"Funny," Skulduggery said. "I seem to recall someone making the exact same argument about you rescuing me. And I also remember someone else telling them that reducing the choice to raw and basic statistics is not how things work, nor how they should work."

It wasn't as if Skulduggery had accepted that being rescued by Gabe was a good thing. Not with Lucifer on the way and the whole planet being put at risk, for the benefit of just one person who, when all was said and done, deserved every minute of that suffering anyway. But Skulduggery also wasn't above using previous arguments he didn't agree with to make a point now.

"It's not just a bit," he added quietly. "It's constant, and cumulative, and dangerous. You have a whole world of people back home counting on you returning in one piece. We can handle this without divine intervention."

"Actually," Ghastly returned, just as quietly, "unless you can find Scarab in less than a minute, I'm not sure we can."