A/N: This story is complete in four chapters; the next chapters will be posted as soon as I get them back from my wonderful beta readers. Thanks to refya and JunoMagic for betaing this for me!

Disclaimer: Characters, settings, or basically anything you recognise are not mine. They belong to the amazing Derek Landy. I make no money from this. I didn't even come up with the title - that has been nicked from the Rolling Stones song by the same name.

Dancing With Mr D

Chapter 1

Valkyrie Cain was standing at the very edge of the pier, her back turned to the road. Her arms were crossed and the wind played with her hair. The waves, deceptively calm and smooth in the distance, were kicking against the pier. She could feel the vibrations even through the soles of her boots.

She heard a car approach, then stop. Footsteps came closer, their rhythm familiar to her ears.

"I've been thinking about Tanith," she said when she knew he was close enough to hear her. She still didn't turn around. He wasn't going to like what she had to say. "And I think I know what to do."

"Valkyrie…" Skulduggery's voice was soft. "We've been over this before."

"Yes, we have. And I've been reading enough about this to know that there is no way to push the Remnant out of a living host after they've been possessed for so long. A living host, Skulduggery. That's what they all specify. You know it as well as I do – the Remnant cannot survive in a dead body."

Skulduggery was silent for a moment.

"No." He stepped closer, until he was facing Valkyrie. "I know what you're saying and no, we're not going to do that."

"I don't mean that we should kill Tanith."

"I know what you mean. You're thinking about Nye. And I'm saying no."

Valkyrie sighed. "I wasn't thinking about Nye, actually. I have no more desire to have anything further to do with Nye than you do. I was just thinking that… I died when I stepped into the Dullahan's carriage." She looked up at Skulduggery. "I was quite dead before I even reached Nye."

"No."

"Just think about it! All we'd need to do is to get Tanith on board the Coach-a-Bowers, and the Remnant would be forced out. And everyone in the carriage is dead – even if the Remnant survived, somehow, it wouldn't have a new host to cling to. We wouldn't be putting anyone else in danger."

"No."

Valkyrie rolled her eyes. "I remember when you used to dazzle me with your vocabulary. What's happened to it today?"

Skulduggery pushed his hands deeper into the pockets of his long coat and gazed at the sea. "I'm saying no because it's something I've thought about. Months ago, in fact. It was one of the options I considered first, right after it happened. And I don't think it's a good idea."

"Why not? As plans go, this one sounds quite decent. Better than most we've usually had."

"It's too risky. I've cheated death before. You've been dead and came back. People don't get this kind of luck more than once in their life, Valkyrie. If we were to go with Tanith, and we really would need to accompany her, there's no guarantee that we would be allowed to walk away unharmed or alive – or as alive as either of us can be considered to be."

Valkyrie sighed. Skulduggery was a lot of things, but no one could ever have mistaken him for a coward. There had to be a way to get through to him.

"So you're not willing to take the risk. I know you've been acting different since Lord Vile's return, but… How many times has Tanith risked her life for you or me? She was there for me, every step of the way, when you were gone and I had to find a way to get that portal opened. Without her, you would still be there."

"A fair point," Skulduggery admitted. "But it's still too risky. Not everyone who has been possessed for even a few hours has survived. There's a good chance that the Remnant has become so tightly fused with Tanith's mind that forcing it out will kill her. Not kill her temporarily but for good."

Valkyrie kicked at a pebble, watching as it hit the waves and wobbled for a moment before sinking.

"I'll do it on my own, then. I owe it to Tanith to try. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. The Tanith I know would never want to live the rest of her life as that— that thing inside her. And if I die, well… At least that spares the world from Darquesse."

"Don't be silly."

He looked as expressionless as always, but something in the way he tilted his head told Valkyrie that she had won. This had been almost too easy. She wondered idly whether he'd only argued against her plan to make sure that she'd considered it from all angles.

She was sure they hadn't even begun to scratch the surface, never mind covering all the angles, but that didn't matter. She had a plan, and she had Skulduggery at her side, and Tanith would be saved.

xXx

"Arrangements have to be made," Skulduggery said, leaning against a bookcase in Gordon's study. "For most people, the journey in the Dullahan's carriage is final. There is no return. When you were taken to Nye, there was a purpose to your journey – a purpose other than simply dying. If you haven't arranged it beforehand, I don't think there is necessarily a way back to this world."

Valkyrie nodded. "Nye had some sort of deal with the Dullahan, I think. Nye spoke to him, promised that it wouldn't keep me there. I assume that was because I was there before my time."

