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actually winning. His support was crumbling, his influence was fading, and he was staring defeat in the face. So he ordered one last, desperate strike against all the leaders on our side.’ Stephanie stared at him, lost in his voice. ‘I went up against his right-hand man who had laid out a wickedly exquisite trap. I didn’t suspect a thing until it was too late. ‘So I died. He killed me. The twenty-third of October it was, when my heart stopped beating. Once I was dead, they stuck my body up on a pike and burned it for all to see. They used me as a warning – they used the bodies of all the leaders they had killed as warnings – and, to my utter horror, it worked.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The tide turned. Our side starting losing ground. Mevolent got stronger. It was more than I could stand, so I came back.’ ‘You just. . . came back?’ ‘It’s. . . complicated. When I died, I never moved on. Something was holding me here, making me watch. I’ve never heard of it happening before that and I haven’t heard of it happening since, but it happened to me. So when it got too much, I woke up, a bag of bones. Literally. They had gathered up my bones and put them in a bag and thrown the bag into a river. So that was a marvellous new experience right there.’ ‘Then what happened?’ ‘I put myself back together, which was rather painful, then climbed out of the river and rejoined the fight, and in the end, we won. We finally won. So, with Mevolent defeated, I quit that whole scene and struck out on my own for the first time in a few hundred years.’ Stephanie blinked. ‘Few hundred?’ ‘It was a long war.’ ‘That man, he called you detective.’ ‘He obviously knows me by reputation,’ Skulduggery said, standing a little straighter. ‘I solve mysteries now.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Quite good at it too.’ ‘So, what, you’re tracking down your head?’ Skulduggery looked at her. If he’d had eyelids, he might well be blinking. ‘It’d be nice to have it back, sure, but. . .’ ‘So you don’t need it, like, so you can rest in peace?’ ‘No. No, not really.’


This is a fantasy story. What do you think is most unbelievable so far? In what way might Skulduggery have been trapped?


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