Nobody had spoken for at least three minutes.

Ghastly Bespoke and Tanith Low were still staring at her in disbelief. Ghastly, unlike Tanith, had remembered some ounce of common courtesy and closed his mouth at least. Tanith was gawping silently in full-blown shock, her blonde hair flopped around her shoulders as though mimicking her baffled expression.

The only person Valkyrie did not dare look at was Skulduggery Pleasant. The man was standing to her right, just out of her field of vision in the silent sitting-room. He hadn't said a word since he'd entered and found his assistant curled up on his sofa, wearing his hat and jacket and hugging a pair of his shoes.

Valkyrie chewed up a few excuses in her mind, rejecting each as unlikely or embarrassing. The silence was approaching four minutes and Valkyrie was about to open her mouth with an unknown explanation, when Tanith suddenly broke the stifling silence.

She burst out laughing.

"Val!" she shrieked. "Seriously, there are other types of comfort blankets than men's shoes." She doubled over in hysterics and Valkyrie couldn't help grinning too, though her cheeks were still beetroot.

She chucked a shoe at Tanith, which bounced off without causing damage and the two girls jumped into a session of mock-sparring, made difficult by the fact that they kept doubling over with mirth and clutching each other and wiping their eyes. The hat bounced away in the flurry and Valkyrie forgot about it.

Ghastly raised his eyebrows at this sudden and abrupt change of mood, and looked around for Skulduggery, but he had already left the room.

The tailor found his friend in the room next door staring intently at the hat as though it was the most fascinating thing on the planet. Skulduggery's head was bare, revealing the white of his skull and the bones in his neck. His back was oddly stiff.

Ghastly cleared his throat, and only spoke when Skulduggery said nothing.

"I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it. She was cold... er, probably"

Skulduggery looked around and plopped his hat back onto its rightful place atop his head.

"I see."

"She's a kid."

"I know that."

"She wouldn't..."

"I know. I'm a role-model." He glanced at a watch that didn't exist on his skeletal arm. "I'm also a late one. Do excuse me." And with that he gently pushed past Ghastly and headed back the way they had come. Ghastly followed more slowly.

"Come on, Valkyrie. Hero time again."

Ghastly watched as Valkyrie pushed herself off the sofa and followed Skulduggery out the front door. She didn't say a word.

Ghastly turned to Tanith.

"What do you think?" he asked.

Tanith looked up and shrugged. "She's a girl. She wants security."

Ghastly straightened his jacket and adjusted the scissors in his belt.

"What if..."

"Come on, Ghast! You can't possibly think she could be in love?"

"...The likelihood is pretty low, I'll admit."

"She's not stupid. She's just lost in a world of magic and menace. She wouldn't be so daft as to fall in love with a living skeleton."

"So..." said Skulduggery at last. Valkyrie breathed a sigh of relief; the silence had been getting to her.

"Mm?" She still couldn't look at him. She instead watched the trees and cars zip past as they drove through the busy roads leading away from Haggard. Skulduggery drove the flashy Bently excellently. She couldn't help noticing.

"Care to explain?" Skulduggery's tone was calm. Valkyrie almost believed that he wasn't fazed in the slightest.

"Explain what?"

"The hat, the jacket... the shoes."

Valkyrie shrugged, though her face was flushing and her hands trembling slightly. "They are nice shoes."

"That they are."

They drove on in silence for a while, until Skulduggery suddenly swerved into a lay-by and juddered to a halt. Valkyrie was flung sideways and she narrowly avoided crashing into Skulduggery by gripping her seat.

She righted herself and turned to demand an explanation.

Something made her stop. Her breath hitched in her throat and she shut her mouth. Skulduggery was sat hunched forward with his head against the steering wheel and his hands gripping it loosely. With his usual disguise: large-rimmed hat, fuzzy wig, sunglasses and scarf, Valkyrie was jolted into thinking of him as not undead, but living. Alive and vulnerable and human.

"Skul..?"

"You do realise," he said after a pause. "I am dead."

"I know that."

"A skeleton."

"Right."

Skulduggery looked up at her and adjusted his hat. "As long as we're clear on that."

"Of course. Why wouldn't we be?"

His face didn't change, of course it didn't; he merely reached up and flipped his hat onto Valkyrie's head.

"You never do anything I tell you."

"That's what makes me so brilliant," she replied, grinning.