For the next two days and nights absolutely nothing interesting happened. I wandered around Moscow, making unexpected purchases and practicing my new abilities, trying not to make it too obvious. I switched on my cell phone, without having the slightest idea why¡ªI had nowhere to ring and there was no one to ring me. I bought a mini-disk player and spent a couple of hours putting together a disk for it from the catalog, looking for old and new songs that triggered some response in my recalcitrant memory. I gradually got used to the changes in Moscow, which behind the tinsel glitter of its bright, festive neon had remained just as dirty and scruffy as ever. The hotel staff all said hello to me, and they seemed to have organized a line for the right to serve me¡ªI was still living like a man who didn't acknowledge any bills worth less than a hundred rubles. But strangely enough, I was still careful to collect my correct change in the shops, even the little nickel-plated coins that are no good for anything except maybe souvenirs for foreigners.
During those two days I only met Others three times: Once in the metro, entirely by chance; once at night, when I ran into a drunk witch trying unsuccessfully to fly up to a third-floor balcony because she'd lost her keys and didn't have enough Power left to go through the Twilight. I gave the witch a hand. And once during the day I was taken for an uninitiated Other by a rather powerful Light magician¡ªI even remembered his name: Gorodetsky. He'd just happened to go into the shop for the same thing as me¡ªto put together a new mini-disk for his player. The magician was surprised when he saw my official seals and backed off immediately. He was even going to leave, out of disgust, I think, but they'd just finished cutting my disk, so I was the one who left.
I was left wondering for a while why he hated the Dark Ones so much.
But then, everybody hates us. Well, almost everybody. And they just don't want to believe that what we feel about them is mostly indifference¡ªjust as long as the Light Ones don't get in our way. And they do, all the time. But I suppose we get in their way too.
No one from the Night Watch bothered me. I don't think they even made any attempt to find me and question me. They must have realized that a Dark magician has no need to drink human blood. Of course, I could have done it, and given myself a chronic digestive disorder¡ªif I hadn't been sick in disgust... I was totally absorbed in waiting for the next step up along the stairway, for when something inside me would force me to make use of magic, but apparently for that to happen required an extreme, unambiguous situation. Not just minor actions, like getting rid of the fat-faced ticket inspectors in the bus with their shaved heads, or a mantle of calm for the agitated people standing in line for metro cards when I couldn't be bothered to wait¡ªno, all that was quite literally yesterday's level as far as I was concerned. In order to learn something new and reveal another layer of my sealed memory, in order to take possession of the knowledge that was still slumbering, I needed more serious shocks.
I had to wait for them, but not very long.
Like many other Dark Ones, I turned out to be an inveterate night owl. Since I was living among ordinary people, I couldn't completely ignore the day, but I didn't feel like resisting the al-luring call of the night either. I rose late, about midday or even later, and I only returned to the hotel at dawn.
My fourth night in Moscow was already streaked with the first hints of dawn, the blackness had already admitted the first shades of dark gray into itself, when I ran smack into the next step upward. I was strolling along deserted Izmailovsky Boulevard when I suddenly sensed the flash of a powerful magical discharge somewhere in among the buildings in the distance.
When I say "discharge," I don't mean that uncontrolled energy had simply escaped. No. The energy was discharged and then immediately absorbed, otherwise the final result would have been a banal explosion. Others transform themselves, and the world, and energy. But in the final analysis the balance of energy emitted and absorbed always amounts to zero, otherwise...
Otherwise the world simply couldn't exist. And we couldn't exist in it.
I felt something urging me to go there. Go!
So I had to go
I walked for about twenty minutes, confidently turning corners at intersections and sometimes taking shortcuts through courtyards. When I was almost there I sensed Others¡ªthey were approaching rapidly from two different directions, and at the same time I heard the sound of several automobiles. Almost immediately I picked out the house and the apartment I needed from the faceless palisade of high-rises. That was where the event had occurred that had caught the attention of the other me, still concealed somewhere in the depths of my ordinary being.
A standard five-story Khruschev-period building on Thirteenth Park Street. Rubbish containers standing along the end wall, and not a sign of the trading kiosks I was so used to seeing in the South.
