RIPPLING POOL: CHAPTER THREE

His home was not all that big, but then again, he did not require much space. The only distinguishing features from most other apartments were these:

A: No T.V., no computer, and no personal objects lying around. If you checked the closet, there were two other things inside: A spare suit and a nearly empty suitcase lying on the floor. If you checked the suitcase you would find an old-fashioned gun, ammo for said weapon, two odd black tubes with rings on the end, and a piece of paper that was folded in half. The piece of paper would be written in what looked like Latin… But it couldn't be Latin. Surely not.

B: The kitchen was empty, no food in the fridge or on the shelves. The dining room table was covered in papers, with no evidence as to sitting place for eating. The bed was not slept in, ever. If you looked closely, it appeared as if someone had been lying on the covers, not in them.

C: The bookshelf was full of books, and only five were in English. One of which happened to be an Edgley book, The Vanishing Night. The others were in Spanish, German, and what appeared at first glance to be Greek- but that wasn't possible, since no one spoke it anymore, right?

D: A skeleton was in residence.

Skulduggery Pleasant was standing, back to the paper-covered table, staring out of the window. Fifth story, overlooking a quiet street in the part of town that nobody looked up in, and if anyone saw him they would know who he was. After all, China's library was just down the street.

His jacket was thrown over a chair, his hat and scarf hanging from a hook in the wall. Deep shadows cast by the setting sun twisted their images into things almost out of a painting.

…He had never really appreciated art (unless it was of him). Death has a way of re-prioritizing your interests.

Skulduggery sighed. 'Maybe I shouldn't have brought Valkyrie today. Echo looked… uncomfortable. And analytical.' He knew from experience that an uncomfortable and analytical Echo drew bad conclusions that almost always ended up being true.

Like, for instance, the day she figured out that Alison was pregnant. She had looked uncomfortable and analytical the day Alison said she didn't really want to hire a nursemaid, and what happened?

Echo had practically raised the kid. Sadly, it ended up being exactly what Alison wanted.

'And me, too. I didn't want an infant bawling all over when I was only 40 either.'

Skulduggery's lips would have twisted into a half-grin while he turned towards the door. He couldn't wait to hear what Echo thought about his snarky teenage assistant.

The car left, driving by her house and down the street, out of her vision, out of her-

No, not out of her life. She knew Skulduggery well enough to know that he would be back within a week, maybe even tomorrow. That didn't bother her.

But what bothered her was so great that a gnat hovered inches from her head, but she ignored it. Breathing slightly hard, the only outward sign of her adrenaline rush, she stared out of the window and tried to force her thoughts into a shape that made sense. It hurt, and the pain infuriated her, because it would not go away. She knew better then to drown it in liquor (she had done that once, and the results had been… bad.), and sleeping pills made her head ache when she woke up.

So, she sat in a comfortable chair by the window, enjoying the chill from the glass in the hot day, and thought.

For thirty minutes she thought, and only came up with this equation:

Skulduggery.

Plus student.

Equals…?

She couldn't make sense of it! Her face looked blank, pale, and slightly stoned; and for once it reflected what was inside: She did not know where to begin! Her experience when it came to Skulduggery and children was almost nil, and it had been a very long time since Penelope…

A blank came over her again, and she noticed half-heartedly that the gnat had landed an inch from her arm where it rested on the windowsill. She knew that Penelope was important now, and waited for her subconscious to throw her a bone- it must have affected her too, whatever it was, if she had her thoughts driven continuously over the past half-hour towards her dead niece.

Niece.

Niece, as in Skulduggery's and Alison's daughter.

Echo felt like an idiot, above all the other emotions that suddenly choked her. Penelope, of course! Valkyrie was almost exactly like her dead kin in personality.

New trains of thought opened up, hundreds at a time, each splitting off in all kinds of new directions, turning the dull ache from before into a sudden and splitting migraine. Her head thunked down on her arm, and the gnat took off, buffered by the sudden wind.

"Owwww…" She muttered, displeased by the rush of feelings that crippled her brain. She was reminded of the past times Skulduggery had caught up to her, and the fact that this happened almost every time. Echo sighed, acknowledging the fact that her life revolved completely and totally around Skulduggery. After all, he was the only person she had ever loved as anything other then kin.

Now, if she could make it so that it didn't mess with her mind whenever he met someone knew, she would be getting somewhere.

Silently cursing the Skeleton for ruining her day (and probably her week, based on past experiences), she descended into herself.

Surrounded by her feelings, she whispered a single question out-loud, surrounded by the dull ache of her headache and the knowledge that her brain would feel as if it was swelling outside her brain for several more hours before she sorted herself out. "What do I feel?"

The first thought was jealousy. Her time with him, as little as it was, now had to be divided between herself and Skulduggery. Bad, bad Echo! She had no right to be jealous of the girl that reminded him- and her, now that she thought of it- of Penelope.

