Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

Note: I talk a lot of money and business here but know nothing of it. Sorry. I probably messed up a lot but this is fanfiction and my world so let's roll with it.

Chapter 59

That night brought a flash thunderstorm and flooding to the area Valkyrie lived in, but it didn't stop her brothers and sister from preparing the house for the new security. Valkyrie had sat by the window with Tanith for most of the night on watch, mostly because she didn't want to lie in bed awake and worrying, but also because she wanted to spend time with her sister. At some point around three in the morning, Valkyrie was staring outside and narrowed her eyes, looking into the black outside.

"Tanith," she whispered. "Is it me, or is there something by the front wall on the right?"

Tanith leaned forwards to look better but Valkyrie didn't see it again and was sure Tanith didn't see it either.

"Call the alarm anyway," Tanith said after a moment. Valkyrie nodded and went to the nearest other person, Weasel, and told him there may be someone outside, and he spread it to the others. They already had everything on highest security as it was and anyone coming it to any entrance would set off the alarms. But as they had already discussed, their alarms and security wasn't good enough. They were all tense.

When morning came, they were all tired and had slept in fitful shifts. Morning did bring builders and security advisers and fitters and installers, but it didn't make them any less nervous. If anything, they were more worried as it left a lot of open spots for someone to get into the house.

To combat that, they started taking things outside to confuse anyone that might have been looking. They started taking large items out of the house from the hall they were doing up into an office hall, focusing specifically on the one that was going to be the security room. Valkyrie herself was packed into a box to go alongside the other boxes of stuff, and she had to stay very, very still and quiet as Bear and Crow carried her outside and packed her into Panda's van. Panda, Crow and Tanith drove them to the skip and they dumped all the items except Valkyrie herself, getting her to hid in the van under the bench.

They then went to Crow's house, a place they didn't go particularly often. Positioned at the end of a pretty street, there was only two competing funeral services to share the space with. The house was fairly large, with a big kitchen, two small bathrooms and three bedrooms and a few sofa beds for the Dead Men from before they took in Valkyrie. They hadn't lived permanently together before that, with Bear at his hotel for at least five days a week, Panda having his own place, and the others either at those places, Dexter's apartment, or travelling.

They took Valkyrie into the house quickly, though they didn't think anyone had followed them.

"How long are we staying here?" Valkyrie asked.

"Only me and Tanith are staying here with you," Crow explained. "And hopefully for only a week. If we get Caelan before that we can move back in then, if you'd like."

Valkyrie nodded. "I prefer our house."

He came over and gave Valkyrie a hug, sensing her upset at the change. "Don't worry. We can find Caelan any time, we just want to make sure we're at our strongest, alright? Our friends are coming over to help with the caves, and if we have to throw one vampire at them I'm sure we can manage."

"And give him a piece of my mind," Tanith muttered darkly from the back door where she was sitting and sharpening her sword.

"And cut him up a little," Crow conceded. "The main point is, we'll make him suffer and kill him before he ever so much as sees you."

"I want him to know you're doing this for me," she whispered into his sternum. "I don't want him to think this is for anything but keeping me safe from him."

He stroked her hair. "I promise. Oh, and you're in your usual room with Tanith."

Valkyrie turned her head and glared at her sister. "You better not snore this time."

.*****.

The week was boring. Really, really boring. As a part of keeping her safe, they had to keep her relatively hidden. And since they were pretending she was hidden at the mansion she couldn't be seen outside or Caelan would catch on that she wasn't there. So she had to sit in a small house, compared to the mansion anyway, and do nothing. She could talk to Nadia but with tensions high at her house with the still undecided schooling situation, Nadia was on eggshells not annoying her parents with other things.

Still, they got to text a lot which was nice.

But she also had to do a lot of home schooling again.

"It's Skulduggery's turn," Tanith had told her when Crow had sent her to Tanith for lessons. "I've done weeks of playing teacher, Skulduggery should take a turn."

Valkyrie had gone back to Crow and informed him it was his turn to be teacher and dumped all the learning resources on his lap.

"Why do I have to do it?" He complained.

"Because you adopted me and Tanith's sick of teaching," Valkyrie said, organising her junk. "And I need to talk to you about something important anyway."

"What type of important?" He asked.

"Something to do with Gordon."

"Couldn't we talk about it with him here?" He asked.

"Yes, but I want to talk about it with you alone first," she said, sitting down and getting a few different notebooks and folders out of a box she had brought with her. "This is all of Gordon's business work."

"His business things?" Crow asked, taking a chair next to her at the table.

"Yep. Let me explain it." Valkyrie sorted the folders quickly to be on the table – five folders, neatly placed in front of them in a line. Each was labelled from one to five, with a name. 'Folder 1: Dad's Business,' 'Folder 2: Family Business,' 'Folder 3: Stocks an/op,' 'Folder 4: Investments an/op,' 'Folder 5: Backer/Intervention/Other an/op.'

