"Are you ready to learn, lad?"
Spoilers from the books and/or film to follow!
"Tell yourself every day that you are the best, the strongest and the deadliest. Eventually you will start to believe it. In the end, it will come true. It came true for me. I am Grimalkin."
Grimalkin is a main character (both antagonist and protagonist) in The Wardstone Chronicles and The Starblade Chronicles.
Short Bio[]
Grimalkin is the witch assassin of the Malkin Clan. She is infamous for her scissors, which is rumored to be used to snip the thumb bones of her enemies. However, throughout the series she has never once used these scissors in direct combat. However, she is proud of her infamy & carves a simple image of scissors wherever she goes to mark her territory and is sometimes used as a warning.
She first appears in the Spooks Battle where she hunts Tom, as directed by her clan. However, by The Spooks Mistake she has realized that Tom is the child who was scried to be her only chance to destroy The Fiend, & she has been an ally to the Spook ever since.
Grimalkin has also had a short story in the Spooks Witches and is the narrator of The Spooks: I am Grimalkin. She was the first character to narrate a main story besides Tom, & was the first female narrator. Grimalkin lives by a code of honour; she will never lie & will never use trickery to defeat an opponent.
Physical Abilities[]
Grimalkin is skilled in wielding blades. Her primary weapons are throwing knives & her long blade. She uses her blades with deadly efficiency and says herself that she "rarely misses". The only time she fails to hit her target in the series is when Tom redirects the path of her blade using his ability to slow time. Her knives are quick and powerful is such a way that Tom describes how even ducking or stepping aside would not have saved him from the attack. In The Spooks Mistake Tom describes Grimalkin as "a wheel of death". Grimalkin is also a skilled blacksmith who forges her own weapons, which she carries in leather sheaths about her body. She also displays her knowledge of weaponry when she teaches Tom how to use the destiny blade.
Magic[]
As a malevolent witch, Grimalkin regularly uses magic and often uses bone magic. This is shown by her use of the thumb bones she cuts from her dead enemies. The talent that she is particularly talented with is the ability to know the worth of an opponent as they approach. Grimalkin uses this skill often in her travels. She also learned some shaman magic from her time in Romania; she is able to project her soul from her body with ease.
Meeting the Fiend for the first time[]
"He smiled at me. Never had I been smiled at in such a way, with such warmth and evident liking. He was handsome too, and tall—I have always liked tall men—and before the night was done, we had kissed and lain snugly in each other’s arms."
When Grimalkin was young, around sixteen, she wandered around and passed a ruined chapel. There, she saw a young man in the shadows, staring at her which annoyed her greatly, and she prepared to cast a small smell on him, nothing severe though. But then, the young man did something that pushed all such thoughts from her mind. He smiled at her. Before the night was done, they had kissed, and lain snugly in each other’s arms. The day after, Agnes Sowerbutts revealed to Grimalkin that it was The Fiend, which came as a shock to her. At first Grimalkin found it hard to believe, but then later came to accept it. After this incident, she knew what she had to do. Bear his child and she would be free of him for all eternity.
Bearing the Fiend's child[]
To Be Expanded
Hatred towards the Fiend[]
Grimalkin has long since hated the Fiend. She hated the way her clan grovelled to him so she sought a way to be free of him. She achieved this by bearing his child. Through extremely rare chance, Grimalkin bore a baby boy untainted by darkness. She found the love through which motherhood brought, & she was happy. When The Fiend inspects the child, although Grimalkin attempts to sacrifice her own life for the life of their son, he kills the boy (it is revealed in The Spooks: I Am Grimalkin that the child was to be a threat to the Fiend). In The Spook's I Am Grimalkin, The Fiend tells Grimalkin that he had to kill the boy, because if he had not, the boy would grow up to become his sworn enemy and a great threat, comparing the boy to Tom Ward, who had now replaced him according to him.
Grimalkin became mad with grief for a short amount of time, before deciding that her sole purpose of living was to destroy The Fiend in vengeance.
On Halloween that year, Grimalkin crashed the Deane celebration by throwing three knives at The Fiend. Later, Grimalkin is told that she would require skills greater than Kernolde to defeat The Fiend & through her accuracy, courage & will, Grimalkin became the Malkin assassin & lived her life finding ways to defeat The Fiend & killing enemies simultaneously. Grimalkin partially succeeds in defeating the Fiend by binding him with the help of John Gregory & Tom Ward and taking his severed head into her possession to stop him from being free.
