A strangely welcome distraction from the food sat down near him fairly quickly, and Skulduggery nodded to the man. "I've had worse mornings." He might have said any morning where you woke up was a good morning, except that Skulduggery wasn't used to sleeping. And that was part of the problem.

The bad feeling he'd gotten off of Gabe the day before had almost completely disappeared this morning. Maybe Skulduggery was just too distracted, or maybe getting to know the man yesterday had helped. Either way, it was much easier to talk to him now.

"Better than the one before that," he answered Gabe's question neutrally. Much more frustrating, especially since they'd seen the staircase before getting attacked, but at least there wouldn't be any lingering effects from this one. No physical effects, to be precise. The emotional effects the hallucinations were having was a whole other story. Skulduggery really had to fight just to have those, and not... something worse.

But this would have been Gabe's first night, he remembered. "I hope yours wasn't too jarring. Did the rosary help?" His tone was lightly amused for a moment, but became serious again with his next question. "Did you find who you were looking for?"