"What we need to do first is to find out whether the Dullahan always delivers the dead to Nye," Skulduggery continued. "You may be right and we won't need to meet it, and I dearly hope we won't, but – there is research to be done first. If the dead get taken somewhere else as well, then where? And is there a way back? Or is Nye's warehouse the only place in between our world and death?"

"I still think we should just ask Gordon," Valkyrie said. "He might not be happy about the plan, but I've been in mortal danger before. And we need all the knowledge we can get."

"But where's the fun in it if we simply ask him without even trying to do some research first, to find out the answers on our own?"

"Research and fun shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence," Valkyrie muttered. She favoured the direct approach. Asking her dead uncle's echo had always been the most convenient way of finding things out. "Besides, your idea of research is going to China's library and asking her. I don't see how that's any different."

"China is much prettier than Gordon."

Valkyrie stuck her tongue out at him. Childish, perhaps, but satisfying.

"We can go to the library and look around first," Skulduggery offered. "And then we can come back here and ask Gordon. I don't think we should ask China anything too obvious anyway, although if I do the asking, it should be safe."

"Are you going to tell Ghastly?"

Skulduggery shrugged lightly. "I have to, I think. Some of it anyway. We might need his help in capturing Tanith. How are we going to do that, by the way? "

Valkyrie sighed. "I don't know yet. But finding her should be easy enough. We just have to wait until she decides to drop by my home to taunt me again."

"It would be much easier if she had a schedule for those visits," Skulduggery said. "Tuesday nights, every other week, for example. But if she comes by again unannounced… I don't think it would be a good idea for you to try and take her down on your own, especially when Sanguine is likely to lurk close by."

Valkyrie had to admit that Skulduggery was right. As much as she missed training with Tanith, her continued lessons with Skulduggery had made sure she was stronger and faster than ever, but she couldn't even begin to expect to take Tanith down in a fight. And she didn't want to hurt Tanith – while Tanith, or rather the Remnant in her, would have no such qualms about hurting her.

"We might be able to organise some sort of ambush," Skulduggery said. "Ghastly will need to be involved anyway. He wouldn't forgive either of us if we went ahead with this without his knowledge and got ourselves or Tanith killed."

Valkyrie nodded. Again, Skulduggery had a point.

"He'll be a lot of help," Skulduggery added. "The difficulty will be in convincing him not to accompany us all the way to death and back."

"Yeah. I mean, I'd love to have him with us, but he might realise I've been through this particular experience before, and…"

"…and you don't want him to know you've had your name sealed, or that, indeed, you know your true name."

"That's pretty much it, yes."

"You haven't told Fletcher either, have you?"

"No." Telling Fletcher was not something Valkyrie planned to do any time soon. Her relationship with Fletcher was currently the only light-hearted, fun, easy thing in her life, and informing her boyfriend that she might turn into the embodiment of evil, bent on destroying the world, was not something she wanted to do. No matter how guilty she sometimes felt, keeping something of this magnitude from him.

Skulduggery nodded. "Fair enough. I should probably tell you that the longer you keep this from him, the worse the possible consequences – but I can certainly see why you don't want to tell him. I'm glad you told me, though."

Valkyrie smiled. "I'm glad, too. Not that I could have kept it from you for much longer anyway. You can always tell when something's wrong, it seems."

"So, we cannot involve Fletcher in the whole plan either," Skulduggery mused. "And the less China knows, the better. That leaves just you and me."

A few steps took Skulduggery across the room, to another bookcase. As he browsed the titles, he said, his tone carefully casual: "You know, of course, that Tanith knows about Darquesse. I don't mean the Remnant in Tanith, but Tanith herself. She found out shortly before she was possessed."

Valkyrie blanched. This was not something that had occurred to her, and she'd never asked for details of what had happened while the Remnant was inside her.

"And another thing – Sanguine knows, too. I can only assume that so far, it's suited him not to spread the word around. If we manage to save Tanith – or even if we don't, but succeed in taking her away from Sanguine…"

"Do you think Tanith will remember anything?"

Skulduggery shrugged. "There is no way to know. In most of the documented cases, the possessed people don't remember anything of the time they were possessed – and sometimes also not much from the time immediately preceding the possession. You are an obvious exception, but then, you also managed to force the Remnant out on your own. But every such case deals with short-term possession. With Tanith… Well. The Remnant has spent such a long time with her that even if your plan, crazy and impossible as it is, works, she may remember everything. Or nothing at all."

"If she does remember, I don't think she'd tell anyone." Valkyrie was sure of that. Almost.

"She might not. What about Sanguine, though?"

"Would anyone believe Sanguine?"

