Night Watch

Prologue

His name was Maxim.

Not such a very unusual name, but not ordinary either, not like all those Sergeis, Andreis, and Dmitrys. And a name with a fine Russian ring to it, even if its roots did go back to the Greeks and the Varangians, maybe even the Scythians.

He was happy enough with his appearance. Not the cloying good looks of an actor from some TV serial, but not a dull, ordinary face either. A handsome man, he stood out in a crowd. And he'd built his body too, but without overdoing it—no bulging veins, no fanatical workouts at the gym.

He was happy with his job as auditor for a major foreign firm, one that was profitable—he could afford to indulge all his interests, and he didn't need to worry about the protection rackets.

It was all just as if one day his guardian angel had simply decided: «You shall be a bit better than all the rest.» Only a bit, but still better. And that suited Maxim just fine. Why try to scramble higher up the ladder and fritter his life away on acquiring a fancy car, invitations to high-society parties, or an apartment with an extra room… what for? He enjoyed life for its own sake, not for material possessions. Life was the exact opposite of money, which in itself meant nothing.

Of course, Maxim had never thought about this quite so clearly. One of the quirks of people who've managed to find their place in life is that they believe that's the way things ought to be. Everything simply works out the way it ought to. And if someone feels shortchanged by life, then he has only himself to blame. He must be either lazy and stupid. Or else he thought too much of himself and tried to «get above himself.»

Maxim was fond of that phrase: «getting above yourself.» It put everything in perspective so neatly. For instance, it explained why his intelligent and beautiful sister was throwing her life away on an alcoholic husband in Tambov. She'd gone off looking for someone with better prospects… and just look what she'd found. Or take his old school friend who'd been lying in a hospital ward for more than a month now. He'd wanted to expand his business, and he had. He was lucky still to be alive, lucky his competitors happened to be so civilized… the market in non-ferrous metals had been carved up a long time ago.

Maxim might be in danger of «getting above himself» in only one part of his life, and it was such a very strange and complicated part that he preferred not even to think about it. It was much easier to simply accept the strange thing that sometimes happened to him in spring, occasionally in the fall, and only very, very rarely at the height of summer, when the oppressive heat became totally unbearable, emptying his head of all logic and caution, including even those vague doubts about his psychological balance… Maxim didn't think he was in any way schizophrenic, though. He'd read quite a lot of books and consulted specialists… only, of course, without going into all the details.

No, he was normal. Obviously some things that existed simply defied reason and couldn't be judged by the usual human norms. Still the idea he might be «getting above himself» bothered him… Could he be?

Maxim was sitting in his car, a neat, well-cared-for Toyota, with the engine running quietly. It wasn't the most expensive of cars but it was still way better than most in Moscow. In the dim light of early morning, no one could have made out his face behind the steering wheel, even from just a few steps away. He'd spent the whole night like that, listening to the gentle purring sound of the engine, chilled through but determined not to turn the heater on. As usual when this happened to him, he didn't feel like sleeping. Or smoking. He didn't feel like doing anything at all; it felt good just to sit there like that without moving, like a shadow in the car parked at the curb, waiting. The only thing that troubled him was that his wife would think he'd been with his mistress. How could he prove to her that he didn't have a full-time mistress and all his flings amounted to no more than brief vacation romances, fleeting affairs at work, and occasional professional services when he traveled on business… and he hadn't even bought those on the family's money; they'd been provided by clients. He couldn't have refused, they'd have been offended. Or decided he was gay and offered him boys the next time…

The glimmering green figures on the clock flickered and changed: five in the morning. Any moment now the street-sweepers would come creeping out to work. This was an old district, prestigious; they were very strict about keeping things clean around here. It was a good thing it wasn't raining or snowing either; the lousy winter was over, it was dead and gone, and now spring was here, bringing its own problems, including the temptation to «get above himself»…

One of the doors of the nearby building slammed. The young woman who had come out stopped as she adjusted her purse on her shoulder, about ten meters away from the car. These buildings had no courtyards, they were inconvenient to work in and probably to live in as well: What was their prestigious reputation worth if the plumbing were rotten and the meter-thick walls were covered with mildew—and it was probably haunted…

Maxim smiled gently as he climbed out of his car. His body obeyed him with no reluctance; his muscles hadn't cramped up during the night; if anything they felt stronger than ever. And that was a sure sign.

But seriously, he wondered, do ghosts really exist?

«Galina!» he shouted.

The young woman turned toward him. And that was another sign he was right, otherwise she would have run for it; after all, who wouldn't be suspicious of a man lying in wait outside the door early in the morning…

«I don't know you,» she said, in a voice both calm and curious.

«No,» Maxim agreed. «But I know you.»

«Who are you?»

«A judge.»

He pronounced the word solemnly, rolling it off his tongue. A judge. Someone who has the right to pronounce judgment.

«And just who are you intending to judge?»

«You, Galina.» Maxim was focused, intent. Everything around him seemed to be turning dark, and that was a sure sign too.

«Oh, really?» She looked him over quickly, and Maxim caught a glint of yellow fire in her eyes. «You think you'll be able to manage that?»

«Sure I will,» replied Maxim, raising up his hand. The dagger was already in it—a long, narrow blade made of wood that had once been light-colored but had become darker over the last three years, gradually stained…

She didn't make a sound as the wooden blade slid into her chest and pierced her heart.

As always, Maxim felt a momentary panic, a brief, searing surge of horror—what if he'd made a mistake this time, after all? What if?

He lifted his left hand to touch the simple little wooden cross that he always wore hanging on his chest. And he continued standing there, holding the wooden dagger in one hand and clutching the cross in the other, until the woman began to change…

It happened fast. It always happened fast: The transformation into an animal and then back into a human being. The animal, a black panther, lay there on the sidewalk for a few moments, its eyes staring blankly and its fangs exposed, a victim of the hunt, dolled up in a matching skirt and jacket, pantyhose and dainty shoes. Then the process was reversed, like a pendulum making its final swing.

What Maxim found amazing was not the rapid transformation that came too late for his victim, as usual, but the fact that there was no wound left on the body. That brief moment of transfiguration had purged her and made her whole. There was nothing but a cut on her blouse and her jacket.

«Glory be to Thee, O Lord,» Maxim whispered, looking down at the dead shape-shifter. «Glory be to Thee.»

He didn't really resent the role allotted to him.

But it was still a great burden for a man who didn't like to get above himself.

Chapter 1

That was the morning I knew spring had really arrived.

The evening before, the sky had been different, with clouds drifting over the city, and the air had been filled with the scent of a chilly, damp wind and snow that hadn't fallen yet. I'd felt like snuggling down deep into my armchair, sticking something cheerful and moronic—something American—in the VCR, taking a sip of cognac and just falling sleep.

But in the morning everything had changed.

Some cunning conjuror's hand had thrown a blue shawl over the town, running it over the streets and the squares and wiping away the final traces of winter. Even the heaps of brown snow left on the street corners and in the gutters didn't seem to have been overlooked by spring; they were an integral element of the decor. A memento.

I smiled as I walked to the metro.

Sometimes it feels really good to be human. That was the way I'd been living for a week now: When I got to work, I didn't go up any higher than the second floor, and all I did was fiddle with the server that had suddenly developed a number of bad habits, or install new office software for the gals in accounting, even though none of us could see why they needed it. In the evening I went to the theater, to a soccer match, to various small bars and restaurants. Anywhere at all, as long as it was noisy and crowded. Being human in a crowd is even more interesting than just being human.

Of course, in the Night Watch offices, an old four-story building rented from our own subsidiary, there wasn't a single normal human being to be found anywhere. Even the three old cleaning women were Others. Even the loose-mouthed young security guards at the entrance, who were there to frighten off petty gangsters and commercial salesmen, had some modest magical powers. Even the plumber, an absolutely classic Moscow alcoholic, was a magician… and he'd have been a really good magician too, if it weren't for his drinking problem.

But the first two floors of the building had to look perfectly ordinary. The tax police were allowed in here, as well as our human business partners and the thugs who provided our «protection»—the racket was actually controlled directly by our boss, but the small-fry didn't need to know that.

And the conversations people had here were perfectly mundane, too. About politics, taxes, shopping, the weather, other people's love affairs and their own. The women gossiped about the men, and we gave as good as we got. Romances sprang up; bosses were trashed; bonus possibilities were discussed.

Half an hour later I reached Sokol station and made my way up to street level. It was noisy and crowded, and the air was filled with exhaust fumes. But it was still spring.

There are plenty of districts in Moscow worse than the one where our office is. In fact, it's probably one of the best—that's not counting the Day Watch offices, of course. But then, the Kremlin wouldn't suit us, anyway: The traces of the past lie too heavy on Red Square and the ancient brick walls. Maybe someday they'll get worn away. But that would require certain conditions, and there's no sign of them coming anytime soon… no sign at all, unfortunately.

I walked from the metro; it wasn't far. The faces on every side looked friendly and welcoming, thawed by the spring sunshine. That's why I love the spring: It takes the edge off that feeling of weary helplessness. And there are fewer temptations around…

One of the security guys was smoking outside the door. He gave me a friendly nod. Thorough checks weren't part of his job description. And as it happened, I was the one who decided whether they had Internet access and new games on their computer in the duty room, or just the official information and personnel files.

«You're late, Anton,» he said.

I checked my watch.

«The boss has called everyone together in the conference room; they were looking for you.»

Strange; I wasn't usually brought in on the morning briefings. Had one of my computer networks crashed? Not likely, or they'd have dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night without a second thought, and it wouldn't have been the first time either…

I nodded and started walking faster.

The building has an elevator, but it's ancient, and I preferred to run up to the fourth floor. There was another security post, a bit more serious this time, on the third-floor landing. Garik was on duty. As I approached he screwed up his eyes and peered through the Twilight, scanning my aura and all the markings that we Night Watch agents carry on our bodies. Then he gave me a friendly smile:

«Get a move on.»

The door of the conference room was half-open. I glanced inside. There were about thirty people in there, mostly field agents and analysts. The boss was striding in front of a map of Moscow and nodding his head, while his commercial deputy, Vitaly Markovich, a very weak magician, but a born businessman, spoke to everyone:

«And so we have completely covered our current expenditures, and we have no need to resort to… er… special varieties of financial activity. If the meeting approves my proposals, we can increase our employees' allowances somewhat—in the first instance, naturally, for our field operatives. Payments for temporary disability and pensions for the families of those who have been killed also need to be… er… increased somewhat. And we can afford to do that…«

It was funny to see magicians who could transform lead into gold, coal into diamonds, and neat rectangles of paper into crisp bank notes discussing commerce. But in actual fact it made things easier. It provided an occupation for those Others whose powers were too meager to make them a living. And it reduced the risk of unsettling the balance of power.

When I appeared, Boris Ignatievich nodded and said:

«Thank you, Vitaly. I think the situation is quite clear; there are no complaints as far as your work is concerned. Shall we vote on it? Thank you. Now, while we have everyone here…«

The boss kept a close eye on me as I tiptoed to an empty chair and sat down.

»… we can move on to the most important item of business.»

From his chair next to me, Semyon leaned over and whispered:

«The most important item of business is the payment of Party dues for March…«

I couldn't help smiling. Sometimes Boris Ignatievich really does act just like an old-time Communist Party functionary. I find that less irritating than when he acts like a medieval inquisitor or a retired general, but maybe that's just me…

«The most important item is a protest I received from the Day Watch just two hours ago,» said the boss.

It didn't sink in immediately. The Day Watch and the Night Watch are constantly making problems for each other. There are protests every week: Sometimes it's settled at the district office level, and sometimes a case goes to the Berne tribunal…

Then I realized any protest that required a full meeting of the Watch couldn't possibly be ordinary.

«The essential point of the protest,» said the boss, rubbing the bridge of his nose, «… the essential point of the protest is as follows… This morning one of the Dark Side's women was killed near Stoleshnikov Lane. This is a brief description of the incident…«

Two sheets of paper warm from the printer landed in my lap. Everyone else received an identical gift. I ran my eyes over the text:

«Galina Rogova, twenty-four years old… initiated at the age of seven, her family are not Others… mentor—Anna Chernogorova, fourth-grade magician… At the age of seven Galina Rogova was identified as a were-panther. Average powers…«

I frowned as I read through the dossier, although there wasn't much reason for concern. Rogova had been a Dark One, but she hadn't worked in Day Watch. She hadn't ever hunted human beings, not even once. Even the two licenses she'd been given, when she came of age and after her wedding, hadn't been used. With the help of magic she'd reached a high position in the Warm Home construction corporation and married the deputy director. One child—a boy, no Other powers detected. She'd used her powers as an Other for self-protection a few times, and on one occasion killed her attacker. But even then she hadn't stooped to cannibalism…

«We could do with more shape-shifters like that, right?» asked Semyon. He turned the page and gave a little snort of surprise. Intrigued, I flipped to the end of the document.

That was it. The report of the examination. A cut in the blouse and the jacket… probably a blow with a thin-bladed dagger. Enchanted, of course; a shape-shifter couldn't be killed with plain ordinary steel. But what was it that had surprised Semyon?

There it was!

No visible wounds had been discovered on the body. Not even a scratch. The cause of death was a total drain of vital energy.

«Very neat,» said Semyon. «I remember during the Civil War I was sent to capture a were-tiger. The bastard worked in the Cheka, and pretty high up too…«

«Have you familiarized yourselves with the data?» the boss asked.

«May I ask a question?» A slim arm shot into the air on the far side of the room.

«By all means, Yulia,» the boss said with a nod.

The Night Watch's youngest member stood up, adjusting her hair nervously. A pretty-looking young girl, maybe just a little immature. But taking her into the analytical department had been a good move.

«Boris Ignatievich, the way I see it, the magical intervention here is second degree. Or even first?»

«It could be second degree,» the boss confirmed.

«That means it could have been you…« Yulia paused for a moment, embarrassed. «Or perhaps Semyon… Ilya… or Garik. Right?»

«Garik couldn't have done it,» said the boss. «But Ilya or Semyon could have.»

Semyon mumbled something, as if he'd rather have been spared the compliment.

«It's also just possible that the killing was carried out by someone on the Light Side who was just passing through Moscow,» Yulia mused out loud. «But magicians that powerful can't arrive in town without being noticed; they're all monitored by Day Watch. That means there are three people we need to investigate. And if they all have alibis, we have no charges to answer, right?»

«Yulia,» the boss said, shaking his head, «no one's bringing any charges against us. What we have here is the work of a Light Magician not registered in Moscow who is not aware of the Treaty.»

Now that was really serious…

«Then… oh!» said Yulia. «I'm sorry, Boris Ignatievich.»

«That's perfectly okay,» the boss said, nodding again. «You've taken us right to the heart of the matter. There's someone we've managed to overlook, boys and girls. We've let someone slip through our fingers. We have a Light One of great power wandering loose in Moscow. He or she doesn't understand a thing—and he's killing Dark Ones.»

«More than one?» a voice in the hall asked.

«Yes. I checked the archives. There were similar incidents three years ago, in the spring and fall, and two years ago, in the fall again. On every occasion there was no physical trauma, just the signature tear in the clothing. The Day Watch investigated, but it came up with nothing. Apparently they attributed the death of their own people to chance… so now one of the Dark Ones will be punished.»

«And one of the Light Ones too?»

«One of us too.»

Semyon cleared his throat and said in a thoughtful voice, «The periods between the incidents are strange, Boris…«

«I don't think we know about all the incidents. Whoever this magician may be, he has always killed Others with low-level powers; obviously there must have been some kind of chink in their protective covers. It's very likely that a number of his victims were uninitiated or unknown Dark Others. Here's what I propose…«

The boss paused and glanced around the room before he continued:

«Analytical section—collate available information from criminal records and try to identify similar incidents. Bear in mind that they may not have been classified as murders, more likely as deaths from unknown causes. Check the results of autopsies, question people working in the morgues… think for yourselves where you can obtain the information. Research group—send two or three agents to the Day Watch and examine the body. Operations group—intensive street patrols. Try to find him, guys.»

«We're always on the lookout for someone,» Igor muttered. «Boris Ignatievich, there's no way we could have overlooked a powerful magician. We just couldn't have!»

«He may not be initiated,» the boss snapped back. «His powers manifest themselves sporadically…«

«In the spring and the fall, just like any ordinary psycho…«

«Yes, Igor, that's perfectly right. In the spring and in the fall. And now, right after this latest killing, he must still be carrying some trace of magic. That gives us a chance, if only a small one. Get on it.»

«Boris, what exactly is our goal?» Semyon asked curiously.

Some people in the room had already started getting to their feet, but now they stopped.

«Our goal is to find this Maverick before the Dark Ones do. To protect him, educate him, and bring him over to our side. As usual.»

«Clear enough,» said Semyon and stood up.

«Anton and Olga, would you please stay,» the boss said brusquely and walked over to the window.

On their way out, people glanced at us curiously, even enviously. A special assignment is always intriguing. I looked across the room, caught Olga's eyes, and smiled. She smiled back.

She looked nothing like the dirty-faced, barefoot young woman who'd drunk cognac in my kitchen last winter. Now she had a stylish haircut, a healthy complexion, and eyes full of… no, the confidence had been there all the time, but now there was a certain flirtatious pride too.

Her punishment had been repealed. Partially, that is.

«Anton, I don't like what's going on here,» the boss said without turning around.

Olga shrugged her shoulders and nodded for me to reply.

«I beg your pardon, Boris Ignatievich?»

«I don't like this protest lodged by the Day Watch.»

«Neither do I.»

«You don't understand, and I'm afraid none of the others do either… Olga, have you at least got some inkling of what's going on?»

«It's very strange Day Watch hasn't been able to find the killer after several years.»

«Yes. Do you remember Krakow?»

«I do, unfortunately. You think we're being set up?»

«It's possible…« The boss moved away from the window a bit. «Anton, do you think that could be the way things are heading?»

«I don't completely understand,» I mumbled.

«Anton, let's assume that we really do have a Maverick wandering around the city, a solitary killer. He's uninitiated. From time to time his powers suddenly surface… he locates one of the Dark Ones and eliminates him, or in this case, her. Would Day Watch be able to locate this Maverick? Unfortunately, believe me, they would. Then the question is: Why haven't they caught and exposed him, when Dark Ones are dying?»

«Only unimportant ones,» I pointed out.

«Correct. Sacrificing pawns is in the tradition…« the boss caught my eye and paused. «In the tradition of the Watch.»

«The Watches,» I said vengefully.

«The Watches,» the boss echoed wearily. «You haven't forgotten… let's think where a maneuver like this could be leading. A blanket accusation of incompetence against the whole of Night Watch? Nonsense. We're supposed to keep tabs on the behavior of the Dark Ones and the observance of the Treaty by known Light Ones, not go hunting for mysterious maniacs. In this case it's Day Watch that is at fault…«

«That means it must be a provocation aimed at a specific person?»

«Well done, Anton. Remember what Yulia said? There's only a handful of us who could do this. That can be proved conclusively. Let's suppose Day Watch has decided to accuse someone of violating the Treaty, to claim that a member of our staff who knows the terms of the Treaty is meting out summary justice on his own account.»

«But that's easy to disprove. Just find the Maverick…«

«And if the Dark Ones find him first? But don't bother to announce the fact?»

«What about alibis?»

«And what if the killings took place at times when this person has no alibi?»

«A tribunal, with a full-scale interrogation,» I said gloomily—having your mind turned inside out isn't a pleasant experience…

«A powerful magician—and these killings were committed by a powerful magician—can close off his mind even against a tribunal. Not deceive the tribunal, just close himself off from it. And in any case, Anton, with a tribunal including Dark Ones, he would have to do it. Otherwise our enemies would learn far too much about us. And if a magician conceals himself against investigation, it's automatically regarded as a confession of guilt, with all the consequences that stem from that so-called confession—both for him and the Watch.»

«You paint a dark picture, Boris Ignatievich,» I said. «Very dark. Almost as dark as the one you painted for me last winter, in my sleep. A young boy with incredible Other powers, an Inferno eruption that would flatten the whole of Moscow…«

«I am telling you the truth here, Anton.»

«What do you expect from me?» I asked bluntly. «This isn't really my area. Am I going to give the analysts a hand? We'll be handling everything they bring in anyway.»

«Anton, I want you to figure out which of us is the target. Who has an alibi for all the known incidents and who doesn't.»

The boss slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and took out a DVD.

«Take this… it's a complete dossier for the whole three-year period. For four people, including me.»

I gulped as I took it.

«The security codes have been removed. But you understand that no one else must see this. You have no right to copy the information. Encrypt all your calculations and procedures… and make the key as complex as you can.»

«I'd really need someone to help,» I suggested hesitantly, with a glance at Olga. But then, what kind of help could she give me? Everything she knew about computers she'd learned from playing games like Heretic and Hexen.

«You check my database yourself,» the boss said, after a pause. «You can use Anatoly for the others. All right?»

«Then what's my assignment?» asked Olga.

«You'll cover the same ground, only by asking direct questions. Interrogating people, in other words. And you'll start with me. Then the other three.»

«All right, Boris.»

«Get on it, Anton,» the boss said with a nod. «Start immediately. You can pass everything else on to your girls; they'll manage.»

«Perhaps I could riddle about a bit with the data?» I asked. «If someone doesn't happen to have an alibi, I could arrange one.»

The boss shook his head.

«No. You don't understand. I don't want to set up any false alibis. I want to make sure that none of us are involved in these killings.»

«Are you serious?»

«Yes. Because nothing's impossible in this world. Anton, the really nice thing about our work is that I can give you an assignment like this. And you'll carry it out. Regardless of who's involved.»

There was still something bothering me, but I nodded and walked toward the door, clutching the precious disc. It came to me in a flash. I turned back and asked:

«Boris Ignatievich…«

The boss and Olga instantly moved apart.

«Boris Ignatievich, you say there are four sets of data here?»

«Yes.»

«For you, Ilya, Semyon…«

«And you, Anton.»

«Why?» I asked dumbly.

«During the standoff on the roof you stayed down in the second level of the Twilight for three minutes, Anton… that's a third-grade power.»

«Impossible,» I said.

«It happened.»

«Boris Ignatievich, you always told me I was just an average magician!»

«Well, let's just say I need an excellent programmer more than one more field operative.»

Any other time I would have felt proud. Offended at the same time, of course, but still proud. I'd always thought that fourth-grade magic was my ceiling, and it would be a long time before I reached it. But just at that moment everything was clouded by a clammy, disgusting feeling—fear. Even though in five years of working in a quiet staff position in the Watch I thought I'd learned not to be afraid of anything: the authorities, hoodlums, diseases…

«This was a second-level intervention…«

«The boundary here's ever-shifting, Anton. You might be capable of more.»

«But we have more than ten third-grade magicians. Why am I one of the suspects?»

«Because you offended Zabulon personally. Tweaked the tail of the head of Moscow's Day Watch. And he's quite capable of setting up a special trap just for Anton Gorodetsky. Or rather, adapting an old trap that was being kept in reserve.»

I swallowed and left without asking any more questions.

Our lab's on the fourth floor too, but in the other wing. I set off hurriedly along the corridor, nodding to people I met, but staying focused, clutching that disc tighter than a passionate young man clutches the hand of the girl he loves.

Was the boss telling the truth?

Could the blow really be aimed at me?

In all likelihood, he was. I'd asked a straight question and been given a straight answer. Of course, as the years go by, even the most Light of magicians acquire a certain degree of canniness and learn to play tricks with words. But the consequences of a direct lie would be too grave even for Boris Ignatievich.

I approached an entry lobby fitted with electronic security systems. I knew that all magicians regarded technology with disdain, and Semyon had shown me once how easy it was to fool the voice analyzer and the iris scanner. But I'd gone ahead with buying these expensive toys anyway. Maybe they were no protection against an Other, but it seemed perfectly possible to me that one day the guys from the Federal Security Service or the mafia would decide to check us out.

«One, two, three, four, five…« I muttered into the microphone, gazing into the camera lens at the same time. The electronic circuits pondered for a few seconds, then a green light came on above the door.

There was no one in the first room, where the server's cooling fans were humming gently. The air-conditioners built into the wall were huffing and puffing, but it was still hot in there. And spring had only just begun…

I didn't go into the system analysts' lab, just walked straight through into my own office. It wasn't all my own. Anatoly, my deputy, worked here too. Sometimes he lived here, spending the nights on the old leather sofa.

When I came in he was sitting at his desk, thoughtfully inspecting an old motherboard.

«Hi,» I said, sitting down on the sofa. The disc was burning my hands.

«It's a goner,» Tolik said gloomily.

«Trash it then.»

«Let me just take its brain out first.» Tolik was thrifty, a habit acquired from years of working in state-financed institutions. We had no problems with finances, but he carefully stockpiled all the old hardware anyway, even if it were of no use to anyone. «Would you believe it, I've been fiddling around with this for half an hour, and it's still dead…«

«It's an outdated antique; why waste time fiddling around with it? Even the machines in accounting are more modern.»

«I could give it to someone… Maybe I should take the cache out too…«

«Tolik, we've got an urgent job to do,» I said.

«Huh?»

«Uh-huh! Look…« I held up the disc. «This is a dossier… a complete dossier on four members of the Watch, including the boss.»

Tolik opened the drawer of his desk, stuck the motherboard in it, and fixed his eyes on the disc.

«Precisely. I'm going to check three of them. And you're going to check the fourth… me.»

«So what are we checking for?»

«This,» I said, holding up my printout from the briefing. «It's possible that one of the suspects may be carrying out sporadic killings of Dark Ones. Unauthorized killings. All the known incidents are listed here. We have to either eliminate this possibility, or…«

«Ah, so it really is you who's killing them, then?» Tolik asked. «Pardon my sense of humor.»

«No. But don't take my word for it. Let's get on with the job.»

I didn't even look at the information about me, just downloaded all eight hundred megabytes into Tolik's computer and took the disc.

«Shall I tell you if I come across anything really interesting?» Tolik asked. I glanced across at him as he looked through the text files, tugging on his left ear and clicking regularly with his mouse.

«That's up to you.»

«Okay.»

I started my reading of the dossier with the materials on the boss. First came the introductory blurb—then background information. Every line I read made me break out in a sweat.

Of course, even this dossier didn't give the boss's real name and origins. Facts like that weren't kept on file anywhere for Others of his rank. But even I was still making new discoveries every second. Starting with the fact that the boss was older than I'd thought. At least a hundred and fifty years older. And that meant he'd been personally involved in drawing up the Treaty between Light and Darkness. It struck me as interesting that all the other magicians still surviving from that time held positions in the central office and weren't stuck in the exhausting and tedious post of a regional director.

