"Oh! There you are, Stewart." Mercyful picked up her beloved pencil, Stewart.
"Indeed," he said simply.
"What's eating you?" Mercyful raised an eyebrow. "OMG! ! ! You don't have termites or anything, do you? ? ? Ah! ! ! What am I going to do? ? ?"
Stewart groaned inwardly. First, you stop abusing punctuation so. Second… Um… Whatever.
Instead, he said, "No, no. I'm fine. Just fine."
Mercyful regarded him curiously, shrugged her shoulders and gently put him the pocket of her pinstriped suit.
Kneeling, she started to pick the not-at-all-complicated locks Skulduggery had installed. He was really very careless about them.
Stepping into the house, she took Stewart out of his perch and set him into her breast pocket so that his head poked out. He stared at her.
"What'cha lookin at?" he asked idly.
"You." For some obscure reason, she blushed.
"Why?"
"No reason."
"Mercyful? What are you doing here? Why did you break in? Do I even want to know?" Skulduggery strolled in.
"At your service, wanted some company apart from Stewart, what the hell," she tucked her lock-picks into her boot-top, "And probably not."
"Why is no one else home?"
"Mum's out clubbin'. I'm banned from that… And the drinkin'… And the fu-"
"Hush!"
"Fine…"
"Well, I guess you can stay then. For a while." Mercyful grinned.
A/N: So, the dreaded Miss Fear is back!
Incidentally, the original draft had less swearing and a lot less innuendo. Blame her Beta.
-Mercyful