"Good question. Maybe not. But it's something I suggest you keep in mind."

xXx

Coming up with a plan to capture Tanith was the easy part. Skulduggery's suggestion was for him and Ghastly to take turns in keeping watch over Valkyrie's home until the next time Tanith showed up again, and then overpower Tanith, alert Fletcher to teleport in, take Tanith to a secured and bound room in Ghastly's basement and teleport out again.

Neither Ghastly nor Fletcher knew about the plan yet, but Valkyrie had no doubt that they would agree to help. The only problem would be keeping the rest of the plan from them, but they'd cross that hurdle once they came to it.

The rest of the planning wasn't nearly as straightforward.

"It's not really my area of expertise," admitted Echo-Gordon when Skulduggery finally agreed to ask him. "I didn't even know about Doctor Nye – and I must say, I'm very sad Gordon never came across him in his research! Can you imagine what a brilliant tale of horror I – he – could have written, had he known about him? Cutting people up and removing their innards, having the gutless dead walk around with their hearts in plastic bags… Oh, the potential that there would have been!"

Valkyrie winced. Telling Echo-Gordon about her ordeal in detail had not been the best idea.

Skulduggery's private inquiries had yielded no results either, as he admitted, slumping into his favourite armchair after yet another day of fruitless research.

"Even the people who should know are keeping their mouths shut," he grumbled. "I tried to, ah, persuade some of them to talk, but charm didn't work. Neither did blackmail nor direct threats. Either they really didn't know, or they're too afraid to talk about it."

China had informed them that to the best of her knowledge, while Nye's warehouse was indeed not the Dullahan's only destination, it was the only place where one could just step outside and live again. She'd sent Valkyrie a curious look, which she had tried to ignore, but she had an uncomfortable feeling that China was too close to guessing the truth. At least the truth about Valkyrie having her name sealed, if not the truth about the name itself.

Every book they'd come across said the same.

Valkyrie stared into her mug of tea, which had long since gone cold. The signs were clear: they would have to go through Nye's warehouse again. No other way about it.

"It's not too late to change your mind." There was a hint of concern in Skulduggery's voice.

"No." She'd bested Nye before, and she'd been on her own then. With Skulduggery at her side, she didn't have to worry. Did she?

"Very well."

Skulduggery got up and went to a chest of drawers. "There is something I promised to give you a while ago, and never did. It may be time I did something about that."

"My Christmas present?" She hadn't asked about it again, and with everything that had happened immediately after Christmas, it had really slipped her mind for a while, but not getting a present from him after everything she'd been through had hurt. Not that she'd told him that.

Skulduggery hesitated. "Well, I'd rather call it your 17th of July present."

"That's today."

"Indeed it is."

"Why is today so special that I should get a present?"

"It's a lovely, sunny day."

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. Skulduggery tilted his head. "Do you want your present or not?"

"That depends on the present. Is it something I'd like?"

"I think so."

"Okay then."

Valkyrie was curious. She was almost certain that this was the Christmas present she hadn't got. She wondered what made Skulduggery change his mind (and not just wait for the next Christmas).

The package that Skulduggery picked out from the drawer was small and nondescript in shape, looking mostly like a short tube of some sort.

And it was wrapped in paper with little snowmen on it.

She rolled her eyes and took the package from Skulduggery's outstretched hand. It was heavy; heavier than it had looked.

She tore off the paper.

"Is this…?"

"It's a stick." Skulduggery's voice was smug.

"A stick."

"A stick. I promised you a stick, and here it is."

Valkyrie eyed the grey tube doubtfully. "It's a very short stick."

Skulduggery took the tube from her, held it horizontally and pressed a slight indentation in the middle of it. A moment of blur later, he was holding a long staff, both ends tapering off gradually.

"Wow."

"I know. My presents are always amazing."

Valkyrie took the staff and weighed it in her hand. It was perfectly balanced, nice and sturdy. A real weapon. She jabbed Skulduggery lightly on the arm with it.

"Ordinarily I'd say I hate you, and mean it, but this is amazing. Thank you."

"If there is any kind of trouble ahead… You said elemental magic didn't work there. I know you have your ring, but it would make me feel better to know that Necromancy wasn't the only thing you'd have to rely on. It's too dangerous, using death magic in the realm of death itself."

Valkyrie shrugged. Talking about her Necromancy with Skulduggery still made her uncomfortable. She knew he had a point, but… In any case, having an extra weapon would certainly be handy, at other times as well.

"You need to practice using it," Skulduggery said. "We can start with the training today, if you wish."

"You can use one of these?"

"Of course I can."

She grinned, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. In the grand scale of things, it may have been just a tiny matter, but Skulduggery's thoughtfulness combined with something as tangible as the staff… She just knew that their plan really would work, and that they'd come out alive.

She found the button to collapse the staff again and tucked it inside her jacket. "I'm looking forward to using this."