Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy Read Free Book Online

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
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    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."
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    "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. library.
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    While they stood 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 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 realized 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 that had to be shelved. Stacks and stacks of books, a labyrinth of bookshelves 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