A/N: I don't own Skulduggery, Tipstaff, Ghastly, Erskine, Tanith, Cleavers, Dr. Nye, Kenspeckle, China or Valkyrie, obviously. Val is still 24 and the story is still in her POV. Oh, to any Tipstaff fans your favourite Administrator is getting an upgrade here, enjoy!
I blinked, certain I hadn't heard Tipstaff right. "I'm sorry, you what?"
"I took the files, and why shouldn't I? It's part of my job, not that anyone around here appreciates me." He sniffed.
"Tipstaff, I apologize, but I'm not following you. Why would you need a whole briefcase full of files?" I asked.
"To do my own work, to see what sort of mess had been made and what had been taken. Everything here is so disorganized." His voice pitched slightly higher and his hands fluttered nervously. Tipstaff's eyes grew wider and he paled. I turned to see the Grand Mage approaching, looking livid.
"So you just handed over everything to the killer after you were done?" He barked.
Tipstaff quailed and seemed ready to faint. He hated displeasing anyone, especially Erskine, whom he hovered over whenever he was allowed. The man meant well, I realized, he was just lacking in social skills and didn't need treated so poorly because of his timidity. I had to speak up for him.
"I don't think he did, Grand Mage. I think they were stolen."
Erskine looked at me. "Ghastly is right, it is creepy when you do that. You sound like you're getting ready to hit me for having a title."
"Sorry, I hate authority figures. But the good news is I don't see you as one."
Erskine laughed and his temper cooled slightly. We could see Tipstaff trying to rally, to come to the defense of protocol and procedure, but he just sagged backwards, and I had to catch him by the elbow before he fell. Something was seriously wrong. Tipstaff was timid, but he wasn't an outright coward.
Erskine and I helped him to sit down at his desk, Skulduggery watching at a careful distance. He must have rang Ghastly, because both he and Tanith showed up and Tipstaff was soon surrounded with more people than he'd likely seen worried over him in a long time. Ghastly made Tipstaff tea, and he sipped it slowly, looking at Ghastly in such profound gratitude that I was touched. Not only couldn't I recall anyone liking Tipstaff I couldn't recall anyone doing anything for him either.
"Are you all right, Tips- Administrator? Do you need me to get a doctor?" I managed to use his title, to grant him a token of respect, and it didn't sound like a threat, at least I didn't think it did.
Tipstaff smiled at me faintly. "No, thank you, my dear. I'm fine, I just haven't eaten all day, maybe it's been two days, I've been busy. They are right, I know you mean well, but please don't use titles with anyone, you do sound angry even if you don't mean to."
"Mmm, I hate people telling me what to do."
"Really? I love it. I couldn't do this job otherwise, could I? Now telling people what to do I have a problem with, so I guess it doesn't come out right."
"You do tend to shout." I admitted. "The food here is terrible though, do you need me to get you anything?"
"No, thank you for offering though. The tea is all I need for now. The files were stolen but I honestly thought I misplaced them and I know I cause enough trouble as it is. Not being liked is part of an administrator's duties, I'm afraid."
"If you want the popular vote, install a Starbuck's in the lobby." I offered.
He laughed, a sound I'd never heard from him before. "Don't you think I'd like to, Detective? But we can't have anything civilian here, and we are so restricted on what we can do. Believe me, I've tried to fix things. The food, the hideous walls. We're not even underground like a proper Sanctuary because some genius thought we'd blend in better above ground." I smiled. I couldn't believe it but Tipstaff was actually a likable person if given half a chance. Once we were sure he was all right Skulduggery and I withdrew, leaving Erskine and Ghastly talking to Tipstaff quietly.
Skulduggery waited until we were far enough away from the office before speaking. "Are you sure you feel well? You were nice to Tipstaff. I thought you liked annoying him."
"I'm not suddenly a nicer person, but until the cave spirit is dealt with I'm cutting him some slack, it also isn't exactly the time to have the Administrator angry at us, but we're back to square one. Anyone could have stolen the files, or he could have misplaced them."
