Playing with Fire: Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 2 recap

Baron Vengeous, one of Mevolent's generals, escapes imprisonment with help from the hired killer Billy-Ray Sanguine and sets out to wake the Grotesquery, a creature stitched together around the remains of a Faceless One, which he intends to use to open a way for the dark gods to return. Skulduggery and Valkyrie hunt him through a world that includes the vampire Dusk, the reclusive sorcerer known as the Torment, and the reliably unhelpful China Sorrows. Valkyrie, training hard as an Elemental and running her ordinary life through a mirror duplicate, learns why the Sceptre of the Ancients obeyed her: she is descended from the last of the Ancients, and it is her blood the ritual needs. Vengeous also recovers the armour of Lord Vile, a Necromancer general missing since the war, and wears it against them. He wakes the Grotesquery, but Skulduggery and Valkyrie kill him and destroy the creature before the way can be opened. Tanith is badly injured, Dusk and Sanguine both escape, and Valkyrie's ancestry has made her a target.

Previously: twelve-year-old Stephanie Edgley inherited the house and fortune of her uncle Gordon, a horror novelist who had been murdered, and met Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton detective who told her that magic was real. She became his partner, took the protective name Valkyrie Cain and began learning Elemental magic, alongside the sword-fighter Tanith Low, the tailor Ghastly Bespoke and the information broker China Sorrows. The killer was Nefarian Serpine, a surviving lieutenant of the dark sorcerer Mevolent and the man who had tortured Skulduggery to death during the war after murdering his wife and child. Serpine was hunting the Sceptre of the Ancients, a weapon once used to drive out the Faceless Ones, the dark gods who ruled before humanity. Valkyrie found it first and it bound itself to her; when Serpine took it and attacked the Sanctuary, she got it back and killed him with it. She then chose to keep the work, the name and the training, and to keep all of it hidden from her parents.

Some months on, Valkyrie is deep into her training as an Elemental and is running her ordinary life through a duplicate that steps out of her bedroom mirror and goes to school in her place. The peace ends when Baron Vengeous, one of Mevolent's three great generals, escapes the prison that has held him since the war, cutting his way out with help bought from the outside. His escape is arranged by Billy-Ray Sanguine, a Texan hired killer who travels through solid stone. Skulduggery and Valkyrie are put on the case, and it is immediately obvious that Vengeous is not simply running: he escaped at this particular moment because there is something he intends to do.

What Vengeous wants is the Grotesquery, a creature built long ago out of pieces of several different beings around the remains of something that was never human, kept dead and locked away ever since. Waking it would give the people who worship the Faceless Ones a way to call their gods back into the world. The hunt brings Skulduggery and Valkyrie up against Dusk, a vampire working as Vengeous's muscle, who is faster and stronger than anything Valkyrie has fought, and sends them to Kenspeckle Grouse, an irritable old scientist who runs a hidden medical facility behind a derelict cinema and who patches Valkyrie up while complaining about everyone involved in her getting hurt.

Chasing what Vengeous needs, Skulduggery, Valkyrie and Tanith bargain for information with China Sorrows and then with the Torment, an ancient recluse who despises ordinary people and can become an enormous spider. From them Valkyrie learns something about herself: the Sceptre of the Ancients obeyed her because she is descended from the last of the Ancients, the first sorcerers who drove the Faceless Ones out of the world. That inheritance is not a curiosity. The ritual Vengeous intends to perform on the Grotesquery requires the blood of an Ancient's descendant, which means Valkyrie is not just investigating the case, she is the missing ingredient in it.

Vengeous is also hunting the armour of Lord Vile, a Necromancer who fought as one of Mevolent's generals in black armour and disappeared before the war ended. The armour has been hidden for a lifetime, and in the wrong hands it makes its wearer close to unstoppable. Between guarding Valkyrie, keeping the Sanctuary informed and staying ahead of Sanguine and Dusk, Skulduggery loses ground; Valkyrie is taken and her blood is used, and the ritual Vengeous has been working towards begins. Tanith is hurt badly in the fighting, and Dusk, cut and humiliated, marks Valkyrie down as something to be settled later.

The Grotesquery wakes. Vengeous, wearing Lord Vile's armour, has the creature he needs and the protection to keep anyone from taking it off him, and the way for the Faceless Ones is closer to opening than it has been since the war. Skulduggery, Valkyrie, Tanith and Ghastly go after him anyway, with the Sanctuary too slow and too cautious to arrive in time. Valkyrie, whose fire has been the weakest part of her training all book, has to use it when there is nothing else left.

Vengeous is beaten and killed, and the Grotesquery is destroyed before it can be used to bring the Faceless Ones through. Sanguine escapes underground, and Dusk survives with an unfinished grudge against Valkyrie. Tanith is left seriously injured but alive, and Kenspeckle Grouse puts everyone back together while telling them exactly what he thinks of them. Two of Mevolent's three generals are now dead, but the armour of the third, Lord Vile, has been dragged back into the world, and the people who want the Faceless Ones returned have not gone away. Valkyrie ends the case stronger, more confident with fire, and carrying a piece of knowledge that changes what she is worth to the other side: she is the last of the Ancients' line, and her blood can open doors.

Baron Vengeous succeeds in waking the Grotesquery, using Valkyrie's blood, and wears the armour of Lord Vile into the final fight, but he is beaten and killed and the creature is put down before it can be used to open the way for the Faceless Ones. The cost is heavy: Tanith is badly hurt, Dusk survives with a grudge against Valkyrie he intends to settle, and Billy-Ray Sanguine slips away underground as he always does. The lasting change is what Valkyrie has learned about herself. She is descended from the last of the Ancients, which is why the Sceptre obeyed her and why her blood was worth stealing, and that inheritance makes her useful to every faction that still wants the Faceless Ones back. Her Elemental magic is stronger, particularly fire, and her double life is holding, but only just. Two of Mevolent's three generals are now dead, the Faceless Ones remain the goal of everyone who worshipped them, and the armour of the third, Lord Vile, is loose in the world again.