Aside from that, I recognized a few of the aliases the boss had used in the history of the Watch, and where he was born. We'd wondered about that sometimes, and even placed bets on it, always pointing to «indisputable» proof. But somehow no one had ever suspected that Boris Ignatievich was born in Tibet.

And even in my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined whose mentor he had been!

The boss had been working in Europe since the fifteenth century. From indirect references, I speculated that this change of residence was because of a woman. I could even guess who it was.

I closed the file and looked at Tolik. He was watching some kind of video. Of course, my biographical details had proved less fascinating than the boss's. I glanced at the small moving picture and blushed.

«For the first incident you have a cast-iron alibi,» Tolik said without turning round.

«Listen…« I was lost for words.

«Okay, okay. I'll fast-forward it, to check the entire night…«

I imagined what the recording would look like at high speed and turned away. I'd always suspected the boss kept tabs on his colleagues, especially the young ones. But not that literally!

«The alibi won't be that solid,» I said. «I'll get dressed and go out any moment now.»

«I see that,» Tolik confirmed.

«And I'll be gone for almost an hour and a half. I was looking for champagne… and while I was looking, I sobered up a bit in the fresh air. Started wondering if it was worth going back.»

«Don't worry about it,» said Tolik. «You watch the boss's private life.»

Half an hour later, I realized Tolik was right. Maybe I had good reason to feel offended by the observers' brazen intrusion. But Boris Ignatievich was as monitored as I was.

«The boss has an alibi,» I said. «Indisputable. For two incidents he has four witnesses. And for one—almost the entire Watch.»

«Was that the hunt for that Dark One who went crazy?»

«Yes.»

«Well, in theory, you could have killed the Dark Ones. Quite easily. And I'm sorry about this, Anton, but every one of the killings happened when you were in an excited state; not completely in control of yourself.»

«I didn't do it.»

«I believe you. What shall I do with the file?»

«Delete it.»

Tolik thought for a while.

«I don't have anything valuable on here. I think I'll run a low-level format. The disc's long overdue for a clean-out.»

«Thanks.» I closed the dossier on the boss. «That's it, I'll deal with the others myself.»

«Gotcha,» said Tolik as he overcame the computer's righteous indignation and it began digesting itself.

«Go check on our staff,» I suggested. «And look stern for a change. I'm sure they're playing patience in there.»

«All in a day's work, I suppose.» Tolik agreed willingly enough. «When will you be through here?»

«In about two hours.»

«I'll come back.»

He went off to our «girls,» two young programmers who basically dealt with the Watch's official activity. I continued working. Semyon was next up.

Two and a half hours later I tore my eyes away from the computer, massaged the back of my neck with my palms—it always cramps up when I sit there hunched over the monitor like that—and turned on the coffee machine.

Neither the boss, nor Ilya, nor Semyon fitted the role of an unhinged killer of Dark Ones. They all had alibis—and some of them were absolutely rock solid. For instance: Semyon had managed to spend the entire night of one of the murders in negotiation with the top management of the Day Watch. Ilya had been on assignment in Sakhalin—they'd screwed things up so badly over there that they'd needed help from the central office…

I was the only one left under suspicion.

It wasn't that I didn't trust Tolik, but I went through the data again anyway. It was all very neat. Not a single alibi.

The coffee was disgusting, sour; the filter couldn't have been changed for ages. I gulped down the hot swill, gazing at the screen, then took out my cell phone and dialed the boss's number.

«Yes, Anton.»

He always knew who was calling him.

«Boris Ignatievich, only one of the four can be suspected.»

«Which one exactly?»

The boss's voice was dry and official. But somehow I suddenly got this image of him sitting semi-naked on a leather couch, with a glass of champagne in one hand and Olga's hand in the other, holding the phone in place with his shoulder, or levitating it beside his ear…

«Tut-tut,» the boss rebuked me. «You lousy clairvoyant. Who's under suspicion?»

«I am.»

«I see.»

«You knew it,» I said.

«Why do you say that?»

«There was no need to get me to process that dossier. You could have done it yourself. That means you wanted me to be convinced of the danger.»

«That could be,» the boss said with a sigh. «What are you going to do, Anton?»

«Start packing my bag for jail.»

«Come around to my office. In… er… in ten minutes.»

«Okay.» I turned off my phone.

First I went to see how the girls were doing. Tolik was still there with them, and they were hard at work.

The Watch didn't really have any need for these two worthless programmers. Their security clearance was low, so we still had to do almost everything ourselves. But where else could we find work for two sorceresses as weak as these two? If only they'd have agreed to live ordinary lives… no, they wanted the romance of working for the Watch… So we'd invented jobs for them.

They mostly just whiled away the time, surfing the Net and playing games; their greatest favorites were the various kinds of patience.

Tolik was at one of the spare PCs—we had plenty of hardware around the place. Yulia was perched on his knees, twitching the mouse around on its mat.

«Is that what you call computer skills training?» I asked, gazing at the monsters hurtling around the screen.

«There's nothing better than computer games for improving skill with the mouse,» Tolik replied innocently.

«Well…« I couldn't think of any answer.

It was a long time since I'd played any video games like that. The same went for most other members of the Watch. Killing some evil vermin in a cartoon stopped being interesting once you'd met it face to face. Unless, that is, you'd already lived a couple of hundred years and built up huge reserves of cynicism, like Olga…

«Tolik, I probably won't be back in today,» I said.

«Aha.» He nodded, without any sign of surprise. None of us have really strong powers of prevision, but we sense little things like that immediately.

«Galya, Lena, see you later,» I said to the girls. Galya twittered something polite, trying to look entirely absorbed in her work. Lena asked:

«Can I leave early today?»

«Of course.»

We don't lie to each other. If Lena asks, it means she really needs to leave early. We don't lie. But sometimes we might just leave something unsaid…

The boss's desk was in a state of total confusion. Pens, pencils, sheets of paper, printouts of reports, dull, exhausted magic crystals.

But the crowning glory of this incredible jumble was a lighted spirit lamp, with some white powder roasting over it in a crucible. The boss was stirring it thoughtfully with the tip of his expensive Parker pen, obviously expecting it to produce some kind of effect. But the powder seemed to be doggedly ignoring the heat and his stirring.

«Here.» I put the disc down in front of the boss.

«What are we going to do?» Boris Ignatievich asked without even looking up. He wasn't wearing a jacket; his shirt was crumpled and his tie had slid to one side.

I stole a glance at the couch. Olga wasn't in the office, but there was an empty champagne bottle standing on the floor, next to two glasses.

«I don't know. I haven't killed any Dark Ones… not these Dark Ones. You know that.»

«Sure, I know.»

«But I can't prove it.»

«By my reckoning we've got two or three days,» said the boss. «Then the Day Watch will bring a formal charge against you.»

«It wouldn't take much to arrange a false alibi.»

«And would you agree to that?» Boris Ignatievich inquired.

«Of course not. Can I ask one question?»

«Yes.»

«Where does this information come from? The photos and videos?»

The boss paused for a moment.

«I thought that would be it. You've seen my dossier, Anton. Was it any less intrusive?»

«No, I suppose not. That's why I'm asking. Why do you allow information like that to be gathered?»

«I can't forbid it. Monitoring is carried out by the Inquisition.»

I just managed to bite back the stupid question: «But does it really exist?» My face probably said it all for me anyway.

The boss continued looking at me for a moment or two as if he were expecting more questions and then went on:

«Let's get to the point, Anton. From this moment on you must never be left alone. Maybe you can go to the John on your own, but at all other times—you must have two or three witnesses with you. If we're lucky there could be another killing.»

«If I'm really being set up, the killing won't happen until I'm left without an alibi.»

«And we'll make sure you are not left without one,» the boss said, laughing. «What kind of old fool do you take me for?»

I nodded, still not sure, still not understanding everything.

«Olga…«

The door in the wall—the one I'd always assumed led into a closet—opened and Olga came in, smiling as she straightened out her hair. Her jeans and blouse sat really tight on her body, the way they do only after a hot shower. Behind her I caught a glimpse of an immense bathroom with a Jacuzzi and a panoramic window right across one wall—it must have been one-way glass.

«Olya, can you handle this?» the boss asked, obviously meaning something they'd already talked about.

«On my own? No.»

«I didn't mean that.»

«Oh sure, of course I can.»

«Stand back to back,» the boss ordered.

I didn't feel like arguing, but I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew something really serious was about to happen.

«And both of you open yourselves to me,» Boris Ignatievich demanded.

I closed my eyes and relaxed. Olga's back was hot and damp, even through the blouse. A strange sensation, standing there touching a woman who's just been making love… but not with you.

No, I wasn't the slightest bit in love with her. Maybe because I remembered her in her non-human form, maybe because we'd become friends and partners so quickly. Maybe because of the centuries that separated her birth from mine: What did a young body mean, when you could see the dust of the centuries in the other person's eyes? We'd become friends, and nothing more.

But standing next to a woman whose body still remembers someone else's caresses, pressing yourself against her—that's a strange feeling…

«Right, let's begin…« said the boss, perhaps a bit too sharply. And then he uttered some words I didn't understand, in some ancient language that hadn't been used for thousands of years.

Flying.

It really was like flying. As if the ground had slipped away from under my feet and I'd become weightless. An orgasm in free fall, LSD mainlined straight into the bloodstream, electrodes in the subcortical pleasure centers…

I was swept away in a torrent of wild, unadulterated joy that came out of nowhere, and the world dimmed and blurred. I would have fallen, but the power streaming out of the boss's raised hands held Olga and me up on invisible strings, making us arch over and press ourselves against each other.

And then the strings got tangled up.

«I'm sorry, Anton,» said Boris Ignatievich, «but we didn't have any time for hesitation and explanations.»

I didn't answer. I was dumbfounded, sitting there on the floor and staring at my hands, at those slim fingers with the two silver rings, at my legs—those long, shapely legs still damp after my bath, in jeans that were clinging too tight, at the blue and white sneakers on my little feet.

«It's not for long,» the boss said.

«What the…« I almost swore, jerking forward and trying to jump to my feet, but the sound of my voice made me cut my oath short. A low, vibrant, soft woman's voice.

«Calm down, Anton.» The young man standing beside me reached out his hand and helped me up.

If not for that, I'd probably have fallen over. My center of balance had completely changed. I was shorter, and the world looked quite different…

«Olga?» I asked, looking at what used to be my face. My partner, now the inhabitant of my body, nodded. Totally confused, I gazed into her… into my face and I saw I hadn't shaved properly that morning. And there was a little, angry red pimple on my forehead that would have done credit to any teenage slob going through puberty.

«Calm down, Anton. It's the first time I've ever swapped sexes too.»

Somehow I believed her. Despite her great age, Olga might never have found herself in this particular ticklish situation before.

«Have you got your bearings now?» the boss asked.

I looked myself over again, first raising my hands to my face and then looking at my reflection in the glass doors of the shelves.

«Let's go,» said Olga, tugging at my arm. «Just one moment, Boris…« Her movements were as uncertain as mine. Maybe she was even less steady. «Light and Darkness, how do you men walk?» she suddenly exclaimed.

It was then that the irony of the situation struck me and I started laughing. They'd hidden me, the target of the Dark Side's plot, in a woman's body. In the body of the boss's lover, who was as old as the hills.

Olga literally pushed me into the bathroom—I couldn't help feeling quite pleased I was so strong—and bent me down over the Jacuzzi. Then she squirted a jet of cold water straight into my face from the shower head she'd left lying ready on the soft-pink ceramic surface.

I snorted and twisted free of her grip, suppressing the urge to smack Olga—or was it me, really?—across the face. The motor reflexes of this other body seemed to be coming awake.

«I'm not hysterical,» I said. «It really is funny.»

«Are you sure?» Olga screwed up her eyes, looking hard at me. Was that really the expression I had when I was trying to look benevolent and doubtful at the same time?

«Absolutely.»

«Then take a look at yourself.»

I went across to the mirror, which was on the same massive scale as everything else in this secret bathroom, and gazed at myself.

The result was strange. As I looked at my new form, I began feeling completely calm. The shock would probably have been worse if I'd been in another man's body. But this was okay; it just felt like the beginning of a fancy dress party.

«Are you influencing me at all?» I asked. «You or the boss?»

«No.»

«I must have pretty strong nerves then.»

«You've smudged your lipstick,» Olga commented. She chuckled. «Do you know how to put lipstick on?»

«Are you crazy? Of course not.»

«I'll teach you. It's not that tricky. You're really lucky, Anton.»

«How's that?»

«One week later, and I'd have had to teach you to use panty liners.»

Chapter 2

After I stepped out of the office I paused for a moment, fighting the temptation to go back in.

I could reject the boss's plan at any moment. I only had to go back in and say a few words, and Olga and I would be returned to our own bodies. But in half an hour of conversation I'd been told enough to make me accept that switching bodies was the only way to handle this provocation by the Dark Ones.

After all, it doesn't really make much sense to refuse life-saving treatment because the injections hurt.

I had the keys to Olga's apartment in my purse, together with her money and credit card in a little billfold, makeup, a little handkerchief, a panty liner—what for, when I wasn't supposed to need it?—a little box of Tic Tacs, a comb, a layer of small items scattered on the bottom, a mirror, a tiny cell phone…

But the empty pockets of the jeans made me feel like I must have lost something. I rummaged in them for a second or two, trying to find at least a forgotten coin, but was soon convinced that Olga carried everything in her purse, the way most women do.

You might have thought I'd just lost things that were a bit more important than the contents of my pockets. But it was a detail that irritated me, so I transferred a few bank notes from the handbag to my pocket and that made me feel a bit more confident.

It was a shame Olga didn't carry a Walkman, though…

«Hi,» said Garik, walking toward me. «Is the boss free?»

«He's… he's with Anton…« I replied.

«What's happened, Olya?» Garik asked, looking at me closely. I don't know what it was he'd sensed: a different intonation, hesitant movements, a new aura. But if a field operative that neither Olga nor I had ever spent much time with could sense the swap, I wasn't doing too well.

And then Garik gave me a timid, uncertain smile. That was entirely unexpected: I'd never noticed Garik trying to flirt with the Watch's female employees. He even has trouble getting to know human women, he's so incredibly unlucky when it comes to romance.

«Nothing. We had a bit of an argument.» I turned away without saying goodbye and walked to the staircase.

That was my cover story for the Night Watch—in the highly unlikely event that we had one of the other side's agents among us. As far as I know, that's something that's only happened once or twice in the entire history of the Watch, but you can never tell… Might as well let everyone think Boris Ignatievich had a falling out with his old girlfriend.

There was a plausible reason, a good one. A hundred years of imprisonment in his office, without any chance to assume human form, partial rehabilitation, but with the loss of most of her magical powers. That was more than enough reason to take offense… And at least the story relieved me of the need to play the part of the boss's girlfriend, which would have been going just too far.

I walked down to the third floor, thinking things through as I went. I had to admit that Olga had made things as easy for me as she could. She'd put on jeans today, instead of her usual matching skirt and jacket or dress, and sneakers instead of high-heeled shoes. Even the light perfume she'd used wasn't overpowering.

I knew what I was supposed to do now; I knew how I was supposed to behave. But even so, it was still hard. I had to turn into the modest, quiet side corridor instead of going toward the door.

And take a plunge into the past.

They say hospitals have their own unforgettable smell. And of course they do. It would be strange if the mixture of bleach and pain, sterilizing unit and wounds, standard issue bed sheets and tasteless food didn't have some kind of smell.

But tell me, if you can—where do schools and colleges get their smell?

Not all our subjects are taught on the Watch's own premises. Some things are easier to teach in the morgue, at night—we have our contacts there. Some things are taught out in the field; some things are taught abroad, on tourist trips paid for by the Watch. During my training, I spent time in Haiti, Angola, the USA, and Spain.

But there are still some lectures that can be given only in the Watch's own building, securely sealed off from its foundations to its roof by magic and protective spells. Thirty years ago, when the first Watch moved into this building, they set up three small halls, each for fifteen trainees. I still don't know what was most important in that decision—the optimism of my colleagues or the fact that the space was available. Even when I was in training—and that was a very good year—one hall was enough for all of us, and even then it was always half empty.

Right now the Watch was training four Others. And Svetlana was the only one we could be certain would join us and not prefer an ordinary human life.

It was deserted here, deserted and quiet. I walked slowly along the corridor, glancing into the empty teaching rooms, which would have been the envy of even the best-equipped and most prosperous university. A laptop computer on every desk, a huge TV projector in each room, shelves crammed with books… If only a historian could have seen those books—a real historian, that is, not some historical pimp.

But historians never would see them.

Some of the books contained too much truth. Other contained too many lies. People couldn't be allowed to read them, for the sake of their own peace of mind. Let them keep living with the history they were used to.

The corridor terminated in a huge mirror that covered the entire end wall. When I glanced into it casually I saw a beautiful young woman swaying her hips as she strode along the corridor.

I staggered and almost fell over: Olga had done everything possible to make things easy for me, but even she couldn't change her own center of gravity. As long as I forgot the way I looked, everything was more or less normal; the motor reflexes took over. But the moment I took a look at myself from the outside, things slipped out of sync. Even my breathing changed, and the air felt different as it entered my lungs.

I walked up to the last door, a glass one, and glanced through it cautiously.

The class was just finishing.

Today they'd been studying everyday magic, I knew that the moment I saw Polina Vasilievna standing by the demonstration stand. She's one of the oldest members of the Watch—to look at, that is, not by her actual age. She'd been discovered and initiated when she was already sixty-three years old. Who could have guessed than an old woman who earned her living by telling fortunes with cards during those wild years after the war actually possessed genuine powers? Quite strong powers too, although only in a narrow field.

«And now, if you need to spruce up your clothes in a hurry, you can do it in a moment. Only don't forget to check first how much strength you have. Otherwise the result might be embarrassing.»

«And when the clock strikes twelve, your carriage will turn into a pumpkin,» the young guy sitting beside Svetlana said in a loud voice. I didn't know him; this was only his second or third day of training, but already I didn't like him.

«Precisely,» Polina exclaimed delightedly, even though she heard the same witticism from every group of trainees. «Fairy tales lie just as much as statistics do, but sometimes you can find a grain of truth in them.»

She picked a neatly ironed tuxedo up off the desk. It was spruce and elegant, a little old-fashioned. James Bond must have worn one like it.

«When will it turn back to rags again?» Svetlana asked in a practical tone of voice.

«After two hours,» Polina told her briskly. She put the jacket on a hanger and hung it on the stand. «I didn't make a great effort.»

«And what's the longest you can you keep it looking good?»

«About twenty-four hours.»

Svetlana nodded and suddenly looked in my direction—she'd sensed my presence. She smiled and waved. Now everyone had noticed me.

«Please come in,» said Polina, bowing her head. «This is a great honor for us.»

Yes, she knew something about Olga that I didn't. All of us knew no more than one part of the truth about her; probably only the boss knew everything.

I went in, trying desperately to make my walk a bit less provocative. It did no good. The young guy sitting next to Svetlana, and the fifteen-year-old kid who'd been stuck in the preliminary class for six months, and the tall, skinny Korean, who could have been thirty or forty—they all watched me.

With very definite interest. The atmosphere of mystery that surrounded Olga, all the rumors and unspoken reservations, and above all the fact that she was the boss's lover from way far back—it all provoked a very noticeable response from the male section of the Watch.

«Hello,» I said. «I hope I'm not interrupting?»

I was trying so hard to get my phrasing right, I forgot to control my tone of voice, and my banal question came out sounding languidly mysterious, addressed to every single person there. The spotty-faced kid couldn't take his eyes off me, the young guy gulped, and only the Korean maintained some semblance of composure.

«Olga, did you have some announcement to make to the students?» Polina inquired.

«I need to have a word with Sveta.»

«Then class dismissed,» the old woman declared. «Olga, please do come in sometime during class! My lectures can't take the place of your experience.»

«Certainly,» I promised generously. «In three or four days.»

Olga could make good on my promises. I had to take the hits for her carefully cultivated sex appeal.

Svetlana and I walked toward the door. I could feel three pairs of greedy eyes drilling into my back—well, not exactly my back.

I knew that Olga and Svetlana were on close terms. I'd known since that night when Olga and I had explained to her the truth about the world and the Others, the Light Ones and the Dark Ones, about the Watches and the Twilight, since that dawn when she had held our hands and walked through the closed door into the field headquarters of the Night Watch. Sure, Svetlana and I were closely linked by a mystical thread. Destiny held us together in its firm grip, but only for the time being. Svetlana and Olga were just friends. It wasn't destiny that had brought them together. They were free.

«Olya, I have to wait for Anton,» said Svetlana, taking hold of my hand. It wasn't the gesture of a younger sister clutching her elder sister's hand, looking for support and reassurance. It was the gesture of an equal. And if Olga allowed Svetlana to behave like her equal, then she really did have a great future ahead of her.

«Don't bother, Sveta,» I said. «Don't bother.»

Again there was something not quite right in the phrase or the tone. Svetlana gave me a puzzled look, and it was exactly like Garik's had been.

«I'll explain everything,» I said. «But not right here and now. At your place.»

The new defenses at her apartment were the best that could possibly be set up—the Watch had invested too much energy in its new member to lose her now. The boss hadn't even argued about whether I could confide in Svetlana; he'd insisted on only one thing—it had to happen at her place.

«All right.» The surprise was still there in Svetlana's eyes, but she nodded in agreement. «Are you sure it's not worth waiting for Anton?»

«Absolutely,» I said, quite sincerely. «Shall we take a car?»

«Aren't you driving today?»

Fool!

I'd completely forgotten that Olga's favorite mode of transport was the sports car the boss had given her as a present.

«That's what I meant—shall we drive?» I asked, realizing I looked like a complete idiot.

Olga nodded. That puzzled look in her eyes was getting stronger and stronger.

At least I knew how to drive. I'd never been tempted by the dubious pleasure of owning a car in a megalopolis with lousy roads, but our training had included all sorts of things. Some things had been taught the ordinary way; some things had been beaten into our heads by magic. I'd been taught how to drive like a simple human being, but if I suddenly happened to find myself in the cabin of a helicopter or a plane, then reflex responses I couldn't even remember in an ordinary state would kick in. At least, in theory they ought to kick in.

I found the car keys in the purse. The orange sports car was standing in the parking lot in front of the building, under the watchful eye of the security guards. The car's doors were locked, but since the top was down that was fairly ridiculous.

«Will you drive?» asked Svetlana.

I nodded without saying anything, then got into the driver's seat and started the engine. I remembered that Olga always took off like a bullet, but I didn't know how to do that.

«Olga, there's something wrong with you,» said Svetlana, finally deciding to say what was on her mind. I nodded as I drove out onto Leningrad Prospect.

«Sveta, we'll talk when we get to your place.»

I'm no hotshot driver. We were driving a long time, a lot longer than we ought to have been. But Svetlana didn't ask any more questions; she sat there, leaning back in her seat and looking straight ahead. Maybe she was meditating, or maybe she was trying to look through the Twilight. Several times in the traffic jams, guys tried to hit on us from their cars—always the most expensive models, though. Apparently the way we looked and the car we were in drew attention. Windows were wound down; heads with crew cuts were stuck out, sometimes with a hand clutching a cell phone, as a universal badge of status. At first I just found it annoying. Then it started to seem funny. By the end I wasn't reacting to any of it any longer, just like Svetlana.

I wondered if Olga found these attempts to get to know her amusing…

She probably did. After spending decades in non-human form, after being imprisoned in a glass showcase…

«Olya, why did you bring me away? Why didn't you want me to wait for Anton?»

I shrugged. I was sorely tempted to answer: «Because he's sitting right here beside you.» The chances were pretty slim that we were being observed. The car was protected by spells too; I could sense some of them, some of them went beyond the level of my powers.

But I restrained myself.

Svetlana hadn't taken the course on information security yet; it comes three months into the training. I think it would make good sense to put it in earlier, but a specific program has to be designed for each individual Other, and that takes time.

Once Svetlana had been through the fiery crucible of that ordeal, she'd know when to keep quiet and when to speak. They just start feeding you information, strictly measured, in a specific sequence. Some of what you hear is true, and some of it's false.

They tell you some of it quite freely and openly, and some of it under a terrible oath of secrecy. And some of it you find out «accidentally,» by eavesdropping or spying.

And then everything you've learned starts to ferment inside you, making you feel pain and fear, pushing and straining so hard to break out you think your heart's going to burst, demanding some immediate, irrational reaction. In the lectures they tell you all sorts of nonsense you don't really need to know to live as an Other, while the most important training and testing is taking place in your soul.

It's rare for anyone to have a serious breakdown. It's only training, after all, not a test. And the height set for every individual is no higher than he can jump—provided he calls on every last ounce of his strength, leaving scraps of blood-stained skin behind on the razor wire along the top of the barrier.

But when the people in the course matter to you, or even if you simply like them, it starts getting to you, tearing you apart. You catch a strange glance cast in your direction and start wondering what your friend has just learned in the course. What truths? What lies?

And what the student is learning about himself or herself, about the world around him, his parents and friends…

And you have a terrible, unbearable yearning to help. To explain, to hint, to prompt.

But no one who's been through the course will ever give way to that desire. Because that's what they're learning through their own pain and suffering—what to say and when.

Generally speaking, we can and should say everything. We just have to choose the right time, otherwise the truth can be worse than a lie.

«Olya?»

«You'll understand soon,» I said. «Just wait a while.»

I glanced through the Twilight and hurled the car forward, flitting neatly between a clumsy jeep and a military truck. The mirror cracked as it folded back after clipping the edge of the truck—I didn't care. Our car was first across the intersection, tearing out onto the Highway of Enthusiasts.

«Does he love me?» Svetlana suddenly asked. «Does he, yes or no? You must know, don't you?»

I shuddered and the car swerved, but Svetlana took no notice. I sensed it wasn't the first time she'd asked that question. She and Olga must have left a difficult conversation unfinished.

«Or does he love you?»

That was it. I couldn't keep quiet any longer.

«Anton is very fond of Olga,» I said, speaking of myself and the owner of my body in the third person. It was a bit artificial, but it gave an impression of cool, distant politeness. «Comrades in combat. Nothing more than that.»

If she asked Olga how she felt about me, it would be harder to avoid lying.

Svetlana didn't ask. And a moment later she touched my hand, as if she were asking me to forgive her.

But now I couldn't stop myself asking:

«Why do you ask?»

She answered simply, without hesitation:

«I don't understand. Anton is behaving very strangely. Sometimes he seems to be madly in love with me. And sometimes it's as if I'm just one of hundreds of Others that he knows. A comrade in arms.»

«A destiny node,» I said briefly.

«What?»

«You haven't studied that yet, Sveta.»

«Explain it to me, then!»

