and Stephanie could feel her hair drying.
“Wow,” she said.
“Wow indeed,” Skulduggery responded and thrust his hand out, sending the ball of fire shooting through the air. It burned out as it arced in the night sky and faded to nothing.
“What about earth?” Stephanie asked, but Skulduggery shook his head.
“You don’t want to see that, and hopefully you’ll never have to. The earth power is purely defensive and purely for use as a last resort.”
“So what’s the most powerful? Is it fire?”
“That’s the flashiest, that gets all the ‘wows’, but you’d be surprised what a little air can do if you displace it properly. Displaced air doesn’t just disappear – it needs somewhere to be displaced to.”
“Can I see?”
They reached the edge of the car park and passed the low wall that encircled it. Skulduggery flexed his fingers and suddenly splayed his hand, snapping his palm towards the wall. The air rippled and the bricks exploded outwards. Stephanie stared at the brand-new hole in the wall.
“That,” she said, “is so cool.”
They walked on, Stephanie glancing back at the wall every so often. “What about the Adepts then? What can they do?”
“I knew a fellow, a few years ago, who could read minds. I met this woman once who could change her shape, become anyone, right in front of your eyes.”
“So who’s stronger?” Stephanie asked. “An Elemental or an Adept?”
“Depends on the mage. An Adept could have so many tricks up his sleeve, so many different abilities, that he could prove himself stronger than even the most powerful Elemental. That’s been known to happen.”
“The sorcerer, the worst one of all, was he an Adept?”
“Actually, no. Mevolent was an Elemental. It’s rare that you get an Elemental straying so far down the dark paths, but it happens.”
There was a question Stephanie had been dying to ask, but she didn’t want to appear too eager. As casually as she could, thumbs hooked into the belt loops of her jeans, she said, as if she had just plucked this thought out of thin air, “So how do you know if you can do magic? Can anyone do it?”
“Not anyone. Relatively few actually. Those who can usually congregate in the same areas, so there are small pockets of communities, all over the world. In Ireland and the United Kingdom alone, there are eighteen different neighbourhoods populated solely by sorcerers.”
“Can you be a sorcerer without realising it?”
“Oh, yes. Some people walk around every day, bored with their lives, having no idea that there’s a world of wonder at their fingertips. And they’ll live out their days, completely oblivious, and they’ll die without knowing how great they could have been.”
“That’s really sad.”
“Actually it’s quite amusing.”
“No, it’s not, it’s sad. How would you like it if you never discovered what you could do?”
“I wouldn’t know any better,” Skulduggery answered, stopping beside her. “We’re here.”
Stephanie looked up. They had arrived outside a crumbling old tenement building, its wall defaced with graffiti and its windows cracked and dirty. She followed him up the concrete steps and into the foyer, and together they ascended the sagging staircase.
The first floor was quiet and smelled of damp. On the second floor, splintered shards of light escaped through the cracks between door and doorway into the otherwise dark corridor. They could hear the sound of a TV from one of the apartments.
When they got to the third floor, Stephanie knew they had arrived. The third floor was clean, it didn’t smell and it was well-lit. It was like an entirely different building. She followed Skulduggery to the middle of the corridor and noticed that none of the doors were numbered. She looked at the door Skulduggery knocked on, the door that had a plaque fastened to it: ‘Library’.
While they waited there, Skulduggery said, “One more thing. No matter how much you might want to, do not tell her your name.”
The door opened before she could ask any more questions and a thin man with large round spectacles peered out. His nose was hooked and his wiry hair was receding. He wore a checked suit with a bow tie. He glanced at Stephanie then nodded to Skulduggery and opened the door wide for them to come through.
Stephanie realised why none of the doors were numbered – it was because they all led into the same room. The walls between apartments had been taken away in order to accommodate the vast number of books on the shelves. Stacks and stacks of books, a labyrinth of bookshelves that stretched from one side of the building to the other. As they followed the bespectacled man through the maze she saw more people, their attention focused on their reading, people half-hidden in shadow, people who didn’t look exactly right…
In the middle of the library was an open space, like a clearing in a forest, and in this open space stood the most beautiful woman Stephanie had ever seen. Her hair was black as raven wings, and her eyes were the palest blue. Her features were so delicate Stephanie feared they might break if she smiled, and then the lady smiled and Stephanie felt such warmth that for an instant she never wanted to be anywhere else but at this lady’s side.
“Stop that,” said Skulduggery.
The lady let her eyes move to him and her smile turned playful. Stephanie stared, enraptured. Her body felt so heavy, so clumsy; all she wanted to do with her life was just stand here, in this spot, and gaze at pure and true beauty.
“Stop that,” Skulduggery said again, and the lady laughed and shrugged and looked back at Stephanie.
“Sorry about that,” she said, and Stephanie felt a fog lift from her mind. She felt dizzy and staggered, but Skulduggery was there, a hand on the small of her back, supporting her.
“My apologies,” the lady said, giving her a small bow. “I do forget the effect I have on people. First impressions and all that.”
“Seems like every time you meet someone new, you forget that little fact,” Skulduggery said.
“I’m a scatterbrain, what can I say?”
Skulduggery grunted and turned to Stephanie. “Don’t feel self-conscious. The first time anyone sets eyes on China, they fall in love. Believe me, the effect lessens the more you get to know her.”
“Lessens,” the woman named China said, “but never entirely goes away, does it, Skulduggery?”
The detective took off his hat and looked at China, but ignored her question. China smiled at Stephanie and handed her a business card. It was eggshell white and bore a single telephone number, etched with delicate elegance.
“Feel free to call me if you ever stumble across a book or an item you think I might be interested in. Skulduggery used to.