Three vehicles at the entrance: a Zhiguli, a humble and very unkempt-looking station wagon, and a pampered BMW. There were actually plenty of other cars standing all around, but they were obviously parked for the night, while these had just arrived in a hurry and been dumped.
The fifth floor. At the entrance to the stairwell (the metal door, by the way, was standing wide open) I sensed powerful magical blocks, and they made me pull my shadow up from the ground and enter the Twilight.
I think the Twilight draws Power out of Others¡ªif they don't know how to resist it, of course. Nobody told me what to do. I just started doing it instinctively, as if I'd always known how. Maybe I always had, and I just remembered when I needed to.
The blue moss that inhabits the first level of the Twilight had spread in luxurious abundance over the walls and the stairs, even the banisters. The people living in this entrance must be highly emotional if it was flourishing so well.
Here was the apartment I wanted. More powerful blocks, and the door locked even in the Twilight.
And at that point I was flung up another two steps. Overcoming a momentary weakness, I raised my own shadow from the floor again and went deeper.
I could immediately tell this was a place where not many came. There was no building. There was almost nothing at all except a dense, dark gray mist and the moons that I could vaguely make out through it. All three of them. There ought to have been a raging wind¡ªthe wind doesn't recognize any difference between the ordinary world and the Twilight¡ªbut at this level, time flowed so slowly that I could hardly feel it at all.
I began slowly falling, sinking into this mist, but I held myself up. Apparently I knew how to do that. A certain effort¡ªas always, hard to describe and more instinctive than conscious¡ª and I moved forward. Another effort, and I glanced out into the preceding level of the Twilight.
Everything was happening in syrupy slow motion, as if the world had sunk into a layer of transparent gray tar, and at first, sounds seemed like deep, distant peals of thunder, but I managed to adjust to their slowness. I must have set my rate of perception to the same pace, attuned myself to this new reality, and from that moment on, everything that was happening began to remind me again of the ordinary world¡ªthe world of human beings.
A narrow hallway, as they all are in those buildings. Two doors on the left¡ªto the bathroom and the kitchen. One room farther along on the left and one on the right. The room on the right was empty. In the room on the left there were five Others and a body lying on a disheveled bed. The body of a guy about thirty: He had several ragged wounds in the area of his crotch and stomach, which immediately put to rest any idea that he could be saved. The wounds were covered with a crumpled, bloody bed sheet.
There were three Light Ones and two Dark Ones. The Light Ones were a lean young guy with a rather asymmetrical face and two acquaintances of mine¡ªthe music lover Gorodetsky and the girl shape-shifter. The Dark Ones were a plump magician with a keen, intense expression, and a gloomy individual who looked to me like an unsuccessful parody of a lizard¡ªhe was wearing clothes, but his hands and face were green and scaly.
The Others were arguing.
The Light One I didn't know was talking.
"It's the second incident this week, Shagron. And another murder. I'm sorry, but it's beginning to look like you've thrown the treaty out the window."
The Dark One glanced involuntarily at the corpse.
"We can't keep track of everybody, you know that perfectly well," he blurted out, but I didn't hear any trace of guilt or regret in his voice.
"But you undertook to warn all the Dark Ones about Clean Week! Your chief promised officially."
"We did warn them."
"Well, thank you!" The Light One clapped his hands in theatrical applause. "The result is impressive. I repeat: We, the agents of the Night Watch, officially request your cooperation. Call your chief out!"
"The chief isn't in Moscow right now," the magician replied morosely. "And, by the way, your chief knows that perfectly well, so he needn't have bothered to authorize you to request cooperation."
"Does that mean," Gorodetsky asked with the hint of a threat in his voice, "that you are refusing to provide cooperation?"
The Dark magician shook his head rather more quickly than he need have. "What do you mean, refusing? No. We're not refusing. I just don't understand what we can do to help."
The Light Ones seemed to be filled with righteous wrath at that. The magician I didn't know spoke again. "What can you do? Some shape-shifting hooker rips the balls off a client¡ª an uninitiated Other, by the way¡ªand gets clean away! Who knows all your countless low-life best¡ªyou or us?"