The second stirring was dread, and she dealt with that the same way- Skulduggery had remained the same way for far too long, growing used to patterns. A new source in his life was a good thing, and even if it made it harder for her to talk to him again, it was worth the pain. It was worth it, all of it.

Batting off all the new complications to her life, she dropped deeper into herself.

When she opened her eyes, the window outside was dark, and her back ached from sleeping seated in a chair by the window, bent over at the waist. She was still leaning against it, and winced when she tried to move. Her arm was stinging, which was what she got for falling asleep absolving herself.

It was an odd practice, but it was necessary for her: If she held onto all her negative emotions that had built up over the years, she would have gone insane on everyone long ago. It had gotten to the point where she was half-convinced she was OCD: It became almost painful to go for too long without reassuring herself and removing any questions from her mind, banishing bad thoughts, and making herself into as close of a perfect person she could get to.

She knew she was far from perfect, but… Somehow, she knew that it was her perfection that made her… her! After so many years, anything less was a slight. She knew she could only depend on others for so much, and that they depended on her to lift impossible weights and see right through obstacles that had other people stumped.

It was her mask: The way she smiled and listened to people that earned their respect, the way she knew what to do from her endless years of experience that got their trust, the way she got mad at opportune moments that got everyone else to dance to her tune. She was too well practiced to let anything slip; so many people took her perfection at face value. In an odd way, everything she did was calculated for effect. Most people did not even notice she was manipulating them if she wore her 'I'm but an innocent girly-girl!' face to deal with them.

She sighed, the 'light-and-free' feeling she usually got from carrying out her ritual fading away with the sullen thoughts. It did not bring her joy to know that Helen's face could launch 1,000 ships, but her voice could convince them not to leave. Stupid men.

It was an odd feeling, knowing that very few knew that she wore masks, and that even fewer had seen beneath them- and all of them were dead. She didn't doubt that the one person that had seen her without them even remembered Echo-without-masks. Skulduggery was that kinds of person- forget all the things that don't matter, because his mind only has so much space. That's why some people kept diaries.

…Echo didn't doubt that it was against a few laws for her to keep a diary.

She stood, wincing, stretching backwards and flexing her hand to get the blood flowing again. She felt like Pins and Needles were stuck in her arms-

Damn. Now the song was stuck in her head. Billy Talent wrote the song in 2006, she remembered, and the album had wound up finding it's way to her door. The return address was from Germany.

…Germany. Why Germany? Hummed the song under her breath while she made her way to the kitchen. She rubbed her eyes to clear the sleep from them and froze as she heard a sound downstairs.

Her breathing all but stopped, eyes automatically closing. Something had been knocked over, and muttered curses made their merry way up the steps. She descended three steps, and then sighed, shaking her head.

Skulduggery muttered obscene things under his 'breath' as he righted the easel- that had been left in the middle of the room. It wasn't his fault for backing into it; after all, it was four feet tall, three feet wide (with canvas), and made no sound. It was Echo's fault, surely, for leaving it in the middle of the room!

"You know, usually people knock before entering someone's home." Echo's hair was flat on one side, and she was flexing her right hand as if it hurt.

"…Technically, I'm not a person," was the first thing he could come up with to counter her.

"You speak, so you're a person."

"These days, computers talk too." Believing he won, he turned back to the easel. It had nothing much on it yet, just what looked like the outline of a yellow house. Yellow. Really, some people had no taste…

Echo took a moment to answer. "So that makes computers people, too."

Skulduggery made the skeleton equivalent of opening his mouth and beginning to reply, before noticing the smirk on her lips. She thought she had a comeback for whatever he said next. Knowing the short brunette as he did, he decided (rather wisely) to not dispute her point.

(If he had, he would have gotten 'If it can hold a conversation, its a person, because it can respond actively,' and if he had said something along the lines of 'that's just a programmed response,' she would have said that most people don't even think before they talk so you should stop doing so.)

"Interesting house you've got here." Usually she preferred much smaller houses, some barely big enough for a bed to be laid out. It made him claustrophobic, but Echo insisted that it was 'cozy.'

Cozy, hah. Bottom floor, three meters wide, and surrounded on all sides is cozy? If you're attacked there, you're screwed, lady.

"It's too big," Echo replied, obviously thinking the opposite of him. "Some of the rooms are empty."

"…So rent them out."

"Do you want three other people living in your personal quarters, prying into everything you do and wondering where you came from?" She asked him seriously.

…He didn't. Echo was always a conversation ender: Most anything she said could not be made fun of or disputed without making him look like an idiot- and he wasn't.

"I thought not. It's probably in some contract somewhere with my name on it that I can't ever live with more then two people ever."

"You said 'ever' twice." …Most of what she said could not be made fun of.