"True, but I'm thinking they were stolen. Tipstaff is too much of a straight arrow to take anything home with him, he sleeps in his office on the floor when he needs to work on something."
"You know this because?"
"I stepped on him once. But in my defense his office was dark."
"Skulduggery, you can see in the dark."
"You know that, but Tipstaff doesn't." He grinned hugely. "I needed some files he refused to let me see, so I simply snuck in and memorized them. I stepped on him on the way out on purpose, having unscrewed the light bulbs first of course. The man was screaming and running around banging into things. Great fun."
"You ARE a cat in a detective suit. A vengeful, spiteful cat at that."
"I never said I wasn't. Now my dearest combat accessory the hour is late and I think it is time I got you to bed." He took hold of my arm and we started back to our room.
"I could put the armour on, you know, we are two days out. It might make sense for me to be on alert."
"It would, but I'd honestly miss holding you for the night. Still if you think it is best-" He opened the door to our room, holding it for me to enter. I looked at him and sighed. For as highly intelligent as he was, Skulduggery didn't let silly things like logic or practicality get in the way of getting what he wanted. He made me coffee, his now nightly ritual, and then tilted his head at me expectantly. I was fairly sure we'd already kissed that night, but then realized we hadn't. I walked towards him, grinning.
"Something you want, Detective?" I teased.
"You know what I want, Valkyrie."
"World peace?"
"Very cute, quit stalling. Unless of course you don't want to." The man knew how to fight dirty, I'd give him that. But my lips had barely touched his teeth when a vision of him with China came on that was so powerful I pushed him away, reeling backwards. I would have fallen if Skulduggery hadn't caught me. "Valkyrie! What is it, what's wrong?" I didn't get a chance to answer as the room went dark and I could tell from the startled shouts in to corridor they had gone out everywhere else as well. Our window broke and I heard Skulduggery curse then start to struggle with something.
I called my armour to me, and could see a gruesome sight. The body of the killer was struggling with Skulduggery, trying to drag him towards the broken window. Skulduggery summoned a flame and touched it to his attacker, who went up with a sudden whoosh. But the arms that held him stayed locked tightly, and Skulduggery himself yelped as the flames bit into his clothing. I snapped both palms out, dousing them with water, then followed up with my shadows to club the killer in the head repeatedly.
He snarled, loosing his grip on Skulduggery, then roared and leapt at me. Skulduggery hit him with flames once more and I held him in midair, displacing the air to hold him in place while he burned. Skulduggery was using twin jets of flame now, then broke them off, drawing his revolver and emptying into the flaming head of the corpse. The head exploded and the corpse went slack.
Skulduggery doused the flames with water just as the lights came back on and Ghastly burst into our room. Ghastly looked at the headless corpse, and the ruined room, then at Skulduggery and me. "There've been attacks. All the corpses in the mortuary have reanimated. You got one here, but we need help with the rest."
Tipstaff, to be useful was blaring the instructions on how to kill the zombies over the address system I didn't even know we had, his normally mild voice a commanding roar. By the time we reached the main hall Tanith had dispatched a zombie by herself and was charging towards a second, but that wasn't the thing that caught my attention.
What caught my attention was Tipstaff standing his ground against a zombie. He seemed to be displacing the air, for the creature howled and snapped and tried repeatedly to walk forward. Then before Tanith could go to him he let the air go and simply snapped his hand at the zombie's head, which exploded, sending a gory shower of chunks all over.
Tipstaff turned on his heel with military precision and left, passing three Cleavers were herding the last remaining zombie into a containment unit of some sort with a sneer of distaste. My blood went cold because I knew exactly who had sent the unit up, even though I'd been told the Sanctuary fired it. Dr. Nye. Even a zombie, even a cave spirit-possessed zombie didn't deserve Dr. Nye's attention. The poor beast seemed to know, and whatever was inhabiting the body seemed to flee, leaving an empty husk behind.
The zombies had been quelled after a short time and I knew every one of them would end up with Nye. It came into view, apparently brave enough to leave the ward it'd been retained in, though God knows it was no longer allowed to see patients. Ghastly had joined us and I glared at him. "I thought you told me they fired it."