«You know,» I said, driving the car faster and faster—that must have been the body's motor reflexes kicking in—«you know, when he came to your place that first time…«

«I know that I was influenced. He told me,» Svetlana interrupted.

«That's not the point. The suggestion was removed when you were told the truth. But when you learn to see destiny—and you'll learn to see it a lot more clearly than I do—then you'll understand.»

«They told us that destiny is variable.»

«Destiny is polyvariable. But when he came to see you, Anton knew that if he succeeded in his assignment, he would fall in love with you.»

Svetlana didn't answer that. I thought I saw her cheeks color slightly, but maybe that was just the wind in the open car.

«And what difference does that make?»

«Do you know what it's like to be condemned to love?»

«But isn't it always like that?» Svetlana asked, trembling with indignation. «When people love each other, when they find each other out of thousands and millions of people. It's always destiny!»

Once again I sensed that infinitely naive girl in her, the girl who couldn't hate anything except herself. The girl who was already beginning to disappear.

«No, Sveta, haven't you ever heard love compared to a flower?»

«Yes.»

»A flower can be grown, Sveta . But it can be bought too, or given as a gift.»

«Did Anton buy it?»

«No,» I said, a bit too sharply. «It was a gift. From destiny.»

«What difference does that make? If it is love?»

«Sveta, cut flowers are beautiful, but they don't live for long. They're already dying, even the ones that are carefully placed in a crystal vase and given fresh water.»

«He's afraid of loving me,» Svetlana said thoughtfully. «Isn't he? I wasn't afraid, because I didn't know all this.»

I drove up to the building, weaving between the parked cars, mostly Zhigulis and Moskviches. This wasn't a prestigious district.

«Why did I tell you all that?» asked Svetlana. «Why did I make you answer? Just because you're four hundred forty-three years old?»

I shuddered when I heard that number. Yes, a real wealth of experience. An immense wealth. Next year Olga would be celebrating a very magical kind of birthday.

I'd like to believe my body would still be in such beautiful physical condition, even at a quarter of that age.

I left the car without putting on the alarm. No human being would ever think of trying to steal it in any case: The protective spells provide greater security than any alarm system. Svetlana and I walked briskly up the steps without speaking and went into her apartment.

Things had changed a bit, of course. Svetlana had left her job, but her study grant and the initial allowance paid to every Other when they are initiated came to far more than her modest earnings as a doctor. She had a new TV; what I couldn't understand was when she found the time to watch it. It was a flashy widescreen model, too big for her apartment. I found this sudden yen for the good life amusing. It's something everyone goes through at the beginning—probably a defensive reaction. When your world crumbles around you, when the old fears and anxieties disappear and new ones, still vague and unfamiliar, take their place, everyone starts acting out some of the dreams from their former life that seemed so unreal only recently. Some go on a spree in restaurants, some buy an expensive car, some buy themselves haute-couture outfits. It doesn't last for long, and not just because working in the Watch won't make you a millionaire. The very needs that seemed so compelling only yesterday begin to fade away, disappearing into the past. Forever.

«Olga?»

Svetlana looked into my eyes.

I sighed, gathering my strength.

«I couldn't tell you earlier. We can only talk here. Your apartment is protected against observation by the Dark Ones.»

I could see that Svetlana already suspected the truth.

«This is only Olga's body,» I said.

«Anton?»

I nodded.

The two of us must have looked really absurd!

It was a good thing Svetlana was already used to absurdity.

She believed me straight away.

«You bastard!»

Spoken in a tone that would have suited the aristocratic Olga. And the slap to my face came from the same opera libretto.

It didn't hurt, but it upset me.

«What's that for?» I asked.

«For eavesdropping on other peoples' conversations!» Svetlana snapped.

It wasn't a very precise way of putting it, but I got the idea. When Svetlana raised her other hand, I ignored the Christian teaching and dodged the second slap.

«Sveta, I promised to take care of this body!»

«I didn't!»

Svetlana breathed heavily, biting her lip. Her eyes were blazing. I'd never seen her in such a fury, never even suspected it was possible. Just what was it that had made her so furious?

«So, you're afraid to love cut flowers?» said Svetlana, slowly advancing on me. «That's your problem, is it?»

I got the idea. But it took a moment or two.

«Get out of here! Get out!»

I backed away until I ran into the door. But the moment I stopped, Svetlana stopped too. She jerked her head to one side and yelled:

«Stay in that body! It suits you better; you're not a man, you're a spineless wimp!»

I didn't answer. I didn't say a word, because I could already see the way things would go. I could see the lines of probability stretching out ahead of us, see destiny derisively weaving its pathways together.

And when Svetlana burst into tears, instantly robbed of all her fighting spirit, and lowered her face into her hands, when I put my arm around her shoulders and she sobbed in relief on my shoulder, I felt cold and empty inside. The cold was piercing, as if I were back standing on a snow-covered roof in a blustery winter wind.

Svetlana was still human. There wasn't enough of the Other in her yet; she didn't understand, she couldn't see the road leading off into the distance, the road we were destined to follow. And so she couldn't see how that road divided in two, running off in different directions.

Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it's only faith that gives love its strength and its joy.

Svetlana was sobbing on my shoulder.

Great knowledge brings great sorrow. How I wished I didn't know the inevitable future! I wished I didn't know it, and I just could love her without thinking twice about it, like an ordinary, mortal human being.

And what a pity it was that I wasn't in my own body.

To any outsider it might have looked like two women who were close friends had decided to spend a quiet evening in front of the TV with tea with jam. Drinking a bottle of dry wine and chatting about those three eternal subjects: All men are bastards, I've nothing to wear, and the most important of all—how to lose weight.

«You really like bread rolls, don't you?» Svetlana asked in surprise.

«Yes. With butter and jam,» I replied morosely.

«I thought someone promised to take care of that body?»

«I'm not doing it any harm! Believe me, it's having a really great time.»

«Well now,» Svetlana said vaguely, «you ask Olga afterward how she takes care of her figure.»

I hesitated, but went ahead and cut another roll in half, then spread it generously with jam.

«And whose brilliant idea was it to hide you in a woman's body?»

«The boss's, I think.»

«I thought it must be.»

«Olga supported him.»

«I should think so. She worships the very ground Boris Ignatievich walks on.»

I had my doubts about that, but I kept quiet about them. Svetlana got up and went over to the wardrobe, opened it, and looked thoughtfully at the hangers.

«Will you put on a robe?»

«What?» I said, choking on my roll.

«Are you going to sit around in the house like that? Those jeans are bursting on you. It must be uncomfortable.»

«Can't you find something like a sweat suit?» I asked pitifully.

Svetlana gave me a mocking glance and then took pity.

«I suppose I might.»

To be quite honest, I'd rather have seen that combination on someone else. On Svetlana, for instance. Brief little white shorts and a blouse. For playing tennis, or maybe for jogging.

«Get changed.»

«Sveta, I don't think we're going to spend the whole evening in the apartment.»

«Never mind. It'll be useful anyway; I need to check that the size is right. You get changed and I'll go and make some tea.»

Svetlana went out and I hurriedly pulled off the jeans. I started unbuttoning the blouse, fumbling with the funny little buttons that were too tight, and then glared balefully at myself in the mirror.

A good-looking girl, that was for sure. A good model. I put the new clothes on in a hurry and sat down on the couch. There was a soap opera on the TV—I was amazed Svetlana watched this junk. But then, the others were probably showing the same stuff.

«You look great.»

«Don't, Sveta, please,» I begged her. «I feel sick enough already.»

«Okay, I'm sorry,» she said lightly, sitting down beside me. «So what have we got to do?»

«We?» I asked with gentle emphasis.

«Yes, Anton. You didn't come here by chance.»

«I had to tell you about the mess I'm in.»

«Okay. But if the boss…«—Svetlana managed to pronounce the word «boss» with real relish, with respect and irony at the same time—«… has allowed you to confide in me, that means I have to help you. It must be the will of destiny.» She couldn't resist putting that in.

I gave in.

«I mustn't be left alone. Not for a moment. The basis of the whole plan is that the Dark Ones are deliberately sacrificing their own pawns—either killing them or allowing them to die.»

«Like the other time?»

«Yes. Precisely. And if this provocation is directed at me, there's going to be another killing any time now. At some moment when they think I don't have an alibi.»

Svetlana looked at me with her chin propped on her hands and slowly shook her head.

«And then you'll jump out of this body like a jack out of his box. And it'll be clear that you couldn't have carried out these serial killings. The enemy is confounded.»

«Uh-huh.»

«I'm sorry, I haven't been in the Watch for long; maybe there's something I don't understand.»

That put me on my guard. Svetlana hesitated for a second and then went on:

«When all those things happened to me, what was going on? The Dark Ones were hoping to initiate me. They knew Night Watch would notice; they even figured out that you could possibly intervene and help.»

«Yes.»

«That was why they played out that complex maneuver, sacrificing a few pieces and building up false positions of strength. And to begin with, Night Watch was taken in. If the boss hadn't launched his counter-maneuver, if you hadn't gone charging straight in, taking no notice of anything…«

«You'd be my enemy now,» I said. «You'd be studying with the Day Watch.»

«That's not what I meant, Anton. I'm grateful to you, and to everyone in Night Watch, above all to you. But that's not what I'm talking about right now. Surely you understand that what you've just told me sounds about as probable as that story did? Everything fit together so neatly, didn't it? A pair of vampires poaching. A boy with exceptional powers. A woman under a powerful curse. A massive threat to the entire city.»

I didn't know what to say. I looked at her and felt my cheeks beginning to burn. A girl who wasn't a third of the way through the introductory course, a total novice in our line of work, was laying out the situation for me the way I ought to have laid it out for myself.

«What's happening right now?» Svetlana continued, not noticing the torment I was in. «There's a serial killer destroying Dark Ones. You're on the list of suspects. The boss immediately makes a cunning move: You and Olga swap bodies. But just how cunning is this move, really? As far as I understand it, the practice of body-swapping is quite common. Boris Ignatievich himself used it only recently, didn't he? Has he ever used the same move twice in a row? Against the same enemy?»

«I don't know, Svetlana; they don't tell me all the details of the operations.»

«Then think for yourself. And another thing. Is Zabulon really so petty, so hysterically vengeful? He's hundreds of years old, isn't he? He's been in charge of the Day Watch for a very, very long time. If this maniac…«

«Maverick.»

«If they really have let this Maverick run loose on the streets of Moscow while they get ready to make their move, then would the head of Day Watch really waste him on such petty business? I'm sorry, Anton, but you're really not such an important target.»

«I understand. Officially I'm a fifth-grade magician, but the boss said I could aim for third-grade.»

«Even taking that into account.»

We looked into each other's eyes and I shrugged:

«I give up, Svetlana, you must be right. But I've told you all I know. And I can't see any other possible interpretation.»

«SO you're just going to follow instructions? Walk around in a skirt, never let yourself be alone for a single moment?»

«When I joined the Watch, I knew I was giving up part of my freedom.»

«Part of it!» Svetlana snorted. «Is that what you call it? Okay, you know best. So we're spending the night together, then?»

I nodded:

«Yes… But not here. It's best if I stay with people all the time.»

«What about sleeping?»

«It's riot that hard to go without sleep for a few nights,» I said with a shrug. «I am sure Olga's body is trained at least as well as mine. These last few months her life's been one never-ending high-society whirl.»

«Anton, I haven't learned these tricks yet. When do I sleep?»

«During the day. In class.»

She frowned. I knew Svetlana would agree; she couldn't help herself. With her character she couldn't even refuse to help some stranger in the street, and I certainly wasn't that.

«Why don't we go to the Maharajah?» I suggested.

«What's that?»

«An Indian restaurant; it's pretty good.»

«Is it open all night?»

«No, unfortunately. But we'll think of somewhere else to go afterward.»

Svetlana stared at me so long she got under even my naturally thick skin. What had I done wrong this time?

«Thank you, Anton,» she said with real feeling. «Thank you very much. You've just invited me to a restaurant. I've been waiting two months for that.»

She got up, went across to the wardrobe, opened it, and gazed thoughtfully at the clothes hanging there.

«I don't have anything decent in your size,» she said. «You'll have to get back into the jeans. Will they let you into the restaurant?»

«They should,» I said, not too sure of myself. But if it came to that, I could always influence the restaurant staff a little bit.

«If need be, I can practice implanting suggestions,» Svetlana said, as if she'd read my thoughts. «I'll make them let you in. That will be a good deed, won't it?»

«Of course.»

«You know, Anton…« Svetlana said, taking a dress off a hanger, holding it up against herself and shaking her head. Then she took out a beige suit. «… I'm amazed at the way the members of the Watch use the interests of the Good and the Light to justify any interference in reality.»

«Not any interference!» I protested.

«Absolutely any. If necessary, they'll even claim robbery's a good deed, even murder.»

«No.»

«Imagine you're walking along the street and you see a grownup beating a child, right there in front of you. What would you do?»

«If I had any margin left for intervention,» I said with a shrug, «I'd perform a remoralization. Naturally.»

«And you'd be absolutely certain that was the right thing to do? Without even thinking it over, without looking into things? What if the child deserved to be punished for what it had done? What if the punishment would have saved it from serious problems later in life, but now it will grow up to be a murderer and a thief? You and your remoralization!»

«Sveta, you don't understand.»

«What don't I understand?»

«Even if I didn't have any margin left for parapsychological influence—I still wouldn't just walk on by.»

Svetlana snorted.

«And you'd be certain you were right? Where's the boundary line?»

«Everyone determines the line for himself. It comes with experience.»

She looked at me thoughtfully.

«Anton, every novice asks these questions. I'm right, aren't I?»

«Yes.» I smiled.

«And you're used to answering them, you know a series of ready-made answers, sophisms, historical examples, and parallels.»

«No, Sveta. That's not the point. The point is that the Dark Ones never ask questions like these.»

«How do you know?»

«A Dark Magician can heal; a Light Magician can kill,» I said. «That's the truth. Do you know what the difference is between Light and Darkness?»

«No, I don't. For some reason, they don't teach us that. I expect it's hard to formulate clearly?»

«Not at all. If you always put yourself and your own interests first, then your path leads through the Darkness. If you think about others, it leads toward the Light.»

«And how long will it take to reach it? The Light, I mean?»

«Forever.»

«This is all empty words, Anton. A word game. What does an experienced Dark Magician tell his novice? Maybe he uses words that are just as beautiful and true?»

«Oh, sure, about freedom. About how everyone gets the place in life that they deserve. About how pity is degrading and true love is blind, and true kindness is useless—and true freedom is freedom from everyone else.»

«And is that a lie?»

«No,» I said with a shake of my head. «That's a part of the truth too. Sveta, we're not given the chance to choose absolute truth. Truth's always two-faced. The only thing we have is the right to reject the lie we find most repugnant. Do you know what I tell novices about the Twilight the first time? We enter it in order to acquire strength. And as the price for entering it we give up the part of the truth that we don't want to accept. Ordinary human beings have it easier. A million times easier, even with all those disasters and problems and worries that don't even exist for the Others. Humans have never had to face this choice: They can be good and bad, it all depends on the moment, on their surroundings, on the book they read yesterday, on the steak they had for dinner. That's why they're so easy to control; even the most malicious villain can easily be turned to the Light, and the kindest and most noble of men can be nudged toward the Darkness. But we have made a choice.»

«I've made it too, Anton. I've already been in the Twilight.»

«Yes.»

«Then why don't I understand where the boundary is and what the difference is between me and some witch who attends black masses? Why am I still asking these questions?»

«You'll never stop asking them. Out loud at first, and later on just to yourself. It will never stop, never. If you wanted to be free of painful questions—you chose the wrong side.»

«I chose the one I wanted.»

«I know. So now put up with it.»

«All my life?»

«Yes. It will be a long one, but you'll never get over this. You'll never stop asking yourself if every step you make is the right one.»

Chapter 3

Maxim didn't like restaurants. That was just his character. He felt far more comfortable and relaxed in bars and clubs, sometimes even the more expensive ones, as long as they weren't too prissy and formal. Of course, there were some people who always behaved like red commissars in negotiations with the bourgeoisie, even in the most sumptuous restaurants: no manners and no wish to learn any. But then what did all those New Russians in the jokes have to model themselves on?

Last night had to be smoothed over somehow, though. His wife had either believed his story about «an important business meeting» or at least pretended that she did. But he was still suffering vague pangs of conscience. Of course, if only she knew! If she could only imagine who he really was and what it was he did!

Maxim couldn't say anything, so he had no choice but to make up his absence the previous night by using the same methods any decent man uses after a little affair. Presents, pampering, an evening out. For instance, at a prestigious restaurant with subtle exotic cuisine, foreign waiters, elegant decor, and an extensive wine list.

Maxim wondered if Elena really thought he'd been unfaithful to her the night before. The question intrigued him, but not enough for him to ask it out loud. There are always some things that have to be left unsaid. Maybe some day she'd learn the truth. And then she'd be proud of him.

But that was ridiculous—he realized that. In a world full of the creatures of Malice and Darkness, he was the only knight of Light, eternally alone, unable to share with anyone the truth. In the beginning, Maxim had hoped to meet someone else like him: a sighted man in the land of the blind, a guard who could sniff out the wolves in sheep's clothing among the heedless herd.

But there wasn't anyone. He had no one to stand beside him.

Even so, he hadn't despaired.

«Do you think this is worth trying?» Maxim glanced down at the menu. He didn't know what malai kofta was. But that had never prevented him from making decisions. And in any case, the ingredients were listed.

«Yes, try it. Meat with a cream sauce.»

«Beef?»

He didn't realize at first that Elena was joking. Then he smiled back at her.

«Definitely.»

«And what if I do order something with beef?»

«Then they'll refuse politely,» said Maxim. Keeping his wife amused wasn't tough. He actually enjoyed it. But right now he would really like to take a look around the room. Something here wasn't right. He could sense a strange, cold draft blowing through the semi-darkness at his back; it made him screw up his eyes and keep looking, looking…

Could it really be?

The gap between his missions was usually at least a few months, maybe six. Nothing had ever come up the very next day…

But the symptoms were only too familiar.

Maxim reached into his inside jacket pocket, as if he were checking his billfold. What he was really concerned about was something else—a little wooden dagger, carved artlessly but with great care. He'd whittled the weapon for himself when he was a child, without understanding what it was for at the time, thinking it was simply a toy.

The dagger was waiting.

But who was it?

«Max?» There was a note of reproach in Elena's voice. «You're up in the clouds again.»

They clinked glasses. It was a bad sign for husband and wife to do that; it meant there'd be no money in the family. But Maxim wasn't superstitious.

Who was it?

At first he suspected two girls. Both attractive, even beautiful, but each in her own way. The shorter one with dark hair, who moved in a slightly angular way, like a man, was literally overflowing with energy. She positively oozed sexuality. The other one, the blonde, was taller, more calm and restrained. And her beauty was quite different, soothing.

Maxim felt his wife watching him and looked away.

«Lesbians,» his wife said disdainfully.

«What?»

«Well, just look at them! The little dark-haired one in jeans is totally butch.»

So she was. Maxim nodded and assumed an appropriate expression.

Not them. Not them, after all. But who was it then?

A cell phone trilled in the corner of the room and a dozen people automatically reached for their phones. Maxim located the source of the sound and caught his breath.

The man talking into the cell phone in rapid, quiet bursts was not simply Evil. He was enveloped in a black shroud that other people couldn't see, but Maxim could sense it.

The draft was coming from him, it smelled of danger, appalling danger, coming closer.

Maxim felt a sudden ache in his chest.

«You know what, Lena, I'd like to live on a desert island,» Maxim blurted out before he realized what he was saying.

«Alone?»

«With you and the children. But no one else. Not a soul.»

He gulped down the rest of his wine and the waiter immediately refilled his glass.

«I wouldn't like that,» his wife said.

«I know.»

The dagger felt heavy and hot in his pocket now. The mounting excitement was acute, almost sexual. It demanded release.

«Do you remember Edgar Allan Poe?» Svetlana asked.

They'd let us in without any fuss. I hadn't been expecting that—the rules in restaurants must have changed, been made more democratic, or maybe they were just short of customers.

«No. He died too long ago. But Semyon was telling me…«

«I didn't mean Poe himself. I meant his stories.»

»The Man of the Crowd ,» I guessed.

Svetlana laughed quietly.

«Yes. You're in the same fix as him right now. You have to stick to crowded places.»

«Fortunately I'm still not sick of those places just yet.»

We had a glass of Bailey's each and ordered something to eat. That probably gave the waiter certain ideas about why we were there: two inexperienced prostitutes looking for work—but I didn't really care.

«Was he an Other?»

«Poe? Probably an uninitiated one.»

«There are some qualities—some incorporate things,

That have a double life, which thus is made

A type of that twin entity which springs

From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.»

Svetlana recited in a quiet voice.

I looked at her in surprise.

«Do you know it?» she asked.

«How can I put it?» I said. Then I raised my eyes and declaimed:

«He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!

No power hath he of evil in himself;

But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!) Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf, That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod No foot of man), commend thyself to God!»

We looked at each for a second and then both burst into laughter.

«A little literary duel,» Svetlana said ironically. «Score: one-one. A pity we don't have an audience. But why did Poe remain uninitiated?»

«A lot of poets are potential Others. But some potentials are best left to live as human beings. Poe was too psychologically unstable; giving people like that special powers is like handing a pyromaniac a can of napalm. I wouldn't even try to guess which side he would have taken. He'd probably have withdrawn into the Twilight forever, and very quickly.»

«But how do they live there? The ones who have withdrawn forever?»

«I don't know, Svetlana. I expect no one really knows. You sometimes come across them in the Twilight world, but there's no contact in the usual sense of the word.»

«I'd like to find out,» said Svetlana, casting a thoughtful glance around the room. «Have you noticed the Other in here?» she asked.

«The old man behind me, talking on his cell phone?»

«Why do you call him old?»

«He's very old. I'm not looking with my eyes.»

Svetlana bit her lip and screwed up her eyes. She was beginning to develop little ambitions of her own.

«I can't do it yet,» she admitted. «I can't even tell if he's Light or Dark.»

«Dark. Not from Day Watch, but Dark. A magician with middle-level powers. And by the way, he's spotted us too.»

«So what are we going to do?»

«Us? Nothing.»

«But he's Dark!»

«Yes, and we're Light. What of it? As Watch agents we have the right to check his ID. But it's bound to be in order.»

«And when will we have the right to intervene?»

«When he gets up, waves his hands through the air, turns into a demon, and starts biting off people's heads…«

«Anton!»

«I'm quite serious. We have no right to interfere with an honest Dark Magician's pleasant evening out.»

The waiter brought our order and we stopped talking. Svetlana ate, but without any real appetite. Then, like a sulky, capricious child, she blurted out:

«And how long is the Watch going to continue groveling like this?»

«To the Dark Ones?»

«Yes.»

«Until we acquire a decisive advantage. Until people who become Others no longer hesitate for even a moment over what to choose: Light or Darkness. Until the Dark Ones all die of old age. Until they can no longer nudge people toward Evil as easily as they do now.»

«But that's capitulation, Anton!»

«Neutrality. The status quo. Double deadlock—there's no point pretending otherwise.»

«You. know, I like the solitary Maverick who's terrorizing the Dark Ones a lot more. Even if he is violating the Treaty, even if he is setting us up without knowing it! He's fighting against the Darkness, isn't he? Fighting! Alone, against all of them.»

«And have you thought about why he kills Dark Ones but doesn't get in touch with us?»

«No.»

«He can't see us, Svetlana. He looks straight through us.»

«He's self-taught.»

«Yes. Self-taught and talented. An Other with powers that manifest themselves in chaotic fashion. Capable of seeing Evil. Incapable of recognizing Good. Don't you find that frightening?»

«No,» Svetlana said sullenly. «I'm sorry, I can't see where you're going with this, Olga. Sorry, I mean Anton. You've started talking just like her.»

«That's okay.»

«The Dark Other's going somewhere,» said Svetlana, looking past my shoulder. «To extract other people's energy, to cast evil spells. And we don't interfere.»

I turned my head slightly and saw the Dark One. To the unaided eye he looked about thirty years old at most. Dressed in good taste, charming. A young woman and two children were sitting at the table he'd just left. The boy was about seven, the girl a bit younger.

«He's gone for a leak, Svetlana. To take a pee. And his family, by the way, is perfectly ordinary. No powers. Are you suggesting we eliminate them too?»

«Like father, like son…«

«Try telling that to Garik. His father's a Dark Magician. Still alive.»

«There are always exceptions.»

«Life consists of nothing but exceptions.»

Svetlana didn't answer.

«I know that itch, Sveta. The itch to do Good, to pursue Evil. Right now, to finish it forever. That's the way I feel too. But if you can't understand that's a dead end, you'll end up in the Twilight. One of us will have to put an end to your earthly existence.»

«But at least I'd have done something.»

«You know what your actions would look like to an outsider? A psychopath killing normal, decent people at random. Chilling reports in the newspapers, with spine-chilling descriptions and grand nicknames for you—say, 'the new Lucretia Borgia.' You'd sow more Evil in human hearts than a brigade of Dark Magicians could generate in a year.»

«How come all of you always have an answer for everything?» Svetlana asked bitterly.

«Because we've been through the training. And survived. Most of us have survived.»

I called the waiter and asked for the menu.

«How about a cocktail? And then we can move on. You choose.»

Svetlana nodded as she studied the wine list. The waiter was a tall, swarthy young guy, not Russian. He'd seen just about everything, and he wasn't much bothered by one girl acting like a man with another.

«Alter Ego,» said Svetlana.

I was doubtful—it was one of the strongest cocktails. But I didn't argue.

«Two cocktails and the check.»

We waited in oppressive silence while the bartender was mixing the cocktails and the waiter was adding up the check. Eventually Svetlana asked:

«Okay, I get the picture with poets. They're potential Others. But what about the great villains? Caligula, Hitler, the homicidal maniacs?»

«Just people.»

«All of them.»

«Mostly. We have our own villains. Their names don't mean anything to ordinary people, but you'll be starting the history program soon.»

«Alter Ego» was an accurate description. Two heavy, immiscible layers, black and white, swaying in the glass. Sweet plum liqueur and dark, bitter beer.

I paid in cash—I don't like to leave an electronic trail behind me—and raised my glass.

«Here's to the Watch.»

«To the Watch,» Sveta agreed. «And your escape from this mess.»

I felt like asking her to knock on wood, but I didn't. I downed the cocktail in two gulps—first the gentle sweetness, then the mild bitterness.

«That's great,» said Svetlana. «You know, I like it here. Maybe we could stay a bit longer?»

«There are lots of good places in Moscow. Let's find one without any black magicians out for a night on the town.»

