“Valkyrie walked to the back door, which hadn't been closed properly, shut it and locked it. There was now a baby in the house, after all. She couldn't take the chance that a wild animal might wander in and make off with Alice, like those dingoes in Australia. She was probably being unfair to both dingoes and Australia, but she couldn't risk it. Locked doors kept the dingoes out, and that's all there was to it, even if she didn't know what a dingo actually was. She took out her phone, searched the Internet, found a picture of a baby dingo and now she really wanted a baby dingo for a pet.”

“But even with my minimal amount of fame, there are certain perks. Recently, I was at a movie premier, and at the party after the movie, Meryl Streep was loose, walking around the room like a normal person. Absolutely nothing was preventing me from lunging toward her and shrieking "Dingoes ate my baby! Dingoes ate my baby!”

“Just leave her alone. You're annoying her.' 'I'm not annoying her. She doesn't even know how to be annoyed. She's, what, a week old?''She's three months.''She's three months in our years, but what is she in baby years?”

“Here she is,” her mum said, cooing at the baby, “my special girl.”“Oh, cheers,” Valkyrie said, rolling her eyes.”

“La Dorada skulked into view. She was half-mummified, but sodden. Gooey. Regin let out a low whistle. “The Mummy Returns meets Dingoes Ate My Face.”

“Even as she'd been writing it, she wondered if she was using too many exclamation marks, but she was glad she left them in. Nothing says "all is good in the world" like exclamation marks, after all.”

“Valkyrie Cain got out of the passenger side. She zipped upher black jacket against the cold, and joined Skulduggery as hewalked up to the front door. She glanced at him, and saw that he was smiling."Stop doing that,” she sighed.“Stop doing what?” Skulduggery responded in that gloriously velvet voice of his.“Stop smiling. The person we want to talk to lives in the only dark house on a bright street. That’s not a good sign.”“I didn’t realise I was smiling,” he said. They stopped at the door, and Skulduggery made a concerted effort to shift his features. His mouth twitcheddownwards. “Am I smiling now?”“No.”“Excellent,” he said, and the smile immediately sprang back up.”