Derek Landy - The Dying of the Light

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2014

Reissued in this edition in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is:

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Skulduggery Pleasant rests his weary bones on the web at:

www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk

Derek Landy blogs under duress at

www.dereklandy.blogspot.com

Text copyright © Derek Landy 2014

Illuminated letters copyright © Tom Percival 2014

Skulduggery Pleasant logo TMHarperCollins Publishers

Skulduggery Pleasant © TMDerek Landy

Cover design © blacksheep-uk.com

Cover illustration © Tom Percival

Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 9780007489282

Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780007489299

Version: 2019-04-15

This book is dedicated to me.

Derek, without you, I would not be where I am today.

Words cannot convey how much I owe you for the guidance you’ve shown me – for your wisdom, your wit, your keen insight and your keener intelligence, your taste, your strength, your integrity and your humility. I won’t mention the charity work you do, or the political activism you’re involved in, or the ecological work you’ve spearheaded. And it’s not just because you won’t talk about it – it’s because no one else does, either.

You have taught me how to be a better person.

Nay – you have taught us all.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1: Meek Ridge

Chapter 2: Living in the Shadow

Chapter 3: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Chapter 4: Friends and Foe

Chapter 5: To Watch the World Burn

Chapter 6: My Normal Life

Chapter 7: Visions

Chapter 8: Curiosity

Chapter 9: Signate

Chapter 10: Girls’ Night Out

Chapter 11: Honey, I’m Home

Chapter 12: The Cauldron

Chapter 13: My Friend. My Furniture.

Chapter 14: A Common Enemy

Chapter 15: Finbar’s Dream

Chapter 16: The National Black Belt Review Board

Chapter 17: A Voice from the Darkness

Chapter 18: Brogues and Burrs

Chapter 19: Me and Her

Chapter 20: Home Delivery

Chapter 21: The Eviction

Chapter 22: The Return of Valkyrie Cain

Chapter 23

Chapter 24: A Fine Pair of Specimens

Chapter 25: Going To America

Chapter 26: Weird Feelings

Chapter 27: The Gnarl

Chapter 28

Chapter 29: Those Who Live in Darkness

Chapter 30: Forgiven

Chapter 31: Creepy Kid

Chapter 32: The Job Offer

Chapter 33: Misadventures in Babysitting

Chapter 34: Saying Goodbye

Chapter 35: The Loss

Chapter 36: Joining the Stream

Chapter 37: Brooking No Argument

Chapter 38: Enemy Territory

Chapter 39: Finding the Fountain

Chapter 40: Famous Last Words

Chapter 41: Here Be Dragons

Chapter 42: Brainstorm

Chapter 43: Shunting Ravel

Chapter 44: A Better Person

Chapter 45: A Brutal Act of Kindness

Chapter 46: The Conversation

Chapter 47: The Death Bringer Wakes

Chapter 48: A New Roarhaven

Chapter 49: Stopping for Gas

Chapter 50: The Card Trick

Chapter 51: The Temple of the Spider

Chapter 52: The Devil Comes to Play

Chapter 53: The End is Nye

Chapter 54: The Deal

Chapter 55: The Exiled

Chapter 56: Toe to Toe

Chapter 57: A World of Pain

Chapter 58: Valkyrie’s Affliction

Chapter 59: The Corpse Trail

Chapter 60: Freaks

Chapter 61: The Plan

Chapter 62: The Knock on the Door

Chapter 63: The City Below

Chapter 64: Chasing Alice

Chapter 65: The Second Test

Chapter 66: Table Manners

Chapter 67: Lightning

Chapter 68: The Hourglass

Chapter 69: Strange Bedfellows

Chapter 70: Return of the Living Dead

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Keep Reading …

Read on for a taste of Resurrection

The Skulduggery Pleasant series

About the Publisher

ive in the morning and Danny is up, rolling slowly out of bed, eyes half open as his bare feet touch the floorboards. Getting up this early is worse in the winter, when the cold threatens to push him back under the covers. Colorado winters are something to behold, as his dear departed dad would say, and Danny isn’t one to argue with his dear departed dad. But the summers are warm, and so he sits on the edge of his bed without shivering, and after a dull minute he forces his eyes open wide, stands up and dresses.

He goes downstairs, puts the coffee on while he opens the store. Five thirty every morning except Sundays, the General Store is open and ready for business. It was that way when Danny was a boy and his folks ran the place, and it’s that way now that Danny is twenty-seven and his folks are cold and quiet and lying side by side in the ground. On his more maudlin days, Danny also likes to think his dreams are buried down there with them too, but he knows this is unfair. He tried to be a musician; he moved to LA and formed a band and when it didn’t all happen the way he wanted he scampered back home to take over the family business.