This is because when his spirit is trapped in two parts he is bound until the spirit is one again. This hatred is directly responsible for Grimalkin becoming the Malkin's assassin and her alliance with Thomas Ward.
Appearances[]
The Spook's Battle[]
Grimalkin is directed by the Malkin Clan to kill Tom. However, he deceives her and Grimalkin is speared in her shoulder with Tom's rowan staff which briefly pins her to a tree. It is unknown how she escapes, though it can be assumed that Grimalkin used brute force to free herself, because rowan wood & silver is painful for a malevolent witch to touch. Tom arrives home safely while discovering his ability to change the speed of time.
The Spook's Mistake[]
Alice calls Grimalkin to defend Tom from Morwena, and fights alongside Tom in the battle against the Water Witches.
The Spook's Sacrifice[]
Grimalkin joins the attack on the Ordeen. She also presents to Tom two gifts; an enchanted blade and a wish-granting spell, which John Gregory disapproves of.
The Spook's Destiny[]
Grimalkin joins an alliance with Tom, Alice, and the Spook to bind the Fiend.
The Spook's: I Am Grimalkin[]
Grimalkin narrates as she tries to keep the Fiend's head out of his servants' possession. The Fiend reveals to Grimalkin that the reason he killed her son, or as he says it, their son, was because the boy would be a threat to him in the future, even comparing in to Tom Ward, who according to The Fiend, had now taken his place.
The Spook's Blood[]
Grimalkin returns to help protect Tom from the Romanian witches & Siscoi.
Spook's: Slither's Tale[]
Grimalkin travels north to get a star stone which fell from the sky, with which she intends to forge a weapon powerful enough to destroy The Fiend. She is captured and imprisoned by the Kobalos, & then allied with Slither. However, by the end of the book, Grimalkin deceives Slither with a clever choice of words without ever breaking her code of honor, & they see each others as enemies from then on.
The Spook's Revenge[]
Grimalkin helps the Spook, Tom and the Witches destroy the Fiend, while trying to grasp the fact that Alice has become a malevolent witch, who has sided with the Fiend.
A New Darkness[]
Grimalkin is studying the Kobalos at the start of the book, and when Tom is attacked by a Haizda mage, he agrees to go north to fight them. He fights a shaiksa mage and kills him, but is severely wounded in the process. Grimalkin does all she can to save him, but she fears it was for nothing. However, at the end of the book the coffin shakes, putting doubt on whether Tom is in fact dead.
The Dark Army[]
To Be Expanded
Relationships with other characters[]
Tom[]
Grimalkin believes that Tom is the child whom was scryed by Martha Ribstalk to be her only chance to destroy her life-long enemy The Fiend, but this was after her failed attempt to kill him. Now she wholeheartedly believes this enough to protect him, whatever the costs.
Alice[]
Grimalkin seems generally affectionate towards Alice though at first she claims it is only because her mother is a Malkin. She appeared distressed when Alice is taken by the Fiend and in The Spooks: I am Grimalkin she knocks her unconscious to save her from facing a battle. As the daughter of the Fiend, Alice possesses a huge amount of magic and Grimalkin used some of it to heal herself or to possibly "refill" herself.
[[John Gregory|The Spook]
Grimalkin is formal to John Gregory but as a malevolent witch they argue on many issues. However, John is a valuable ally to her & both would help each other.
Slither[]
When Grimalkin, with her blades, a starstone and the head of the Fiend, crashed at somewhere outside Valkarky, the Kobalos went to capture her but she was able to kill four of the elite Kobalos guards. After capturing her, the Kobalos put Grimalkin into cell 42, a cell for prisoners who are extremely dangerous. She then controlled Slither's mind and made him come to the cell. She then ordered that she will help him if he gets back her blades, the starstone and the bag. Slither was only able to get the Fiend's head so Grimalkin went to take back her stuff herself. She then disguised as Nessa and helped Slither to kill the Haggenbrood and Eblis. She finally helps to free the slave girls and Nessa in Valkarky and guides them to freedom.
Research[]
After Thomas kills the Fiend, the skelts take pieces of his body and feed it to the powerful Kobalos god called Talkus which makes him several times more powerful. Grimalkin already knows about Talkus and the Kobalos so she does experiments with some of the monsters that the Kobalos created such as the Vartek.