"Sometimes I think you do," the Dark magician retorted and glanced at the girl. "If you remember the conversation in the Seventh Heaven when they caught the Inquisitor and him..."¡ª he nodded at Gorodetsky and paused, as if he were thinking about something.
"Most likely the shape-shifter's not registered. And most likely the client got a bit too boisterous and er... er... Well, let's put it this way: He wanted something that was unacceptable even to a hooker. And this is the result."
"Shagron, you can't unload this on the human cops, because she killed him when she was in her Twilight form. Like it or not, the Watches are involved. So tell me straight: Are you going to carry out an investigation or will you force us to deal with it? And don't even hope that you can just drag things out. We want Saturday's vampire and this cat up in front of a tribunal, and before next weekend. Do you understand our demands?" The skinny young guy was leaning on Shagron, insisting on his rights, and he obviously enjoyed doing it, as an Other who didn't often get involved in showdowns. And he seemed to have justification for putting on the pressure...
"These lousy, lecherous cats," the scaly one suddenly muttered. "Brainless bitches..."
"Shut up," the Light girl told him coldly. "You overgrown gecko."
Ah, yes, she was a cat too, even though she was Light...
"Cool it, Tiger Cub," Gorodetsky said to her. Then he turned to the Dark magician again. "Do you understand our demands?"
At this point I returned to the first level of the Twilight. To describe the seconds that followed as a dumb show would be a gross understatement.
"You!" the girl gasped. "You again!"
"Buenos noches, lady and gentlemen. Pardon me, I saw the light, so I just dropped in."
"Anton, Tolik," Tiger Cub said in a ringing voice that trembled slightly, pointing one finger at me in a childish manner. "Andriukha found him standing over the vampire's victim on Saturday! This Dark One from Ukraine!"
All five of them carried on staring straight at me.
"I hope," I said ironically, "that I don't resemble a shape-shifting hooker any more than I do a crazy vampire?"
"Who are you?" the Dark magician, the one they called Sha-gron, asked in a hostile voice.
"A magician, dear colleague. A Dark magician. From out of town."
When he tried to probe me, I could tell that if I hadn't yet climbed up the next step, then I was right there in front of it. He didn't get anywhere. And meanwhile I noticed that Shagron's defenses were not entirely his own¡ªI could sense a framework that had been put together by a top-class magician. Probably the famous chief who wasn't in Moscow at the moment.
"A second murder, and here you are again," Tolik drawled suspiciously, also making an attempt to probe me¡ªquite unsuccessfully, as I noted with some satisfaction. "I don't like it. Perhaps you would care to explain?"
Tolik certainly looked annoyed, but now he was behaving correctly, and that suited me just fine. He was obviously the leader of the three Light Ones and now he was busily thinking over the possible courses of action. There seemed to be plenty of choice.
"Yes, I would," I agreed readily. "I was out strolling not far from here. I sensed something bad going on. And I came to see if I could do anything to help."
"Do you work in the Watch back home in Ukraine?" the scaly one asked unexpectedly.
"No."
"Then how can you help?"
"Who knows?" I said with a shrug.
Of course, the scaly one's tongue was long and forked. Our people's imagination is certainly pretty limited. You'd think the Twilight image of a Dark One offered plenty of scope for fantasy¡ªunlike what the Light Ones have, which is just a standard outfit: a luminescent glow and white clothes. The more sentimental ones, mostly the women, have a white garland as well. But even so... almost all the Dark Ones go for the old worn-out cliche of a scaly demon with horns and a forked tongue.
"Of course, you have nothing at all to do with these murders?" the girl said with poorly concealed sarcasm.
"Naturally."
"I don't trust him," said the girl and turned away. "Anton, you have to probe him."
"We will," Anton replied without thinking. "When we get back I'll personally request all the data on him..."
I laughed ironically.
"All right. If you don't want any help, I don't mind. I'm not going to impose myself on you. I'll be going then..."
I started toward the door.
"Hey, Dark One," Tolik said to my back. "I'd advise you not to leave Moscow. That's an official ban from the Night Watch."