"I did, and that's what I was told, Valkyrie, I'm just as unhappy to see its ugly face as you are. No doubt the weasel knows something it shouldn't."
Nye spotted us and approached, being disgustingly apologetic, mainly because it knew we hated it so much. It was a filthy war criminal, not to be trusted, and I'd found that out the hard way, twice. If it was there it was still torturing people on the Sanctuary's dime and it knew we knew that too.
"Detectives, always an utter delight!" It made a wheezing laughing sound rubbing its hands together as if readying for an operation. Skulduggery drew his revolver and Nye stepped back, frowning. "I only wanted to offer my assistance on your case, detectives, I think I know a way to capture this thing you are fighting." He sounded like he wanted to experiment on it and he most likely did. Still, Skulduggery holstered his gun and nodded.
"Go on." Skulduggery said, and Nye turned to him with delight.
"The late Kenspeckle Grouse, you remember him? He was working on a device, like a Soul Catcher, only much more powerful. I do believe I know where to find it as well."
"Why are you helping us?" I asked.
"Because once you capture it I want to study it, that's the deal."
I looked at Skulduggery and he just shrugged. "Deal." He said.
Nye of course was too canny to take just our word and waited until Erskine agreed. We all knew Nye could be leading us into a trap, and most likely it was. But it insisted there had been a secret room under the old theatre where Kenspeckle had hidden certain work. Certain work it gloatingly implied the Sanctuary funded even if it was illegal.
After it had Erskine's promise it folded it's long form down slightly to fit through his doorway and was gone. I knew nobody intended to keep the promise to it, even if it did threaten about having powerful patrons.
Nor was Ghastly about to let me or Skulduggery to go anywhere near the place. It was the wee hours of the morning and still dark enough that a van of Cleavers was sent to the area. We waited in Erskine's office for them to report back, everyone growing more tense as they reached the destination.
Communications abruptly cut off and Erskine swore softly. Ether the mission had been comprised or the Cleavers were dead, but either way when the minutes drug on with no further reports, we knew the truth. Tipstaff stood up from where he'd been quietly observing, his jaw set. "I'm going in after them and nobody here is stopping me. If you simply must know I don't like killing anything, even that zombie, so I've been hiding what I can do for a very long time. Killing used to be all I did, because that's about all my powers are good for. I've only ever worked alone and I refuse to take anyone with me."
Nobody laughed, since this wasn't the Tipstaff we were used to. He stood tall and firm, and there was a cold edge to his voice. His gaze had gone hard, and he clearly hated what he was about to do. There were sorcerors like him, people whose uses of magical powers was more suited to killing than the more peaceful pursuits most sorcerors followed. Tipstaff, timid though his disposition might be in every day life, was clearly specialized in his training.
Despite his insistence we all trailed after him to his office and watched as he dug a sidearm out of one drawer. Tipstaff loaded a clip and put several more in a pocket, then nodded sharply to us and left.
I followed Tipstaff, still not liking the idea of him going alone. "All this time, the way you act, is so they wouldn't find you isn't it?"
He nodded tightly. "Those in power will hear of what I've done, remember me, they'll want me to kill again, and I hate killing, It isn't my fault it is all I'm good at, Detective Cain."
"That explains why your such a lousy administrator, no offense meant."
He looked sideways at me and snorted. "As soon as I get the device I'm bringing it back and leaving. I hate this job almost as much as everyone here hates me. I give them five minutes before they are telling the right people what I did."
I saw Ghastly, Skulduggery, and Tanith had followed at last, and put a hand on Tipstaff's arm. He looked at me in surprise, his hard face softening into its usual expression. "I didn't see anything tonight, Administrator, nor did anyone else. We need you here, we need you against the cave spirit."
Tipstaff glanced over at Erskine who nodded as did everyone else. He looked at us, then the door and sighed. "I'm not getting rid of any of you, am I?"
When we all shook our heads he sighed and agreed we'd all go in Ghastly's van. Tipstaff sat in the back with Erskine, and we settled in for the hours long drive.
