Playing with Fire: Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 2 characters

Also known as Stephanie Edgley

Appears from the start

Skulduggery's partner, still a schoolgirl at home in Haggard and a working detective everywhere else. Since taking her name she has been training hard as an Elemental, is competent with air and fire and is learning to take a beating without stopping, which happens more often than she admits. She keeps the two halves of her life apart by sending a magical duplicate to school and to the dinner table, and she has begun to prefer the half her parents know nothing about.

Appears from the start

The skeleton detective: an Elemental sorcerer who died during the war against Mevolent and came back, now the Sanctuary's most effective and least popular investigator. He hides his skull under a hat, scarf and sunglasses when he has to go out among ordinary people, drives a vintage Bentley, and treats mortal danger as an opportunity for conversation. He is training Valkyrie, and worrying about how good she is getting at this.

Appears from the start

The duplicate that steps out of Valkyrie's bedroom mirror to live her ordinary life while she is away, and hands back everything it experienced when she touches the glass again. It looks like her, answers to her name and fools her parents completely. It is not alive, it has no feelings of its own, and it does not always do exactly what Valkyrie would have done.

First appears in chapter 5

One of Mevolent's three great generals, a soldier and a fanatic who has spent the years since the war in a magical prison and has never once suggested he regrets anything. Where Serpine was a schemer, Vengeous is a commander: disciplined, patient, and devoted to the return of the Faceless Ones as a matter of faith rather than ambition.

First appears in chapter 5

A Texan hired killer in a pale suit and dark glasses, with smooth hollows where his eyes should be. He opens a seam in stone or earth with a straight razor and sinks into it, travelling through solid ground and arriving wherever he likes. He is unfailingly polite, entirely mercenary, and works for whoever is paying this week.

First appears in chapter 3

A tailor of protective clothing and a formidable fighter who can turn his skin to stone, scarred since birth by a curse laid on his mother. He is one of the few people Skulduggery trusts without qualification, and he keeps his shop, his temper and his opinions to himself.

First appears in chapter 2

The sword-carrying English sorcerer who can walk on walls and ceilings, back in Ireland and glad of the excuse. She is cheerful about violence, unbothered by odds, and the closest thing Valkyrie has to an older sister.

First appears in chapter 12

An elderly, brilliant and permanently irritated scientist and physician who runs a hidden medical facility behind a derelict cinema, patching up sorcerers who should have known better. He disapproves of Skulduggery, disapproves even more of a child being brought to him bleeding, and treats them both anyway.

First appears in chapter 12

A vampire who serves as muscle for whoever can control him. By day he passes for a pale, contained man kept in check by a drug he doses himself with; by night, if the drug is skipped, he sheds his skin and becomes something far faster and far worse. He is patient about grudges.

First appears in chapter 12

The keeper of Dublin's great private library and a seller of information to any side that pays. Beautiful, magically adored by everyone who sees her, and cheerfully unreliable, she is nevertheless the first person Skulduggery asks when he needs to know something obscure.

First appears in chapter 19

An ancient and bitter sorcerer who withdrew from the world long ago and lives apart from the Sanctuary with followers who share his contempt for ordinary people. He hates being disturbed, bargains hard for what he knows, and can take the shape of an enormous spider.

First appears in chapter 18

A creature assembled from parts of several different beings and built around the remains of something that was never human. It has been kept dead and in pieces for a very long time, and there are people who believe that waking it would open a door that was shut at enormous cost.

First appears in chapter 26

One of Mevolent's generals from the war, a Necromancer who fought in black armour and was feared even by the people he fought beside. He vanished before the war ended and has not been seen since; what he left behind is still dangerous enough that people go looking for it.