"I'll bear it in mind," I promised. "In any case, I wasn't planning to leave..."
"I'll go with you," Tolik said to Anton and Tiger Cub. "I have something to say to you."
Anton thought gloomily that he must have done a bad job cleaning up again¡ªfor some reason this strange Dark One's words had really stung him. Tiger Cub had imitated the stranger's way of speaking very precisely, right down to the intonation pattern, and when Anton saw the Dark One, he was convinced yet again that Tiger Cub had the makings of a skillful actress. Who could tell what she might have been if she hadn't been an Other...
Shagron and his partner had driven off in their fancy BMW a long time ago. Tolik reached out his hand demandingly and Anton obediently gave him the keys to the office Zhiguli. Tiger Cub got into the back without speaking. Anton sat beside Tolik, who drove rapidly out onto Sirenevy Boulevard and headed east.
"Who is he, this Dark One?" Anton asked to break the silence. He was in a foul mood. Another body¡ªand this time an uninitiated Other!
"He's a very powerful magician," Tolik said abruptly. "More powerful than me. I tried to probe him and I failed¡ªhe closed up instantly."
"Closed up?" Tiger Cub said in an excited voice from the back. "You mean he came without a shield?"
"That's just the point," Tolik exclaimed gloomily. "When he came in, he looked exactly like an ordinary magician, maybe third or fourth level. Like me and Anton."
Anton didn't say anything¡ªstrictly speaking, Tolik was incorrect, but in essence he was right. Gesar had called Anton a second-level magician, but Anton's powers had only risen to that level on a few occasions. It would be more honest to admit that for the time being he was still third level.
"But as soon as I tried to probe him," Tolik went on, "that was it. A blank wall. He's definitely more powerful than me. Anton. Did you try to probe him?"
"No."
"Looks like he's first level..." Tolik, said with a sigh. "If it comes to it, we'll have to call in Ilya..."
"I'm afraid we might even have to call in Olga and Sveta and the boss," Anton remarked. Nobody answered him. Nobody liked the idea of asking the Higher Magicians for help.
Tiger Cub started squirming about, making herself more comfortable on the seat. "There's no way he's not connected with these murders. I can understand the first time¡ªhe arrived in Moscow, went out for a walk, and accidentally stumbled across a poacher. But this time? What was he doing on Pervo-maiskaya Street?"
"But did he definitely arrive on Saturday?" Tolik asked.
"Definitely," Tiger Cub assured him. "I didn't like the look of him, you know? I even found the train he was on and scanned the conductress for memories. He almost never came out of his compartment, but he was on the train all right."
"And do we have anything on him?"
Anton thought he caught a hint of concealed hope in Tolik's question: "Compromising material, you mean? Not a thing. Not a single violation. He doesn't need any licenses, he's not a vampire or a shape-shifter. And he was only initiated fairly recently, just seven years ago... Like me."
Tolik nodded thoughtfully. "There aren't many Others in Nikolaev. So the Watches are small as well, only twenty or thirty agents..."
"Okay, when we get back, I'll dig a bit deeper," Anton promised. "Did you lock up your station wagon, eh?"
"What's going to happen to it?" Tolik asked with a shrug. "Yes, we'll have to phone the boss after all. Or will we be able to handle this on our own?"
He was obviously feeling uncomfortable. Tolik had been in charge of the IT department for more than a year now, since Anton made the move to operational work. But no member of the Night Watch has the right to let his qualifications slip¡ª and the time had come around for Tolik's month of field duty.
And on the very first day there was an unpleasant incident like this...
"We'll probably have to tell him," Anton decided.
"Then there's no point in putting it off..." Tolik sighed.
Tiger Cub eagerly held out her cell phone, but before Tolik could even touch it the phone started chirping the tune of "Midnight in Moscow."
Anton was about to take the phone, but he restrained himself. You never know... It was obviously one of their own calling, but he couldn't sense the tense, nervous energy of a work call. Maybe it was simply some member of the Watch calling Tiger Cub? Everybody had a personal life, even the members of the Watch.
