The next moment the door behind Natasha opened with a sudden crash and the hall was instantly full of people: two men were holding the seer firmly by the arms and another had walked quickly through into the kitchen – without looking around him first: he obviously knew the layout of the apartment very well. A young, black-haired girl had appeared beside Natasha. All the men were dressed in a simple and somehow deliberately inconspicuous manner: T-shirts and the same shorts that ninety per cent of the male population of Moscow was wearing in this incredible heat. Natasha suddenly had the frightening thought that clothes like that were something like the unobtrusive grey suits worn by agents of the special services.
'That's awful,' the girl said, looking at Natasha and shaking her head. 'How disgusting, Natalya Alexeevna.'
Unlike the men, she was dressed in dark jeans and a denim jacket. She had a sparkling pendant on a silver chain round her neck and several massive silver rings on her fingers – fancy, complicated rings with dragons' heads and tigers' heads, intertwined snakes and patterns that looked like the letters of a strange, mysterious alphabet.
'What do you mean?' Natasha asked in a dull voice.
Instead of answering, the girl unzipped Natasha's purse and took out the little bottle. She held it up in front of Natasha's eyes. And then she shook her head again in reproach.
'Got it!' shouted the young man who had gone into the kitchen. 'It's all here, guys.'
One of the men holding the seer by the arms sighed and said in a strangely bored tone:
'Darya Leonidovna Romashova! In the name of the Night Watch, you are under arrest.'
'What watch?' There was an obvious note of puzzlement, as well as panic, in the seer's voice. 'Who are you?'
'You have the right to respond to our questions,' the young man went on. 'Any magical action on your part will be regarded as hostile and punished without any warning. You have the right to request the settlement of your human obligations. You are accused of . . . Garik?'
The young man who had gone into the kitchen came back out. As if she were dreaming, Natasha noticed that he had an intellectual, thoughtful, rather sad kind of face. She had always rather liked men like that . . .
'I suppose it's the usually,' said Garik. 'The illegal practice of black magic. Third- or fourth-degree intervention in the consciousness of other individuals. Murder, tax evasion – but that's not for us, that's for the Dark Ones.'
'You are accused of the illegal practice of black magic, inter- vention in the consciousness of others and murder,' the man holding Darya repeated. 'You will come with us.'
The seer gave a long, piercing, terrifying scream. Natasha involuntarily glanced at the open door. Of course, it would be naïve to hope that the neighbours would come running to help, but they could call the police, couldn't they?
The strange visitors didn't react to the scream. The girl only frowned and nodded in Natasha's direction:
'What shall we do with her?'
'Confiscate the potion and wipe her memory clean.' Garik looked at Natasha without a hint of sympathy. 'Let her believe there was no one in the apartment when she got here.'
'And that's all?' the girl took a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one casually.
'Katya, what other choice is there? She's a human being, how can we do anything with her?'
This wasn't even frightening any more. It was a dream, a nightmare . . . and Natasha reacted as if she were dreaming. With a sudden movement she grabbed the precious bottle from the girl's hand and dashed towards the door.
She was flung back as if she had run into an invisible wall. She shrieked as she fell at the seer's feet, the bottle went flying out of her hand and shattered easily against the wall. A tiny patch of sticky, colourless liquid appeared on the lino.
'Tiger Cub, pick up the pieces for the report,' Garik said calmly.
Natasha burst into tears.
No, she wasn't afraid, although Garik's tone of voice left no doubt that they really would wipe her memory clean. They'd clap their hands or something like that and wipe it clean. And she would find herself standing out in the street, firmly convinced that the seer's door had never opened.
She cried as she watched her love dribble across the dirty floor.
Someone stuck their head in through the open door to the landing. 'We've got company, guys!' Natasha heard an alarmed voice say, but she didn't even look round. There was no point. She was going to forget it all anyway. It would all be shattered into sharp little fragments and soak away into the dirt.
For ever.
CHAPTER 1
I NEVER have enough time to get ready in the morning. I can get up at seven, or even at six, but I still always need another five minutes.
Why is it always like that, I wonder?
I was standing in front of the mirror, quickly putting on my lipstick. And as always happens when you're in a hurry, the lipstick was going on unevenly, as if I was a schoolgirl who'd secretly borrowed her mother's lipstick for the first time. It would have been better not to bother at all, and go out without any makeup on. I don't have any complexes about that, I look good enough without it.
'Alya!'
Here we go.
That just has to happen, doesn't it?
'What is it, Mum?' I shouted, fastening my sandals in a hurry.
'Come here, my little one.'
'Mum, I've already got my shoes on!' I shouted, adjusting a twisted strap. 'I'm late.'
'Alya!'
There was no point arguing.
