Skulduggery Pleasant: The End of the World
Page 7
Stephanie didn’t answer. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like being under constant attack, without the means to fight back. But she couldn’t fight back, she couldn’t argue, because she didn’t know what she might say in her anger. She had to sit here and take it.
“You need to think about what you’ve done,” her mother said. “Think about the people you’ve hurt, and the people you are hurting, and then decide if you think it’s worth it.”
Her mother left the room, closing the door behind her. Stephanie sat very still, allowed a few moments to slip past, then lashed out, flinging a lamp across the room. It smashed into the wall and dropped.
She blinked, watching as it rolled to a stop on the floor. She hadn’t touched it. She’d reached for it and then suddenly it was flying through the air, but she hadn’t actually touched it. She smiled to herself. Her powers were growing. Just in time, too.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, PART 3:
(The following is a chunk of the original epilogue.)
Valkyrie Cain. She’d taken that name and she’d embraced it, without the slightest idea of what that would entail. She was a part of it now, part of the world that had claimed the life of her uncle, entering into it with gleeful abandon and hideous ignorance. She’d had the audacity to think that because she was descended from the Last of the Ancients, she was somehow meant for this. Meant for magic and marvels and wonders. And what had she seen instead? She’d seen death and destruction, terrors beyond belief and stuff of which nightmares are made.
Silly little girl.
She deserved all the pain she had received. The bruises, the fractures, the cuts, the broken bones? She deserved them, she deserved all of them and more. After all, hadn’t she got off lightly? What about poor old Ghastly Bespoke, now nothing more than a ridiculous statue in the back room of his shop? Or Tanith Low, the feisty and brave Tanith Low, skewered by a man who had vanished without a trace? Had Tanith deserved her untimely death? Stephanie was the one who should have died, and she knew it.
Her death would be a release, after all. It would release her parents from having to worry about her. After that night in Haggard, after all the tales of roving gangs and fighting in the streets and Stephanie being at the centre of it all, her poor mother and father were at their wits’ end. Her mother hadn’t spoken to her in weeks. Her father couldn’t even look her in the eye anymore. She hobbled around on her crutches and no one in town wanted to have anything to do with her. She was better off dead.
Even little Jasper was scared of her, little Jasper and his ears that stuck out like car doors. His parents had warned him about her. “Stay away from that Edgley girl,” they’d said, “she’s trouble.” Oh how right they were.
Stay away from that Edgley girl. She’s trouble.
It didn’t take much to figure out who was really behind all these stories and rumours. Her suspicions were confirmed when she got that phone call.
“Stephanie?”
Yes? she’d said.
“Ah Stephanie, it’s Mr Fedgewick here, your late uncle’s solicitor.”
Oh yes, she’d said. Do you want to talk to my dad?
“Actually, I want to talk to you. I felt I had to call, out of a sense of fair play. Your aunt and uncle arrived at my office a few days ago, accompanied by their own solicitor. They requested an examination of the Will. There seems to be a… a possible loophole, in the wording of the document. I am certain your uncle didn’t mean it but, nonetheless, it is there.”
What’s the loophole?
“It seems that you only inherit if you are actually living at home, with your parents, on your eighteenth birthday.
“They were quite insistent that this point be accurate, and they repeatedly proposed the unlikely scenario that if you were not living at home when you turned eighteen, the inheritance would be divided between your parents, and them. I just thought you ought to know.”
And that’s when it all started to make sense. The constant rumour-mongering, the casting of all those aspersions, planting the seeds of doubt in her parents’ minds. They were out to ruin her life, weren’t they? Ruin her reputation, ruin her image, and cause rifts between herself and her folks. How wicked. How delightfully Machiavellian in scheme and ambition. They really were to be applauded.
And what could poor old Stephanie do? No one was talking to her, and no one would believe her anyway. She had taken so many trips down to the police station that it was becoming a second home to her. She was notorious, the villain of Haggard. Her crimes grew with each rumour, her sins multiplying with each whisper.
She didn’t even have the Bentley to retreat into. Her good and dear friend Skulduggery Pleasant had a lot of cleaning up to oversee. Meritorious had returned and assumed control once more, but his authority was shaky at best. He had, after all, fled at a time when his leadership was needed the most. Around the world, Serpine’s allies had resurfaced and struck, and then vanished again when the news of his demise had reached them. Their coup may have failed, but because of it the Cleavers’ numbers had been decimated, and their duties stretched them thin. Confidence in the rules and rule-makers was at an all time low. The Sanctuary had been breached, after all. Nothing, and no one, was safe.
Stephanie wasn’t involved in these matters, of course. She’d needed time off, time to heal, to mend, and to pretend to be normal. Not that she was fooling anyone. Not any more.
And that was the worst part, wasn’t it? She could no longer hope to blend in with the boring and the banal. They knew her now. They knew she was different.
But they still didn’t know just how different she was.
And there you have it – a glimpse of what could have been. Anger and strife instead of warmth and weird jokes. I know which version I prefer.
I hope you found this little insight into the writing process at least vaguely interesting. I had originally wanted to have all these pages blank for you to, like, doodle, or something. But they said no, there had to be stuff. Interesting stuff. With words.
(You can still doodle, though. If you want. In the margins.) I’m going now. I have work to do. And books to write. And my cat has just sat on my keyboard, and she won’t get off.
Derek Landy
Copyright
First published in paperback in Great Britain for World Book Day
by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2012
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Visit Skulduggery Pleasant on the web at www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk
Derek Landy blogs under duress at www.dereklandy.blogspot.com
Copyright © Derek Landy 2012
Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Illuminated letters © Tom Percival 2012
Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy
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SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT: THE END OF THE WORLD. Copyright © Derek Landy 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007468072
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