The town hadn't changed at all, Valkyrie realized as they drove through Haggard. She saw more than one familiar face, and very few new ones, out the window of the Bentley. She even saw Hannah Foley near the edge of town. She was walking with a man Valkyrie assumed was her husband and had a baby in a stroller. Hannah wasn't the first classmate Valkyrie had seen that was now married, she was the fourth—the second who now had a kid.
"Ugh," Valkyrie sighed, leaning her head back against the seat. "I'm so old."
Skulduggery looked over at her and tilted his head.
"Everyone I went to school with is grown up now. They're getting married and having kids and doing all these adult things and it's weird," she explained.
"Well, you can't have expected them not to change while you were gone. Five years is quite a long time, especially to mortals," he said as they drove past the city limits.
"I know, but seeing Alice older was one thing—I mean, it was still a bit of a shock, but I was expecting it. I didn't even think about what everyone else was going to look like when I got back."
"Ah," he said. "I see."
Skulduggery parked the Bentley at a park that Valkyrie had been to once or twice when she was younger in a nearby town. They took care of the Mevolent follower, a middle aged man in raggedy clothes, and were on the road again with the man in the back seat within thirty minutes.
"The Faceless Ones will return! Then you'll be sorry!" he proclaimed.
"Give it a rest, John," Valkyrie said, a bit annoyed with all his proclamations. In the five minutes they had been in the car, he had already made about twenty of them. "Where to next?" she asked Skulduggery trying to ignore the man in the back seat as he continued to mutter to himself.
"The Sanctuary to drop off John," he told her. She frowned realizing she didn't even know where the Sanctuary was now.
"Where is the Sanctuary these days?" she asked.
"You'll see."
"You'll see when the Faceless Ones return!" shouted John.
"Shut up, John," they said in unison.
"What do you mean, 'You'll see'?" Valkyrie asked Skulduggery
"I mean, you'll see," he said. "Patience is a virtue, Valkyrie."
"I hate it when you say that," she sighed in annoyance, and watched the landscape zoom by outside. Ten minutes and many proclamations later they entered Dublin. They turned down a familiar street and she realized where the Sanctuary might be.
"No," she breathed
"A couple years ago, they rebuilt the wax museum," Skulduggery explained. "And when they did, the council decided to rebuild something else."
"Oh my God," was all she could say.
Skulduggery pulled into the parking lot of the museum and she saw school children walking inside, evidently on a field trip. They got out of the car, Skulduggery wrapping his scarf around his jaw and warning John not to run away, since they had to take off his handcuffs to avoid suspicion. Skulduggery bought three tickets for the museum and they went inside.
They neared the new, but familiar, Phil Lynott figure, and a group of tourists were scattered around the area. Valkyrie and Skulduggery pretended to be interested in the figures as they waited. Luckily, a tour guide came along and lead the group away.
"Would you like to do the honors?" he asked when the area was clear. Valkyrie smiled and began sliding her hand around the wall until she found the switch. With a faint click, the wall opened and they walked in.
"Not that I didn't like the Sanctuary being in Dublin or anything," she said as they walked through the halls that looked essentially the same as they had before Davina Marr had destroyed them. "But you would think they would be able to figure out an easier way to open the entrance after all this time."
"Are you criticizing the Council?" said a familiar voice behind her and she turned around.
"China," Valkyrie beamed when she saw the woman standing there.
"Valkyrie Cain," China remarked with her usual calm demeanor, striding towards them. "I heard you were back in the country."
"Yeah, I am," is all she said. China looked nearly the same as she had five years ago. The same raven black hair and beautiful blue eyes, though she looked more tired, which Valkyrie supposed was due to the fact that she was now running a Sanctuary.
"It's good to see you again," China added. "Who is this you have with you?" she wondered, looking at the man's grubby clothes with a faint look of disgust.
"This is John," Skulduggery told her. "Say 'hello' John,"
"You will regret not accepting the Faceless Ones! Mevolent was smart! He accepted them!" John proclaimed.
