The house they pulled up to was at the bottom of a small hill and was overlooked by all of the other houses, huddled there around the other streets of the village with winking lights like gossiping neighbours. Even the lines of streetlights seemed to be shutting it out, but the house didn't seem to mind - it stood there proud and regal on its stretch of coast in the small amount of light leaking from the village.

Valkyrie got out of the Bentley, shaking herself from a doze. Skulduggery was already out of it, long legs striding up the small path and past the wild garden, the dark shapes of hedges and bushes looming like an array of attackers ready to jump out at them.

Valkyrie hurried up behind him, cursing the fact that she would never know whether she would have grown taller if she were mortal, or at least been better at power walking.

Skulduggery reached the door. It was painted the deepest teal of the British seas and had an old metal knocker with a split-tail mermaid for a handle. Valkyrie went to rap it on the wood, but Skulduggery help up a hand.

"Wait. We already activated the alarms for the guests. If you knock that, they'll just assume that we're mortals, insufferably rude, or both."

Deep inside the house, a bell chimed. Valkyrie waited, hand inches away from the ornate handle. After a moment, the blue door was cracked open and a small figure a foot tall peered up at them.

"A golem," Skulduggery explained.

"It's an extension of the lock mechanism - Perdita must still be working inside."

The little golem was covered in the same sorts of symbols Valkyrie knew China used and had cabochons of milky marble for eyes, giving it a pupil-less look. Valkyrie stared at it uneasily whilst it swivelled its head from left to right to regard them in turn, the rest of its body unmoving. Its looked like an owl.

It gave Valkyrie the creeps.

"Ignore it," Skulduggery muttered. Valkyrie continued to stare it down. Skulduggery paused.

"Far be it for me to be the voice of reason, Valkyrie, but we have two people to interview right now."

As if sensing Skulduggery's annoyance, the golem opened the door further and turned, walking into the darkness through the porch of the house. Skulduggery gave a small nod and followed him, leaving Valkyrie to close the door behind the three of them.

The house had high ceilings, but the corridor into which Valkyrie and Skulduggery stepped into was as narrow as a prison-escapee's tunnel, and nearly as crooked. The floor was covered in a patchwork of threadbare rugs to serve as a carpet, and the bookshelves pressed the tunnel in further. They stretched nearly down to the floor all the way up from the ceiling, though only half of the space was taken up with books. The rest was filled with glass bell jars and containers of all shapes and sizes, containing all manner of things, with potted plants teetering on the edges of shelves high about even Skulduggery's head and countless tins full of an assortment of objects.

Skulduggery was right ahead of her, so close that she could have reached out and touched his shoulders. For a moment she was tempted to move him along. The corridor was far too narrow for her tastes. He walked as quickly as ever, though, so soon enough they reached the end of the corridor. Instead Valkyrie tried to distract herself from the dark, constricting hallway by looking at the assortment of books and odd objects alongside the walls. In between a set of marine encyclopedias, what looked like a dried pufferfish sat on a small block of wood, but it glowed softly into the gloom, or so it appeared. Valkyrie squinted at it.

Skulduggery stopped, blocking the doorway entirely. Eyes on the fish, Valkyrie had no time to look up before bumping right into Skulduggery's back. She could feel his bony body beneath the layers of carefully-tailored clothing.

"Sorry," Valkyrie mumbled. She felt off balance in more ways than one.

"It's quite all right," Skulduggery answered quietly, in a tone of voice that Valkyrie had never heard before. He moved forward and to the side, letting Valkyrie squeeze past him into the more open space of a sitting room. The golem was standing before them, head cocked again to regard them both, and after an awkward moment of silence it bowed. The joints of its arms and legs ground against the torso with the faint sound of a mortar and pestle, and it opened its mouth, letting a scratchy recording play in the hushed room.

A woman's voice with an accent Valkyrie couldn't place started talking, in a bossy voice. The sound coming from the golem's body was freaky and Valkyrie had half a mind to close her eyes so that she could pretend that the golem wasn't there before she realised that Skulduggery wouldn't stop making fun of her for weeks. 'Still clinging onto mortal prejudices, I see,' he'd say in his glorious voice, and she'd have to fight a smile so that it wouldn't look like she was agreeing with him.

"Mr. Pleasant and Miss Cain, if you're hearing this I'm still at the beach with Perdy, collecting some wildlife samples. Apologies. Please do make yourselves at home in this sitting room, and we'll be no later than five or so minutes past the time I agreed. The guest library is in this room and you are free to read whatever you wish."

The recording clicked off with the sound of a gramophone's needle.

"Wax disks," Skulduggery murmured, as if to answer Valkyrie's unspoken question. He bowed his head his head toward the golem and it wandered off, presumably back to the door. Immediately, Skulduggery crossed to the far side of the room, where yet another bookshelf dominated the wall, this time filled only with every kind of book from paperbacks to large leatherbound volumes.

"So, automatic doorbell and answering machine in one?" Valkyrie said, feeling a little foolish. "I can't tell if that's fancy or lazy. And why do they have a guest library?"

She walked over to the section of book-covered wall that Skulduggery examined, her eye caught by a shelf entirely taken up with lurid covers depicting monsters and all bearing a familiar name.

