Valkyrie, yet again, found herself watching him. It was becoming a habit she could not afford to have. There were so many reasons why it wouldn't work, why it wasn't possible, and yet she had that damn hope pounding in her chest, day and night, every time she spoke to him or looked at him or thought of him.

She shook her head in an attempt to clear it. Skulduggery glanced over at her from the driver's seat.

'Headache?' he asked.

She chuckled dryly. 'It's that damn cologne you're wearing. If I didn't know any better I'd suspect you wear it purely to annoy me…'

'Valkyrie, there was never any doubt that I wear it purely to annoy you; I plan my days around your irritation.'

'And I plan my life around yours'

'Yes I had noticed that, I've been meaning to ask; are you planning on getting your own life any time soon or is this puppy-like attachment a permanent arrangement?'

'I'm quite content for now. When you realise you can't live without me I suppose I'll have to move on.'

'Eight years, hasn't happened yet'

'And you had to put up with Fletcher for the majority of them, I figured once he started hanging around you'd cut me loose'

'I feel that is a testimony to my patience and grace; I have put up with a girl of questionable intelligence and a boy with ridiculous hair for the greatest years of my life'

'I'm pretty sure the greatest years of your life were when you were alive...'

'How fortunate I'm not insecure about my state of existence'

'How fortunate the sheer size of your ego makes it impossible for you to be insecure about anything'

He harrumphed indignantly. 'I don't like you'

Skulduggery parked the car outside the tattoo parlour and the pair made their way up to the front door, just as Ghastly pulled up in the van.

'Morning Ghastly' said Valkyrie brightly, waving enthusiastically as he joined them.

Skulduggery and Ghastly both looked at her.

'Someone's unnecessarily cheerful this morning' said the tailor, eyebrows raised.

Valkyrie reddened unnoticeably and scolded herself inwardly. Idiot, calm down.

'Someone's unnecessarily grumpy this morning' she countered. The truth was she was just in a good mood after spending the morning in the car with Skulduggery. Good God this was becoming pathetic. She glanced at him as he knocked on the door. Sooner or later he was going to guess, if she couldn't start controlling her general ridiculousness, and that would be the worst possible thing that could happen, at all, in the world. Ever.

Finbar Wrong answered the door in a towel and positively lit up at the sight of Skulduggery.

'Skul-man!' he cried and dropped his towel as he went in for a hug. The intended hug-ee physically flinched and backed away, hands in the air warding off the naked onslaught. 'Whoooaaaa Finbar the suit, the suit!'

Finbar stood in confusion for a moment before shivering, noticing the fallen towel and hastily wrapping it around his waist.

'Gotcha Skul, always fully clothed, c'mon in, you haven't seen your godson in months! Val, Ghastly' he said nodding at them, gripping the towel as he stood aside.

'Finbar, I'm not your son's godfather'

'Oh yeah you're right, sorry man. Ghastly that's your area of expertise'

'Not me either mate'

Finbar scratched his head good-naturedly. 'Wonder who it is then… Tea? Coffee? Peach?'

They seated themselves on the mismatched chairs in Finbar's living room/tattoo parlour, Valkyrie taking the tattoo chair.

'Hey Fin how 'bout a tattoo?' she inquired casually.

'Yeah sure wha-?' Finbar began.

'Absolutely not' interjected Skulduggery.

Valkyrie turned to him slowly.

'Pardon?'

The skeleton sat very still and said nothing. From the way he held his head she could tell he was frowning. She continued to look at him.

'Nothing' he said quietly.

He was, in Valkyrie's opinion, still coming to terms with the end of her childhood, despite the fact that it had ended long before she turned eighteen, let alone twenty. It saddened her to think he still thought of her as a child; just one more reason why it would never work. Why what would never work? she thought to herself angrily, what exactly do you want here?

It was a good question, she didn't know what she wanted to happen, all she knew was that she wanted something to happen.

He avoided her gaze and got back to business. 'Finbar, we're here for some help. We've heard some rumours lately from other psychics, unreliable of course but worrying all the same. We were wondering could you please put on some trousers!'

Finbar scrambled into the next room and reappeared wearing scruffy jeans.

'We were wondering could you look forward only a week or two, to clarify they're not true.'

'Sure man, anything for the godfather of my child.'

He set about gathering his things. Skulduggery shook his head.

*0*0*0*

Despite Skulduggery's assurance that the above named rumours were indeed only rumours, Finbar's vision left the party feeling decidedly nervous. True, they hadn't seen anything that looked like the end of the world; no figure in black massacring millions of people, but they did see a lot of empty streets and they did hear a lot of sobbing from sources that weren't visible. It was undeniably chilling. Even Skulduggery admitted he hadn't expected it to look so…dark.

'What do you think causes it?' asked Valkyrie in the car afterward, Ghastly following them in the van.

The detective remained silent for a few moments, the engine purring soothingly in the background.

'I'm not sure' he said finally. 'There didn't seem to be any sign of violence; no broken glass, no bodies strewn across the street, no blood, no debris. But then why would there be so many people crying? Why would everyone hide indoors if the event that caused sadness had already happened?'

'Unless they were crying in anticipation of something bad? Maybe a comet is bound for earth or something?'

Skulduggery nodded in approval. 'Yes we're going to have to consider options like that. Still, it's all a bit suspicious. We definitely need to look into it further. With my expertise and your good looks we'll undoubtedly solve it.'

They drove on to Haggard in silence, Valkyrie desperately trying to suppress the flare of excitement that rose inside her when he jokingly complimented her. She could feel her cheeks reddening with a mixture of joy and embarrassment at that joy. This was so humiliating. She shifted in her seat and turned to look out the window, all but pressing her cheek against the cool glass to cool herself down.

'Valkyrie?' her partner asked, causing her to jump in her seat. 'Are you quite alright?'

'What? Yeah, of course, yeah, why wouldn't I be?' Good God pull yourself together woman…

'You just seem to be falling out the window. I had admittedly always assigned to you puppy-like tendencies but hanging your head out of a moving car seems a bit extreme, even for you.'

Valkyrie punched him in the arm and scowled. 'Shut up, if your car wasn't so bloody warm…'

'I think the temperature is spiffing'

'You can't feel temperature'

She said it with more venom than she had intended, in an effort to conceal her earlier discomfort. Skulduggery turned to look at her, tilting his head gently to the side.

'Are you sure you're alright?' He had an edge to his voice that Valkyrie hadn't heard before.

Oh my God he knows. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.

She laughed nervously, almost hysterically. 'Skulduggery I'm fine stop being such a worrywart!'

Oh Christ did she just say worrywart? She tried yet again to cover up:

'I'm just a little tired today, I think I'm coming down with something, flu maybe, it's probably nothing, maybe it is, I don't know I'm not sick that often, well, not as often as most people, but I suppose considerably more often than you are, what with you being a skeleton and all, well I suppose I never really asked you do you get sick? Do you get colds? I suppose you'd need to feel cold to get colds, well then again I've no idea how colds work I'm not a doctor, I'm not Kenspeckle, ha…ha…'

Oh. God. Make it stop.

Skulduggery glanced at her again and shook his head slightly, but said nothing.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, Valkyrie mentally shouting at herself for the entire time. At this rate not only was he going to cop on, but she was going to destroy any friendship they had at the moment, by causing him to gradually realise that she was too crazy to be a functional partner.