That couldn't have been a coincidence. According to Gabe, Wreath was able to see souls in this state, for better or for worse; and his gaze had stopped on Skulduggery, lingered, before the Necromancer spoke again. Skulduggery was mildly curious about what he'd seen, of course, but there was an even more pressing issue. Just how much had Wreath seen? How much of Skulduggery's past was written in his soul? Would Gabe have warned him if anything in his soul was indicative of more than common knowledge?

Valkyrie, despite her earlier offer of help getting shut down, was still hovering around Wreath, seemingly oblivious. Didn't she see how he'd looked at his cane? Her ring? Her? That annoyed Skulduggery more than it really should have, but he didn't try to stop her. And when she pointed out a bus stop bench just up the sidewalk, he didn't object. He wasn't heartless, after all. Well, he was, but that was purely a physical issue. He was capable of taking pity on people he didn't particularly like.

"He saw you, then?" Skulduggery asked Gabe quietly. "Does he know? Because if he does, we might have a problem." Quite apart from the whole revealing-Gabriel-to-the-world thing, Solomon Wreath was a Necromancer; a devout religious man who'd spent a very long time believing in one societal imperative and nothing else. There was no telling how he would react to seeing an Archangel. Skulduggery had had enough trouble accepting it back at the Institute, and he hadn't really believed in anything.

"Are you okay?" Valkyrie asked Wreath up ahead. "He didn't try to hurt you or anything, did he?" She hesitated. "I did try to warn you."