Sveta nodded.

«And by the way, he's not back yet.»

I looked at my watch. Yes, he'd been gone long enough to pee a whole bucketful.

And what really bothered me was that the magician's family were still sitting at their table, and the woman was obviously getting worried.

«Sveta, I'll just be a moment.»

«Don't forget who you are!» she whispered as I left.

Yes, it would look a bit strange all right for me to follow the Dark Magician into the restroom.

I walked across the restaurant and took a look through the Twilight on the way. I ought to have been able to see the magician's aura, but there was nothing but a gray void lit up by ordinary auras glowing different colors: pleased, concerned, lustful, drunk, happy.

He couldn't have just slipped out through the plumbing!

The only weak glimmer of light from an aura belonging to an Other was outside the building, over beside the Belarussian embassy. But it wasn't the Dark Magician; it was much weaker and its color was different.

Where had he gone to?

The narrow corridor ending in two doors was empty. I hesitated for a moment—who could tell, maybe we just hadn't noticed the magician leaving via the Twilight, or maybe he was powerful enough to teleport? Then I opened the door of the men's restroom.

Inside it was very clean and bright and a bit cramped, and the air had a strong smell of floral air freshener.

The Dark Magician was lying just inside the door, and his outstretched arms prevented me from opening the door all the way.

He had a puzzled, confused kind of expression on his face. I spotted the gleam of a slim crystal tube in his hand. He'd reached for his weapon too late.

There was no blood. There were no signs at all, and when I took another look through the Twilight I didn't find any traces of magic.

It looked like the Dark Magician had died of a perfectly ordinary heart attack or stroke—if he'd actually been capable of dying that way.

There was just one small detail that totally ruled that possibility out.

A small cut on the collar of his shirt. As narrow as if it had been made by a cutthroat razor. As if someone had stuck a knife in his neck and just nicked the edge of his collar. Except that there were no signs of the blow on his skin.

«Bastards!» I whispered, not knowing who I was swearing at. «Bastards!»

I could hardly have ended up in a worse situation than this. I'd swapped bodies and gone out to a crowded restaurant with a «witness,» only to wind up entirely alone, standing over the body of a Dark Magician killed by the Maverick.

«Come on, Pavlik,» someone said behind me.

As I looked around the woman who'd been sitting at the table with the Dark Magician came into the corridor, holding her son by the hand.

«I don't want to, Mom!» the kid yelled, acting up.

«You go in and tell your dad we're getting bored already,» the woman said patiently. The next moment she looked up and saw me.

«Call someone!» I shouted, despairing. «Call someone! There's a man hurt here! Take the child away and call someone!»

They obviously heard me in the restaurant—Olga had a strong voice.

The murmur of voices stopped immediately, leaving the slushy folk music to play on in the sudden silence.

Of course, she didn't do as I said. She dashed forward, pushed me out of the way, collapsed on her husband's body, and started keening—actually keening—at the top of her voice, already knowing what had happened while her hands were still busy unbuttoning the slit shirt collar and shaking the lifeless body. Then the woman started slapping the magician on the cheeks, lashing hard, as if she hoped he was only pretending or had just fainted.

«Mom, why are you hitting Dad like that?» Pavlik exclaimed in a shrill voice. Not frightened, just surprised; he'd obviously never seen his parents fight. They must have been a happy family.

I took the boy by the shoulder and started gently leading him away. People were already squeezing into the corridor. I saw Sveta staring at me wide-eyed. She'd already guessed what had happened.

«Take the child away,» I said to our waiter. «I think a man's dead in there.»

«Who found the body?» the waiter asked calmly. Speaking without the slightest accent, quite differently from when he was serving our table.

«I did.»

The waiter nodded as he deftly handed the boy on to one of the female restaurant staff. The boy was crying now, he'd realized something had gone wrong in his cozy little world.

«And what were you doing in the men's restroom?»

«The door was open and I saw him lying there,» I said, lying without even thinking about it.

The waiter nodded, accepting that it could have happened that way. But at the same time he took a firm grip of my elbow.

«You'll have to wait for the militia, lady.»

Svetlana had already pushed her way through to us. She narrowed her eyes when she heard those last words. That was all I needed now—for her to try erasing the memories of everyone there!

«Of course.» I stepped forward, and the waiter was forced to let go of my arm and follow me. «Svetka, it's terrible, there's a body in there!»

«Olya.» Sveta's reaction was the right one. She put her arm around my shoulders, gave the waiter an indignant look and led me back into the restaurant.

Just then the boy passed us, sobbing loudly as he squeezed his way through the greedy, curious crowd back to his mother. They were trying to get her away from the body—she'd taken advantage of the confusion to bend back down over her husband and start shaking him:

«Get up! Gena, get up! Get up!»

I felt Svetlana shudder at the sight and I whispered:

«Well? Do we exterminate the Dark Ones with fire and the sword?»

«Why did you do it? I would have understood without that!» Svetlana whispered furiously.

«What?»

We looked into each other's eyes.

«Then it wasn't you?» Sveta whispered uncertainly. «I'm sorry; I believe you.»

I realized then just what a deep hole I was in.

The investigator didn't take any particular interest in me. I could see from his eyes that he'd already made his mind up—death from natural causes. A weak heart, drug abuse, whatever. He couldn't be expected to feel any sympathy for a man who frequented expensive restaurants.

«Was the body lying in this position?» «Yes, just like that,» I confirmed, wearily. «It was terrible!» The investigator shrugged. He couldn't see anything really terrible about a body, especially one that wasn't drenched in blood. But he was condescending.

«Yes, a terrible sight. Was there anybody else nearby?» «Nobody. But then a woman appeared, the man's wife, with their child.»

I was rewarded with a crooked smile for my deliberately disjointed statement.

«Thank you, Olga. Someone may be in touch with you again. Not planning to leave town at all, are you?»

I shook my head rapidly. The militia was the very last thing I was bothered about right then.

But I was bothered by the sight of the boss sitting unobtrusively at a table in the corner.

The investigator left me in peace and went to talk to «the dead man's wife.» Boris Ignatievich immediately made straight for our table. Nobody paid any attention to him; he was obviously protected by some mild distraction spell.

«Now you've done it,» he said simply.

«Us?» I asked, just to get things clear.

«Yes. Both of you. But especially you, Anton.»

«I followed all the instructions I was given,» I whispered, feeling furious. «And I never laid a finger on that magician!»

The boss sighed.

«I don't doubt that. But knowing the situation, how could you, a member of the Night Watch staff, be so stupid as to go off after a Dark One on your own?»

«Who could have foreseen this?» I asked indignantly. «Tell me who!»

«You could. After the unprecedented measures we've taken to disguise your identity. What were your instructions? Never be left alone for a moment! Eat and sleep with Svetlana! Take your showers together! Go to the bathroom together! Every single moment you had to be…« The boss stopped and sighed.

«Boris Ignatievich,» Svetlana unexpectedly put in. «None of that matters anymore. Let's try to think what we can do now.»

The boss looked at her in surprise and nodded.

«You are right. Let's try to think. First of all, the situation is really catastrophic now. Before, any suspicion of Anton was purely circumstantial, but now he's literally been caught red-handed. Don't shake your head like that, Anton! You were seen standing over a body seconds after its death. The body of a Dark Magician, killed in the same way as all the previous victims. The Day Watch will appeal to the Tribunal for your memory to be read.»

«That's very dangerous, isn't it?» asked Svetlana. «But at least it will prove Anton isn't guilty.»

«Yes, it will, Svetlana. And in the process the Dark Ones will acquire all the information Anton has had access to. Do you realize just how much the Watch's senior programmer knows? Some things he may not even be aware he knows, when he just glanced at the data, processed it, and forgot it. But the Dark Ones have their own specialists, and when Anton comes out of that courtroom—assuming he survives having his mind turned inside out—the Day Watch will know about all our operations. Can't you see what will happen? Our teaching methods, the way we look for new Others, the way we analyze combat operations, our networks of human informers, our casualty lists, our employees' personal files, our financial plans…«

They were talking about me, while I just sat there as if I had nothing to do with what was going on. It wasn't a question of frankness, it was simpler than that: The boss was consulting with Svetlana, a novice magician, and not with me, a potential magician of the third grade.

If I compared the situation with a game of chess, it was insultingly simple. I was a rook, an ordinary officer of the Watch, and Svetlana was a pawn—but a pawn about to become a queen.

And for the boss all the bad things that could happen to me meant nothing compared with the chance to give Svetlana a little practical lesson.

«Boris Ignatievich, you know I won't allow them to read my memory,» I said.

«Then you'll be found guilty.»

«I know. I swear I had nothing to do with the death of these Dark Ones. But I don't have any proof.»

«Boris Ignatievich, what if we suggest they only check Anton's memory for today!» Svetlana exclaimed joyfully. «That would solve everything, they'd be convinced…«

«The memory can't be sliced up like that, Sveta. It spills out all in one piece. Starting from the first moment of life. With the smell of mother's milk, with the taste of the amniotic fluid in the womb.» The boss was speaking very emphatically now. «That's the problem. Even if Anton didn't know any secrets. Imagine what it's like to remember absolutely everything and go through it all again! Swaying in that dark, viscous liquid, the walls closing in on you, the glimmer of light ahead, the pain, the choking sensation, the struggle to survive your own birth. And so on, moment by moment—you know how when you're dying your whole life passes before your eyes? That's exactly what happens when they turn out your memory. And at the same time, somewhere deep inside, you still remember that all this has already happened. Can you understand that? It's hard to hold on to your sanity.»

«You say that,» Svetlana said uncertainly, «as if…«

«I've been through it. But not in an interrogation. More than a century ago. The Watch was still studying the effects of exposing and reading the memory, and a volunteer was required. Afterward it took them about a year to restore me to normal.»

«How?» Svetlana asked curiously.

«With new impressions. Experiences I hadn't had before. Foreign countries, unfamiliar food, surprise meetings, unfamiliar problems. And even so…« The boss smiled wryly. «I still sometimes catch myself thinking: What is all this—reality or just memories? Am I living it or lying on a crystal slab in the Day Watch office while they unwind my memory like a ball of string?»

He stopped speaking.

There were people sitting at the tables around us, waiters dashing around. The crime scene team had taken away the body of the Dark Magician, and some man, evidently a relative, had come for the widow and the children. Nobody else seemed to be affected by what had happened. Quite the opposite, in fact. There were more customers, with bigger appetites and a greater zest for life. And nobody there was taking any notice of us: The boss's casually cast spell made them all look away.

What if all of this had already happened?

What if I, Anton Gorodetsky, systems administrator at the Nix Trading Company, and also a Night Watch magician, was lying on a crystal slab covered with ancient runes? And my memory was being unwound, examined, dissected by someone—it didn't matter who, Dark Magicians or a joint tribunal of both sides?

No!

That couldn't be right. I didn't have that feeling the boss had been talking about. I had no sense of déjà vu. I'd never been in a woman's body before, and I'd never found any bodies in restaurant restrooms.

«I've laid out the problem,» said the boss, drawing a long, slim cigarillo out of his pocket. «Is the situation clear? What are we going to do?»

«I'm prepared to do my duty,» I said.

«Don't be in such a rush, Anton. Drop the bravado.»

«It's not bravado. It's not just that I'm prepared to protect the secrets of the Watch. I simply wouldn't survive that kind of interrogation. Better to die.»

«But we don't die the same way people do.»

«Sure, it's tougher for us. But I'm ready for that.»

The boss sighed.

«I'm sorry, ladies. Anton, let's forget the consequences for a moment and try thinking about what led up to this incident. Sometimes it's helpful to look back.»

«Okay,» I said, not feeling particularly hopeful.

«The Maverick has been poaching in the city for several years. The latest figures from the analytical section indicate that these strange killings began three and a half years ago. Some of the victims are known Dark Ones. Some are probably potentials. None of the victims was higher than grade four. None of them worked in the Day Watch. It's ironic that almost all of them were very moderate Dark Ones, if you can put it like that. They may have killed and they influenced people negatively, but far less than they could have done.»

«They were set up, weren't they?» said Svetlana.

«They must have been. The Day Watch didn't touch this psychopath, it even laid out victims for him from the Dark Side—those it could easily spare. But what for? That's the important question: What for?»

«So they could accuse us of incompetence,» I suggested.

«The end doesn't justify the means.»

«In order to set up one of us.»

«Anton, the only member of Night Watch who doesn't have alibis for the times of the killings is you. Why would Day Watch go hunting for you?»

I shrugged.

«Zabulon's revenge?» said the boss, shaking his head. «No. You only clashed with him recently. But this blow was carefully planned three and a half years ago. We're still left with the question: Why?»

«Maybe Anton is potentially a very powerful magician?» Svetlana suggested, speaking softly. «And the Dark Ones have realized that. It's too late to bring him over to their side, so they decided to eliminate him.»

«Anton is more powerful than he realizes,» the boss replied sharply, «but he'll never get higher than grade two.»

«What if our enemies can see further along the possible variants of reality than we can?» I asked, looking the boss in the eye.

«And?»

«Maybe I'm a weak magician; I may be average or powerful, but what if it's enough just for me to do something in order to change the balance of power? Do something simple that has nothing to do with magic? Boris Ignatievich, the Dark Ones tried to get me away from Svetlana—that means they could see the branch of reality in which I could help her! What if they can see something else? Something in the future? What if they've been able to see it for a long time, and they've been getting ready to take me out of the game? What if the fight over Sveta is small change by comparison?»

At first the boss listened carefully. Then he frowned and shook his head.

«Anton, you're suffering from megalomania. I'm sorry, but I checked the lines of everybody working in the Watch, from the key personnel to our plumber, Uncle Shura. And there just aren't any great achievements in your future. Not on any of the reality lines.»

«Boris Ignatievich, are you absolutely sure you haven't missed something?»

He'd really made me angry now.

«Of course not. I'm not absolutely sure of anything. Not even of myself. But the chances of you being right are very, very slim. Believe me.»

I believed him.

Compared with the boss, my powers approximate to zero.

«So we still don't know the most important thing—the reason?»

«Right. The hit is aimed at you; there's no doubt about that now. The Maverick is being controlled, very subtly and precisely. He believes he's waging war on Evil, but he's always been a puppet, with someone else pulling the strings. Today they brought him to the same restaurant you came to. They handed him a victim. And you went right along.»

«Then what are we going to do?»

«Try to find the Maverick. It's our only chance, Anton.»

«We're actually going to kill him, though.»

«No, we're not. All we're going to do is find him.»

«All the same. No matter how bad he might be, no matter how wrong he's got everything, he's still one of us. He's fighting against Evil the best way he knows how. We just have to explain everything to him.»

«Too late, Anton. Too late. We missed him when he appeared. Now, after all he's done… Remember how that girl-vampire died?»

I nodded: «Laid to eternal rest.»

«And her crimes were far less serious—from the Dark Ones' point of view. She didn't understand what was going on either. But the Day Watch accepted that she was guilty.»

«Was that pure coincidence?» asked Svetlana. «Or were they creating a precedent?»

«Who knows? Anton, you have to find the Maverick.»

I looked up, amazed.

«Find him and hand him over to the Dark Ones,» the boss said sternly.

«Why me?»

«Because you're the only one who has the moral right to do it. You're the one under threat. You're only protecting yourself. For anybody else, handing over a Light One, even if he is purely instinctive, self-taught, and misguided, would be too much of a shock. You'll survive it.»

«I'm not so sure.»

«You will. And remember, Anton. You've only got tonight. The Day Watch won't have any reason to drag things out. They'll bring a formal charge against you in the morning.»

«Boris Ignatievich!»

«Now remember! Remember who was in the restaurant! Who followed the Dark Magician to the restroom?»

«Nobody,» Svetlana put in. «I'm sure of it. I kept looking to see when he would come out.»

«That means the Maverick was waiting for the Dark Magician in the restroom. But he had to come out. Do you remember? Sveta, Anton?»

Neither of us said anything. I didn't remember. I'd been trying not to look at the Dark Magician.

«One man did come out,» said Svetlana. «He was kind of…«

She thought about it.

«Ordinary, absolutely ordinary. An average man, as if someone had mixed a million faces together and made an average one. I just caught a glimpse and forgot him right away.»

«Remember now,» the boss demanded.

«I can't, Boris Ignatievich. He was just a man. Middle-aged. I didn't even realize he was an Other.»

«He's an elemental Other. He doesn't even enter the Twilight, just balances right on the edge. Remember, Sveta! His face or some distinctive features.»

Svetlana rubbed her nose with her finger.

«When he came out and sat down at his table, there was a woman there. A beautiful woman with dark-blonde hair. It was dyed, and I noticed she used Lumene makeup too; I use it myself sometimes; it's cheap, not all that good.»

In spite of everything, I couldn't help smiling.

«And she was upset about something,» Sveta added. «She was smiling, but her smile looked wrong. As if she wanted to stay, but they had to leave.»

She started thinking again.

«The woman's aura! You remember it! Let me have the image,» the boss exclaimed, speaking more loudly and changing his tone of voice. Of course, no one in the restaurant heard him, but for a brief moment the expressions on people's faces were distorted and a waiter carrying a tray stumbled and dropped a bottle of wine and two crystal glasses.

Svetlana shook her head sharply. The boss had put her in a trance as easily as if she were an ordinary human being. Her pupils opened wide, and a pale, thin, glimmering rainbow connected their two faces.

«Thank you, Sveta,» said Boris Ignatievich.

«Did I manage it?» the girl asked, amazed.

«Yes. You can consider yourself a seventh-grade magician. I'll confirm that I tested you in person. Anton!»

This time I looked into the boss's eyes.

A brief jolt.

Streaming threads of an energy unknown to ordinary humans.

An image.

No, I didn't see the face of the Maverick's female companion. I saw her aura, and that's worth far more. Blue and green layers intermingled like ice cream in a glass, a small brown spot, a white streak. A fairly complex aura, not easy to forget, and basically quite attractive. It upset me—she loved him.

She loved him and she was feeling hurt about something. She thought he didn't love her anymore, but she was still holding on and she was prepared to keep going on like that.

By following this woman's trail I would find the Maverick. And hand him over to a tribunal—to certain death.

«No!» I said.

The boss gave me a pitying look.

«She's not guilty of anything! And she loves him, you can see that!»

That dismal music was still whining in my ears, and nobody there took any notice of my shout. I could have rolled around on the floor and dived under people's tables—they'd have just lifted their feet up and kept on devouring their Indian delicacies.

Svetlana looked at us. She'd remembered the aura, but she hadn't been able to interpret it. That's a grade-six skill.

«Then you'll die,» said the boss.

«At least I'll know what for.»

«Have you thought about the people who love you, Anton?»

«I don't have any right to do that.»

Boris Ignatievich grinned wryly:

«A hero! Oh, what great heroes we all are! Clean hands, hearts of gold, feet that have never stepped in shit. Have you forgotten the woman who was taken out of here? And the crying children, have you forgotten them? They're not Dark Ones. They're ordinary people, the ones we promised to protect. How long do we spend on getting the balance right for every operation we plan? I may curse our analysts every moment of the day, but why are they all gray-haired by the age of fifty?»

It felt like the boss was lashing me across the cheeks. He was lecturing me the same way I'd lectured Svetlana just recently, with absolute confidence.

«The Watch needs you, Anton! It needs Sveta! But it doesn't need some crazy psychopath, no matter how well-intentioned he might be. It's easy enough to take a little dagger and start hunting Dark Ones in back alleys and restrooms. Without thinking about the consequences or weighing the guilt. Where's our front line, Anton?»

«Among ordinary people.» I lowered my eyes.

«Who do we protect?»

«Ordinary people.»

«There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place. That's why the Maverick is guilty! And that's why you, Anton, and no one else, will find him. And make sure he stands trial. Either voluntarily or under compulsion.»

The boss suddenly broke off and rose abruptly to his feet.

«Let's go, ladies first.»

I'd never seen him behave like that. I leapt up and grabbed my purse—an automatic reflex response.

The boss wouldn't get jittery without good reason.

«Quickly!»

I suddenly realized I needed to visit the place where the unfortunate Dark Magician had met his end. But I didn't say a word. We moved toward the exit so fast the security guards would have been sure to stop us, if only they could have seen us.

«Too late,» the boss said quietly, right beside the door. «We were talking too long.»

Three people walked into the restaurant as if they were oozing through the door. Two well-built young guys and a girl.

I knew the girl. It was Alisa Donnikova, the witch from Day Watch. Her eyes opened wide when she spotted the boss.

She was followed by two barely perceptible silhouettes moving through the Twilight.

«Would you wait a moment, please?» Alisa said in a hoarse voice, as if her throat had suddenly gone dry.

«Begone.» The boss made a swift gesture with one hand, and the Dark Ones were forced aside, toward the walls. Alisa leaned over hard, trying to resist the elastic wall of force, but her powers weren't up to it.

«Zabulon, I summon you!» she squealed.

Oho! The witch must be a real favorite of the Day Watch boss if she had the right to summon him!

The other two Dark Ones emerged from the Twilight. I identified them at a glance as warrior magicians of the third or fourth grade. Of course, they were absolutely no match for Boris Ignatievich, and I could give the boss a hand, but they could drag things out.

The boss realized that too.

«What do you want?» he asked menacingly. «This is the time of the Night Watch.»

«A crime has been committed,» said Alisa, her eyes blazing. «Here, not long ago. One of our brothers has been killed, killed by one of…« She stared hard at the boss, then at me.

«One of… ?» The boss asked hopefully. The witch didn't take the bait. If she'd been foolish enough to hurl an accusation like that at the boss, with her status and at the wrong time, he would have splattered her across the wall.

And he wouldn't have paused for a moment to wonder if such a step was reasonable or not.

«One of the Light Ones!»

«The Night Watch has no idea who the criminal is.»

«We officially request assistance.»

So. Now we had nowhere left to retreat. A refusal to render assistance to the other Watch was as good as a declaration of war.

«Zabulon, I call on you!» the witch cried out again. I was beginning to hope that maybe the leader of the Dark Ones couldn't hear her or was tied up with something important .

«We are willing to collaborate,» said the boss. His voice was like ice.

I glanced back into the dining area, over the shoulders of the magicians—the Dark Ones had already surrounded us, clearly intending to keep us by the door, and what was happening in the restaurant was just incredible.

People were gorging themselves.

They were chomping so loudly it sounded as if there were pigs at every table. Their eyes were dull and glazed, their fingers clutched knives and forks, but they were raking up the food with their hands, choking on it, snorting, and spitting it out. A respectable-looking middle-aged man who'd been dining sedately in the company of three bodyguards and a young woman was gulping down wine straight from the mouth of the bottle. A pleasant-looking young man—a yuppie type—and his pretty girlfriend were fighting over a plate, spilling the thick, orange sauce over themselves. The waiters were rushing from table to table, flinging plates, cups, bottles, braziers, and dishes at the diners…

The Dark Ones have their own methods for distracting outsiders.

«Were any of you present in the restaurant when the murder was committed?» the witch asked triumphantly. The boss paused before he answered.

«Yes.»

«Who?»

«My companions.»

«Olga, Svetlana,» said the witch, devouring us with her eyes. «Was there not also present another Night Watch agent whose human name is Anton Gorodetsky?»

«Apart from us, there were no members of Night Watch present!» Svetlana said quickly. A good answer, but too quick. Alisa frowned, realizing her question had been too vague.

«A quiet night, isn't it?» said a voice from the doorway.

Zabulon had answered the summons.

I looked at him in despair, realizing that a supreme magician would not be taken in by my disguise. He might not have recognized Ilya as the boss, but the old fox wouldn't be caught out by the same trick twice.

«Not so very quiet, Zabulon,» the boss said simply. «Call off your minions, or I'll have to do it for you.»

The Dark Magician still looked exactly the same, as if time had stopped, as if the icy winter hadn't finally given way to a warm spring. A dark suit, a tie, a gray shirt, old-fashioned, narrow shoes. Sunken cheeks, dull eyes, hair cut short.

«I knew I'd find you here,» said Zabulon.

He was looking at me. And only at me.

«How stupid,» he said, shaking his head. «What do you need all this for, eh?»

He took a step forward and Alisa darted out of his way.

«A good job, prosperity, self-esteem, all the joys of the world—all in your grasp, all you have to do is decide what you'll have this time. But you're so stubborn. I don't understand you, Anton.»

«And I don't understand you, Zabulon,» said the boss, blocking his way.

The Dark Magician reluctantly turned his gaze to him.

«Then you must be getting old. The person in your lover's body is Anton Gorodetsky, the same person we suspect of the serial killings of Dark Ones. Just how long has he been hiding in there, Boris? Didn't you notice the substitution?»

He giggled again.

I looked around at the Dark Ones. They still hadn't understood. They needed another second, or half a second.

Then I saw Svetlana raise her hand, with a yellow magical flame flickering on the palm.

So now she'd passed the fifth-level test—but this was still a battle we could only lose. There were three of us and six of them. If Svetlana struck—not to save herself, but to get me out of this fix—there'd be a bloodbath.

I jumped forward.

It was a good thing Olga's body was well-trained and in such good shape. It was a good thing that all of us—Light Ones and Dark Ones—weren't really used to relying on the strength of our arms and legs, on simple, crude violence. And the best thing of all was that Olga, who had been deprived of most of her magic, hadn't neglected the skills of physical combat.

Zabulon doubled up with a hoarse gasp when my fist—or rather, Olga's fist—sank into his stomach. I swept his legs from under him with a single kick and dashed outside.

«Stop!» howled Alisa in a voice filled with admiration, hate, and love all at once.

The hunt was on.

I ran down Pokrovka Street in the direction of Zemlyanoi Val Street, with my purse bouncing hard against my back. It was a good thing I wasn't wearing high heels. I had to get away, disappear. I'd really enjoyed the urban survival course, but it was so short, really short—who could have imagined a Night Watch agent would end up running and hiding, instead of chasing and catching?

I heard a screeching wail behind me.

I leapt aside in a pure reflex response, before I could even understand what was happening. A streak of crimson flame came hurtling down the street, coiling and twisting as it passed me, then it tried to stop and turn back, but its inertia was too great: the charge crashed into the wall of a building, momentarily turning the stones white-hot.

But that was… !

I tripped and fell, glancing back. Zabulon was recharging his battle staff, but he was moving very slowly, as if there were something hindering him, slowing him down.

He was shooting to kill!

There wouldn't have been even a handful of dust left of me

There wouldn't have been even a handful of dust left of me if I'd been caught by Shahab's Lash!

So the boss was wrong after all. The Day Watch didn't want what was inside my head. They wanted to eliminate me completely.

