Valkyrie zipped along the main road and indicated her bike's lights, turning into the residential street where Skulduggery's house was. As soon as she had come of age Valkyrie had bought herself a nice bike - nothing fancy or something to take pride in like Tanith's beloved motor, but small and fast enough to be more convenient than using magic or waiting for a lift. It was small enough to compact in the Bentley's boot and was a nice shade of cherry red. Skulduggery wouldn't let himself be seen with it.
They'd had a kind of argument over the paint colour, actually - Valkyrie had been damned if she'd had any more items of black that her family could gossip about, nice as the colour was, and Skulduggery had agreed… Before insisting she repaint the small bike a classic, Italian sky blue. It was almost as bad as his spare cars. Having had a decade or so to perfect her sulking skills, Valkyrie ended up winning the fight, but she'd had to call and threaten Skulduggery's regular bodyshop worker to ensure she wouldn't be taken by surprise.
Valkyrie brought the bike to a stop outside the house, popping the large visored helmet off and shaking her hair to dislodge it from the recesses of her dark jacket, using the air to smooth it down. Her stomach rumbled traitorously and she covered it with the helmet, walking up to the front door as she felt around her pockets for the magically ward-disarming key she kept on her person at all times. Finding it at last, she hooked her fingers around the football-insignia keychain - a gift from Alice on her fifteenth birthday in the never-ending War Of The Teams, since Alice had never shaken the stupid belief that Dublin City was a horrible team that her first boyfriend had instilled in her - and fished it out carefully, fitting it into the lock. It glowed to signal that yes, she had the right key and no, Skulduggery wasn't going to come and swoop down on her thinking that he was being burgled.
A voice called from the dark hallway as she stepped through the door.
"Valkyrie, hello. We'll be ready to go in just a moment."
Following the sound of the deep, velvety voice Valkyrie arrived in one of the many living rooms to see the sight of Skulduggery slipping his arms through a crisp, clean shirt, deftly buttoning it up and donning his jacket once more. He cocked his head, seeing her questioning look. "Just spilt some caustic acid - I was experimenting with some engraving. Don't look at me like that, I haven't harmed the surfaces."
Valkyrie scowled, but it her mood was already improving. That was, until the words in what he'd actually said had processed.
"We're going out? What? Why?"
"I'm sure I've already told you this. After all, why else would you be here?"
Valkyrie folded her arms over her stomach, then dropped the bulbous helmet on a nearby sofa from her hand when it got in the way.
"I came here to look for food. I'm starving, and I've just come from a visit from my parents."
If Skulduggery had eyes, they'd be twinkling smugly.
"And why would I, a dead man who hasn't been in possession of a stomach of a stomach for hundreds of years, have a better stocked larder than a well put together bachelor in her mid thirties? Or, bachelorette," he added thoughtfully, as Valkyrie walked past him and began rifling through her cupboards in this house instead. He carried on talking, apparently oblivious to the fact that she'd walked off mid-conversation.
"In fact, I'm almost certain you scheduled a 'work holiday' specifically for this case- pack your toothbrush, it's going to be a long one, I'm afraid. Metaphorically, of course. It's not an actual holiday, unfortunately. I've tried and I've tried but Ghastly refuses to send us to the Bahamas for reconnaissance-"
Valkyrie froze.
"What?"
"It's the selkie trafficking case, remember? Lots of paperwork. Lots of scumbags. Not very much of the fun stuff."
"So no punching bad guys?"
"No, just good old fashioned detecting."
Valkyrie remembered now.
"Selkies, you say?"
Skulduggery sighed in mock annoyance. He had a tendency to tell her things when she wasn't there, or wasn't listening, or even when she was crashed at the flat and then implying that he'd been helpful and considerate; and wouldn't repeat himself. On the plus side it made Valkyrie a good listener, and if she didn't know him better she would assume it was some wise trick to teach her good detecting skills, like in the old cheesy nineties kung fu movies. But she knew he was really just too unused to having a long term partner that didn't end up dying screaming - one he trusted. Valkyrie had long since surpassed the mark of short-term partner, coworker or even friend and was now to her knowledge and that of her circle of acquaintances Skulduggery's only long-term 'relationship' past his death. In a way - in many ways - it was brilliant, him and her against the world, but in others… Well. It sometimes got difficult. Valkyrie had sworn not to succumb to 'forty year old brat syndrome' as she'd termed sorcerer's adolescence, but it seemed she'd already lost the fight.
She was looking forward to meeting the selkies, though.
Valkyrie sat eating a sandwich she'd made in the Bentley whilst Skulduggery navigated the misted up rural roads and tried not to project an air of too much distaste whilst a CD of string quartet music played over the sound of her eating. She knew it was partly because of his nannying of the car, but also because of her choice of sandwich fillings. For someone who'd been raised before breakfast was invented and for whom sandwich meant 'full roast squashed between doorstops of bread' rather than 'chicken and mayo cardboard slivers', Skulduggery was squeamish about her combination of strawberry preserve, salted beef, fried chicken and gherkin wedges.