Tipstaff told us briefly about his time in the service, how men like him didn't even exist not even to elite groups like the Dead Men, because he existed to neutralize them if they ever became a threat. It was said in a friendly fashion, but I think everyone in that van realized he could kill us all before we reacted, Skulduggery included.
Tipstaff leant forward between the seats and touched my shoulder briefly. "Thank you for your kindness earlier, Detective Cain, and for offering to protect my identity. You have no idea how much I hate my talents, and I've only ever used them when I was sure it was the right thing to do, but as you can imagine, Sanctuaries lie." He sounded sad.
"My last mission I was told the target was a man trafficking in women and children, using the monies to support those who would expose magic to the world. I was given a dossier, everything seemed as sure and certain as it always was. Only later did I find out his only crime was to disagree with the latest war the Sanctuary was fighting in. I'd killed an innocent man, all because they were afraid he was hurting the war effort." His voice became bitter, hard.
"So I disappeared, got surgery, developed the personality you know as Tipstaff. My training was so good it was easy to fool everyone, to stay the helpless, meek and inoffensive Tipstaff." His voice took on a sing-song quality and I shivered slightly, wondering how many times he'd wanted to kill everyone, myself included. "But I realized tonight I couldn't let innocent people die just so I could stay hidden."
"The funny thing is, that IS my personality when I'm not killing people. I jump at everything, I flee from a fight, I'm sissified. But when it is time to fight, then I change into this. So maybe this is the put-on personality, I really don't know. But I do know you have my gratitude, Detective Cain, you were the first person at the Sanctuary to apologize to me for anything, ever. You're also the first person to offer me anything, Elder Bespoke getting me tea tonight excluded. So thank you, if you ever need me to neutralize a problem I'm here for you."
The rest of the ride he was charming, talking about everything under the sun, friendly, sociable. Everyone relaxed in his presence, though Erskine did look rather pale and kept giving him furtive glances when I looked into the rear view mirror to see them. Skulduggery just sat beside me, his grin behind his disguise rather self-satisfied. Now I understood his comment about fighting back to Tipstaff. I looked at Skulduggery, and he nodded, knowing as always what I was thinking. Somehow he'd known and had been trying to goad Tipstaff into a fight all this time, just to see who would win. The problem was my money would have been on Tipstaff.
We arrived at the ruined theatre, the van for the Cleavers dark and silent. Tipstaff directed Tanith and I to the van, warning us to be careful of explosives, and took off down the alley, Ghastly and Skulduggery on his heels. Erskine he made stand lookout at the front of the alley, something I think Tipstaff reveled in doing. This was his mission after all, we were all along for the ride.
We cleared the van. It was safe and no traps or bodies were inside. But I heard the faintest ticking sound from the engine. An engine that had been dormant for hours. "Bomb!" I yelled to Tanith, and I took off after the three men, Tanith going to get Erskine out of the blast zone.
I caught up with the men and displaced the air around them, shoving them into a side alley, getting glares and curses from all three, then the van went off and I barely had time to raise a shield of air. Shrapnel exploded past us, burying itself in the far wall of the blind alley. There had been no device, Nye had been told to send us here by whoever controlled him.
The explosion had been deafening, setting off car alarms blocks away with the reverberations. But we had to hurry, to get back to our own van, which Tipstaff had had the foresight to tell us to park several blocks away. We had all piled in and were racing back to the Sanctuary as the first alarms and sirens went off, and police cars raced past us. My heart was still jack-hammering and I realized I was holding Skulduggery's hand too tightly. I relaxed my grip and looked over at him and caught his wan smile. Only Tipstaff was laughing, regaling us with how much fun that was, and how many missions had been traps, and wasn't working at a Sanctuary fun?
We got back with the sun bright for once, it figured it would have to be on a day we had to be inside. Tipstaff told us to leave Nye to him, winked, and told us it had been a pleasure knowing us. When Nye was found dead hours later, we all managed to look surprised. Why, we didn't even know he was in the Sanctuary, hadn't he been fired, and what was the world coming to? Skulduggery looked at me after our debriefing with Erskine and Ghastly, which had really been talking about nothing, since we all knew about the killing and who did it.
