A war lasting less than a year is actually kind of an upside, at least for the people left behind. War is a terrible, terrible thing, and the fewer people who have to make their way through one, the better.

Last time, Ghastly thinks morbidly, it took the deaths of two Dead Men before the war was finished. Why should this time have been any different?

Then he mentally shakes himself. "Sometimes," he says, "the little things are enough." But the smile he offers Skulduggery is a melancholy one. It's scant compensation for everything lost.

"Do you think the world will be all right? Ireland?" Ghastly has perilously little picture of the world after, only really the deaths.