Ghastly Bespoke was rambling. Corrival watched the other man with a mixture of amusement, bemusement and dread as Ghastly sat, didn't sit, drank, said nothing, said a lot (but which basically amounted to nothing anyway). Ghastly. Rambling. Uncertain. As if he was gearing up to something. It was such a novel experience that Corrival didn't even manage to tell him to get on with it; he just stared in disbelief.

Did he believe in the Faceless Ones? Well, no, he bloody well hadn't. Who had, other than their worshippers? And a lot of the time not even them!

All of which meant that it took a few moments for the tailor's last words to sink in. Corrival's first reaction was a deep, abiding relief. Skulduggery was back, and since the world wasn't currently being ruled by Faceless Ones, he could assume the detective's little band of detectives had managed it without letting any of them through.

It was the second part at which Corrival's brain stalled, rebooted, reran and then stalled again. Archangel. Even taking into account the idea that Ghastly was just talking about a being roughly analogous to a Faceless One, except opposite in terms of mortality, that was ... well. 'Extraordinary' was too tame a word.

Assuming, of course, that Ghastly was still sane after the rescue attempt. Corrival squinted at the tailor, sipping his whiskey and trying to figure out if you could tell insanity-by-Faceless-One just by looking.

Finally he gave up and asked bluntly, "Why are you here, Ghastly?"