The Dark Ones were running after me. Zabulon was aiming his weapon. The boss was restraining Svetlana as she struggled to break out of his grasp. I jumped up and started running again, already knowing there was no way I could escape. At least there was nobody around: Instinctive, subconscious fear had swept everybody off the street the moment our confrontation began. Nobody else would get hurt.

I heard a squeal of brakes and looked around just in time to see the Day Watch agents jump out of the way of a car careering wildly along the street. The driver stopped for a moment, evidently thinking he'd driven into the middle of a gangland Shootout, then picked up speed again.

Should I stop him? No, it wasn't allowed.

I jumped up onto the sidewalk and squatted down, hiding from Zabulon behind an old Volga, letting the stray driver past. The silver Toyota hurtled past me and then screeched to a halt with a smell of burning brakes.

The door on the driver's side opened and a hand beckoned me.

Things like this just didn't happen!

Heroes only got rescued by passing cars in cheap action movies.

At least that's what I was thinking as I opened the back door and threw myself inside.

«Get us out of here!» shouted the woman I found myself next to. But the driver didn't need any encouragement; we were already moving. There was a flash behind us, and the driver swerved out of the path of a streak of fire. The woman began wailing.

How did they see what was happening? As automatic gunfire? Salvoes of rockets? A blast from a flame-thrower?

«Why did you come back, why?» the woman asked, trying to lean forward to hit the driver in the back. I was all set to grab her arm, but before I could, the car jerked forward and tossed the woman back against the seat.

«Don't,» I said gently.

She glared at me indignantly. She had every right. What woman would be pleased to see her husband stop and risk his life for an attractive, dishevelled female stranger and take her into his car when it's being chased by a gang of thugs?

At least the immediate danger was past now. We came out onto Zemlyanoi Val Street and drove on in a solid stream of traffic. My friends and my enemies were both left a long way behind.

«Thanks,» I said to the short hair on the back of the driver's head.

«Did you get hit?» he asked without even turning around.

«No, thanks to you. Why did you stop?»

«Because he's an idiot!» the woman beside me screeched. She moved away to the far side of the car, shunning me as if I had the plague.

«Because I'm not an idiot,» the man replied calmly. «Why were they out to get you? Never mind, it's none of my business.»

«They wanted to rape me,» I said, blurting out the first thing that came into my head. But it was a pretty good story. Right there on the table: not like Moscow, even with all its gangland excesses, more like some saloon in the Wild, Wild West.

«Where do you want to go?»

«This will do fine,» I said, looking out at the flaming red letter M above the metro entrance. «I'll make my own way home.»

«We can drop you off.»

«No need. Thanks, you've done more than enough already.»

«All right.»

He didn't argue or try to change my mind. The car braked and I got out. I looked at the woman.

«Thank you,» I said.

She snorted and jerked away, slamming the door shut.

Well, there you go.

But things like that still went to prove that our work did make some kind of sense after all, I thought.

I automatically straightened out my hair and dusted down my jeans. People walking by eyed me cautiously, but they didn't shy away, so I couldn't be looking all that bad.

How much time did I have before the hunt picked up my trail? Would the boss be able to slow them down?

That would be good. Because I thought I was beginning to understand what was going on here.

And I had a chance, only a tiny one maybe, but still a chance.

I set off toward the metro, taking the cell phone out of Olga's purse on the way. I started dialing her number, then swore, and dialed my own.

It rang five times, six, seven.

I canceled the call and dialed my cell phone number. This time Olga answered right away.

«Hello?» said a slightly hoarse, unfamiliar voice. My voice.

«It's me, Anton,» I shouted. A young guy walking past looked at me in surprise.

«You dimwit!»

I wouldn't have expected anything else from Olga.

«Where are you, Anton?»

«Getting ready to go underground.»

«You'll have plenty of time for that. What can I do to help?»

«Are you up to speed on the situation?»

«Yes, I'm maintaining parallel contact with Boris.»

«I need to get my body back.»

«Where can we meet?»

I thought for a moment.

«The station where I got out after I tried to detach that black vortex from Svetlana.»

«Got you. Boris told me about that. Make it three stations farther around the circle, up and to the left.»

Aha, she was counting off stations on the map of the metro.

«Yes, that's okay.»

«In the middle of the hall. I'll be there in twenty minutes.»

«Okay.»

«Want me to bring you anything?»

«Just bring me. Anything else is up to you.»

I folded away the cell phone, took another quick look around, and walked quickly into the station.

Chapter 4

I was standing in the center of Novoslobodskaya Station. It's a common enough scene there when it's not that late: a girl waiting, maybe for a guy, maybe for a girlfriend.

In my case, I was waiting for both.

It would be harder to find me underground than on the surface. Even the best Dark Ones wouldn't be able to pick up my aura through the layers of earth, through all the ancient graves that Moscow stood on, among the crowd, in that dense, agitated stream of people. Of course, combing all the stations wouldn't be too hard either: Just one Other with my image for each station would do it.

But I was hoping I still had an hour or half an hour before the Day Watch made that move.

How simple everything was, after all. How elegantly the pieces of the puzzle fit together. I shook my head and smiled, and immediately caught a young guy dressed punk-style looking at me inquisitively. No, my young friend, you're on the wrong track. This sexy body is only smiling at its own thoughts.

I ought to have got the picture the moment the plotlines all started converging on me. The boss was right, of course. I wasn't valuable enough. They wouldn't have come up with a dangerous and costly maneuver lasting years just for my sake. It was all about something else, something completely different.

They were trying to exploit our weaknesses. Our goodness and love. And it was working, or almost working.

I suddenly felt like I needed a cigarette really badly; my mouth even filled up with saliva. Strange, I'd never really smoked much; it had to be a reaction from Olga's body I imagined her a hundred years earlier—an elegant dame with a slim cigarette in a long holder, sitting in some literary salon somewhere with Blok or Gumilev. Smiling as she discussed the Freemasons, the sovereignty of the people, and the urge toward spiritual perfection.

Ah, here was someone at last!

«Have you got a cigarette?» I asked a young guy walking past—he was dressed well enough not to smoke cheap garbage like Golden Yava.

He gave me a surprised look, then held out a pack of Parliaments.

I took a cigarette, thanked him with a smile, and cast a mild spell over myself. People's eyes slid off to the side.

That was better.

I concentrated, raising the temperature of the tip of the cigarette to two hundred degrees, and inhaled. So we'd wait. And we'd break a few little unquestionable rules.

People flowed past, giving me a wide berth, about a meter. They sniffed the air in surprise, wondering where the smell of tobacco smoke was coming from. And I smoked, dropping the ash at my feet, eyeing the militiaman standing just five steps away and trying to figure out my chances.

They turned out to be not that bad. Pretty good, in fact. And that bothered me.

If they'd been preparing this maneuver for three years, one option they must have taken into account was that I'd see through it. They must have an answer for that—but what was it?

It took me a second or two to register the surprised look. And when I realized who was watching me, I started in surprise.

Egor.

The kid, the Other with weak powers who'd got caught up in the big fight between the two Watches six months ago. Played for a patsy by both sides. An open card that still hadn't been dealt. But players don't fight over cards like that.

His powers were strong enough to penetrate my casual cover, and the meeting itself didn't really come as a surprise. There are many chance events in the world, but apart from that, there's also something called predetermination.

«Hi, Egor,» I said without even pausing to think. I expanded the range of the spell to include him in the circle of non-attention.

He started and looked around. Then he started staring at me. Of course, he hadn't seen Olga in human form. Only as a white owl.

«Who are you and how do you know me?»

Yes, he'd grown. Not on the outside, on the inside. I couldn't understand how he could have avoided making his choice for so long and still not joined the side of Light or the side of Darkness. He'd already entered the Twilight, in circumstances that meant he could have gone either way. But his aura was still as pure and neutral as ever.

His destiny was his own. It must be good to have your own destiny.

«I'm Anton Gorodetsky, the Night Watch agent,» I said simply. «Remember me?»

Of course he remembered me.

«But…«

»•Take no notice. It's a disguise; we can swap bodies.»

I wondered for a moment if I ought to think back to the course on illusion and temporarily restore my usual appearance. But there was no need—he believed me. Maybe because he remembered the boss's body swap.

«What do you want from me?»

«Nothing, I'm just waiting for a friend, the girl this body belongs to. You just happened to meet me here by chance.»

«I hate your Watches!»

«If you say so. But I really haven't been trailing you. You can go if you want.»

The kid found that far harder to believe than the idea of swapping bodies. He looked around suspiciously and frowned.

Of course, it was hard for him to leave. He'd touched the secret and sensed powers that went beyond the human world. And he'd renounced those powers, at least for the time being.

But I could imagine how much he wanted to learn—at least just a few little things, stuff like conjuring tricks with pyrokinesis and telekinesis, suggestion, healing, cursing—I didn't know what exactly, but he must have wanted to know how to do these things, not just know about them.

«You really haven't been trailing me?» he finally asked.

«No, I haven't. And we can't lie—not directly.»

«How do I know that isn't a lie too?» the kid muttered, looking away. A logical question.

«You don't,» I agreed. «Believe it if you want to.»

«I'd like to,» he said, still looking down at the floor. «But I remember what happened up there on the roof. I dream about it at night.»

«You don't need to be afraid of that vampire,» I said. «She's been laid to rest. By order of the court.»

«I know.»

«How?» I asked, surprised.

«Your boss called me.»

«I didn't know about that.»

«He called one day when there was no one else home. He said the vampire had been executed. And he said that since I was a potential Other, even if I hadn't made a choice yet, I'd been taken off the list of human beings. So I could never be selected by chance again, and I needn't be afraid.»

«Yes, of course,» I said.

«And I asked him if my parents were still on the list.»

I couldn't think of anything to say to that. I knew what the boss's answer had been.

«I'll be going, then,» said Egor, taking a step away. «Your cigarette's finished.»

I dropped the butt and nodded.

«Where have you been? It's late.»

«Training; I swim. Tell me, is that really you?»

«You remember the trick with the broken cup?»

Egor gave a weak smile. It's always the cheapest tricks that impress people the most.

«I remember. Look…« he stopped short, staring past me.

I turned around.

It was strange to see myself from the outside. A young guy with my face, walking with my walk, wearing my jeans and sweater, with a Walkman on his belt and a small bag in his hand. And that smile, so faint you could barely see it—that was mine. Even the eyes, those false mirrors, they were mine too.

«Hi, Anton,» said Olga. «Good evening, Egor.»

She wasn't surprised to see the kid there. She seemed very calm altogether.

«Hello,» said Egor, looking first at her, then at me. «Is Anton in your body now?»

«That's right.»

«You're pretty. How do you know me?»

«I saw you when I was in a body that wasn't so pretty. Excuse us now; Anton's got serious problems and we've got to deal with them.»

«Should I go then?» Egor seemed to have forgotten that was what he'd just been about to do.

«Yes. And don't get angry; things are going to get hot around here any moment, very hot.»

The kid looked at me.

«I've got all of Day Watch on my trail,» I explained. «All the Dark Ones in Moscow.»

«Why?»

«It's a long story. You'd better get back home.»

It sounded rude. Egor frowned and nodded. He glanced in the direction of the platform. A train was just pulling in.

«But they'll protect you, won't they?» He was still finding it hard to grasp which of us was in which body. «Your Watch will?»

«They'll try,» Olga replied gently. «But now go, please. We haven't got much time, and it's running out fast.»

«Goodbye,» said Egor, turning and running toward the train. His third step took him out of the circle of non-attention and he was almost knocked off his feet.

«If the boy had stayed, I might have believed he was going to join our side,» Olga said as she watched him go. «I'd really like to check the probability lines to see why you met him in the metro.»

«By chance.»

«Nothing happens by chance. Ah, Anton, I used to be able to read reality lines like an open book, no problem. «

«I wouldn't mind having decent prevision.»

«Genuine prevision isn't something you can just order from a catalog. Okay, back to business. You want to give my body back?»

«Yes, right here.»

«Okay.» Olga stretched out her arms—my arms—and took hold of my shoulders. It gave me a stupid, ambiguous sort of feeling. She obviously felt the same thing, because she laughed and said: «Why did you have to mess everything up so soon, Anton? I had such extravagant plans for this evening.»

«Maybe I should be grateful to the Maverick for disrupting your plans?»

Olga stopped smiling and concentrated.

«All right. Let's get on with it.»

We stood with our backs touching and held our arms out in the form of a cross. I took hold of Olga's fingers, which were also mine.

«Give back what is mine,» said Olga.

«Give back what is mine,» I repeated.

«Gesar, we return your gift!»

I started when I realized she'd spoken the boss's real name. And what a name!

«Gesar, we return your gift!» Olga repeated sternly.

«Gesar, we return your gift!»

Olga switched into an ancient tongue, intoning the words gently, speaking as if it were her native language. It hurt me to feel how hard she had to strain to perform a piece of magic that really shouldn't have been difficult with second-grade powers.

Changing back bodies is like releasing a spring. Our minds had only been kept in each other's bodies by the energy that Boris Ignatievich Gesar had transferred to us. All we had to do was relinquish that energy and we would resume our previous forms. If either of us had been a first-grade magician, we needn't even have been in physical contact; it could all have been done at a distance.

Olga's voice soared as she pronounced the final formula of renunciation.

For an instant nothing happened. Then I was racked by cramps and shooting pains; everything blurred and went gray in front of my eyes, as if I were sinking into the Twilight. For a moment I could see the whole station—the dusty, stained-glass windows, the dirty floor, the slow movements of the people, the rainbows of their auras, two bodies thrashing about as if they'd been crucified to each other.

Then I was pushed and shoved and squeezed into the shell of my body.

«Aaagh,» I gasped as I fell to the floor, just putting my hands out at the last moment. My muscles were twitching, my ears were ringing. The reverse switch had been far less comfortable, maybe because it wasn't performed by the boss.

«Are you okay?» Olga asked in a feeble voice. «Ooh, you bastard.»

«What?» I asked, looking at her.

«You could at least have gone to the bathroom!»

«Not without Zabulon's permission.»

«Okay, let's forget it. Anton, we've got about a quarter of an hour. Tell me everything.»

«What exactly?»

«What you've figured out. Come on. You didn't just want to get back into your own body; you've worked out some kind of plan.»

I nodded, then straightened up, dusted off my palms, and slapped my knees to clean off my jeans. The strap holding my holster was too tight under my arm; I'd have to loosen it. There weren't many people in the metro now, the flood tide had receded. But that meant the ones who were left weren't kept busy maneuvering through the crowd, and they had time to think: Auras flared up in bright rainbow colors and I caught the echoes of their owners' feelings.

They'd really cut back Olga's powers. In her body it had taken me a real effort to see the secret world of human feelings. But then, that was only a simple thing, absolutely simple. Not even anything to feel proud about.

«It's not me the Day Watch want, Olga. They don't want me at all. I'm an ordinary average magician.»

She nodded.

«But I'm the one they're hunting. There's no doubt about that. So if I'm not the quarry, I must be the bait. The same way Egor was the bait when Sveta was the quarry.»

«Have you only just realized that?» Olga shook her head. «Of course. You're the bait.»

«For Svetlana?»

The sorceress nodded.

«I only realized it today,» I admitted. «Just an hour ago, when Sveta wanted to stand up to the Day Watch, she shifted up to fifth-grade powers. In an instant. If a fight had broken out—she would have been killed. We can be controlled too, Olya. Human beings can be turned in different directions, toward Good or Evil; the Dark Ones can be manipulated through their meanness, their vanity, their thirst for power and fame. And we can be manipulated through our love. In that area we're as defenseless as children.»

«Yes.»

«Is the boss in the picture?» I asked. «Olya?»

«Yes.»

She was finding it hard to get her words out. I couldn't believe it! Light Magicians who had lived for hundreds of years didn't feel shame. They'd saved the world so often; they had all the ethical dodges down pat. Great Sorceresses didn't feel ashamed, not even former Great Sorceresses. They'd been betrayed too often themselves.

I laughed.

«Olya, did you realize right away? As soon as the Dark Ones lodged their protest? That they were hunting me, but only in order to push Svetlana out of control?»

«Yes.»

«Yes, yes, yes. And you still didn't warn me, or her?»

«Svetlana needs to mature quickly, to skip a few steps on the way.» A bright flame flared up in Olga's eyes. «Anton, you're my friend. I'll tell you the truth, so you can understand. We don't have enough time right now to nurture a Great Sorceress properly. But we need her, we need her more than you can even imagine. She already has enough power. She'll get tougher and learn how to muster that power and direct it and, what's even more important, she'll learn how to hold it in check.»

«And if I die, that will only strengthen her will and her hatred of Darkness.»

«Yes. But I'm sure you're not going to die. The Watch is hunting for the Maverick; everybody's been enlisted. We'll turn him over to the Dark Ones and the charges against you will be dropped.»

«But a certain Light Magician who wasn't initiated at the right time will die. Miserable and alone, like an animal brought to bay, convinced he's the only one fighting against the Darkness.»

«Yes.»

«You agree with everything I say today,» I said in a perfectly calm voice. «Olga, don't you think what you're doing might just be despicable?»

«No.» There wasn't a trace of doubt in her voice. That meant the stakes must be really high.

«How long do I have to hold out, Light One?»

She shuddered.

There was a time, a long time ago, when Watch members were fond of—«Light One.» Why had the words lost their old meaning? Why did they sound as absurd now as the word «gentlemen» used to address the dirty street bums around the beer kiosks?

«Until morning at least.»

«The night's not our time any longer. Today all the Dark Ones will be out on the streets of Moscow. And they'll be acting within their rights.»

«Only until we locate the Maverick. Hang in there.»

«Olga.» I took a step toward her and touched her cheek with my hand, for a moment completely forgetting the difference in our ages—what were a few hundred years or so, compared with eternal night?—and about the differences in our powers and our knowledge. «Olga, do you really believe that I'll still be alive in the morning?»

The sorceress didn't answer.

I nodded. There was nothing more to talk about.

I wonder how it would be

To lose myself in the dawn.

To knock at the transparent doors

And know no one will answer.

I clicked the button and set the Walkman playing in random mode. Not because the song didn't match my mood, exactly the opposite in fact.

I love the metro at night, but I don't know why. There's nothing to look at except the same old dreary advertisements and the same old tired human auras. The rumble of the engine, the gusts of air coming in through the half-open windows, the jolting over the rails. The numb wait for your own station.

But I love it anyway.

It's so easy to take advantage of our love!

I shuddered, got up, and walked to the door, even though I'd been planning to ride to the end of the line.

This station was Rizhskaya. The next was Alekseevskaya.

Again that intense silence,

Always about the same thing,

Today the season opens

At the lepers' club.

That was okay.

I was already on the escalator when I caught the faint scent of power ahead of me. I ran my eyes along the downward escalator and saw the Dark One almost immediately.

No, he wasn't a member of the Day Watch staff; he was carrying himself all wrong for that. He was a low-ranking magician, grade four or five, probably five, and he was concentrating hard, scanning the people around him. Still really young, not much over twenty, in a crumpled jacket that was hanging open, with long, light hair and a handsome face even when it was all tensed up like that.

So what could have pushed you over the edge into the Darkness? What happened before that first time you stepped into the Twilight? An argument with your girlfriend? A quarrel with your parents? Did you flunk your exams in college or get failing grades in school? Did someone stomp on your foot in the trolley?

And the most terrible thing of all is that your appearance hasn't even changed. Maybe you're even better-looking now. Your friends were amazed to discover what a fun guy you turned out to be, how exciting it was to hang out with you. Your girlfriend discovered all sorts of good qualities in you that she hadn't seen before. Your parents were absolutely overjoyed to see how serious and diligent their son had suddenly become. Your professors were delighted with their talented student.

And nobody knows how you make the people around you pay. And just how high the price will be for your kindness, your jokes, and your sympathy.

I closed my eyes and leaned against the moving handrail. I was tired; I was slightly drunk; I wasn't paying any attention to anything, just listening to the music.

The Dark One's gaze slid over me, moving lower, then quivered, and came to a halt.

I hadn't had any time to prepare, to change my appearance or distort my aura. I really hadn't expected the search in the metro would have started already.

A cold, piercing touch, like a gust of icy wind. The young guy was comparing me with the image that must have been distributed to all the Dark Ones in Moscow. He was working clumsily; he'd forgotten about his defenses; he didn't notice my mind slipping along the pathway cleared through the Twilight and touching his thoughts.

Joy. Delight. Rejoicing. Found. The prey. They'll give me part of the prey's power. They'll appreciate this. They'll promote me. Fame. Get my own back. They didn't appreciate me before! Now they'll understand. They'll pay.

I'd been expecting that at least somewhere in some corner of his mind there would be some other thoughts. About me being an enemy. About me killing others like him.

But no. There was nothing. He wasn't thinking of anything but himself.

I withdrew my feelers before the young magician withdrew his own clumsy ones. All right. He didn't possess any great powers; he wouldn't be able to communicate with the Day Watch from inside the metro. And he wouldn't even want to. He thought of me as a cornered animal, and not even a dangerous one—a rabbit, not a wolf.

Bring it on, my young friend.

I walked out of the metro, slipped around to the side of the door, and summoned my shadow. The hazy silhouette shimmered above the ground and I stepped into it.

The Twilight.

People walking by became enveloped in a transparent haze, cars starting crawling along like tortoises, the streetlamps dimmed, their light turned gloomy and oppressive. It was quiet, all sounds reduced to a dull, barely audible rumble.

I'd made my move a bit too early; it would be a while before the magician could get back up after me… But I could feel my own power; I was pumped with it. That must have been Olga's work. While she was in my body she'd regained her former powers and filled it with energy, without using up a single drop of it. She would never even have thought of taking any, no matter how great the temptation might be.

«You'll understand for yourself where the boundary lies»—that's what I'd told Svetlana. Olga had known far better than me where the boundary lies for a long, long time.

I walked along the wall, taking a glance through the concrete at the inclined shaft and the conveyor belts of the escalators. There was a dark spot climbing upward quite rapidly: The magician was in a hurry, running up the steps, but he was still in the human world. Saving his powers. Bring it on, bring it on.

I stopped dead.

There was a small, swirling cloud skimming toward me just above the ground, a clump of mist that had assumed the form of a human figure.

An Other. A former Other.

Maybe it had been one of us. And maybe not. The Dark Ones had to go somewhere when they died. But now it was just a hazy little cloud, an eternal wanderer in the Twilight.

«Peace unto you, fallen one,» I said. «Whoever you may have been.»

The quivering silhouette halted in front of me. A tongue of mist freed itself from its body and extended toward me.

What did it want? The number of times inhabitants of the Twilight had tried to communicate with the living could be counted on the fingers of one hand!

The hand—if it could be called a hand—was trembling. White threads of mist came away from it, dissolving in the Twilight, scattering onto the ground.

«I'm very short of time,» I said. «Fallen one, no matter who you were in life, Dark or Light, peace unto you. What do you want from me?»

A gust of wind seemed to ripple through the coils of white mist. The phantom turned, and the outstretched hand—I no longer had any doubt that it was a hand—pointed through the Twilight toward the northeast. I followed the direction. He was pointing to a needle-slim silhouette glimmering in the sky.

«Yes, the tower, I understand! What does it mean?»

The mist started to blur and dissolve, and a moment later the Twilight around me was as empty as it usually is.

I started to shiver. The dead Other had tried to communicate with me. Was he a friend or an enemy? Had he been advising me or warning me?

There was no way to tell.

I took another look through the walls of the station building—the Dark Magician had almost reached the top of the escalator, but he was still on it. So I had a moment to try to figure out what the phantom had been trying to say. I hadn't been intending to go to the Ostankino television tower; I had a different route in mind, rather risky but innovative. So it didn't make any sense to warn me not to go to the tower.

Maybe I'd been given directions? But by whom? Friend or foe, that was the important question. I couldn't really expect all differences to be wiped out beyond the borders of life. Our dead would not abandon us in battle.

I would have to decide for myself. Only not right now.

I ran toward the entrance of the metro, taking my pistol out of my shoulder holster as I went.

Just in time: The Dark Magician came out of the doors and immediately dived into the Twilight. He made it look easy, but I saw how he managed. The auras of people near him flared up, scattering dark sparks in all directions.

If I'd been in the human world, I'd have seen people's faces distorted by a sudden pain in their hearts or emotional distress—which is far more painful.

The Dark Magician peered around, looking for my trail. He knew how to extract power from people around him, but his general technique wasn't exactly great.

«Take it easy,» I said, pressing the barrel of the pistol against the magician's spine. «Take it easy. You've already found me. And I bet you're thrilled.»

I held his wrist tight with my other hand so that he couldn't make any passes. All these young magicians use a standard set of spells, the simplest and most powerful. And they require the precise coordination of both hands.

The magician's palm was suddenly damp.

«You, you…« he still couldn't believe what had happened. «You're Anton! You're outside the law!»

«Maybe so. But what good will that do you now?»

He turned his head. In the twilight his face was distorted; it had lost that attractive, genial look. He hadn't reached the stage of the complete Twilight makeover, like Zabulon, but even so, his face was no longer human. The jaw hung down too low, the mouth was wide, like a frog's, the eyes were close-set and dull.

«You're a real ugly specimen, my friend,» I said, forcing the gun barrel into his back again. «This is a pistol. It's loaded with silver bullets, although that's not strictly necessary. It'll work just as well in the Twilight world as in the human one—slower, but that won't save you. You'll be able to feel the bullet ripping through the skin and parting the fibers of your muscles, smashing the bone, tearing the nerves apart.»

«You won't do that!»

«Why?»

«Because then there'd be no way you could beat the rap!»

«Is that right? But right now there's still some kind of chance, is there? You know, the urge to squeeze this trigger is getting stronger all the time. Let's go, scumbag.»

I helped the magician along with a few kicks as I led him into the narrow passage between two trading kiosks. The thick growth of blue moss covering their walls started twitching. The Twilight flora was keen to taste our emotions—my fury and his fear—but the mindless plants had a strong instinct of self-preservation.

The Dark Magician had plenty of that too.

«Listen, what do you want from me?» he shouted. «They gave us a briefing and told us to look for you! I was only following orders! I honor the Treaty, watchman!»

«I'm not a watchman any longer!» I said, shoving him against the wall, into the tender embrace of the moss. Let it suck out a little bit of his fear, or we wouldn't be able to have a proper talk. «Who's leading the hunt?»

«The Day Watch?»

«More specifically?»

«The boss, I don't know his name.»

That was almost certainly true. But I knew the name anyway.

«Were you sent to this particular station?»

He hesitated.

«Answer,» I said, aiming the barrel at the magician's stomach.

«Yes.»

«Alone?»

«Yes.»

«That's a lie. But it's not important. What were you ordered to do you once you found me?»

