"Oh, yes," Skulduggery answered darkly. "Churches of the Faceless are everywhere, each as weak as the last. They're supposedly peaceful now, but every Sanctuary keeps an eye on them. Mevolent was based in Ireland, but he had followings all over the world."

"See, here's what I don't get," Valkyrie spoke up, copying Tanith's backward walk so they could all see each other. "It was a gigantic war that went on for centuries, right? In every country. How come I never hear about it in normal history books? I get the whole secrecy taboo thing, but would Mevolent really have cared about it? It was a war. Why didn't anyone notice anything?"

"Because we're very good at the whole secrecy taboo thing," said Ghastly with a chuckle.

Skulduggery nodded in agreement. "Valkyrie, think about it. Would Mevolent really have wanted mortals to notice? Would he have wanted a whole planet of people who are very, very good at killing each other without magic and very easily panicked, to find out there was a small group of people who were trying to bring about Armageddon? He didn't want a reveal of magic anymore than we did."

Valkyrie let that sink in, her brow furrowing with the effort, and then she sighed. "Can we talk about something nice? Something fun? Like puppies. I haven't talked about puppies for a year. Let's talk about puppies."