Skulduggery pulled the body out. Now little more than a skeleton, it crumpled to a pile of bones on the kitchen floor.
“This must be kinda weird for you,” Temper said.
“Not really,” Skulduggery replied, picking up the skull. He tilted his head. “I think I know him.”
Temper frowned. “How can you tell?”
“I recognise him from somewhere.”
“I don’t mean to be … uh, whatever … but how can you recognise him when he’s … like this?”
Skulduggery looked at Temper. “You don’t think all skulls look alike, do you?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“You do?”
“Of course.”
Skulduggery started searching its clothes. “Did I ever tell you that I lost my skull once?”
Temper sighed. “Yeah, you did. Goblins ran away with it.”
“And for years afterwards I wore a replacement skull. For years, I walked around with a different head. The jaw was different, the cheekbones were different, the nasal aperture was hilariously off – I’m still surprised people recognised me at all.”
“Maybe the fact that you were a skeleton …”
Unable to find any ID, Skulduggery tore off a large strip of the deceased’s shirt. “The point is, a skull is as unique as the face that sits upon it.”
Skulduggery laid the cloth over the head, and manipulated moisture out of the air to dampen it until it clung to the skull. Then he put both hands up under the jaw and ever so gently the air began to flow, filling out the cheeks and the eye sockets from beneath.
“No,” Skulduggery murmured, “that isn’t it …”
Temper watched as the cloth face billowed slightly, somehow giving the corpse lips, lending it the appearance of substance. Every so often, Skulduggery would give another murmur. He was like a sculptor: happy with one part of the face, he’d move on to the next, until it became something definite.
“Satrap Beholden,” Skulduggery said, removing the cloth from the corpse’s skull as he stood. “I haven’t heard from him in years. Haven’t seen him in a decade.”