«Observe.»

«Another lie. But an important one this time. Think again and try a different answer.»

The magician didn't say anything. The blue moss must have done too good a job.

I squeezed the trigger and the bullet sang sweetly as it traveled across the meter of space between us. The magician had enough time to see it—his eyes opened wide in terror, which made them look a bit more human—and he jerked away, but too late.

«That's just a flesh wound to begin with,» I said. «Not even fatal.»

He writhed on the ground, pressing his hand against the ragged hole in his stomach. In the Twilight his blood was almost transparent, but maybe that was an optical illusion. Or perhaps it was a just a peculiarity of this magician.

«Answer the question!»

I swept my hand through the air and set the blue moss around us on fire. Enough already, now I was going to capitalize on fear, pain, despair. Enough mercy and compassion, enough polite conversation.

This was the Darkness, after all.

«We were ordered to report in and if possible to kill you.»

«Not detain me? Just kill me?»

«Yes.»

«I'll accept that answer. Your means of communication?»

«By phone, that's all.»

«Let me have it.»

«It's in my pocket.»

«Throw it.»

He reached clumsily into his pocket—the wound wasn't fatal, and the magician's resistance was still high, but the pain he was going through was hellish.

Just the kind he deserved to suffer.

«What's the number?» I asked, catching the cell phone.

«It's on the emergency call key.»

I glanced at the screen.

From the first numbers, the phone could have been absolutely anywhere. It was another cell.

«Is that the field headquarters? Where is it?»

«I don't…« He paused, glancing at the pistol.

«Remember,» I encouraged him.

«They told me they'd be here in five minutes.»

All right!

I took a look back over my shoulder, at the needle blazing brightly in the sky. It fit perfectly.

The magician moved.

No, I hadn't deliberately provoked him by looking away. But when he took a wand out of his pocket—a short, crude device he obviously hadn't made himself, some cheap trash he'd bought—I felt relieved.

«Well?» I asked when he froze, not daring to raise his weapon. «Go for it!»

The young magician didn't move; he didn't say a word.

He knew if he tried to attack, I'd empty the entire clip into him. And that would be fatal. But they were probably taught how to behave in a conflict with Light Ones. So he also knew it would be hard for me to kill someone who was unarmed and defenseless.

«Stand up to me,» I said. «Fight! You son of a bitch, it never bothered you to destroy people's lives or attack defenseless people before, did it? Well? Bring it on!»

The magician licked his lips—his tongue was long and slightly forked. I suddenly realized what Twilight form he would eventually assume, and I felt sick.

«I throw myself on your mercy, watchman. I demand compassion and justice.»

«If I leave now, you'll be able to contact your base,» I said. «We both know it. Or you'll extract enough strength from people walking by to fix yourself up and get to a phone. Isn't that right?»

The Dark One smiled and repeated.

«I demand compassion and justice, watchman!»

I tossed the pistol from one hand to the other, looking into that smirking face. They were always ready to demand. But never to give.

«I've always had problems understanding our side's dual standard of morality,» I said. «It's a difficult thing to come to terms with. It only comes with time, and I haven't got much of that. Coming up with all those excuses for when you can't protect everybody. When you know that every day someone in a special department signs licenses for people to be handed over to the Dark Side. It's tough, you know.»

The smile disappeared from his face. He repeated the same words, like an incantation.

«I demand compassion and justice, watchman.»

«I'm not in the Watch anymore,» I said.

The pistol jerked and the breech clattered slowly, lazily spitting out the cartridge cases. The bullets zipped through the air like a small swarm of angry wasps.

He screamed only once, then two bullets shattered his skull. When the pistol clicked and fell silent, I reloaded the clip slowly, mechanically.

The body on the ground in front of me was mangled and mutilated. It had already begun to emerge from the Twilight, and the Twilight mask on the young face was dissolving.

I waved my hand through the air, grasping and clutching at an imperceptible something flowing through space. The outside layer of it. A copy of the Dark Magician's human appearance.

Tomorrow they'd find him. The wonderful young man everybody loved. Brutally murdered. How much Evil had I just brought into the world? How many tears, how much bitterness and hate? Where did the chain of future events lead?

And how much Evil had I killed? How many people would live longer and better lives? How many tears would never be spilled, how much malice would never be stored? How much hate would never even be born?

Maybe I'd stepped across the barrier that should never be crossed.

And maybe I'd understood where the next boundary was, the one that had to be crossed.

I put the pistol back in its holster and left the Twilight.

The sharp needle of the Ostankino television tower was still boring into the sky.

«Now let's try playing without any rules,» I said. «Without any at all.»

I managed to stop a car immediately, without even giving the driver an attack of altruism. Maybe that was because now I was wearing such a very charming face, the face of the dead Dark Magician?

«Get me to the TV tower,» I said as I climbed into the battered model 6 Lada. «As fast as you can, before they close the doors.»

«Going out for a bit of fun?» the driver asked with a smile. He was a rather dour-looking man in glasses.

«You bet,» I answered. «You bet.»

Chapter 5

They were still letting people into the tower. I bought a ticket, paying extra so I could go to the restaurant, and set off across the lawn around the tower. The last fifty meters of the path were covered by a puny sort of canopy. I wondered why they'd put it there. Maybe the old building sometimes shed chunks of concrete?

The canopy ended at a booth where they checked ID. I showed my passport and walked through the horseshoe frame of the metal detector—which wasn't working anyway. There were no more checks; that was all the protection this strategic target had.

I was beginning to have serious doubts. I had to admit it was a strange notion to come here. I couldn't sense any concentration of Dark Ones nearby. If they really were here, then they were very well shielded, which meant I'd have to deal with second-and third-grade magicians. And that would be suicide, pure and simple.

The headquarters. The field headquarters of the Day Watch, set up to coordinate the hunt. The hunt for me. Where else could the inexperienced Dark Magician have been expected to report his sighting of the quarry?

But I was walking straight into a setup where there must be at least ten Dark Ones, including experienced guards. I was sticking my own head in the noose, and that was plain stupidity, not heroism—if I still had even the slightest chance of surviving. And I was very much hoping I did.

Seen from down below, under the concrete petals of its supports, the TV tower was far more impressive than it was from a distance. But it was a certainty that most Muscovites had never been up to the observation platform and thought of the tower as just a natural part of the skyline, a utilitarian and symbolic object, but not a place of recreation. The wind felt as strong as if I were standing in the aerodynamic pipe of some complex structure, and right at the very limit of my hearing, I could just catch the low hum that was the voice of the tower.

I stood there for a moment, looking upward at the mesh-covered openings, the shell-shaped hollows corroded into the concrete, the incredibly graceful, flexible silhouette. The tower really is flexible: rings of concrete strung on taut cables. Strength in flexibility.

I went in through the glass doors.

Strange. I'd have expected to find plenty of people wanting to view Moscow by night from a height of three hundred and thirty-seven meters. I was wrong. I even rode up in the elevator all on my own, or rather, with a woman from the tower's service personnel.

«I thought there would be lots of people here,» I said, giving her a friendly smile. «Is it always like this in the evening?»

«No, usually it's busy,» the woman said. She didn't sound very surprised, but I still caught a slightly puzzled note in her voice. She touched a button and the double doors slid together. My ears instantly popped and my feet were pressed down hard against the floor as the elevator went hurtling upward—fast, but incredibly smoothly. «Everyone just disappeared about two hours ago.»

Two hours.

Soon after my escape from the restaurant.

If they set up their field headquarters, then it didn't surprise me that hundreds of people who'd been planning to take a ride up into the restaurant in the sky on this warm, clear spring evening had suddenly changed their plans. Human beings might not be able to see what was going on, but they could sense it.

And even the ones who had nothing to do with this whole business were savvy enough not to go anywhere near the Dark Ones.

Of course, I had the young Dark Magician's appearance to protect me. But I couldn't be sure that kind of disguise would be enough. The security guard would check my appearance against the list implanted in his memory; everything would match up, and he would sense the presence of Power.

But would he dig any deeper than that? Would he check the different kinds of Power, check if I was Dark or Light, what grade I was?

It was fifty-fifty. He was supposed to do all that. But security guards everywhere always skip that kind of thing. Unless they just happen to be dying of boredom or they're new to the job and still very eager.

But a fifty-fifty chance was pretty good, compared to my chances of hiding from the Day Watch on the city streets.

The elevator stopped. I hadn't even had time to think everything through properly; it had taken only about twenty seconds to get up there. That kind of speed in ordinary apartment blocks would really be something.

«Here we are,» the woman said, almost cheerfully. It looked pretty much like I was the Ostankino tower's last visitor of the day.

I stepped out onto the observation platform.

This place was usually full of people. You could tell right away who'd just arrived by the uncertain way they moved; how timidly they approached the panoramic window and the reinforced glass windows set in the floor.

But this time it looked to me like there were no more than twenty visitors. There were no children at all—I could just picture to myself the scenes of hysterics that must have taken place as they approached the tower, the parents' anger and confusion. Children are more sensitive to the Dark Ones.

Even the people who were on the platform seemed confused and depressed. They weren't admiring the view of the city spread out below them, with all its lamps glowing brightly—Moscow in its usual festive mood. Maybe it was a feast in a time of plague, but it was a beautiful feast. Right now, though, no one was enjoying it. Everything was dominated by the atmosphere of Darkness. Even I couldn't see it, but I could feel it choking me like carbon monoxide gas, which has no taste, no color, and no smell.

I looked down at my feet, pulled up my shadow, and stepped into it. The guard was standing near me, just two steps away, on one of the glass windows set in the floor. He glared in a friendly sort of way, looking slightly surprised. He obviously wasn't too comfortable hanging around in the Twilight, and I realized the other side hadn't assigned its best men to guard the field headquarters. He was young and well-built, wearing a plain gray suit and a white shirt with a subdued tie—more like a bank clerk than a servant of the Darkness.

«Ciao, Anton,» the magician said.

That took my breath away for a moment.

Had I really been that stupid? So monstrously, incredibly naive?

They were waiting for me; they'd lured me here, tossed another sacrificed pawn into the scales, and even—God only knew how—drafted someone who'd departed into the Twilight long, long ago.

«What are you doing here?»

My heart thumped and started beating regularly again. It was all very simple, after all.

The dead Dark Magician had been my namesake.

«Just something I spotted. I need some advice on it.»

The guard frowned darkly. Not the right turn of phrase, probably. But he still didn't catch on.

«Spit it out, Anton. Or I won't let you through, you know that.»

«You've got to let me through,» I blurted out at random. In our Watch anyone who knew the location of a field headquarters could enter it.

«Oh yeah, who says?» He was still smiling, but his left hand was already moving down toward the wand hanging on his belt.

It was charged to full capacity. Made out of a shinbone with intricate carvings and a small ruby crystal on the tip. Even if I dodged or shielded myself, a discharge of Power like that would bring every Other in the area running.

I raised my shadow from the floor and entered the second level of the Twilight.

Cold.

Swirling mist, or rather, clouds. Damp, heavy clouds rushing along high above the ground. There was no Ostankino tower here; this world had shed its final resemblance to the human one. I took a step forward through the damp cotton wool, along an invisible path through the droplets of water. The movement of time had slowed—I was actually falling, but so slowly that it didn't matter yet. High above me the curtain of cloud was pierced by the light of three moons—white, yellow, and blood-red. A bolt of lightning appeared ahead of me and grew, sprouting branches that crept slowly through the clouds, burning out a jagged channel.

I moved close to the vague shadow that was reaching for its belt with such painful slowness. I grabbed the arm. It was heavy, unyielding, as cold as ice. I couldn't stop it. I'd have to burst back out into the first level of the Twilight and take him on face to face. At least I'd have a chance.

Light and Darkness, I'm no field operative! I never wanted to end up in the front line! Give me the work I enjoy, the work I'm good at!

But the Light and the Darkness didn't answer. They never do when you call on them. There was only that quiet, mocking voice that speaks sometimes in every heart, whispering: «Who promised you an easy life?»

I looked down at my feet. They were already about ten centimeters below the Dark Magician's. I was falling; there was nothing to support me in this reality; there were no TV towers or anything of the sort here—there are no cliffs that shape or trees that tall.

How I wished I had clean hands, a passionate heart, and a cool head. But somehow these three qualities don't seem to get along too well. The wolf, the goat, and the cabbage—what crazy ferryman would think of sticking them all in the same boat?

And when he'd eaten the goat for starters, what wolf wouldn't like to try the ferryman?

«God only knows,» I said. My voice was lost in the clouds. I put my hand down and grabbed hold of the Dark Magician's shadow—a limp rag, a blur in space. I jerked the shadow upward, threw it over his body, and tugged the Dark One into the second level of the Twilight.

He screamed when the world suddenly became completely unrecognizable. He'd probably never been any lower than the first level before. The energy required for his first trip came from me, but all the sensations were quite new to him.

I braced myself on the Dark One's shoulders and pushed him downward, while I crept upward, stamping my feet down hard on his hunched back. I «Great magicians climb their way up over other people's backs.»

«You bastard, Anton! You bastard!»

The Dark Magician still hadn't realized who I was. He didn't realize it until the moment he turned over onto his back, still providing support for my feet, and saw my face. Here, on the second level of the Twilight, my crude disguise didn't work, of course. His eyes opened wide; he gave a short gasp and howled, clutching at my leg.

But he still didn't understand what I was doing and why I was doing it. I kicked him over and over again, trampling his i fingers and his face with my heels. It wouldn't really hurt an Other, but I wasn't trying to do him any physical damage. I wanted him lower; I wanted him to fall, move downward on all levels of reality, through the human world and the Twilight, through the shifting fabric of space. I didn't have the time or the skill to fight a full-scale duel with him according to all the laws of the Watches, according to all the rules that had been invented for young Light Ones who still had their faith in Good and Evil, the absolute truth of dogma and the inevitability of retribution.

When I decided I'd trampled the Dark Magician down low enough, I pushed off from the spread-eagled body, leapt up into the cold, damp mist, and jerked myself out of the Twilight.

Straight out into the human world. Straight onto the observation platform.

I appeared squatting on my haunches on a slab of glass, soaking wet from head to foot, choking in an effort to suppress a sudden cough. The rain of that other world smelled of ammonia and ashes.

A faint gasp ran around the room and people staggered back, trying to get away from me.

«It's all right,» I croaked. «Do you hear? It's all right.»

Their eyes told me they didn't agree. A man in uniform by the wall, a security guard, one of the TV tower's faithful retainers, stared at me stony-faced and reached for his pistol holster.

«It's for your own good,» I said, choking in a new fit of coughing. «Do you understand?»

I let my Power break free and touch the people's minds. Their faces started looking more relaxed and calm. They slowly turned away and pressed their faces against the windows. The security guard froze with his hand resting on his unbuttoned holster.

Only then did I look down at my feet. And I froze in amazement.

The Dark Magician was there, under the glass. He was screaming. His eyes had turned into round black patches, forced wide open by his pain and terror. The fingertips of one hand were imbedded in the glass and he was hanging by them, with his body swaying like a pendulum in the gusts of wind. The sleeve of his white shirt was soaked in blood. The wand was still there on the magician's belt, but he'd forgotten about it. I was the only thing that existed for him right now, on the other side of that triple-reinforced glass, inside the dry, warm, bright shell of the observation platform, beyond Good and Evil. A Light Magician, sitting above him and gazing into those eyes crazy with pain and terror.

«Well, did you think we always fight fair?» I asked. Somehow I thought he might be able to hear me, even through the thick glass and the roar of the wind. I stood up and stamped my heel on the glass. Once, twice, three times—it didn't matter that the blow wouldn't reach the fingers fused into the glass.

The Dark Magician jerked, trying to tug his hand out of the way of that crushing heel—a spontaneous, instinctive, irrational reaction.

The flesh gave way.

For a moment the glass was covered with a red film of blood, but then the wind swept it away. And all I could see was the vague outline of the Dark Magician's body, getting smaller and smaller, tumbling over and over in the tower's turbulent slipstream. He was being carried in the direction of The Three Little Pigs, a fashionable establishment at the foot of the tower.

The invisible clock ticking away in my mind gave a loud click and instantly cut the time I had left in half.

I stepped off the glass and walked around the platform in a circle. I wasn't looking at the people; I was gazing into the Twilight. No, there weren't any more guards here. Now I had to find out where their headquarters were. Up on top in the service premises, among all the equipment? I didn't think so. Probably in more comfortable surroundings.

There was another security guard, a human, standing at the top of the stairs leading down into the restaurants. One glance was enough for me to see that he'd been influenced already, and quite recently. It was a good thing they'd only influenced him superficially.

And it was a very good thing they'd decided to influence him at all. That was a trick that cut both ways.

The security guard opened his mouth, getting ready to shout.

«Quiet! Come this way!» I ordered.

The security guard followed me without saying a word.

We went into the restroom—one of the tower's free attractions, the highest urinal and toilet bowls in Moscow. Please feel free to make your mark among the clouds. I waved my hand through the air. A spotty-faced youth came scurrying out of one cubicle, buttoning up his pants; the man at the urinal grunted, broke off, and went wandering out with a glassy look in his eyes.

«Take your clothes off,» I ordered the security guard and starting pulling off my wet sweater.

The holster was half-open, and the Desert Eagle was far older than my Makarov, but that didn't particularly bother me. The important thing was that the uniform was almost a perfect fit.

«If you hear shooting,» I told the guard, «go down and carry out your duty. Do you understand?»

He nodded.

«I turn you toward the Light,» I said, intoning the words of the enlistment formula. «Renounce the Darkness, defend the Light. I give you the vision to distinguish Good from Evil. I give you the faith to follow the Light. I give you the courage to fight against the Darkness.»

I used to think I'd never get a chance to use my right to enlist volunteers. How could there be free choice in genuine Darkness? How could I involve anybody in our games when the Watches themselves were established to counterattack that practice?

But now I was acting without hesitation, exploiting the loophole that the Dark Ones had left me by getting the security man to guard their headquarters, the way some people keep a small dog in their apartment: It can't bite, but it can yap. What they'd done gave me the right to sway the security man in the opposite direction and get him to follow me. After all, he wasn't either good or bad; he was a perfectly ordinary man with a wife he loved in moderation, elderly parents whom he didn't forget to help, a little daughter, and a son from his first marriage who was almost grown up, a weak faith in God, a tangled set of moral principles, and a few standard dreams—an ordinary, decent man.

A piece of cannon fodder in the war between the armies of Light and Darkness.

«The Light be with you,» I said. The pathetic little man nodded and his face lit up. There was adoration in his eyes. A few hours earlier he'd gazed in exactly the same way at the Dark Magician who'd given him a casual command and shown him my photograph.

A moment later the security guard was standing at the top of the stairs in my stinking clothes, and I was walking down the stairs trying to figure out what I was going to do if Zabulon was in the headquarters. Or any other magician of his level, come to that.

In that case my powers wouldn't be enough to maintain my disguise for even a second.

The Bronze Hall. I stepped through the doors and looked at the absurd, ring-shaped «restaurant car.» The ring was slowly rotating, together with the tables standing on it.

I'd been certain the Dark ones would set up their headquarters in either the Gold Hall or the Silver Hall. And I was quite surprised by the scene that met my eyes.

The waiters were drifting from table to table like lazy fish, handing out bottles of spirits, which were supposedly forbidden up here. On two tables straight ahead of me computer terminals had been set up, connected to two cell phones. They hadn't bothered to run a cable to any of the tower's countless service outlets, which meant the headquarters had been set up to work only for a short while. Three young guys with short hair were working away intently, with their fingers leaping around all over the keyboards while the lines of type scrolled up the monitor screens and their cigarettes smoked in the ashtrays. I'd never seen Dark programmers before, and these were only simple operators, of course. But they didn't look any different from one of our magicians sitting at a notebook plugged into the network at headquarters. Maybe they even looked a bit more respectable than some I know.

«Sokolniki's completely covered,» one of the guys said. His voice wasn't loud, but it rumbled right around the ring of the restaurant, making the waiters shudder and falter in their stride.

«The Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya line's under surveillance,» said another of them. The young guys glanced at each other and laughed. They probably had a little competition going to see who could report fastest on his sectors.

Go right ahead, keep looking!

I set off around the restaurant, making for the bar. Take no notice of me. I'm a harmless security man who just happened to be given the role of a lowly guard. And now the security man's decided he'd like a beer. Has he completely lost all sense of responsibility? Or has he decided to check that his new bosses are safe? A platoon was sent on night patrol on the orders of the king. Trala-la-la, trala-la-la…

The young woman behind the bar was wiping glasses in a melancholy sort of way. When I stopped, she started pouring me a beer without saying a word. Her eyes were dark and empty; she'd been turned into a puppet, and I had to struggle to suppress an outburst of fury. I couldn't allow it. I had no right to feelings. I was a robot too. Puppets didn't have feelings.

And then I saw the girl sitting on the tall rotating ottoman opposite the bar, and my heart sank again.

Why hadn't I thought about that earlier?

Every field headquarters has to be declared to the other side, and an observer is sent to every field headquarters. It's part of the Treaty; it's one of the rules of the game, in the interest, supposedly, of both sides. If we had a field headquarters, then one of the Dark Ones was sitting in it right now.

The Light One sitting here was Tiger Cub.

At first her glance slid over me with no sign of curiosity, and I was almost certain everything would be okay.

Then her eyes came back to me.

She'd already seen the security man whose appearance I'd assumed. And there was something about me that didn't match the features stored in her memory, something that bothered her. In an instant she was looking at me through the Twilight.

I stood still, without trying to shield myself.

Tiger Cub looked away and turned toward the magician sitting opposite her. He wasn't actually a weak magician—I estimated his age at about a hundred and his powers as at least grade three. He wasn't weak, just complacent.

«The actions you're taking are still a provocation,» she told him in an even voice. «Night Watch is certain that the Maverick isn't Anton.»

«Who, then?»

«An untrained Light Magician unknown to us. A Light Magician controlled by the Dark Ones.»

«But what for, my girl?» the magician asked, genuinely surprised. «Explain it to me. Why would we let our own people be killed, even the ones who are less valuable?»

«Yes, 'less valuable' is the key phrase,» Tiger Cub told him in a melancholy tone.

«Maybe, just maybe, if we had a chance to eliminate the head of the Light Ones in Moscow, but, as usual, he's above all suspicion. And sacrifice twenty of our own just for one ordinary, average Light One? No way. Or do you think we're fools?»

«No, I think you're very smart. Probably much smarter than I am.» Tiger Cub smiled her dangerous smile. «But I'm only a field operative. The conclusions will be drawn by someone else, and they will be drawn, you can be sure of it!»

«We're not demanding immediate execution!» the Dark One said with a smile. «Even now we don't exclude the possibility of a mistake. A tribunal, a professional, impartial investigation, justice—that's all we want.»

«But isn't it strange that your leader couldn't hit Anton with Shahab's Lash?» said the Tiger Cub, tilting a glass of beer with one finger. «It's amazing. His favorite weapon, one he's been a master of for hundreds of years. Almost as if the Day Watch doesn't want to see Anton caught.»

«My dear girl,» said the Dark Magician, leaning across the table, «you're flip-flopping! You can't accuse us of pursuing an innocent, law-abiding Light One and at the same time claim we're not trying to catch him!»

«Why not?»

«Such petty sadism.» The magician giggled. «I'm genuinely enjoying this conversation. Do you really think we're a band of crazy, bloodthirsty psychopaths?»

«No, we think you're a band of cunning creeps.»

«Let's try comparing our methods.» I could see the Dark One was mounting his hobbyhorse. «Let's compare the losses the actions of the two Watches have inflicted on ordinary people, our food base.»

«It's only for you that human beings are food.»

«What about you? Or are Light Ones born to Light Ones now and not picked out of the crowd?»

«For us, human beings are our roots. Our roots.»

«Okay, call them roots. What's the point of arguing over words? But in that case they're our roots too, my girl. And it's no secret that the amount of sap they feed us is on the increase.»

«It's no secret that our numbers aren't declining, either.»

«Of course. Troubled times, all that stress and tension—people are living on the edge, and it's easy to fall off. At least we've managed to agree on that!» The magician snickered.

«Yes,» Tiger Cub agreed. She didn't look in my direction again, and the conversation wandered off onto an eternal, insoluble question that philosophers on both sides have debated in vain, never mind a pair of bored magicians, one Dark and one Light. I realized that Tiger Cub had told me everything she needed to.

Or everything she felt it was appropriate to tell me.

I picked up the mug of beer standing in front of me and drank it in several deep, measured swallows. I really had been thirsty.

So the hunt was just a front?

Yes, and I'd realized that a long time ago. But it was important for me to know that our side understood that too.

And the Maverick hadn't been caught?

Naturally. Otherwise they would already have contacted me. Either by phone or mentally, that was no problem for the boss. The killer would have been handed over to the Tribunal, Svetlana would no longer be torn between the desire to help and the need to avoid getting drawn into a fight, and I could have laughed in Zabulon's face.

But how, how was it possible to find a single man in an immense city like this, when his powers manifested themselves spontaneously? Just flared up and then faded away again. Lying dormant between one killing and the next, one pointless victory over Evil and the next. And if he really was known to the Dark Ones, it was a secret kept by the very top bosses.

Not by the Dark Ones who were wasting their time up here.

I looked around in disgust.

This wasn't serious!

The guard I'd killed so easily. The third-degree magician debating so keenly with our observer and not bothering to keep his eyes open. Those young guys at the terminals, shouting out:

«Tsvetnoi Boulevard has been checked!»

«Polezhaevskaya Street is under surveillance!»

Yes, this was a field headquarters. And it was about as ludicrously unprofessional as the way the inexperienced Dark Ones were hunting for me right across the city. Yes, the net had been cast, but no one was concerned about gaping holes in it. The longer I could keep on dodging the roundup and the more I thrashed about, the more the Darkness liked it. At the strategic level, of course. Svetlana wouldn't be able to bear it; she'd lose control. She'd try to help, because she could sense the genuine Power developing inside her. None of our people would be able to restrain her—not directly. And she'd be killed.

«Volgograd Avenue.»

I could slit all their throats, or shoot them all right here and now! Every last one of them. They were the Darkness's rejects and the failures, the dunces who had no prospects because they had too many shortcomings. It wasn't simply that the Dark Ones didn't feel sorry for them—they were a hindrance, they got in the way. The Day Watch was nothing like the almshouse that we sometimes resembled. The Day Watch got rid of anyone who was surplus. In fact, it usually got us to do the job for it, handing them a trump card, the right to respond, to change the balance.

And the Twilight figure that had directed me to the Ostankino tower was another product of the Darkness. An insurance policy, in case I didn't guess where I ought to go to fight my battle.

But the real action was being coordinated by just one Other.