Tiger Cub took the call. Most of the time she just listened, and once she said, "I don't know."
"It's Garik," she explained in a voice filled with quiet alarm. "Andriukha's disappeared."
"Tiunnikov?"
"Yes. Garik thought he was with us."
"The last time I saw him was this afternoon," Tolik told her. "He was planning to go and catch up on his sleep."
"His phone's not answering. Garik can't sense him either¡ª and he's Andriukha's mentor..."
Anton turned toward Tiger Cub: "After Saturday he was like a man possessed. What did that Dark One say to him in the alley?"
Tiger Cub shrugged. "Nothing special¡ªI've told you a hundred times already. He called him a detective. But Andriukha really had screwed up¡ªit was obvious straightaway that the Dark One was no vampire. I explained that to him myself."
"He doesn't have to be a vampire," Tolik declared in a bored, didactic voice. "This Dark One could quite easily be the organizer of the whole grisly mess. And it goes without saying that his organizational talents are clearly above average!"
"One of Zabulon's pawns," Anton mused. "Yes, it's possible. Perfectly possible."
"Aim a bit higher. Not a pawn, not even a knight or a rook. A bishop. A serious piece. Maybe even a queen..."
"Tolik, don't exaggerate. Without Zabulon there's no way the Dark Ones can match us. And Zabulon's not in Moscow."
"That's what the Dark Ones say. But who knows what the truth is..."
"Zabulon hasn't shown his face much at all recently," Anton put in.
"That's just it. He's been keeping quiet, planning an operation... The lousy thing is that I can't imagine what its objectives are. What do we have so far? Two suspicious killings, with absolutely no idea of how they're connected."
"If they are connected at all," said Anton, but even he didn't seem to believe his own words.
"No, say what you like, but they're connected," Tolik insisted stubbornly. "I can sense it. And the link is that magician from out of town."
"Why bother thinking about it?" Tiger Cub asked. "Since Svetlana appeared we've had a substantial advantage. The Dark Ones have yielded one position after another¡ªremember how the boss put the pressure on Zabulon at the last round of negotiations? And Zabulon gave way¡ªwhat other choice did he really have? It looks as if the Dark Ones have launched an operation to restore the balance. But the timing's terrible¡ªjust before Clean Week..."
"For the Dark Ones that's the best possible time," Anton growled. "They know we won't start anything serious without a good reason. But so far there doesn't seem to be any reason."
"Be careful what you say..." Tolik told him in a pained voice.
The Zhiguli flew on along Leningradsky Prospect, overtaking the advancing dawn.
They drove the rest of the way to the office without saying another word. Either no one wanted to predict the worst, or they all felt they were in for something serious.
Garik was standing outside the entrance, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. And Ilya was there beside him, short of sleep and squinting out from behind his spectacles.
"Right," Tolik said cheerlessly. "Brace yourselves."
Ilya and Garik quickly got into the car, squeezing Tiger Cub from both sides, and Anton immediately realized why they'd got in like that, and what the pale, furious, and therefore very restrained Garik would say next...
"The Cosmos Hotel. Andriukha's dead, guys..."
Tolik slammed the accelerator to the floor, but even the most powerful car isn't fast enough to overtake death. Tiger Cub jerked feebly, squeezed tight between her friends, and then froze.
"How did it happen?" Anton asked in a dull voice.
"That Dark One¡ªVitaly Rogoza¡ªjust phoned. He said he'd found the body of an Other in his room."
"I'll personally bite his throat out," Tiger Cub promised in a hoarse voice. "And don't you try to stop me!"
"I phoned Bear just in case," Ilya said in a very neutral tone. "I think he's already in the Cosmos."
Anton got the idea that his colleagues had understood everything in advance and come to terms with the fact that a fight was inevitable. He secretly stroked the pistol in the holster under his armpit¡ªthe weapon that had never been any real use to him even once.
I had a nagging feeling that the events of the night were still far from over. I felt I was just beginning to be able to foresee the immediate future. Not in detail¡ªfar from it, in fact¡ªmore as a tangled ball of probability threads. But I had begun to sense where the thickest strands were leading.
