"Great." Gabriel grinned again and fell in step beside the young sorcerer as they headed toward the exit. "Why don't you go through the words we've already covered?" It was something he'd done in the car. Without overburdening Fletcher with vocabulary, he'd deliberately stuck to a handful of related ones and twice on the trip had Fletcher recite them.

Luckily, all those words were basic environment ones, and every single one could be used to describe things within view. While continuing the impromptu lesson Gabe examined the entrance more closely and secured Fletcher's help to find another easily-found but less obvious tree at the doorway. The Teleporter had forgotten a number of them already, but with gentle prompting he managed to remember all but two on his own. By the time the little language lesson had finished Gabe had picked one of the trees Fletcher had suggested and had enough of a grasp of China's sigils to be able to transfer the exit. It was dead wood, which was the main reason Gabe had chosen it; it meant he wasn't cutting into a living tree.

But that wasn't the only reason Gabe wanted to speak to Fletcher alone. The fact was that Fletcher, judging by what Skulduggery had said and the way the others treated him on occasion, seemed to be something of an outsider among the others. With a flick of his fingers the Archangel summoned up a scalpel, and as he began to make careful incisions he looked up at Fletcher from beneath the brim of his hat.

"How are you doing?" he asked gently.