"I see," China said simply. "Cleavers." She directed two of them forward with a flick of her finger in John's direction. The gray clad soldiers took hold of John's arms and lead him away down an adjoining hall, past a blonde woman walking towards them, looking at a folder in her hands. When the woman looked up at China and saw Valkyrie standing next to her, she paused for a moment, staring at Valkyrie like she was a ghost, before sprinting forward and wrapping Valkyrie in a hug.
"Val!" Tanith Low exclaimed before letting Valkyrie go.
"Tanith," Valkyrie said. "It's so good to see you!"
"It's good to see me? It's good to see you! For all I knew I was never going to see you again."
Valkyrie winced. "Yeah, sorry about that. I just needed to get away, but I'm back now."
"Good," Tanith said sounding relieved. They both stood there for a moment smiling at each other.
"What's that?" China asked pointing to the file folder in Tanith's hand.
"Oh," Tanith said, looking down at it. "I almost forgot. This is why I was looking for you. It's a file on Kenny Dune." She handed it to China, who opened it up and skimmed through the pages.
"Thank you," China said. "I should go review this. It was nice to see you again Valkyrie." With a wave goodbye, she walked off down a hall in the opposite direction that the cleavers had gone.
Valkyrie turned to Tanith. "Why were you bringing her a file? That seems like something an Elder would do."
"Well, it is something an Elder would do because I'm a part-time Elder," Tanith admitted with a shrug.
Valkyrie frowned. "Part-time?"
"No one who was trusted and respected enough to be an Elder after the war was willing to commit," Skulduggery explained. "So, the sorcerers of the Sanctuary came to a compromise."
"They decided the Council would be composed of seven mages, including the Grand Mage, so no one had to commit to full time and could, at least in part, keep up their other jobs. For the most part, we just have to be here for votes and things like this," Tanith elaborated. "At first, it was meant to be temporary, but after a while we realized it worked pretty well, so we kept it." Tanith shrugged.
"And the other Sanctuaries don't mind?" Valkyrie asked.
"I think they're just happy that we're functioning at all after everything that happened," Tanith admitted. "They don't really care how."
"Wow," Valkyrie said. "So, who are the Elders?"
"Myself, Dexter Vex," Tanith began listing off the names on her fingers. "Geoffrey Scrutinous, Cassandra, some young bloke whose name I still don't know, and Skulduggery."
Valkyrie slowly turned on her heel to face Skulduggery, her mouth forming an O shape.
"Oh. My. God," she said, half-surprised, half-excited.
"Yes, yes, I know," Skulduggery said, trying to brush it off.
"You. An Elder. Do I have to call you Elder Pleasant from now on?" She grinned. Excited. She was definitely excited. She was going to make fun of him so much for this.
"Don't call me that," he said seriously.
"Oh, I'm sorry Elder Pleasant. What would you like me to call you?" she mocked.
He turned to Tanith. "Why did you have to tell her that?" he complained with a annoyed sigh.
"You're the one who agreed to be an Elder. You should have known she would come back and find out," Tanith said.
"Yes, but I figured by then I would have been kicked off the council," he explained.
"For what?" Valkyrie asked. "Being too elderly." Both her and Tanith broke into uncontrollable laughter.
"Ha ha," he said dryly. "Make fun of the skeleton."
"It's just so easy though, Elder Pleasant," Valkyrie said making them both laugh again.
"Can we focus on more important things? Did you say that file was on Kenny Dune?" Skulduggery asked as their laughs died out, effectively changing the topic and bringing them back to focus.
"Yeah," Tanith said, wiping a tear of laughter from her eye. "He's been stirring up some trouble again."
"Wait," said Valkyrie. "That's the guy who gave my parents that flash drive." That flash drive was the reason her parents found out about magic. It was the reason they knew about her other life.
"Recently, he's being trying to make his documentary again," Tanith told them. "He's been trying to film sorcerers and he wants to find the Sanctuary. He knows it's in the museum, but he hasn't figured out how to get in yet, but he's been looking around for it the past few days."
Skulduggery thought for a moment before turning to Valkrie.
"Maybe it's time for Detective Inspector Me to pay Mr. Dune a visit," he said.
