That depended on your definition of 'death,' and Skulduggery told Raine so. "In the mortal world, very likely not. But enough sorcerers have managed to cheat death that there are caveats in place for what to do when presented with the apparently dead body of a criminal. In the case of the man who suffocated, my first task was to neutralise the curse he'd placed on a pen before that curse killed an acquaintance of mine. I succeeded admirably, of course. I then had to make sure he really was dead, and that involves a very complicated step-by-step magical process."

In fact, Skulduggery usually ignored that process. When he killed things, they tended to stay dead. In fact, he was usually capable of destroying or killing things generally lauded as unkillable or indestructible.