Zabulon.

He didn't feel the slightest resentment against me. Of course not. What use would such complex and petty feelings be in a serious game like this?

He'd eaten dozens like me for breakfast, removing them from the board, sacrificing his own pawns to pay for them.

When would he decide that the match was played out and it was time for the endgame?

«Do you have a light?» I asked, putting down my beer mug and picking up a pack of cigarettes lying on the counter. Someone had forgotten it, maybe one of the restaurant's customers, fleeing in a state of panic, maybe one of the Dark Ones.

Tiger Cub's eyes lit up and she tensed her muscles. I realized the sorceress could start her battle transformation at any moment. She must have assessed the enemy's strength too. She knew we had a serious chance of success.

But there was no need.

The old third-grade Dark Magician casually held out his Ronson lighter. It gave a melodic little click and shot out a tongue of flame, and the Dark Magician carried on talking.

«There's only one reason why you constantly accuse the Darkness of playing a double game and organizing deliberate provocations—in order to disguise the fact that you're not fit to survive. Your failure to understand the world and its laws. When you get right down to it, your failure to understand ordinary people! Once it's accepted that the diagnosis made by the Dark Side is far more accurate, then what becomes of your morality? Of your whole philosophy of life? Eh?»

I lit up, nodded politely, and set out for the exit. Tiger Cub watched me go with a puzzled look in her eyes. Well, you just figure out for yourself why I'm leaving.

I'd found out all I could find out around here.

Or rather—almost all.

I leaned down toward the short haircut of the young guy in glasses who had his nose stuck in his notebook and asked briskly:

«What districts are we closing off last?»

«Botanical Gardens and the Economic Exhibition,» he answered, without even looking up. The cursor continued to slide across the screen. The Dark One was issuing instructions, relishing his power as he moved red dots across the map of Moscow. It would have been harder to prize him away from this process than to drag him away from the girl he loved.

They know how to love too, after all.

«Thanks,» I said, dropping my burning cigarette into the full ashtray. «That's very helpful.»

«No worries,» the terminal operator said casually, without looking around. He stuck his tongue out of his mouth and stuck another dot on the map: one more rank-and-file Dark One moving into the roundup. What are you so delighted about, you stupid fool? The ones with real power will never appear on your map. You'd be better off playing with toy soldiers if power's the way you get your kicks.

I slid across to the spiral staircase. All the fury I'd felt on my way here—the determination to kill or, more likely, be killed—had disappeared. I'm sure at some point during a battle a soldier enters a state of icy calm, the same way a surgeon's hands stop trembling when the patient starts dying on the operating table.

What possible variants have you provided for, Zabulon?

I start thrashing about in the nets closing in around me, and the commotion attracts Light Ones and Dark Ones, all of them—and especially Svetlana?

That one's out.

That I give myself up or get caught and then the long, slow, exhausting trial starts, concluding in a frenzied outburst by Svetlana at the Tribunal?

That one's out.

I start a fight with your field headquarters operatives and kill them all, but end up trapped a third of a kilometer above the ground, and Svetlana comes dashing to the tower?

That one's out.

I take a stroll around the field headquarters and figure out that no one there knows anything about the Maverick, and try to play for time?

That's a possibility.

The ring was getting tighter, I knew that. It had been closed off first around the outskirts of the city, along the Moscow Ring Road; then the city had been carved up into districts and the major transport routes had been closed off. It still wasn't too late to take a quick look around nearby districts that weren't under surveillance yet, find a hiding place, and try to lie low. The only advice the boss had been able to give me was to hold out for as long as possible, while the Night Watch was rushing about, trying to find the Maverick.

It's no accident that you're squeezing me into the district where we had our little scuffle last winter, is it, Zabulon? I can't help remembering it, so one way or another the way I act is bound to be affected by my memories.

The observation platform was empty now. Completely empty. The final visitors had fled, and there were no staff—only the man I'd recruited, standing by the stairs, clutching his pistol in his hand and staring downward with his eyes blazing.

«Now we'll change clothes again,» I told him. «The Light thanks you. Afterward you'll forget everything we've talked about. You'll go home. All you'll remember is that it was an ordinary day, like yesterday. Nothing much happened.»

«Nothing much happened!» the security man blurted out cheerfully as he took my clothes off. It's so easy to turn people to the Light or the Darkness, but they're happiest of all when they're allowed to be themselves.

Chapter 6

Once I was out of the tower I stopped, stuck my hands in my pockets, and stood there for a while, looking at the beams of the searchlights shooting up into the sky and the brightly lit security check booth.

There were just two things I didn't understand in the game being played out by the two Watches, or rather by the leaders of the Watches.

That Other who had departed into the Twilight—who was he and whose side was he on? Had he been warning me or trying to frighten me off?

And the kid, Egor—had I really met him just by chance? And if not, had our meeting been a destiny node or just another of Zabulon's moves?

I knew next to nothing about inhabitants of the twilight. Maybe even Gesar himself knew nothing.

But at least I could think a bit about Egor.

He was the card that hadn't been dealt yet. Maybe only a low card, but a trump, like all of us. And small trumps have their uses too. Egor had already been in the Twilight—the first time when he tried to see me, the second time when he escaped from the vampire. That wasn't a very good hand, to be honest. Both times he'd been led by fear, and that should have meant his future was decided. Maybe he could linger on the borderline between human being and Other for a few more years, but his path led to the Dark Ones.

It's always best to look the truth squarely in the face. It didn't make the slightest bit of difference that so far Egor was just like any other good kid. If I survived, I'd still have to ask for his ID every time I met him—or show him my own.

Zabulon could probably influence him. Send him to any place I happened to be. That reminded me that he probably had no difficulty sensing where I was either. I was prepared for that.

But I still didn't know if our «chance» meeting had any meaning!

Given what the Dark computer operator had said—that they weren't combing the Economic Exhibition district yet—it had. I might get the wild idea of using the boy somehow—hiding in his apartment or sending him to get help. I might head for his building. Right?

Too complicated. Way too tricky. They could take me easily enough anyway. I was missing something, something crucially important.

I walked toward the street and didn't look around again at the Dark Ones' sham headquarters. I'd almost even forgotten about the shattered body of the magician who'd been guarding it, lying somewhere near the foot of the tower at that moment. What did they want me to do? What was it? I had to start from that point.

Act as bait. Get caught by the Day Watch. Get caught in a way that would leave no doubt that I was guilty. And that had as good as happened already.

After that, Svetlana wouldn't be able to control herself. We could protect her and her parents. The one thing we couldn't do was interfere in her own decisions. And if she started trying to save me, to pluck me out of the Day Watch's dungeons or rescue me from the Tribunal, she would be killed. Swiftly and without hesitation. The whole game had been designed so she could make a wrong move. The whole game had been set up a long time ago, when the Dark Magician Zabulon had seen the appearance of a Great Sorceress in the future and the part I was destined to play. The traps had been set. The first one had failed. The second one was holding its greedy jaws wide open right now. Maybe there was a third still to come.

But where did a kid who still couldn't manifest his magical powers come into all this?

I stopped.

He was Dark, that must be it!

And who was it who killed Dark Ones? Weak, unskilled Dark Ones who didn't want to develop?

One more body laid at my door—but what was the point?

I didn't know. But I did know that the kid was doomed and the meeting in the metro hadn't been any accident. I could see that clearly now. I must have been experiencing prevision again or another piece of the jigsaw had simply fallen into place.

Egor would die.

I remembered the way he'd looked at me on the platform in the station, with his shoulders hunched over, wanting to ask me something and shout abuse at me all at the same time, to shout out loud the truth about the two Watches, the truth he'd seen too early. I remembered the way he'd turned and run for the train.

«They'll protect you, won't they? Your Watch?»

«They'll try.»

Of course they'd try. They'd keep looking for the Maverick right to the end.

That was the answer!

I stopped walking and grabbed hold of my head. Light and Darkness, how could I be so stupid? So hopelessly naive?

They wouldn't spring the trap as long as the Maverick was still alive. Making me look like a psychopath out on the hunt, a poacher from the Light Side, wasn't enough. They needed to kill the real Maverick as well.

The Dark Ones knew who he was—or at least Zabulon did. And more important than that, they could control him. They tossed his victims to him, members of their own kind they didn't see as particularly useful. And for the Maverick, what was happening right now wasn't just one more heroic incident—he was totally absorbed in the battle against Darkness. He had Dark Ones coming at him from every side: first the female shape-shifter, then the Dark Magician in the restaurant, and now the kid. He must be thinking the whole world had gone crazy, that the Apocalypse was just around the corner, that the powers of Darkness were taking over the world. I wouldn't have liked to be in his shoes.

The female shape-shifter had been killed so they could lodge a protest with us and demonstrate who was under threat.

The Dark Magician had been killed to close off any last loopholes and allow them to bring a formal accusation and arrest me.

The kid had to be killed to get rid of the Maverick after he'd played out his part. So they could intervene at the last moment, catch him standing over the body and kill him when he resisted and tried to escape. He didn't understand that we fought according to rules; he'd never surrender; he'd ignore instructions from some «Day Watch» agent he'd never even heard of.

Once the Maverick was dead I'd be left with no way out. I'd either have to agree to have my memory pulled inside out or depart into the Twilight. Either way Svetlana would blow her cool.

I shuddered.

It was cold. Really cold. I'd thought the winter was completely gone, but that had been wishful thinking.

I held up my hand and stopped the first car that came along. I looked into the driver's eyes and said:

«Let's go.»

The impulse was pretty strong; he didn't even ask where I wanted to go.

The world was coming to an end.

Something had shifted and started to move; ancient shadows had sprung to life; the long-forgotten words of ancient tongues had sung out and a trembling had shaken the earth.

Darkness was dawning over the world.

Maxim was standing on the balcony and smoking as he listened to Lena's grumbling. It had been going on for hours already, ever since the girl he'd rescued had gotten out of the car at the metro station. Maxim had heard more home truths about himself than he could ever have imagined.

The claim that he was a fool and a womanizer who was prepared to risk getting shot for the sake of a cute little face and a long pair of legs was one that Maxim could take calmly. The claim that he was a swine and a bastard who flirted with a jaded, ugly prostitute in his wife's presence showed a bit more imagination. Especially since he'd spoken only a couple of words to his surprise passenger.

And now Lena had moved on to total nonsense, she was dredging up those unexpected business trips, the two occasions when he'd come home drunk—really drunk—speculating on how many mistresses he had, commenting on his incredible stupidity and spinelessness, and how they'd prevented him from making a career or giving his family even a half-decent life.

Maxim glanced over his shoulder.

Lena wasn't even getting worked up, and that was strange. She was just sitting on the leather sofa in front of the massive Panasonic TV and talking, almost as if she meant everything she said.

Was this what she really thought?

That he had a harem of mistresses? That he'd saved that girl because she had a good figure, not because of those bullets that were whistling through the air? That they had a bad life, a poor life? When three years ago they'd bought a beautiful apartment, furnished it so stylishly, and gone to France for Christmas?

His wife's voice sounded confident. It was full of accusation. And it was full of pain.

Maxim flicked his cigarette down off the balcony and looked out into the night.

The Darkness, the Darkness was advancing.

Back there in the restroom he'd killed a Dark Magician. One of the most repulsive manifestations of universal evil. A man who was a carrier of malice and fear. Who extracted energy from the people around him and subjugated other people's souls, transforming white into black, love into hate. Maxim knew he was alone against the world, the way he always had been.

But nothing like this had ever happened before; he'd never run into the spawn of the devil two days in a row. Either they had all come crawling out of their foul, stinking burrows, or his vision was becoming keener.

Like right now.

As Maxim looked out from the tenth floor he didn't see the scattered lights of a city by night. That was for other people. For the blind and the feeble. He saw a small, dense cloud of Darkness hanging above the ground. Not very high, maybe ten or twelve floors up.

Maxim was seeing yet another manifestation of the Darkness.

The usual way. The same way as ever. But why so often now? Why one after another? This was the third! The third time in twenty-four hours!

The darkness glimmered and swayed and shifted. The Darkness was alive.

And behind him Lena went on reciting his sins in a weary, miserable voice. She got up and walked across to the door of the balcony, as if she wanted to make sure Maxim was listening. Okay, that was fine. At least she wouldn't wake the kids—if they were sleeping anyway. Somehow Maxim doubted it.

If only he really believed in God. Genuinely believed. But there was almost nothing left now of the weak faith that had once consoled Maxim after every act of purification. God could not exist in a world where Evil flourished.

But if only He did, or if there was any real faith left in Maxim's soul, Maxim would have gone down on his knees right there, on the dusty, crumbly concrete and held his hands up toward the dark night sky, the sky where even the stars shone quietly and sadly. And he would have cried out: «Why me? Why me, Lord? This is too much; this is more than I can bear. Take this burden from me, I beg you, take it away! I'm not the one You need! I'm too weak.»

But what was the point of crying out? He hadn't taken this burden on himself. It wasn't for him to abandon it. Over there the black flame was glowing brighter and brighter. A new tentacle of the Darkness.

«I'm sorry, Lena,» he said, moving his wife to one side and stepping into the room. «I have to go out.»

She stopped speaking abruptly, and the eyes that had been full of irritation and resentment suddenly looked scared.

«I'll be back.» He started walking toward the door quickly, hoping to avoid any questions.

«Maxim! Maxim, wait!»

The transition from abuse to entreaty was instantaneous. Lena dashed after him, grabbed him by the arm, and looked into his face—wretched, desperate.

«I'm sorry, forgive me; I was so frightened! I'm sorry for saying all those stupid things, Maxim!»

He looked at his wife—suddenly deflated, all her aggression spent. She'd give anything now to stop her depraved, lousy husband from leaving the apartment. Could Lena have seen something in his face—something that had frightened her even more than the gangland shoot-out they'd got mixed up in?

«I won't let you go! I won't let you go anywhere! Not at this time of night!»

«Nothing's going to happen to me,» Maxim said gently. «Quiet, you'll wake the kids. I'll be back soon.»

«If you won't think about yourself, then at least think about the children! Think about me!» said Lena, changing her tack. «What if they remembered the number of the car? What if they turn up here looking for that bitch? Then what will I do?»

«Nobody's going to turn up here.» Somehow Maxim knew that was true. «And even if they do, it's a strong door. And you know who to call. Lena, let me past.»

His wife froze in the middle of the doorway with her arms flung out wide and her head thrown back. Her eyes were screwed up as if she were expecting him to hit her.

Maxim kissed her gently on the cheek and moved her out of the way. Her expression was totally confused as she watched him go out into the hallway. She could hear terrible, noisy music coming from her daughter's room. She wasn't sleeping, she'd turned on her cassette deck to drown out their angry voices, Lena's voice.

«Don't!» his wife whispered imploringly.

He slipped on his jacket, checking quickly to make sure everything was in place in the inside pocket.

«You don't think about us at all!» Lena told him in a choking voice, speaking purely out of inertia, no longer hoping for anything. The music was turned up in her daughter's room.

«That's not true,» Maxim said calmly. «It's you who I am thinking about now. I'm taking care of you.»

He didn't want to wait for the elevator. He'd already walked down one flight of steps when his wife's final shout came. It was unexpected—she didn't like to air their dirty laundry in public and she never quarrelled in the entrance.

«I wish you'd love us, not just take care of us.»

Maxim shrugged and started walking faster.

This was where I'd stood in the winter.

It was all just the same: the lonely alley, the noise of the cars on the road behind me, the pale light from the streetlamps. Only it had been much colder. And everything had seemed so simple and clear, I was like a fresh, young American cop going out on my first patrol.

Enforce the law. Hunt down Evil. Protect the innocent.

How wonderful it would be if everything could always be as clear and simple as it used to be when you were twelve years old, or twenty years old. If there really were only two colors in the world: black and white. But even the most honest and ingenuous cop, raised on the resounding ideals of the stars and stripes, has to understand sooner or later that there's more than just Darkness and Light out on the streets. There are understandings, concessions, agreements. Informers, traps, provocations. Sooner or later the time comes when you have to betray your own side, plant bags of heroin in pockets, and beat people on the kidneys—carefully, so there are no marks.

And all for the sake of those simple rules.

Enforce the law. Hunt down Evil. Protect the innocent.

I'd had to come to terms with all this too.

I walked to the end of the narrow brick alley and scuffed a sheet of newsprint with my foot. This was where the unfortunate vampire had been reduced to ashes. He really had been unfortunate; the only thing he'd done wrong was to fall in love. Not with a girl-vampire, not with a human being, but with his victim, his food.

This was where I'd splashed the vodka out of the bottle and scalded the face of the woman who'd been handed over to feed the vampires by us, the .

How fond the Dark Ones were of repeating the word «Freedom!» How often we explained to ourselves that freedom has its limits.

And that's probably just the way it ought to be. For the Dark Ones and the Light Ones who simply live among ordinary people, possessing greater powers than they have, but with the same desires and ambitions, for those who choose life according to the rules instead of confrontation.

But once you got to the borderline, the invisible borderline where the watchmen stood between the Darkness and the Light… It was war. And war is always a crime. In every war there will always be a place not only for heroism and self-sacrifice, but for betrayal and backstabbing. It's just not possible to wage war any other way. If you try, you've lost before you even begin.

And what was this all about, when you got right down to it? What was there worth fighting for? What gave me the right to fight when I was standing on the borderline, in the middle, between the Light and the Darkness? I had neighbors who were vampires! They'd never killed anyone—at least Kostya hadn't. Other people, ordinary people, think they are decent folks. If you judged them by their deeds, they were a lot more honest than the boss or Olga.

Where was the boundary line? Where was the justification? Where was the forgiveness? I didn't have the answers. I didn't have anything to say, not even to myself. I drifted along, went with the flow, with the old convictions and dogmas. How could they fight all the time, those comrades of mine, the Night Watch field operatives? What explanations did they offer for their actions? I didn't know that either. But their solutions wouldn't be any help to me anyway. It was every man for himself here, just like the Dark Ones' slogans said.

The worst thing was I could tell that if I failed to understand, if I couldn't get a fix on that borderline, then I was doomed. And it wasn't just me. Svetlana would die too. She'd get embroiled in a hopeless attempt to save her boss. The entire structure of the Moscow Watch would collapse.

If I didn't get the one thing right.

I went on standing there for a while, with my hand propped against the dirty brick wall. Obsessing, chewing things over, trying to find an answer. There wasn't one. That meant it was destiny.

I walked across the quiet little courtyard to the «house on stilts.» The Soviet skyscraper made me feel strangely despondent. There was no reason for it, but the feeling was very clear. I'd felt the same thing before, riding past abandoned villages and crumbling grain elevators in a train. A sense of wasted effort. A punch flung too hard, connecting with nothing but the air.

«Zabulon,» I said, «if you can hear me…«

Calm. The usual calm of a late evening in Moscow—car engines roaring, music playing somewhere behind the windows, empty streets.

«There's no way you can have covered every single possibility,» I said, speaking to the empty air. «Just no way. There are always forks in the road. The future isn't determined. You know that. And so do I.»

I set out across the road without looking right or left, taking no notice of the traffic. I was on a mission, right?

The sphere of exclusion.

A streetcar screeched to a halt on the rails. Cars braked and skirted around an empty space with me at its center. Nothing else existed for me now, only that building where we'd done battle on the roof months before, the darkness, those bright flashes of an energy that human eyes couldn't see.

And that power, visible to so few, was on the increase.

I was right, this was the eye of the hurricane. This was the place they'd been leading me to all this time. Great. Now I'd arrived. So you didn't forget that shameful little defeat after all, Zabulon? You haven't forgotten the way you were slapped down in front of your minions.

Apart from all his exalted goals—and I understood that for him they were exalted—the Dark Magician cherished another burning desire. Once it had been a simple human weakness, but now it had been increased immeasurably by the Twilight.

The desire for revenge. To get even.

To play the battle out all over again.

This is a trait all you great magicians have, Light and Dark—you're bored with ordinary battle, you want to win elegantly . To humiliate your opponent. You're bored with simple victories; you've had plenty of those already. The great confrontation has developed into an endless game of chess. Gesar, the great Light Magician, was playing it when he assumed someone else's appearance and took such delight in taunting Zabulon.

But for me the confrontation still hadn't turned into a game.

And maybe that was exactly where my chance lay.

I took the pistol out of its holster and clicked the safety catch off. I took a deep, deep breath as if I were about to dive into the water. It was time.

Maxim could sense that this time it would all be over quickly.

He wouldn't spend all night lying in wait. He wouldn't spend hours tracking down his prey. This time the flash of inspiration had been too bright. More than just a sense of an alien, hostile presence—a clear direction to the target.

He drove as far as the intersection of Galushkin Street and Yaroslavskaya Street and parked in the courtyard of a high rise. He watched the black flame glimmering as it slowly moved about inside the building.

The Dark Magician was in there. Maxim could already feel him as a real person; he could almost see him. A man. His powers were weak. Not a werewolf or a vampire or an incubus. A straightforward Dark Magician. The level of his powers was so low, he wouldn't cause any problems. The problem was something else.

Maxim could only hope and pray that this wouldn't keep happening so often. The strain of killing creatures of Darkness day after day wasn't just physical. There was also that absolutely terrible moment when the dagger pierced his enemy's heart. The moment when everything started to shudder and sway, when colors and sounds faded away and everything started moving slowly. What would he do if he ever made a mistake? If he killed someone who wasn't an enemy of the human race, but just an ordinary person? He didn't know.

But there was nothing he could do about that, since he was the only one in the whole wide world who could tell the Dark Ones apart from ordinary people. Since he was the only one who'd been given a weapon—by God, by destiny, by chance.

Maxim took out his wooden dagger and looked at the toy with a heavy heart, feeling slightly confused. He wasn't the one who'd whittled this dagger; he wasn't the one who'd given it the highfalutin name of a «misericord.»

They were only twelve at the time, he and Petka, his best friend, in fact his only friend when he was a child and—why not admit it?—the only friend he'd ever had. They used to play at knights in battle—not for very long, mind you; they had plenty of other ways to amuse themselves when they were kids, without all these computer games and clubs. All the kids on the block had played the game for just one short summer, whittling swords and daggers, pretending to slice at each other with all their might, but really being careful. They had enough sense to realize that even a wooden sword could take someone's eye out or draw blood. It was strange how he and Petka had always ended up on opposite sides. Maybe that was because Petka was a bit younger and Maxim felt slightly embarrassed about having him as a friend and the adoring way he gazed at Maxim and trailed around after him as if he were in love. It was just a moment in one of the battles when Maxim knocked Petka's wooden sword out of his hands—his friend had hardly even tried to resist—and cried: «You're my prisoner!»

But then something strange had happened. Petka had handed him this dagger and said that the valiant knight had to take his life with this dagger and not humiliate him by taking him prisoner. It was a game, of course, only a game, but Maxim had shuddered inside when he pretended to strike with the wooden dagger. And there had been one brief, agonizing moment when Petka had looked at Maxim's hand holding the dagger where it had halted, just short of the grubby white T-shirt, and then glanced into his eyes. And then he'd blurted out: «Keep it, you can have it as a trophy.»

Maxim had been happy to accept the wooden dagger. As a trophy and as a present. But for some reason he'd never used it in the game again. He'd kept it at home and tried to forget about it, as if he felt ashamed of the unexpected gift and his own sentimentality. But he'd never, ever forgotten about it. Even when he grew up and got married and his own first child had started to grow, he'd never forgotten about it. The toy weapon always lay in the drawer with the albums of children's photographs, the envelopes with locks of hair, and all the other sentimental nonsense. Until the day Maxim first felt the presence of Darkness in the world.

It was as if the wooden dagger had summoned him. And it had proved to be a genuine weapon, pitiless, merciless, invincible.

But Petka was gone now. They'd grown apart when they were still young: A year is a big difference for children, but for teenagers it's a massive gulf. And then life had separated them. They'd still smiled at each other whenever they met and shaken hands, even enjoyed a drink together a few times and reminisced about their childhood. Then Maxim had got married and moved away and they'd almost completely lost contact. But this winter he'd had news of Petka, purely by chance, from his mother—he phoned her regularly, just like a good son should, in the evening. «Do you remember Petya? You were such good friends when you were children, quite inseparable.»

He'd remembered. And he'd realized immediately where an introduction like that was leading.

He'd fallen to his death from the roof of some high rise, though God only knew what he'd been doing up there in the middle of the night. Maybe he'd deliberately committed suicide, or maybe he'd been drunk—only the doctors had said he was sober. Or maybe he'd been murdered. He had a job in some commercial organization that paid well; he used to help his parents and drive around in a good car.

«He was probably high on drugs,» Maxim had said sternly. So sternly, his mother hadn't even tried to argue. «I suppose so; he always was strange.»

His heart hadn't contracted in sudden pain. But for some reason that evening he'd got drunk and killed a woman he'd been trying to track down for two weeks, a woman whose Dark power forced men to leave the women they loved and go back to their lawful wives, an old witch who forced people together and forced them apart.

Petka was gone. The boy he'd been friends with had already been gone for many years, and now Pyotr Nesterov, the man he'd seen once a year or even less often, had been gone for three months. But Maxim still had the dagger Petka had given him.

There must have been some special reason for it, that awkward childhood friendship of theirs.

Maxim toyed with the wooden dagger, rolling it from one hand to the other. Why was he so alone? Why didn't he have a friend beside him to lift at least part of the burden off his shoulders? There was so much Darkness all around, and so little Light.

For some reason Maxim recalled the last thing Lena had shouted at him as he was leaving: «I'd wish you'd love us, not just take care of us.»

«But isn't that the same thing?» thought Maxim, mentally parrying the thrust.

No, it probably wasn't. But what was a man to do when his love was a battle fought against Evil, not for Good?

Against the Darkness, not for the Light.

Not for the Light but against the Darkness.

«I'm the guardian,» Maxim said to himself in a low voice, as if he were too timid to say it out loud. Only schizos talked to themselves. And he wasn't a schizo, he was normal. He was better than normal; he could see the ancient Evil creeping and crawling into the world.

Was it creeping in, or had it already made its home here a long, long time ago?

But this was madness. He mustn't, he absolutely mustn't allow himself to doubt. If he lost even a part of his faith, allowed himself to relax or start searching for non-existent allies, then he was finished. The wooden dagger would no longer be a luminous blade driving out the darkness. The next magician would reduce it to ashes with his magic fire, a witch would cast a spell on it, a werewolf would tear it to shreds.

The guardian and the judge!

He mustn't hesitate.

The patch of Darkness moving about on the ninth floor suddenly started moving downward. His heart started beating faster: The Dark Magician was coming to keep his appointment with destiny. Maxim climbed out of the car and glanced rapidly around him. As usual, some secret thing inside him had driven everyone away from the scene and cleared the battlefield.

