Badd couldn't read Skulduggery's face, but he could read his tone and his posture quite easily. The skeleton man had lost more than his internal organs. When you put all that magical garbage aside a detective was still a detective, wasn't he? And being a detective hurt. It meant seeing your friends die or fall victim to corruption. It meant failing repeatedly because the crooks found some little loophole that let them run free. And it meant after all that you picked up and kept going, because when you were a detective there wasn't much else you could do. It was in the blood.

Or the bone, as the case might be.

"I'm sorry," Badd said quietly, politely averting his eyes.