial on China's desk, standing up.
"Can I..?"
"Of course."
Valkyrie tapped the symbols under the now-open clasps of her tunic, skin flowing up to her face and displacing what was already there, giving it the air of wrinkles on the skin of milk. It turned the face of a youthful woman just shy of twenty to someone who should have rightly been facing a midlife crisis.
Valkyrie looked in a nearby mirror. "Perfect. God, is this what I'd really have looked like? I guess it wouldn't have come on as suddenly…" She distractedly pulled at her newly-acquired crow's feet. "How long will it last?"
"The more often you can turn it off the more it can recharge, even if it's only for a minute at a time. As it is… I've improved it, massively. Take bathroom breaks as often as you can and it should be fine. It's far more complicated than you'll ever know, but it doesn't take as much raw power as Skulduggery or Ghastly's."
Valkryrie smiled again. China liked to think that it was her presence alone than led to her smiling, these days - but she knew the reality was that most smiles were reserved for her partner, Skulduggery. Also, she seemed to be poking at her face again, and China had to concede that the expression currently gracing her now- baggy features was probably at least due in part to curiosity at her fake mortal face.
China had concocted it one day when she'd overheard a conversation between Valkrie and her mother regarding cosmetics of some stripe or other - China could have saved everyone grief by informing her mother of the obvious fact that her daughter didn't see the need to wear makeup other than at state functions, but instead she had planned and sketched until she'd come up with a concrete design for a facade that would approximate what Valkyrie's face would look like if her body's ageing process hadn't been stopped in its tracks by the sheer amount of Ancient magic flowing through her veins.
Looking back at Valkyrie, China noticed that she was still poking at her face like a zombie, and suppressed a sigh. "I'll be over in Haggard in an hour or so. Do try not to break your face."
Valkyrie nodded, and left. China didn't believe in gaudy repetitions of meaningless thanks, and the book that Valkyrie had slipped onto her desk whilst she had been occupied sharpening tools was more than enough, even if she hadn't mentioned her gratitude earlier. China didn't like to think that she was a woman who could be bought or placated easily, but also didn't like to admit to herself that she could be swayed by Miss Cain to domestic acts of kindness and little chats, or that she seemed nowadays to almost know China better than she knew herself. China comforted herself with the thought that after half a millennium, one could be permitted a few lapses into sentimentality.
Valkyrie stood outside her parent's house in Haggard, right hand itching absentmindedly at the still-tender marks on her clavicle. It was a nice evening in March, just on the crisp side of temperate, and the dusky sky leant the suburban street a monochrome look which looked oddly morbid. She raised her hand to knock at the wood, and was greeted by her mother's happy and lined face, smiling at her.
"Stephanie, come in! You're perfectly on time, dear."
"Maybe this is when he have to accept that Steph's finally grown up - when she starts arriving to things without being fashionably late," a voice floated through from the dining room. Melissa Edgely shook her head, face still beaming. "Des, come in and say hello! You need to stop working, now, our favourite daughter's come to visit!"
Desmond Edgely appeared through the doorway, waiting until Valkyrie had hung her coat up on the guesthook and stepped through into the course proper before enveloping her in a hug. Valkyrie relaxed into it, careful not to hug him too strongly - he was coming up to sixty, and she was a trained fighter with the body of a woman in their physical prime - but her parents didn't know that. She held her father's shoulders, looking almost eye to eye at him and smiling herself. "I thought she was at university?" he asked Melissa, mock annoyance in his voice even as a grin threatened to split his face ear to ear and his eyes glinted. "Who's this stranger in my house?"
Valkyrie stepped back before answering him. "So you didn't order this pizza? Damn, I'll just… Go to… The next house or something…" She hadn't the heart to finish off that joke, and it fell a little flat, making things between the three of them awkward for a moment before Melissa's face brightened once more and she shooed Valkyrie and her father back into the dining room. It was yet another reminder about how close her father and she had once been, and how far away - not just geographically - Valkryie had been away from them lately.