"It's a nasty case," Skulduggery said, his voice a little louder over the sound of tearing bread and plucking violin strings.
"Hmmmph?" Valkyrie was enjoying the sandwich too much to even try and pretend to hold on to some dignity. She was starving, and this was her favourite comfort food.
"I said, it's a nasty case we're embarking on, Valkyrie."
"Yeah, definitely, I just… Hold on." Valkyrie made windmilling motions with her hands to stop Skulduggery talking as she finished the sandwich carefully. Finally after reaching her twenties Skulduggery had accepted that yes, she was an adult, and yes, she had enough fine motor control to not spray food all over the beloved Bentley, but she still had to bring old-fashioned handkerchief-sized sandwich wrappings to form a makeshift table cloth every time she ate here. Valkyrie opened the passenger window and shook the fabric square out, balling it up amidst Skulduggery's tuts and stuffing it in her pocket. She swallowed her last bite and took a deep breath.
"This is the trafficking case, right? Magical mail order brides and such."
Skulduggery's head was tilted at a quizzical angle. It happened rarely enough that Valkyrie felt a happy frisson - especially in his own car whilst he was explaining their own case.
"I'm not quite sure I follow. I didn't think mail services shipped live beings. Dead ones, certainly; I have a story about that happening. It's pretty funny, now that I think about it-"
Valkyrie held her hands up again, a look of disgust on her face.
"Eurgh! No, I don't want to know. Mail order brides are a form of prostitution, I guess."
Skulduggery nodded. "The oldest and noblest profession. I suppose I can fill in the blanks myself. Yes, our first lead is going to be an woman who was a selkie, although I suppose she's spent so long out of the seas that calling her an ex-selkie would be appropriate. She works freelances for sanctuaries all over the world; care, conservation and occasionally culling creatures that mortals don't know about, like selkies, sirens, hell hounds - you've faced those, in a way - and the octopus people, of course." He finished off by nodding solemnly.
Valkyrie felt her nose wrinkling in disbelief and then caught herself in the lefthand mirror. For a second she saw a flash of Carol and Crystal in that face, and so she stopped at once.
"You're seriously not telling me that after all this time, octopus people are actually real. You played that joke on me when I was what, twelve?"
"I assure you the only joke was letting you think that I was joking."
"The greatest mind in many a room spends his time keeping tabs on elaborate practical jokes, japes and schemes. You heard it here first, folks."
"Nice use of the word 'japes'-"
"Thank you, I thought so-"
"And thank you for the compliment."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"Yes, it was. Now, Perdita and her wife aren't the most loquacious of people and they're treated rather bigotedly by the magical population at large - they're archetypal civil rights activists. So you're going to have to be your usual, sweet and sensitive self as always. Just letting you know."
Valkyrie looked uncomfortably towards Skulduggery's bleached cheekbones, but his attention was back on the road, sarcastic back and forth over and done with as he overtook a twelve-wheeler truck in near total darkness.
"Because they're, you know - because they're both gay?"
There was a pause as the Bentley drew up beside the truck's front and the driver leant out his window, shaking his fat red fist in front of his fat red face and swearing, very loudly, in a mixture of English and Irish. It was as creative as one could expect from a trucker.
"What? No, of course not, that's not even a-" Skulduggery tutted as the trucker honked loudly. "Never mind. No, we mages aren't susceptible to many taboos, but bigotry to those we deem pitiful is one of the worst - mortals, magical creatures, hippies, zombies. That sort of thing."
Valkyrie nodded and then caught herself, snorting with laughter. "So you're saying that this Perdita woman and her - partner are like Care of Magical Creatures professors from Harry Potter."
In the past ten years or so Skulduggery had reminded Valkyrie many times that referencing a children's fiction series when talking about sorcery was immature, but it hadn't stopped her dragging him to one of the marathons of the digitally-remastered rereleases of the films that she had been invited to back at uni - her science fiction and film class being the only thing that she turned up to rather than letting the hard-reset reflection substitute for.
The arguments about which houses the two of them would have been sorted into (Skulduggery maintained that the Sorting Hat would deem him unsortable due to his being dead and that he would have been able to join the Headless Horsemen if he so pleased whilst Valkyrie vehemently accused him of being a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin) had fuelled many a bantering argument on long car journeys.
Today, however, Skulduggery merely gave her a long-suffering look — the kind that managed to curdle your stomach juices and wither your smile even without the benefit of glaring eyeballs.
"As I was saying Valkyrie, they're not treated very well. Perdita and Penelope are very defensive women a lot of the time, that's all."
Valkyrie gave a mock-salute.
"Sounds good to me. Can I get another sandwich? Or two, or three. Or just a coffee. I think anger makes me hungry."
"Anger just tends to make me more dashing than usual, and more witty. And no, you can't make another one of your dastardly concoctions. Even centuries without having to prepare food hasn't stopped me from realising what a freak you are."
"No more than you!" Valkyrie answered cheerfully, leaning back in her seat and settling in the for the ride.