Midnight Academy. Born at midnight - стр. 14

– And this one?

Hinting at Spider-Man, I played with my eyebrows.

– This? – Nirel asked, frowning. -Are you talking about Percy? He's also in third. He just can’t come to terms with the fact that I have a better gift of premonition than he does.

A chuckle escaped the expressive lips, and with an effort of will I forced myself to look at his eyes.

“I thought that I wouldn’t be able to find him in the form of a spider.”

– Find… Were you playing hide and seek, or what?

I was horrified. Is there really nothing to do here?

– You can say so. Only the territory is not limited and there are no rules. Each of us has abilities. So we checked them.

– Like acute vision or hearing? – I suggested casually, trying not to be seen as being overly interested.

The guy thought for a moment.

– Let’s put it this way: what do you know about Midnighters anyway?

As promised, by this time the guy had escorted me to the freshman building, but I was in no hurry to go inside the gray two-story building.

I understood that running to the gate, rustling with slippers, no longer made sense. Now you need to act with a cool head, with a clearly defined plan. This technique worked best. At least with mom.

Sitting down on a bench opposite the high porch, I decided to find out as much information as possible. Moreover, Nirel answered willingly, did not hide anything and tried to add more details, as if he were explaining to a child.

I was not a child, but my knowledge was characterized by one single word – meager. There was nothing I could do to make the story easier for my interlocutor. I knew almost nothing that was really, in my opinion, important.

I only learned today that there is a territory hidden from human eyes. After a sleepless night spent on the road, a hectic morning with changing cars, and a not very tasty lunch at an eatery with the telling name “Massacre,” my mother brought me to the central city library in Ashwool.

This building was very different from its counterparts on the street. The old houses here were demolished one after another due to their unsuitable condition, and in their place two-story townhouses with an attic under the roof were built. Red brick, dark brown roof. The houses with several apartments looked cozy and well-kept, but the library did not correspond at all to their architecture, or to the new look of the area as a whole.

No, this building also looked clean and tidy. But at the same time, it felt like Her Majesty the Queen in a fluffy crinoline dress was stuck between modern families from an advertisement for toothpaste or mayonnaise. I was even afraid to go inside. No, I wasn’t afraid that the walls would suddenly collapse, but I was sincerely worried whether we could even go there.

What if, instead of a library, there has long been a museum with the most valuable exhibits from the times of that same queen?

I was wrong. Inside, the treasury of knowledge resembled the most ordinary library, as I imagined it in my imagination. Not a school one, of course, there were many times more books here, but it was not forced to the point of “impossible to pass through.”

Along the walls there were neat, identical cabinets made of light wood, up to the ceiling. They stood inside the hall in such a way that they created endlessly stretching rows, at the very end of which only dull darkness could be seen.