Alarm, trouble, disaster, danger¡ªthat was what the night had in store for me. At first I thought I would wait for the Dark Ones downstairs, beside their BMW outside the entrance, but then I realized I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't enlighten them as to... well, as to my total ignorance. Let them think that I really was playing a game. The chief of the Day Watch was out of town, and the others didn't seem to be any competition for me...
But just who was I? Wasn't I aiming too high? Was Moscow so short of powerful magicians? Even if they didn't work in the Watches? I couldn't keep being led on up the steps forever, could I?¡ªthere are no infinite stairways. Some way would be found to keep me in check¡ªthe Moscow magicians had plenty of experience, many of them had an entire century of it. And I didn't really know what I could do and what I couldn't. I was still an unknown quantity. And how did I know my Power wouldn't evaporate just as miraculously as it had appeared?
So you take your time, Vitalik, don't try to force things along. Better think about what bad things this fading night could bring you. But better not drag things out, lengthen that stride...
I walked quickly, as far as Sholkovskoe Shosse, darted into an underpass, and then started hitching a lift on the opposite side of the road.
What I like about Moscow is that even in the dead of night or early in the morning, all you have to do is raise your hand and an automobile will immediately pull in at the curb. In Niko-laev you can stand there for half an hour and no one will even think of stopping. But here everything is decided by money. Everyone needs it.
The Exhibition of Economic Achievements, fifty rubles. The standard rate.
I got into the sporty Volkswagen and set off toward problems that I could almost feel already.
When I reached the hotel, I immediately sensed that my room's defenses had been compromised. The defenses had worked just as they were intended to do, and that was my main problem. Without looking at anyone, I went up to the sixth floor, walked to my suite, put the key in the lock, and froze for a moment, looking at the door.
Okay, whatever was about to happen, I had to go through it.
He was lying in the middle of the lounge with his arms flung out to the sides. There was an expression of childish surprise and resentment on his face, as if he'd opened a wrapper and in-stead of the candy he'd been hoping for he'd found an angry hornet that had instantly sunk its stinger into his carelessly exposed finger.
He had stumbled into my Shahab's Ring. Not complex magic, but very powerful. And, naturally, he hadn't known the word that was needed. He was the unfortunate young detective, Andriukha Tiunnikov, a Light One from the Night Watch, who had been trying to prove that I'd murdered the girl on Saturday.
If he'd been more experienced, he would never have stuck his nose into the area enclosed by the Ring. I hadn't even set it around the whole room¡ªonly the safe with the bag in it.
This was the very last thing I needed¡ªthe Light Ones regarded the deaths of ordinary people as poaching, but the killing of an Other was a different matter altogether. It already smacked of a tribunal.
But I had simply closed off my own territory, closed it off in a way that Others understood! This is mine! Keep out! No entry!
Only he hadn't kept out. And he'd met his end in the Twilight... The infantile booby! Had he been trying to impress his bosses?
I had to own up. Otherwise they'd ask in a way I couldn't refuse to answer.
I reached for the phone¡ªnot my cell, but the ordinary phone that was standing on the table. The number obligingly surfaced from my memory.
"Night Watch? Vitaly Rogoza, Other, Dark. If I'm not mistaken, I have your employee, Andrei Tiunnikov here. He's dead. You'd better come... Cosmos Hotel, suite six hundred twelve."
Strangely enough, the Light Ones weren't the first to arrive. The moment the first Others reached my floor¡ªthere were two of them¡ªI felt as if I were suddenly flooded with energy from someone. The pair were Dark magicians and they were both brimful of a Dark Power that reminded me in some ways of the Twilight, except that it was even denser and darker. A long tongue of Twilight ran straight down through the floors of the hotel, gradually growing thinner as it approached the ground and seeming to run on beyond it, to somewhere lower, somewhere underground.
There was a knock at the door, emphatically correct.
"Yes, yes," I replied, without getting up out of my armchair. "It's open, come in!"