"What does an slash op mean?" Crow asked.

"Anonymous and open," Valkyrie said. "Wait for me to explain okay? Dad's business is a fairly small but well to do mortal construction business. It's relatively simple and run by the managers without much work, we just get a small profit. We, that is me and Gordon, spoke about selling it but I don't want to just let it go, to be honest. But, the only other easy option is to merge it with the family business, which is Folder Two, but that means firing everyone and hiring magical folks, which I don't want to do even more. Folder Two, like I said, is the family business which Gordon converted to work in making construction supplies made with magic properties, like signals and infusions and stuff. It's the second largest in the county. It only does business in Ireland, actually, so Gordon wants to expand.

"The other three are fairly simple. They have all the information for every person and business Gordon has money in. Stocks are obvious, we get a percentage of the profits, and almost all of them are anonymous. Investments are similar but I think they are much larger than the stocks and most of the companies know it was Gordon. There aren't many of them. And then the 'other' file. Not much profit comes from this but there is a lot of favours involved, even though a good half are anonymous. These are the people Gordon helped when there was financial trouble or another business was going to top them, so the favours are massive. Only one has significant profit coming from it, and that's anonymous again."

"Gordon covered his tracks well," Crow commented.

"He did. Almost every single stock and investment is either for a company supplying in another country or significant other countries as well as our own. It's hard to link them."

Crow picked up the folders and looked through each, making small sounds when he recognised a name within.

"You'll like this one best," Valkyrie grinned, handing him the Fifth, 'other', folder. "Look at this – it's the intervention money Gordon gave the Cleaver and Reaper Producers."

"My God," Crow said, taking the folder. "I never knew they were so close to going under."

"That was the point. Gordon found out from another company who Gordon helps finance that they hadn't gotten their Reapers to take their money to the bank and wanted to ask what he wanted to do since they owed him a lot. Gordon did some digging and found they needed help which is why they weren't able to send out security and staff. They knew he donated but it was private to everyone else, but now I'm older I've been in contact to tell them upon my eighteenth birthday, the continued donations we send them will not stop. That's why the Cleavers at the Sanctuary are so nice to me, they are told to be because Gordon, and eventually I, will be giving them so much money. It's why Reapers bow to me too."

He stared at her incredulously. "You could practically control them with the amount Gordon's sending! You might as well be investing."

"I know," Valkyrie said. "It's weird. But it means we can ask for Cleavers from the producers directly and they'll almost always be able to send us a dozen."

"Valkyrie," Crow said, shaking his head and flicking through the folder quickly. "This is incredible. With just a little work you could convert a lot of the consistent donation money into an investment and gain an even better income each month. I always wondered where the money came from, but I never asked or thought it could be as elaborate at this. How much profit do you make a year?"

"Neither did I," Valkyrie admitted. "And I worked it out to be six-hundred thousand a year just from this and with taking the Cleaver donations into account which is a very significant amount, though that number has been going down each year by about fifty thousand for the last five years, but I know the problem and can fix that when I'm eighteen fairly easily. But see this company here? This is one that we need to do some work on. The owner, Mr Apúrate, he's trying to merge his business in real estate with Mr Vinay's business in the same thing, but it's sort of a well-known rumour that if he does it he'll push Nadia's father out and leave him with nothing. Obviously, Mr Vinay has more sense than to agree but Mr Apúrate uses some underhand ways to get what he wants in the last few years. I think we need to do something about it."

Crow nodded. "I think you're right but only because of the underhanded ways part. I understand stocks and the Cleaver Production parts, but the getting businesses to do what you want thing is not my forte. I suggest talking to Anton and Ghastly about that. Between the pressure of you being a detective, Anton's contacts, and Gordon's business know-how, you could get anything you want from him."

"Is that not illegal?" Valkyrie asked suspiciously.

"So is his underhanded methods," Crow pointed out. "We can simply arrest him if you want. But if you want to benefit and live long term on these profits, I don't want to ruin that for you. I don't think it's a good thing, but I do want you to have the most successful life you can, even if it's something I don't like."

She smiled at him. "Thanks, Crow. You're a good bad influence."

"I know."

"Do we still have to do schoolwork?"

"Absolutely."

"But I did all this work myself!" Valkyrie whined. "All this folder stuff and labelling and maths and graphs. At least don't make me do maths, I already did loads."

"Fine. You did maths. You can do physics instead."

Valkyrie put her head on the table.

Aww. Maybe not correct, but I wanted a mini Val and Crow/Skul bonding moment as well as another thing to show Val's maturity and I also need to get more into Val's adult life options now she's getting older. She still has loads of time but it's a story, and this is the intro to that. Now we can have a few dozen chapters of never talking about it :) I'm a good author like that :D