Deliberately clattering my heels, although I wasn't really angry at all, I went through into the kitchen. Mum was sitting in front of the TV the way she always does and drinking yet another cup of tea with yet another cake. What is it she likes so much about those horrible Danish cakes? They're such terrible garbage! Not to mention how bad they are for your figure.
'Little one, are you going to be late again today?' Mum asked, without even turning her head in my direction.
'I don't know.'
'Alisa, I don't think you ought to put up with it. Nine to five is one thing, but keeping you there until one in the morning . . .' Mum shook her head.
'They pay for it,' I said offhandedly.
And then Mum did look at me. And her lips began to tremble.
'So you hold that against me, do you?'
My mother always did have an expressive voice, like an actress's. She should have worked in the theatre.
'Yes, we do live on your wages,' my mum said bitterly. 'The state robbed us and threw us out to die at the side of the road. Thank you, dear daughter, for not forgetting us. Your father and I are very grateful to you. But there's no need to keep reminding us . . .'
'Mum, I didn't mean anything of the kind. You know I don't have a standard working day!'
'Working day!' My mum threw her arms in the air. She had a crumb of cake on her chin. 'Working night, more like! And who knows what you get up to?'
'Mum . . .'
Of course, she didn't really think anything of the kind. Quite the opposite, she was always proudly telling her friends what a fine, upstanding girl I was. It was just that in the morning she felt like arguing. Perhaps she'd been watching the news and she'd heard yet another awful story about our life here in Russia. Perhaps she and Dad had had a row first thing in the morning – that would be why he had left so early.
'And I've no intention of becoming a grandmother at forty!' my mum went on, following no apparent logic. What logic did she need, anyway? She'd been terrified for ages that I would get married and leave home and she'd be left on her own with my father. Or maybe she wouldn't – I'd looked at the reality lines, and it was very likely that my dad would leave her for another woman. He was three years younger than Mum, and unlike her he took care of himself.
'You'll be fifty this year, Mum,' I said. 'Sorry, I'm really in a hurry.'
When I was already in the hall, I heard my mum's voice, full of righteous indignation:
'You never did want to talk to your mother like a normal human being!'
'There was a time when I wanted to,' I muttered to myself as I headed out of the door. 'When I still was a human being I wanted to. But where were you then . . . ?'
And now I knew for sure that Mum was taking comfort in thinking about the row she would have with me in the evening. And she was dreaming of involving Dad in it too. When I thought about that, it instantly put me in a foul mood.
What kind of way to behave is that – deliberately provoking a row with someone you love? But Mum just loves to do it. And she simply doesn't understand that it's her own character that's destroyed my father's love for her.
I'll never do that to anyone.
And I won't let Mum do it either!
There was no one in the hall, but even if there was it wouldn't have stopped me. I turned back to face the door and looked at it in a particular way, with my eyes slightly screwed up ... so that I could see my shadow.
My real shadow. The one that's cast by the Twilight.
It looks as if the gloom is condensing in front of you. Until it becomes an utterly black, intense darkness, so black it would make a starless night look like day.
And against the background of that darkness you see a trembling, swirling, greyish silhouette, not quite three-dimensional but not flat either. As if it had been cut out of dirty cotton wool. Or maybe it's the other way round – a hole has been cut through the great Dark, leaving a doorway into the Twilight.
I took a step forward into the shadow and it slid upwards, enfolding my body, and the world changed.
Colours almost completely disappeared. Everything was frozen in a dark, grey blur like what appears on a television screen if you turn the colour and contrast all the way down. Sounds slowed down, leaving silence; nothing but a barely audible background rumble, as faint as the murmur of a distant sea.
I was in the Twilight.
I could see Mum's resentment blazing in the apartment. A bitter, lemon-yellow colour, mingling with her self-pity and her acid-green dislike of my dad, who had chosen the wrong time to go to the garage and tinker with his car.
And there was a black vortex slowly taking shape above Mum's head. A curse directed at someone specific, still weak, still on the level of 'I hope that job of yours drives you crazy, you ungrateful creature!' – but it was a mother's curse, and they're especially powerful and tenacious.
Oh no, my dear mother!
Thanks to your efforts Dad had a heart attack at thirty-seven and three years ago I barely managed to save him from another ... at a cost that I don't even want to remember. And now you've set your sights on me?
I reached out through the Twilight as hard as I could, so hard I got a stabbing pain under my shoulder blades, and grabbed hold of Mum's mind – it twitched and then froze.
Okay . . . now this is what we'll do . . .
I broke into a sweat, although it's always cool in the Twilight. I wasted energy that would have been useful at work. But a moment later Mum no longer remembered that she'd been speaking to me. And more generally, she was pleased that I was such a hard worker, that I was appreciated and liked at work, that I went out when it was barely light and didn't come back until after midnight.
Sorted.