"When's China arriving? You know, that's such an odd stage name. A little morbid - and so is that Bespoke man's! I mean, they're very apt, but don't you find it a little awkward when you have to sign the ol' business forms with Stephanie Edgely?"
"Surely the Edgely name is interesting enough on it's own, right, Stephanie? First Gordon, now you - Alice and Des'll be breaking world records next!" She laughed. "Come to the kitchen, Stephanie; I can get you some wine, and Des can clear up his horrible records and such."
Valkyrie followed her, just in time to hear a grumbled "Without these horrible records you wouldn't have any nice wine, woman, even if you're the only one who can pick it" from her dad's side of the room.
The kitchen had hardly changed since Valkryie had moved out, and she had noticed only minimal things that were different each time she had visited since; the medicine cabinet had more bottles in it, the food was healthier, and since her younger sister had gone to uni things like cereals and other junk food had disappeared altogether. As if the absence of the two girls had given her parents more freedom, their belongings seemed to encroach on all the surfaces more, giving the impression that their tidy family home had only been kept up for the sake of their live-in daughters.
Sweeping aside a small stack of torn-out crosswords that her mother saved - ostensibly for Valkyrie, who said that they were for she, China and Ghastly to wile away hours at meetings, but really for Valkyrie to take home to Skulduggery - her mother took two wine glasses out from the cupboard used for 'posh glassware' and poured white wine from an already-opened bottle on the countertop, stopping two thirds of the way through filling one and topping it up with water, which she took for herself, passing the full glass to Valkyrie.
Melissa replaced the bottle where she'd found it and leant against the counter by the oven, smiling again as she sipped from her diluted wine - it was a tired smile, pretty much the default expression of her parents nowadays, whose happy life was in sixth decade and without two daughters to raise consisted of muddling along like any other, normal older couple.
Valkyrie felt her face grow hot, and prickle peculiarly and after a little chatter about her job — what the latest order was, how working for a bigshot textiles company was working out; a cover story for Valkyrie's long term estrangement and irregular family visits, China and Ghastly posed from time to time as her partners and co-workers in the big company that Valkyrie supposedly worked at, providing the style, fashion know how and generally all the expertise Valkyrie herself actually lacked — excused herself, guessing that the facade was in need of a touch up and a reboot. Whilst she checked how she looked, marvelling at how the skin flowed away from her subtly lined face, like paper crumpling in reverse as well as using the loo, washing her hands and reactivating the facade before walking back into the kitchen, her parents seemed to have finished preparations for the small dinner. When she stepped out of the downstairs bathroom, a delicious smell wafted through the air and she glimpsed a debris-free dining room table through the open door, cutlery laid out neatly and the wine plus two extra glasses placed in the middle. Her mother straightened up from where she had been checking the oven when she noticed her.
"We've got another ten minutes or so, before the dinner's ready to be served. You haven't gone on any diet fads recently, have you? It's only roast chicken, I'm afraid."
"What? No, of course I haven't. I love chicken, that's fine! Why did you ask?"
"You just look well, is all, I wasn't insinuating anything-"
"Yes, you were. Don't listen to her, Valkyrie, she doesn't love you as much as I do." Her father walked through, an extra set of cutlery in his hands. He'd forgotten that Alison wouldn't be joining them, apparently.
A scowl appeared on her mother's face. "Don't eavesdrop, Des, it's rude. And could you put this out on the table - that's it, I'll put these knives and forks back." She gestured toward Valkyrie's father and exchanged her small jug of flowers for his spare set of cutlery. Valkyrie felt vaguely guilty for not helping them earlier, but it was a bit too late now. She settled for gathering up her and her mother's glasses of wine and putting them at the top of their places in the dining room, immediately noticing how warm the room was. Even though the kitchen had an oven in it, Valkyrie's parents always seemed to keep the living room, bedrooms and dining room extra toasty, no matter what the weather - it was enough to give Valkyrie chilblains walking from one place in the house to another, but she supposed they were getting older, and she was only visiting for a few hours anyway. Instead she shouldered off her leather jacket and walked back out to the corridor with the guest hooks, going to put it there with her coat. If she got cold, she could always use her magic to keep her warm, anyway.