They came in. My acquaintance from the apartment on Per-vomaiskaya Street, Shagron. And another one, also a magician, as far as I could tell. A bit overweight, like Shagron, with dark hair. And powerful. More powerful than his partner. But even so, despite my expectations, it was Shagron who started talking. It seemed that the accepted thing among members of the Watches was for the most important member of a team to keep quiet¡ªAnton had preferred to listen too.
"Good morning, colleague."
"What's good about it? You must be joking, colleague."
I deliberately pronounced the word "colleague" in the same tone as Shagron. But he wasn't so easily provoked, and that was where he had the advantage over me. In experience. All I had to rely on were cheap wisecracks like that, plus moments of sudden illumination and the mystical stairway that obligingly offered me one step after another, and then arranged a kick up the backside at the appropriate moment.
"I'm not joking, colleague, simply greeting you. It's a pity you didn't wait for us back there... you know where I mean. I'd been counting on having a word with you."
"I didn't want to get in your way," I confessed, and it was more than half-true. A normal response from an Other¡ªDark or Light.
"I was counting on help. Help from a brother-in-arms. But you chose to disappear."
That "I" was strictly a Dark way of speaking. In Shagron's place, any Light One would definitely have said "We," and been perfectly sincere. And he'd have meant exactly what Shagron had meant, no less sincerely, of course.
"Okay. Let me introduce you. This is Edgar, our colleague from Estonia, recently a member of the Moscow Watch. What have you got here?"
"What I've got here is yet another body," I confessed. "A Light Other. A Watch member. But then you already know all about it, don't you, colleague Edgar?"
"There's not much time? The Light Ones will be here any minute? Is that what you wanted to say?" Edgar asked, casting aside diplomacy and addressing me in a familiar fashion. I realized there was no point in arguing with this dark-haired Estonian.
"Last Saturday evening, when I'd just arrived, this Light One was in charge of the operation dealing with a poaching vampire..."
"A vampiress," Edgar corrected me with a frown. "And then?"
"By sheer chance I just happened to be there beside the victim. They found me beside the corpse and recognized me as a Dark One. Clearly out of inexperience¡ªI can't see any other reason¡ªTiunnikov accused me of what the vampire... that is, the vampiress... had done. I put him in his place, and I admit I did it quite sharply, but he'd asked for it. And that's really the whole story... When I left my room today, I left some protective spells. And when I came in, there he was. He was already beyond my help."
The last phrase simply burst out on its own¡ªI hadn't been planning to say it. It felt like I was beginning to talk nonsense again.
"This snot-nosed kid was in charge of the operation?" Shagron asked incredulously. "When there were Light Ones with far more experience¡ªthe tigress, the magicians..."
"Tiunnikov was in training, that's perfectly normal," Edgar barked at his partner, and then suddenly glanced at me. "But you set up a Shahab's Ring so strong that it killed the Light Ones' trainee on the spot?"
The question was almost rhetorical. Apparently I'd cast a simple spell, but put too much Power into it. Maybe...
I sensed the approach of the Light Ones at the same time as Edgar, just as they were nearing the hotel. A few seconds later Shagron picked them up too.
"What did you tell them?" Edgar asked, obviously in a hurry. "But keep it short."
I sensed that he had covered us with a cowl of invisibility, and quite a powerful one too. Before I said a single word, I added some Power of my own to the cowl, drawn partly from somewhere inside myself, from my own mind, and partly from outside. It happened quite spontaneously, but I read the dumb astonishment in Edgar's eyes.
"I phoned and said there was a dead Light One in my room. And told them his name. That's all."
Edgar gave a barely perceptible nod and glanced significantly at Shagron, who gave the slightest of shrugs.
We stood there in silence until the knock at the door¡ªa far less polite one this time.
The Light Ones didn't wait to be invited. They just walked straight in.
There were five of them¡ªTolik, Anton, and the girl shape-shifter could barely have had enough time to get from Pervo-maiskaya Street to their office. Two others had come with them¡ªa cultured-looking young guy wearing spectacles with eighty-dollar frames and another with a suntanned face, as if it weren't winter in Moscow.
These last two and Tolik carefully examined, probed, and scanned every centimeter of my suite. The walls here had probably never seen such intense magical activity.