"You have, as the unfortunate saying goes, the luck of the Irish, Valkyrie. Because it was dumb luck that made you apologize when you did and to make the offer you did. I refuse to believe you did it out of a sense of goodwill." Skulduggery said dryly.
"I felt guilty, OK?"
"Well, lucky us that you did. I'd always known he was something, just not that much of a something. Oh, I heard of him during the war. He'd infiltrate our side, taking our corrupt generals and such. He killed black ops when they went rouge too. Now we know why no one ever suspected a thing. Who would expect a mouse like that to hurt them?"
"Mice can roar, Skulduggery."
"My God, she's read a book by an Irishman. Will wonders never cease?"
"American-Irish, you're the one who told me to read more, Skulduggery, at least I think it was you."
"May have been, but then I say a lot of things. But my, what an exciting time we've had of it. If you weren't trapped in that armour I'd take you out to a late breakfast."
I looked down in surprise. "My God, I forgot I was wearing it. Those civilian cops could have seen me, Lord, how dense am I?"
"Mmm, they could have seen me too, you know. We all take risks of being found out. I'm pleased it is so natural to you now, and thank you for saving my life, again."
"Don't mention it. You'd do the same for me."
"Yes I would Valkyrie Cain, but may I do something before you remove it?" I nodded, wondering what he was up to, and Skulduggery kissed me, right there in the foyer of the Sanctuary, ignoring any strange looks we were getting. I knew now what Vile felt when I touched his armour, and the sensation was heady.
I was edgy as we exited out into the sun, and not leastwises because Skulduggery had coaxed me out of my armour. Something seemed wrong that day, and with the sun high it the air we'd have to walk. Every step felt like I was walking onto a live firing range, and when a trash bin fell over in a sudden gust of wind I jumped at the metallic clang.
Skulduggery took me in his arms, soothing me. "Shh, Valkyrie, it's OK, it really is. You're going into delayed shock. It's fine, you're safe, the danger is over now, hush."
"Skulduggery, someone tried to kill us!"
"Someone's always trying to kill us, but you're too beautiful to die. I am of course, already dead, so there's that." I laughed at the poor joke, thankful he was holding me. Still something felt wrong, and as we continued walking my shoulders were bunched. Skulduggery was reaching a soothing hand over when it happened. A passing van careened off the road, and the sliding side door flew open. Before we could do anything magical blasts caught us both full in the face. Skulduggery roared in pain, and I fell to the ground unable to see. I couldn't breath and the darkness came up and swallowed me.
I came to in a Sanctuary bed, Ghastly keeping watch. I tried to sit up and realized I was shackled. "Ghastly, what-"
He looked at me and there were tears in his eyes. "What did I tell you two about not leaving the Sanctuary? What? Skulduggery's gone, we don't know who's taken him."
Then I knew why I'd been strapped down because I tried to surge forward, screaming for my partner. Ghastly started to cry openly, and I fell silent, miserable. This was all my fault wherever he was, whatever they'd done to him, this was all my fault.
"Why take him and leave me behind, why not kill me too?" I asked brokenly. Ghastly shook his head and just held me as we both wept. Hours later when he was sure I wouldn't hurt myself, he released me, and held me close as I took a few tottering steps to his office.
We hadn't been there long when Erskine came in, his face bloodless. "Hold her down." He said. I looked at them confused. Ghastly grabbed my shoulders and Erskine came forward and knelt before me.
"Valkyrie, sweetie, I'm so, so sorry." He was crying now too. I looked at him in confusion.
"What are you sorry for, Erskine, we'll get him back, we always do." Erskine just wept softly as a trembling assistant came in. The young man looked at me with terror in his eyes as he came forward with a box. I knew what had to be in that box and when he opened it there was no mistaking what it was because I knew every fragile bone, every contour, every detail that I could make out. I looked at the skull and hands of Skulduggery Pleasant and passed out.
I have no words. A dark day. I'm not even sure if he is alive at this point, because as we all know dismantling is the one thing that can kill him.