"So who was I supposed to dance the ritual dance with then?" the boy asked, surprised. "It seems wrong to do it alone..."
"A ritual dance?" the Count frowned, and after a few seconds, as if remembering something, he smiled. "Well, yes, exactly... There's a ritual dance to be performed there... By the way, we found a full cup."
"Well, I never drank it," said Maxim. "It smelled like vodka; I don't like that. I only drink kvass when it's hot."
"I see. Well, go on," Ivan Fyodorovich nodded. "The skeleton crawled out, you danced, what happened next?"
"Nothing happened, I went to bed. Everyone ran away. Only a few guys remained, and another girl... She fell right into the grass when the skeleton emerged, and she's been lying there the whole time."
"So, it's clear," the count concluded the conversation. "Everything seems to fit. You went to bed, the skeleton went to Dubravino..."
"Wow, that's cool," Temnikov chuckled.
"By the way, there's nothing 'cool' about this, as you say, Maxim Alexandrovich," Orlov said to the boy as sternly as possible. "For your information, I want to inform you that skeletons shouldn't be wandering around our school grounds and scaring ordinary people; that's wrong. Understood?"
"Yeah."
"By the way, when the police call me early in the morning about our students' behavior; that's also wrong. So in the future, please keep in mind that before you do anything, or in your case, before it happens, I ask you to consider whether the police will call me. Okay?"
"Okay," the boy nodded. "I just have one question."
"Which?"
"Why did they call you? Couldn't they figure it out themselves?"
"They could," the Count nodded. "But they had to report that one of our students had committed such a deed. Reanimating skeletons is wrong. One cannot use the Dark Gift for entertainment."
"I see. Snitching, then... Okay, I'll keep that in mind."
For a while Ivan Fyodorovich and Maxim looked into each other's eyes, then the Count could not resist and smiled:
"Go have lunch, Temnikov. There are five minutes left until lunch, but I think there's still some left."
"Thank you, Mr. Director," said the boy and got up from his chair.
"And please remember our conversation."
"Of course."
Orlov waited until the door closed behind the boy and sighed. Something told him Maxim had said those last words casually; they would have more than one such conversation.
But how much strength does a guy have if he can so easily sense a dead person at a depth of several meters, and even easily force him to come out?
If only he could just get out... He charged it with so much energy that the skeleton wandered around and reached Dubravino. It would have been fine if it had been done by an adult black mage, at least a professor, but a boy... And just for fun, at that... What a unique creature, not a child!
Well, apparently the question is really serious... It needs to be reported, otherwise things could end badly.
He pressed the call button, and a few seconds later his secretary entered the room. A tall, beautiful woman who was always stern with visitors and rarely smiled.
"I'm listening to you, Ivan Fyodorovich."
"Nika Lvovna, please book me a ticket to Moscow urgently for today's flight."
"Your Excellency, you know how it is with tickets these days; if you book for today, business class might not work out. Should we look for tomorrow?"
"It's okay, take whatever you have, but don't put it off until tomorrow. You can even hire a helicopter if you need to, but I want my ghost gone from Kitezh within a few hours."
Ivan Fyodorovich didn't cheat me; there really was some left in the cafeteria, but the best part was already gobbled up. The only starter was fish soup... For the main course, there were meatballs and several kinds of casseroles... What's a carrot casserole like? Even worse than fried onions in soup.
"This is a disaster, Max," Dorian agreed wholeheartedly as I smashed through the first meatball and was debating whether to try a second. "Are you really going to eat this? Back when I was studying, I always had a choice of at least one hundred and eleven dishes, and for dessert..."
"You're such a liar, Dorian," I told him, but I still didn't eat the second meatball.
I'll chat sometime. What's left here? Judging by the schedule, there are only four classes, a few hours of free time, and dinner. That's when I'll really let loose! There can't be meatballs for dinner too, can there?
What kind of lessons do I have left? The first ones, history and math, didn't impress me at all; just incredibly boring.
So, two lessons in basic Runology, and then two more lessons in basic Herbology... Well, that's okay. Runology sounds interesting.
"Well, it's certainly more fun than your basic Herbology," Dorian informed me. "Although basic Runology is, of course, for little kids. I don't even know what they'll teach you there, if anything useful..."
"Let's go and find out," I interrupted his reasoning and was about to get up from the table, when suddenly I saw a lanky guy with long dark hair next to me.
His dark suit had a skull and a white hand embroidered on it, with the number "2" underneath.
"Hello, my name is Alexey Naryshkin," he said and extended his hand to me.
"Hi, I'm Max Temnikov," I replied to his handshake.
"Uh-huh," he nodded. "I know. Weren't you the one who dug up that skeleton last night? That was awesome! I loved it. None of our students have pulled off something like that in the park in two years."
And then I remembered him. Exactly! I saw him last night. He was there with everyone else.
"I recognized you too. You didn't run away and watched my ritual dance to the end. How did you like it? Did you like the way I danced?"
"It's terrible, to be honest. I think the skeleton did a better job."