Bystanders were a fact of life when one was trying to learn to fly indoors in a public area. Erskine had found that people stopped to stare much more frequently when Skulduggery was with him--because really, who could resist staring at a flying skeleton?--but even so, the concept of someone watching him wasn't a new one.

Still, it didn't take much for Erskine's magic to falter during the exercise, and not because of the fog that was dampening magic all over the city. Air magic wasn't meant for flying. In four hundred years, Skulduggery was the only sorcerer Erskine had ever known to accomplish the feat. It had required a radical shift in thinking for Erskine to even start approaching it himself, and after a few weeks of practice he was barely able to stay aloft for a minute at a time without falling back to the ground.

Such as now. Erskine caught movement in the corner of his eye, and when he turned to face the young man--woman?--he stopped concentrating on his magic. And fell down to the floor of the lobby with an unceremonious thump, his quick reflexes meaning that at least he landed on his feet, hard, rather than his rear end.