Anton and the girl didn't interfere, but I could clearly sense the aversion emanating from them. Not even hatred¡ªthe Light Ones don't really even know how to hate properly. More like a desire to pin me into the corner, have me condemned and punished. Or simply to hit me with so much Power that I'd be driven into the Twilight forever.
And I also sensed there was at least one more Light One somewhere outside the room. Probably somewhere else on the same floor, or by the lifts. He was obviously covering the others' backs, and he had shielded himself really well for the job. I only spotted him, you might say, by accident. But I don't think that Sha-gron and Edgar had any idea he was there.
I frowned. The Light Ones had the numerical advantage¡ª there were twice as many of them. And the two of them that I was seeing for the first time were very powerful magicians, almost certainly first level. In any case, the two of them together would be stronger than Shagron and Edgar. And Anton was no pushover either¡ªhe could give Shagron a good fight, or even Edgar. Plus the girl¡ªshe was a warrior. And that unknown one somewhere nearby. The balance of forces was not good at all. They'd grind us to dust, grind us as fine as powdered vanilla...
Meanwhile the Light Ones had finished their scanning. The one in spectacles came up to me and inquired with emphatic indifference: "Tell me, did you really need to use a protective spell of such great Power?"
"Well, why do you think I would have used so much Power?"
The one in spectacles and the other one I didn't know exchanged a quick glance.
"We demand to see your things."
"Stop, stop," Edgar put in hastily. "On what grounds, exactly?"
The one in spectacles smiled bleakly¡ªwith just his lips. "The Night Watch has reason to suspect that a forbidden artifact of immense Power has been smuggled into Moscow. You must know that such actions contravene the terms of the Treaty."
My Dark colleagues looked at me doubtfully. They were apparently expecting some unambiguous response. But what was it? On this occasion my magical internal help-all chose not to prompt me. But on the other hand, I knew perfectly well that there weren't any forbidden artifacts in my bag. And so I gestured magnanimously and said, "Let them look! All night long if they want."
"I protest," Edgar said quietly, and apparently without any great hope. "You don't have the sanction of your chief."
"The protest is rejected," the one in spectacles parried in an inflexible voice. "I'm the chief here. Show us your things, Dark One."
I didn't have to be asked twice. I neutralized the remains of the defenses with a single gesture and opened the door of the safe, where my bag was lying in total isolation, apart from a pair of clothes brushes. Part of its logo seemed to gaze out at us reproachfully: Fuj... I imagined a bored, squeaky voice pronouncing it as "phooey..."
I took the bag and tipped its contents out onto the bed. The Light Ones didn't take much interest in my things, but the sight of the final plastic bag put them on their guard¡ªthe second unknown magician even grasped the amulet in the pocket of his jacket.
When I shook the money out onto the bedcover, everybody looked at me. My own side and the Light Ones. As if I were some kind of psycho. An absolutely hopeless case.
"There," I said. "That's all I have. A hundred thousand. Actually a bit less now."
The magician in spectacles stepped toward the bed and rummaged disdainfully through my things, glancing into the plastic bags. But I realized that what he really wanted was tactile contact.
He wasn't even satisfied with remote scanning!
Good grief, what did they suspect me of? Probably some cretin really had tried to bring something forbidden into Moscow, and since I'd overdone it a bit protecting my miserable heap of bucks, now they suspected me of everything. That was really funny, and it was getting funnier all the time.
The one in spectacles spent about a minute sniffing at my baggage. Then he gave up.
"All right. There's nothing here. We're declaring this suite off-limits. You'll have to change rooms."
The girl shape-shifter started and gave him a puzzled look. He spread his hands and I understood the meaning of his gesture. There was nothing to charge me with. No grounds. The shape-shifter tensed up, but the other magician put his hand on her shoulder, as if he were warning her not to do anything rash.
"Ye-es?" Edgar drawled insinuatingly, and something Estonian finally came through in that "Ye-es" of his. "Change rooms? In that case we request official permission for a seventh-level intervention. In order to avoid unnecessary questions from the hotel management."
The Light Ones were annoyed by that¡ªbut then, they were all annoyed already in any case.