"It looks like they're fans of Gordon's, too," Valkyrie said. "When I met that banshee, she seemed to remember him fondly."

"He was well-liked by many," Skulduggery said. "He was more popular than me, which was always a little galling."

Valkyrie smirked at that, even as she turned to a cover of one of Gordon's anthologies she hadn't seen before.

"Don't tell me your writer fantasies involved being just as popular as your friend and just as many torrid affairs with gorgeous women." She ran her finger down the spine of the book and pulled it out. Beside her, she heard - or felt, she wasn't sure nowadays how she sensed Skulduggery's body language - him start.

"Not… So much," he admitted in a wry voice. "More the former than the latter, I suppose. But being popular is overrated - only a really skilled person can get away remaining unchanged by the weighty expectations of so many people for you to turn respectable."

Valkyrie resolutely kept her eyes on the picture of the good Corporal Fleece, struggling up some large hill or other as lightning struck and rain lashed the dark sky above him. What was that supposed to mean? The words, 'turn respectable', resonated with Valkyrie uncomfortably. She felt her face flush and looked out the corner of her eye at Skulduggery, expecting a rubbing, but he too was poring over a book from the shelf above. Valkyrie took her prize and moved away to a threadbare velvet wingback chair on her left and started to read. The book was a signed copy, and the playfully scribbled signature of her uncle's on the aged cream endpaper reminded Valkyrie, a little guiltily, of the way she'd spoken to her uncle earlier. The whole day's events weighed on her in a tangle of emotions and tiredness, overbearing for a second, until she mentally brushed them away and started to read.

—

Valkyrie had only gotten to the third short story or so, and Skulduggery had steadily worked his way through a small pile of reference books balanced on a small carved table between their two mismatched armchairs when they heard a clattering from the other end of the house. They both looked up. Both women were later than they'd been warned, and for a horrible moment Valkyrie throught they'd have to deal with yet another crop of dead witnesses. While it was true they were dealing with a nearly cold case, it happened far too often in their line of work. Luckily, a second later the same voice from the recording rang out.

"Visitors! Guests! We apologise for our appalling tardiness! Stay where you are! We'll be right through, we have a bushel or two of wildlife samples to rid ourselves of first." The voice sounded much less bossy now, with a much lighter tone. Valkyrie wondered which of the women it was, and guessed the selkie woman - selkies were supposed to be free spirits, weren't they?

Skulduggery seemed to relax and without a further word or look in Valkyrie's direction, busied himself with reading again. Valkyrie wasn't sure what it was - nervousness? - But she couldn't concentrate on Gordon's short stories and instead read the same page over and over again as she listened to the sounds of another woman's voice - lower, this time, and Valkyrie didn't try to make out what she was saying - and walking around, what sounded like buckets being dropped and someone tramping up stairs. Even though she heard footsteps coming toward them, she still flinched when the door opened, revealing a toned woman with damp black hair and a fisherman's sweater that swamped her small frame. Skulduggery stood up in one graceful, fluid motion to offer his hand, which she shook firmly, her serious face and brown eyes drinking him in. Valkyrie put her own book down carefully and stood up. She didn't think that this was the woman she'd heard, and she was proven right when she turned toward toward her, offering her hand to Valkyrie and speaking in a low voice.

"Hello, Miss Cain, my name is Perdita. I've met the good detective, but I don't think I've ever seen you before. Are you new to the profession?"

Her grip was strong but cold, as if Perdita had just washed her hands in ice water. Valkyrie remembered that she and her wife had been working in the sea. Perdita's small, nut-brown hands seemed like they could snap Valkyrie's wrists with hidden strength, but she merely released Valkyrie's right hand and dropped her own to her side, smiling only a little.

"I'm sorry, have I offended you?"

Valkyrie realised that she'd probably been gawping a little.

"Not at all."

At last, Skulduggery decided to speak up. "My partner and I have been working together for - oh, how long has it been, Valkyrie? - around two decades. You and Penelope need to keep up with current affairs."

At this, Perdita's nose wrinkled and the hint of a smile disappeared entirely. "I don't think so. Half of you bloody lot are snobs, no offence."

"None taken," Skulduggery answered smoothly. "I think I know who you mean."

"Mmmm," Perdita hummed in agreement, indicating the door with a jerk of her head. "This way, Penny's just getting ready. Tea?" she turned toward Valkyrie again, making her the full focus of her intense gaze for the second time. Valkyrie felt pinned down the way she never had when Skulduggery deducted something about her.

"Yes, thanks. Although, if it's not too much trouble, I'd love a coffee."

This seemed to satisfy Perdita. "A much better idea, the sea was ruddy cold."

She opened the door she'd come from and gestured toward the corridor beyond, which presumably led to a kitchen. Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery, suddenly unsure what to do. She hadn't been anywhere with Skulduggery where they'd not both been offered food, save Ghastly's.

"Perdita, I'll just tidy up these books. Your guest library is very informative; funny for a couple who don't like guests."

Perdita's mouth turned down sharply once more. "Yes, well, it's not really our choice who does or doesn't visit us, is it," and moved through the threshold. Valkyrie had no choice but to follow her or linger awkwardly in the sitting room where she wasn't needed.