It wasn't a question Skulduggery wanted to answer. What he wanted to do was jump back, and ask a little more about the dark mist around Keeliai. He wanted to ask what else Wreath had observed, or whether Wreath had seen Evandau recently. He wanted much more information on Malicant and the Death plane than he had, for God's sake - they were fighting a war against an enemy no one had even seen.

But something else Skulduggery had noticed about alcohol was its tendency to remove inhibitions and doubts. Wreath was asking a question he would likely never ask again.

"Yes," he said. The response came curtly, as though he planned to change the subject as soon as he could. Skulduggery took a moment, and then tried again. "Yes. Life is - was - fleeting. Death was permanent. I needed that. I was being swept away without it. Even if I'd stayed long enough to find out what the Passage was, I would never have agreed to doing it."