They drove on until they saw the lights of the city looming ahead. Soon the darkness that surrounded the car was replaced with an orange haze that reflected off the wet roads. The city was quiet and still, the streets almost empty. They pulled into a small outdoor car park, and Skulduggery switched off the engine and looked at her.
'Okay then, you wait here.'
'Yes.'
He got out. Two seconds passed, but she hadn't tagged along just to wait on the sidelines — she needed to see what other surprises the world had in store for her. She got out, and he looked at her.
'Stephanie, I'm not altogether sure you're respecting my authority.'
'Yes, I'm not.'
'I see. Okay then.'
He put on his hat and wrapped his scarf around his jaw, but did without the wig and the sunglasses. He clicked his key chain and the car beeped and the doors locked.
'That's it?'
He looked up. 'Sorry?'
'Aren't you afraid it might get stolen? We're not exactly in a good part of town.'
'It's got a car alarm.'
'Don't you, like, cast a spell or something? To keep it safe?'
'No. It's a pretty good car alarm.'
He started walking. She hurried to keep up.
'Do you cast spells, then?'
'Sometimes. I try not to depend on magic these days; I try to get by on what's up here.' He tapped his head.
'There's empty space up there.'
'Well, yes,' he said irritably, 'but you know what I mean.'
'What else can you do?'
'Sorry?'
'With magic. Show me something.'
If he'd had eyebrows, they would most likely have been arched. 'What, a living skeleton isn't enough for you? You want more?'
'Yes,' Stephanie said. 'Give me a tutorial.'
He shrugged. 'Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt. There are two types of mages, or sorcerers.
Adepts practice one branch of magic, Elementals practice another. Adepts are more aggressive; their techniques are more immediately powerful. In contrast, an Elemental, such as myself, chooses the quieter course, and works on mastering command of the elements.'
'Command of the elements?'
'Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. We don't command them, as such; we manipulate them.
We influence them.'
'Like what? Like earth, wind — '
'Water, and fire, yes.'
'So show me.'
Skulduggery tilted his head a little to the right, and she could hear the good humor in his voice.
'Very well,' he said, and held up his open hand in front of her. She frowned, feeling a little chilly, and then she became aware of a droplet of water running down her face. In an instant her hair was drenched, as if she had just surfaced from a dive.
'How did you do that?' she asked, shaking her head, flinging drops of water away from her.
'You tell me,' Skulduggery answered.
'I don't know. You did something to the moisture in the air?'
He looked down at her. 'Very good,' he said, impressed. 'The first element, water. We can't part the Red Sea or anything, but we have a little influence with it.'
'Show me fire again,' Stephanie said eagerly.
Skulduggery snapped his gloved fingers and sparks flew and he curled his hand and the sparks grew to flame, and he held that ball of flame in his palm as they walked. The flame intensified, 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 toward the wall. The air rippled and the bricks exploded outward. 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 will 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 neighborhoods populated solely by sorcerers.'
'Can you be a sorcerer without realizing 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,' he answered, stopping beside her. 'We're here.'
She looked up. They had arrived outside a crumbling old tenement building, its walls 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. It smelled of damp. On the second floor/splintered shards of light escaped through the cracks between doors and doorways into the otherwise dark corridor. They could hear the sounds 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.