Was it a battlefield? Or a scaffold?

Guardian and judge?

Or executioner?

What difference did it make? He was serving the Light!

The familiar power flooded into his body. Holding his hand inside the flap of his jacket, Maxim walked toward the entrance, toward the Dark Magician who was coming down in the elevator.

Quickly, everything had to be done quickly. It still wasn't quite night yet. Someone might see. And no one would ever believe his story; the best he could possibly hope for would be the madhouse.

Call out. Give his name. Pull out his weapon.

Misericord. Mercy. He was the guardian and the judge. The knight of the Light. And not an executioner!

This courtyard was a battlefield, not a scaffold.

Maxim stopped outside the door into the building. He heard steps. The lock clicked.

He felt so wronged; he could have howled out loud in horror and screamed curses at the heavens for his destiny and his great gift.

The Dark Magician was a child.

A skinny, dark-haired little boy who looked quite ordinary—except for the quivering halo of Darkness that only Maxim could see.

But why? Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Maxim had killed women and men, young and old, but he'd never come across any children who'd sold their souls to the Darkness. He'd never even thought about it, maybe because he hadn't wanted to accept the idea that it was possible, or maybe because he'd been avoiding making any decisions in advance. He might have stayed at home if he'd known his next victim would be only twelve years old.

The boy stood in the doorway, looking at Maxim with a puzzled expression on his face. Just for a moment Maxim thought the kid was going to turn around and dash back in, slamming the heavy, code-locked door behind him. Run, then, run!

The boy took a step forward, holding the door so that it wouldn't slam too hard. He looked into Maxim's eyes, frowning slightly, but without any sign of fear. Maxim couldn't understand this. The boy hadn't taken him for a chance passerby; he'd realized the man was waiting for him. And he'd come to meet him. Because he wasn't afraid? Because he had faith in his Dark power?

«You're a Light One, I can see that,» the boy said quietly but confidently.

«Yes.» He had trouble getting the word out, he had to force it out of his throat. Cursing himself for his weakness, Maxim took hold of the boy's shoulder and said: «I am the judge.»

The boy still wasn't frightened.

«I saw Anton today.»

What Anton? Maxim didn't say anything, but the bewilderment showed in his eyes.

«Have you come to see me because of him?»

«No. Because of you.»

«What for?»

The boy was behaving almost aggressively, as if he'd had a long argument with Maxim, as if Maxim had done something wrong and he ought to admit it.

«I am the judge,» Maxim repeated. He felt like turning around and running away. This was all wrong; it wasn't supposed to happen like this! A child couldn't be a Dark One, not a child the same age as his own daughter! A Dark Magician should defend himself, attack, run away, not just stand there with an offended look on his face, as if he were expecting an apology.

As if there were something that could protect him.

«What's your name?» Maxim asked.

«Egor.»

«I'm really sorry things have worked out this way,» Maxim said quite sincerely. He wasn't getting any sadistic satisfaction from dragging things out. «Dammit. I've got a daughter the same age as you!»

Somehow that was the thing that hurt the most.

«But if not me, then who?»

«What are you talking about?» The boy tried to remove Maxim's hand. That strengthened his resolve.

Boy, girl, adult, child… What difference did it make? Darkness and Light—that was the only distinction.

«I have to save you,» said Maxim. He took the dagger out of his pocket with his free hand. «I have to save you—and I will.»

Chapter 7

First I recognized the car.

Then I recognized the Maverick, when he got out of it.

I suddenly felt desperate. It was the man who'd saved me when I was running away from the Maharajah restaurant in Olga's body.

Maybe I ought to have guessed at the time? Probably, if I'd been more experienced, with more time to think and more presence of mind. All it would have taken was to look at the aura of the woman in the car with him. Svetlana had given a detailed description of her, after all. I could have recognized the woman—and the Maverick. I could have ended everything right there in the car.

But how could I have ended it?

I dived into the Twilight when the Maverick looked in my direction. It seemed to work, and he kept walking toward the entrance of the staircase where I'd once sat by the garbage chute and had a gloomy conversation with a white owl.

The Maverick was on his way to kill Egor. Just the way I'd expected. Just the way Zabulon had planned it. The trap was right there in front of me. The tightly stretched spring had already begun to contract. One more move from me, and Day Watch could celebrate the success of their operation.

But where are you, Zabulon?

The Twilight gave me time. The Maverick was still walking toward the apartment block, moving his feet slowly. I looked around for signs of Darkness. The slightest trace, the slightest breath, the slightest shadow…

There was immense magical tension all around me. The threads of reality that led into the future all came together here. This was the intersection of a hundred roads, the point at which the world decided which way it would go. Not because of me, not because of the Maverick, not because of the kid. We were only part of the trap. We were extras on the set: One of us had been told to say «Dinner is served»; another had to act out a fall; another had to mount the scaffold, proudly holding his head high. For the second time this spot in Moscow was the arena for an invisible battle. But I couldn't see any Others, Dark or Light. Only the Maverick, and even now I didn't think of him as an Other, except that he had a scintillating focus of Power on his chest. At first I thought I was seeing his heart. Then I realized that it was a weapon—the one he used to kill the Dark Ones.

What's going on here, Zabulon? I suddenly felt insulted, absurdly insulted. Here I am! I'm stepping into your trap. Look, I've already raised my foot, it's all just about to happen, but where are you?

Either the great Dark Magician had hidden himself so carefully that I couldn't find him, or he wasn't there at all!

I'd lost. I'd lost even before the game was over, because I hadn't understood my enemy's intentions. There ought to have been an ambush here; the Dark Ones needed to kill the Maverick the moment he killed Egor.

I couldn't let him kill him!

I was here, wasn't I? I'd explain to him what was going on, tell him about the Watches and the way they monitored each other, about the Treaty that meant we had to maintain a neutral stance, about human beings and Others, about the world and the twilight. I'd tell him everything the same way I'd told Svetlana, and he'd understand.

Or would he?

If he really couldn't see the Light!

For him the human world was a gray, mindless flock of sheep. The Dark Ones were the wolves who circled around him, picking off the fattest rams. And he was the guard dog. But he couldn't see the shepherds; he was blinded by his fear and fury. So he rushed about crazily; it was just him against all of them.

He wouldn't believe me, he wouldn't let himself believe me.

I dashed forward, toward the Maverick. The door was already open, and the Maverick was talking to Egor. Why had the stupid kid come out so late at night when he knew perfectly well what kind of power rules our world? The Maverick wasn't able to summon his victims to him, was he?

Talk would be useless. Attack him from the Twilight. Pin him down and explain everything afterward!

The Twilight screeched with a thousand wounded voices when I crashed into the invisible barrier at full speed. Just three steps away from the Maverick, as I was already raising my hand to strike, I suddenly found myself flattened against a transparent wall. I slid down off it slowly with my ears ringing.

This was bad. Really bad! He didn't understand the nature of Power. He was a self-taught magician, a psychopath on the side of Good. But when he set out to do his work, he protected himself with a magical barrier. The fact that it was purely spontaneous wasn't any comfort to me.

The Maverick said something to Egor and took his hand out from inside his jacket.

A wooden dagger. I'd heard something about that kind of magic, naive and powerful at the same time, but this wasn't the right time to try to remember.

I slid out of my shadow into the human world and jumped the Maverick from behind.

When he raised the dagger, Maxim was knocked off his feet. The world around him had already turned gray; the boy was already moving in slow motion; Maxim could see his eyelids moving down for the last time before they would part in terror and pain. The night had been transformed into the Twilight stage where he held court and passed sentence.

Someone had stopped him. Knocked aside and pushed him down onto the asphalt. At the very last moment Maxim managed to put out his hand, roll over, and jump to his feet.

A third character had appeared on the stage. Why hadn't Maxim noticed his stealthy approach? While he was busy with his important work, chance witnesses and unwanted company had always been kept away by the power of the Light, the power that led him into battle. Why not this time?

The man was young, maybe a bit younger than Maxim. In jeans and a sweater, with a bag hanging over his shoulder—he shrugged it off carelessly onto the ground. He had a pistol in his hand!

That wasn't good.

«Stop,» said the man, as if Maxim had been about to run. «Listen to me.»

A chance passerby who'd taken him for an ordinary maniac? But then what about the pistol and the crafty way he'd crept up without being noticed? A special forces soldier out of uniform? No, he would have shot Maxim and finished him off; he wouldn't have let him get up off the ground.

Maxim peered at the stranger in horror, trying to figure out who he was. He could be another Dark One, but Maxim had never come across two at the same time.

There wasn't any Darkness there. There just wasn't, none at all!

«Who are you?» asked Maxim, almost forgetting about the boy magician, who was slowly backing away toward his rescuer.

«Anton Gorodetsky, Night Watch agent. You have to listen tome.»

Anton caught hold of Egor with his free hand and pushed him behind his back. There was no mistaking the hint.

«Night Watch?» Maxim was still trying to detect a trace of Darkness in the stranger. He couldn't find it, and that frightened him even more. «Are you from the Darkness?»

He didn't understand a thing. He tried to probe me: I could feel him searching fiercely and determinedly, but clumsily. I don't even know if I could have screened myself against it. I could sense some kind of primordial power in this man, or this Other—both terms could apply here—a wild, fanatical energy. I didn't even try to shield myself.

«The Night Watch? Are you from the Darkness?»

«No. What's your name?»

«Maxim,» said the Maverick, walking slowly toward me. Looking at me as if he could sense that we'd already met, but I'd looked different then. «Who are you?»

«I work for the Night Watch. I'll explain everything, just listen to me. You are a Light Magician.»

Maxim's face trembled and turned to stone.

«You kill Dark Ones. I know that. This morning you killed a female shape-shifter. This evening, in the restaurant, you killed a Dark Magician.»

«Do you do that too?»

Maybe I just imagined it. Or maybe there really was a tremor of hope in that voice. I demonstratively stuck the revolver back in its holster.

«I'm a Light Magician. Although not a very powerful one. One of hundreds in Moscow. There are many of us, Maxim.»

His eyes opened wide and I realized I'd hit the target. Now he knew he wasn't a lunatic who'd imagined he was Superman and felt proud of it. He'd probably never wanted anything so much in his life as to meet a comrade-in-arms.

«We didn't spot you in time, Maxim,» I said. Was it really going to be possible to settle everything peacefully, with no bloodshed, without an insane battle between two Light Magicians? «That was our fault. You started a solitary war of your own, and you've created a messy situation, Maxim, but things can still be put right. You didn't know about the Treaty, did you?»

He wasn't listening to me. He didn't give a damn about some Treaty. He wasn't alone, that was the only thing that mattered to him.

«You fight the Dark Ones?»

«Yes.»

«And there are many of you?»

«Yes!»

Maxim looked at me again, and I saw the piercing glint of the Twilight in his eyes again. He was trying to see the lie, to see the Darkness, to see the malice and hatred—the only things he was capable of seeing.

«You're not a Dark One,» he said. It was almost a complaint. «I can see that. I've never been wrong, never!»

«I'm a watchman,» I repeated. I glanced around—there was no one to be seen. Something had frightened everyone away. That was probably one of the Maverick's powers.

«That boy…«

«He's an Other too,» I said quickly. «It's not clear yet if he's going to be Light or…«

Maxim shook his head.

«He's Dark.»

I glanced at Egor. The kid slowly raised his eyes to meet mine.

«No,» I said.

I could see his aura quite clearly—bright, pure, shimmering colors, typical for very young children, but not for teenagers. His destiny was his own; his future was still undefined.

«He's Dark,» said Maxim, shaking his head again. «Don't you see? I'm never wrong, never. You stopped me from exterminating an envoy of Darkness.»

He wasn't likely to be lying. He might not have been given many skills, but the ones he had were powerful. Maxim could see Darkness; he could spot the tiniest patches of it in other people's souls. In fact, he saw Darkness that was just being born more clearly than any other kind.

«We don't just kill every Dark One we come across.»

«Why not?»

«We have a truce, Maxim.»

«How can there be any truce with Darkness?»

I shuddered. I hadn't heard the faintest note of doubt in his voice.

«Any war is worse than peace.»

«Except this one.» Maxim raised the hand holding the dagger. «You see this? It was a present from a friend of mine. He was killed; maybe people like this boy were responsible. The Darkness is cunning!»

«You think you need to tell me that?»

«Of course. You may be a Light One…« His face twisted in a bitter grin. «But if you are, your Light faded a long time ago. There can be no forgiveness for Evil. There can be no truce with Evil.»

«No forgiveness for Evil?» Now I was really angry. «After you stabbed the Dark Magician in the restroom, you should have tried staying around for another ten minutes! Or didn't you want to see his children screaming and his wife crying? They're not Dark Ones, Maxim! They're ordinary people who don't have our powers! You saved that girl they were shooting at…«

He started, but his face remained as implacably stony as ever.

«Well done! But did you know they were trying to kill her because of your crime? Well?»

«This is war.»

«You've started your own war,» I whispered. «You're like a child, with your toy dagger. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is that it? No holds barred in the great struggle for the Light?»

«I don't fight for the Light,» he said in a quiet voice. «I fight against the Darkness. That's all I'm capable of. Do you understand? And you're wrong; it isn't a matter of eggs and omelettes for me. I didn't ask for this power; I didn't dream of having it. But since it has come to me, I can't act any other way.»

Just who was it who hadn't noticed him in time?

Why hadn't we found Maxim immediately, as soon as he became an Other?

He'd have made a first-class field operative. After long arguments and explanations. After months of training, after years of exercises, after tantrums, mistakes, bouts of drinking, attempts to kill himself. Eventually he would have understood the rules of the confrontation—not with his heart, he wasn't capable of that, but with his cold, uncompromising reason. The laws that govern the way Light and Darkness wage war, that mean we have to turn a blind eye to werewolves hunting their victims and kill our own people who can't do that.

There he was, right in front of me. A Light Magician who'd killed more Dark Ones in a few years than a field operative with a hundred years of experience. Alone, cornered. Knowing only how to hate, incapable of loving.

Egor just stood there quietly behind me, listening intently to what we were saying. I turned around, took him by the shoulders, and pushed him in front of me. I said:

«Is he a Dark Magician? Probably—I'm afraid you're right. In a few more years, this kid will start to sense his own powers. As he goes through life, Darkness will creep alongside him. With every step his life will become easier and easier. And every step will be paid for by someone else's pain. Do you remember the fairy tale about the mermaid? A witch gave her legs; she could walk, but she felt like there were red-hot knives stabbing into her feet all the time. That story's about us, Maxim! We always walk over sharp knives, and that's something you can never get used to. But Andersen didn't tell the whole story. The witch could have done things differently: The mermaid walks, and the knives stab other people. That's the way of the Darkness.»

«I carry my own pain with me,» said Maxim, and I suddenly felt an insane hope that he could understand after all. «But that mustn't be allowed to change anything.»

«Are you prepared to kill him?» I said, nodding toward Egor. «Tell me, Maxim. I'm a Night Watch agent, I know where the line runs between Good and Evil. You can create Evil, even by killing Dark Ones. Tell me—are you prepared to kill him?»

He didn't hesitate. He just nodded, looking straight into my eyes.

«Yes, certainly I am; I've never let a creature of the Darkness get away. I won't let this one get away.»

The invisible trap snapped shut.

It wouldn't have surprised me to see Zabulon standing there. To see him surface out of the Twilight and give Maxim a slap on the back. Or flash a mocking smile at me.

But a moment later I realized Zabulon wasn't there. He never had been.

The trap he'd set didn't need any supervision. It would work all on its own. I'd been caught, and every member of the Day Watch had a solid alibi for that moment.

I either had to let Maxim kill the boy who was going to become a Dark Magician and make myself into his accomplice—with all the obvious consequences.

Or fight the Maverick and kill him—I was far more powerful, after all. Eliminate the only witness with my own hand and kill a Light Magician into the bargain.

Maxim would never back down. This was his war, his own cross that he'd been carrying for years. He wanted victory or death.

So why should Zabulon bother to interfere in the fight?

He'd done everything right. Purged the ranks of the Dark Ones of useless ballast, built up the tension, even deliberately shot to miss. Zabulon had made me come rushing to this spot to meet the Maverick. And now Zabulon was somewhere far away. Maybe not even in Moscow. He might even be watching what was happening: There were plenty of technical and magical devices he could use for that. Watching and laughing.

I was finished.

Whichever way I jumped, the Twilight was waiting for me.

Evil has no need to bother with eliminating Good. It's far simpler to let Good fight against itself.

I had just one chance left, a tiny one, but it was monstrous, vile.

I could be too slow.

I could let Maxim kill the boy, or rather simply fail to stop him. He'd calm down after that. He'd go to Night Watch headquarters with me, listen, argue, and eventually give up, crushed by the boss's implacable arguments and iron logic. He'd realize what he'd done and just how fragile the balance he'd disrupted was. And he'd hand himself over to the Tribunal, where he had at least a slim chance of being acquitted.

I was no field operative, after all. I'd done everything I could. I'd even seen through Darkness's game, a sequence of moves devised by someone far wiser than me. I simply hadn't been strong enough; my reactions hadn't been fast enough.

Maxim raised the hand holding the dagger.

Time suddenly began moving slowly, as if I'd entered the Twilight. But the colors didn't fade; they became brighter than ever. It was like moving through a stream of thick syrup. The wooden dagger glided toward Egor's chest, changing as it moved, gleaming like metal or gray flame. Maxim's face was calm and intent; only the lip held under his teeth betrayed how tense he was. The kid didn't understand what was happening; he didn't even try to move out of the way.

I threw Egor aside—my muscles almost refused to obey me; they didn't want to do something so absurd and suicidal. For the boy, the little Black Magician, the dagger meant death. For me, it meant life. That's the way it always has been and always will be.

What means life for a Dark One means death for a Light One, and vice versa. Who was I to change…

I wasn't too slow.

Egor fell, banged his head against the door, and slid down into a sitting position—I'd pushed him too hard. But I was more concerned about saving him than about any bruises he might get. Maxim's eyes glittered with almost childish resentment, but he could still talk.

«He's an enemy!»

«He hasn't done anything!»

«You're defending the Darkness.»

Maxim wasn't arguing about whether I was Dark or Light. He could see that well enough.

It's just that he was whiter than white. And he'd never had to decide who should live and who should die.

The dagger was raised again. Not aimed at the boy this time, but at me. I dodged away, looked for my shadow, summoned it, and it rushed obediently toward me.

The world turned gray, sounds disappeared, movements slowed. Egor stopped squirming and became completely motionless; the cars crept along the street uncertainly, with their wheels turning in spurts; the branches of the trees forgot about the wind. But Maxim didn't slow down.

He'd followed me in, without knowing what he was doing. Slipped into the Twilight as easily as someone stepping off the road onto the curb. It was all the same to him now; he was drawing strength from his own certainty, his own hate, his lighter-than-light hate, the fury of the color white. He wasn't the executioner of the Dark Ones any longer. He was an Inquisitor. And he was far more terrifying than our Inquisition.

I threw my arms out, spreading my fingers in the sign of Power, simple and foolproof—how the young Others laugh when they're shown that move for the first time. Maxim didn't even stop—he staggered a bit, then put his head down stubbornly and came for me again. I began to get the picture and backed away, desperately running through the magic arsenal in my mind.

Agape—the sign of love. He didn't believe in love.

The triple key—a sign that engendered trust and understanding. He didn't trust me.

Opium—a lilac symbol, the path of sleep. I felt my own eyelids starting to close.

That was how he defeated the Dark Ones. Combined with the powers of an Other, his furious faith acted like a mirror, reflecting back any blow aimed at him. It raised him up to his opponent's level. In combination with his ability to see the Darkness and his ridiculous magical dagger, it made him almost invulnerable.

He couldn't reflect everything like that, though. The reflected blows didn't come back immediately. The sign of Thanatos or the white sword would probably work.

But if I killed him, I'd kill myself. Set myself on the one road that we all come to in the end—into the Twilight. Into the faded dreams and colorless visions, the eternal, chilly haze. He'd found it so easy to see me as an enemy, but I wouldn't be strong enough to see him that way.

We circled around each other, with Maxim sometimes making clumsy rushes at me—he'd never been in a real fight before; he was used to killing his victims quickly and easily. From somewhere far away I could hear Zabulon's mocking laughter. His soft, wheedling voice.

«So you wanted to play a game against the Darkness? Play, then. You have everything you need. Enemies, friends, love, hate. Choose your weapon. Any of them. You already know what the outcome will be. Now you know.»

Maybe I imagined the voice. Or maybe I really did hear it.

«You're killing yourself too!» I shouted. The holster was flapping against my body, begging to be noticed, begging me to take the pistol out and fire a swarm of little silver wasps at Maxim. As easily as I'd done it with my namesake.

He didn't hear me—he wasn't capable of hearing me.

Svetlana, you wanted so much to know where our barriers are, where the line that we mustn't cross when we fight the Darkness runs. Why aren't you here now? You could have seen for yourself.

But there was no one anywhere near. No Dark Ones to revel in the sight of our duel. No Light Ones to help me, to jump on Maxim and pin him down, to put an end to our deadly dance in the Twilight. No one but a young kid and future Dark Magician, getting up clumsily off the ground, and an implacable executioner with a stony face—a self-appointed paladin of the Light who'd sown as much evil as a dozen werewolves or vampires.

I raked my fingers through the cold mist, gathering it into my hand, let it soak into my fingers. And directed a little more Power into my right hand.

A blade of white fire sprouted from my hand. The Twilight hissed and burned. I raised the white sword, a simple weapon, reliable. Maxim froze.

«Good or Evil,» I said, feeling a wry grin appear on my face. «Come to me. Come, and I'll kill you. You might be lighter than Light, but that's not the point.»

With anybody else it would have worked. No doubt about it. I can imagine how it must feel to see a sword of fire appear out of nowhere for the first time. But Maxim came for me.

He took those five steps across the space between us. Calmly, not even frowning, without looking at the white sword. And I stood there, repeating to myself the words that I'd spoken so confidently out loud.

Then the wooden dagger slid in under my ribs.

In his lair somewhere far, far away, the head of Day Watch burst out laughing.

I collapsed onto my knees, then fell on my back. I pressed my palm against my chest. It hurt, but so far that was all. The Twilight squealed indignantly at the scent of living blood and began thinning out.

This was terrible!

Or was this my only way out? To die?

Svetlana wouldn't have anyone to save now. She'd travel on along her long and glorious road, but someday even she would have to enter the Twilight forever.

Did you know this was going to happen, Gesar? Is this what you were hoping for?

The colors came back into the world. The dark colors of night. The Twilight had rejected me, spat me out in disgust. I was half-sitting, half-lying on the ground, squeezing the bleeding wound with my hand.

«Why are you still alive?» Maxim asked.

That note of resentment was back in his voice; he was almost pouting. I felt like smiling, but the pain stopped me. He looked at the dagger and raised it again, uncertainly this time. The next moment Egor was there, standing between us, shielding me from Maxim. This time even the pain couldn't stop me from laughing.

A future Dark Magician saving a Light One from another Light One!

«I'm alive because your weapon is good only against the Darkness,» I said. I heard an ominous gurgling sound in my chest. The dagger hadn't reached my heart, but it had punctured a lung. «I don't know who gave it to you, but it's a weapon of Darkness. Against me it's just a sliver of wood, but even that hurts.»

«You're a Light One,» said Maxim.

«Yes.»

«He's a Dark One.» The dagger slowly turned to point at Egor.

I nodded and tried to tug the kid out of the way. He shook his head stubbornly and stayed where he was.

«Why?» asked Maxim. «Tell me why, eh? You're Light, he's Dark…«

And then even he smiled for the first time, though it wasn't a very happy smile.

«Then who am I? Tell me that.»

«I'd say you're a future Inquisitor,» said a voice behind me. «I'm almost certain of it. A talented, implacable, incorruptible Inquisitor.»

I smiled ironically and said:

«Good evening, Gesar.»

The boss gave me a nod of sympathy. Svetlana was standing behind him, and her face was as white as chalk.

«Can you hold on for five minutes?» the boss asked. «Then I'll deal with your little scratch.»

«Sure I can,» I agreed.

Maxim was staring at the boss with crazy eyes.

«I don't think you need to worry,» the boss said to him. «If you were an ordinary poacher, the Tribunal would have you executed—you've got too much blood on your hands, and the Tribunal is obliged to maintain a balance. But you're magnificent, Maxim. They can't afford to just toss someone like you away. You'll be set above us, above Light and Darkness, and it won't even matter which side you came from. But don't get your hopes up. That isn't power. It's hard labor. Drop the dagger!»

Maxim flung the weapon to the ground as if it were burning his fingers. This was a real magician, well beyond the likes of me.

«Svetlana, you passed the test,» the boss said, looking at her. «What can I say? Grade three for self-control and restraint. No doubt about it.»

I supported myself on Egor and tried to get up. I wanted to shake the boss's hand. He'd played the game his own way again. By using everybody who was there to be used. And he'd outplayed Zabulon—what a pity the Dark Magician wasn't there to see it! How I'd have liked to see his face, the face of the demon who'd turned my first day of spring into a nightmare.

«But…« Maxim started to say something, then stopped. He was overwhelmed by too many new impressions. I knew just how he was feeling.

«Anton, I was certain, absolutely certain that you and Svetlana could handle it,» the boss said gently. «The most dangerous thing of all for a sorceress with the kind of power she's been given is to lose self-control. To lose sight of the fundamental criteria for the fight against Darkness, to act in haste or to hesitate for too long. And this is one stage of the training that should never be put off.»

Svetlana finally stepped toward me and took me gently by the arm. She looked at Gesar, and just for a moment her face was a mask of fury.

«Stop it,» I said. «Sveta, don't. He's right. Today, for the very first time, I understood where the boundary line runs in our fight. Don't be angry. This is only a scratch,» I said, taking my hand away from my wound. «We're not like ordinary people; we're a lot tougher.»

«Thank you, Anton,» said the boss. Then he looked at Egor: «And thank you too, kid. I really hate the idea that you'll be on the other side of the barricades, but I was sure you'd stand up for Anton.»

The boy tried to move toward Gesar, but I kept hold of his shoulder. It would be awkward if he blurted out his resentment! He didn't understand that everything Gesar had done was only a countermove.

«There's one thing I regret, Gesar,» I said. «Just one. That Zabulon isn't here. That I didn't see his face when the whole box of tricks fell apart.»

The boss didn't answer right away.

It must have been hard for him to say it. And I wasn't too pleased to hear it, either.

«But Zabulon had nothing to do with it, Anton. I'm sorry. He really didn't have anything at all to do with it. It was an exclusive Night Watch operation.»