"…I know."

He looked from the painting- where he had been looking without seeing for a good thirty seconds- and over at her. She had somehow un-flattened her hair and her arms were crossed over her chest.

She was waiting for his response, and he was curious. So he responded with "…So why did you do it?"

"Haven't you ever heard of dramatic effect?" She asked, grinning and walking away.

Skulduggery looked after her for five seconds, then decided that whatever she was doing had to be more interesting then just waiting for her to do it.

He found her in the kitchen, holding an upside-down plastic bag and looking rather bemused. "What's so interesting?" He asked, grinning inwardly at the expression on her face.

She looked at him, and the overly dramatic anguish on her face made him snort reflexively. "I have no more food! Whatever shall I do!?"

Echo frowned at the crinkling bag, her lips twisting into a half-smile when she remembered that she had spent the entire day yesterday thinking about running out of food and then Skulduggery arrives- and no more food.

"What's so interesting?" The Devil spoke, and by the tilt of his skull and the set of his shoulders, she decided he was laughing at her.

…Why not give him even more of a reason to laugh? She almost let out a small sob and set her face to the 'panicked' mode. "I have no more food! Whatever shall I do!?"

"…Buy some more?" He suggested dryly. Of course he would have no clue of what to do, he hadn't eaten since the dawn of freaking time…

She looked out the window before she looked at the time on the microwave as a reflex. It was dark outside.

She turned her gaze to the clock. It was 7:30.

"I'm not sure that the grocery worker drones will be willing to provide me with sustenance this long after the sun has set." She murmured in a low, fast voice, her expression vacant. Inwardly she giggled at the absurdity of her statement and took a note: It MUST find its way into her work somehow.

Skulduggery had taken a few steps forward to hear the end. "…Hm. That's a problem."

Inwardly, Echo sighed, upset that she couldn't make him look like an idiot. It was an odd compulsion, but it didn't stop her from laughing at him every time he slipped up.

…Besides, he did the same to her and everyone else. The medicine: Everyone must get a taste of it.

"It is."

They fell into a companionable silence, Echo gazing out the window, the vacant expression still glued to her face, Skulduggery looking no-where in particular but doing so very-

Echo caught her thoughts and threw them into a burning guillotine, watching in glee as the huge blade chopped them to bits, then lit a match and burned the entire thing down. While she thought such violent things, her face didn't change, but a small smile came to her lips.

Skulduggery wondered what she was thinking about and decided it was probably something amusing that she wouldn't share with him.

…Echo thought some pretty weird things, though.

Skulduggery paused, half-remembering something, and straightened as it came to him. "So, what do you think of Valkyrie?"

Echo blinked twice, and her head tilted to the left. "In what way?"

"…In any way." He knew what she meant, but didn't want to hear her thoughts on any one subject.

"She's naïve, but sharp. She doesn't take things at face value… Um, wait, no." She frowned and tapped her chin as she tried to put her thoughts into words. "…She tries to see the deeper things behind actions, but not behind people. For example: She knew that something was there between us, but was shocked when she found out that someone like me was the Captain Cleaver."

He nodded, and added it to his mental notes of 'how to manipulate your stupid student.'

"She's witty and speaks her mind perhaps a bit too much, and beyond that I'm not sure because I only spoke to her for about thirty minutes."

Skulduggery was a bit surprised. "That's it? Usually you can figure out much more-"

"When I'm actually focusing, and when it's a person who's been alive a bit longer and done a bit more then her. Children speak their minds anyways, so the thing about not knowing when to shut up may mean that her childhood was happy enough for her to bring it with her into her teenage years, but other then that…" She sighed.

Skulduggery was a bit surprised, but it made sense. It always did. They did not really need to communicate with words some of the time, as thought time itself had thrown them together enough that something stuck.

Echo smiled slightly. "She also reminds me of Penelope. If I could find it in myself to believe in a religion, right now it would be Buddhism."

Skulduggery started, surprised. "Penelope?" He asked, his voice quiet. His little girl, with the black hair and blue eyes and the smirk that Alison matched his and-

Echo laughed. "Yes, Penelope. Stop acting so shell-shocked over a name."

Skulduggery took a moment to drag himself out of the customary shock that accompanied hearing that name, and compared his lovely daughter to Valkyrie.

…Holy crap, she was right.

"I'm always right." Echo's grin faltered. "Except for, you know, when I'm not."

"Oh, so you can read minds now?" He asked, a little frustrated. And here he had been thinking that he liked Valkyrie because she was in interesting person…

"Nope, you just can't keep your mouth shut." She smiled at him sadly, as if she knew what he was thinking and was now sorry for mentioning his daughter.

Sanguine snorted. For once, someone could match Skulduggery's sarcastic remarks. And it was a girl. Maybe the Skeleton Detective wasn't all he was cracked up to be.