The Twilight Watch:

I nodded, gazing gloomily into my beer mug.

  'No need to knock yourself out,' Semyon advised me. 'There are only two possibilities. This Other is either a fool or he's very cunning. In the first case the Dark Ones or the Inquisitors will find him. In the second case they won't, but they will find the human being and teach him not to wish for such strange things. Similar cases have been known.'

  'What am I going to do?' I asked. 'I must admit the Assol complex is interesting, it's fun to live there. Especially on expenses.'

  'Then enjoy it,' Semyon said calmly. 'Or is your pride offended? Do you want to out-gallop everyone else and find the traitor first?'

  'I don't like leaving things half-done,' I admitted.

  Semyon laughed:

  'All I've been doing for the last hundred years is leaving things half-done . . . There was the little business of the hoodoo laid on the rich peasant Besputnov's cattle, in the Kostroma province. What a case that was, Anton! A mystery. A tight web of intrigue. It was magical all right, but it was all done so cunningly . . . the hoodoo was applied via a field of hemp.'

  'Do cattle actually eat hemp?' I asked, intrigued despite myself.

  'Ah, who'd let them? The peasant Besputnov used to make rope out of that hemp. And he used the rope to lead his cows around. And the hex went through it that way. A cunning hoodoo, slow and thorough. And not a single registered Other for a hundred miles around. I moved into the little village and started searching for the evildoer . . .'

  'Did they really work that thoroughly back then?' I asked, amazed. 'Sending in a watchman for the sake of some peasant and his cattle?'

  Semyon smiled:

  'I did all sorts of work back then. This peasant's son was an Other, and he asked us to step in to help his father, who was so depressed he almost made himself a noose out of that rope . . . So I moved in, all on my ownsome, got myself some property, even started cosying up to a certain little widow lady. But at the same time I was searching. And I realised I was on the trail of an ancient witch, very well disguised, not a member of any Watches and not registered anywhere. It was really fascinating. Just imagine: a witch who was two or three hundred years old! She had accumulated as much power as a first-grade magician! And there I was playing at Nat Pinkerton . . . detecting . . . I felt ashamed somehow to call in the Higher Magicians to help. And gradually, bit by bit, I turned up clues, and put together a list of suspects. One of them was actually the attractive young widow . . .'

  'Well?' I asked, entranced. Semyon certainly liked to stretch the truth a bit, but this story seemed like the real thing.

  'That's all there is,' Semyon sighed. 'There was a rebellion in Petrograd. Then the revolution. So you can imagine, there were more important things to deal with than cunning witches. Human blood was flowing in rivers. I was recalled. I wanted to go back and find the old hag, but I never had the time. And then they flooded the entire village and everybody was resettled. Maybe that witch is dead by now.'

  'Frustrating,' I said.

  Semyon nodded:

  'And I've got an entire wagonload of stories like that. So there's no need for you to go sweating your guts out on this one.'

  'If you were a Dark One,' I admitted, 'I'd definitely think you were trying to divert suspicion from yourself.'

  Semyon just smiled.

  'I'm not a Dark One, Anton. As you know perfectly well.'

  'And you don't know anything about the initiation of human beings,' I sighed. 'I was really hoping . . .'

  Semyon turned serious.

  'Anton, let me tell you something. The girl I loved more than anything in the whole world died in 1921. She died of old age.'

  I looked at him, but didn't dare risk a smile. Semyon wasn't joking.

  'If I'd known how to make her an Other . . .' Semyon whispered, gazing off into the distance. 'If I'd only known . . . I revealed myself to her as an Other. I did everything for her. She was never ill. At the age of seventy, she looked thirty at the most. Even in hungry Petrograd she never wanted for anything . . . the permits she had used to strike Red Army men dumb . . . I had her credentials signed by Lenin himself. But I couldn't give her my length of life. That's not in our power.' He looked into my eyes sombrely. 'If I'd known how to initiate Lubov Petrovna, I wouldn't have asked anybody's permission. I'd have gone through anything. I'd have dematerialised myself – but I'd have made her into an Other . . .'

  Semyon stood up and sighed:

  'But now, to be quite honest, it doesn't matter to me. Whether people can be transformed into Others or not simply doesn't concern me. And it shouldn't concern you either. Your wife's an Other. Your daughter's an Other. All that happiness for one person? Gesar himself can't even dream of anything like it.'

  He walked out, but I sat at the table for a while longer, finishing my beer. The owner of the café – who was also the waiter, the chef and the barman – never even looked in my direction. When Semyon came in, he had hung a magical screen round the table.

  What had I been thinking of, really?

  There were two Inquisitors beavering away. The talented vampire Kostya was circling the Assol complex in the form of a bat. They'd figure it out, they were bound to discover who had wanted to become an Other. And they'd either find the individual who had sent the letters, or they wouldn't.

  What difference did that make to me?

  The woman I loved was an Other. And more than that, she had voluntarily abandoned her work in the Watch, a brilliant career as a Great Enchantress. All for an idiot like me. So that I wouldn't get hung up about being stuck for ever at my basic second grade of power.

  And Nadiushka was an Other too. I'd never have to go through the horror suffered by an Other whose child grows up, grows old and dies. Sooner or later we would reveal Nadienka's true nature to her. She would want to be a Great One, no doubt about it. And she would be the very Greatest. Maybe she would even do something to make this imperfect world better.

  But here I was playing at spies, like a little child. Worrying myself sick about succeeding in my mission, instead of dropping in on my friendly neighbour in the evening or relaxing – strictly for purposes of camouflage – in the casino.

  I got up, put the money on the table and walked out. In an hour or two the screen would disperse, the owner of the café would see the money and the empty glasses and remember a couple of ordinary-looking guys drinking beer there.

  CHAPTER 5

  I SPENT HALF a day doing things that were strictly off limits and no use to anyone. Kostya would probably have pulled a wry face and informed me what he thought of my naïvity.

  First I went back to Assol to change into jeans and a simple shirt, and then I set off in the direction of the nearest normal courtyard – towards the dreary, nine-storey prefabricated buildings. There, to my delight, I discovered a football pitch, with senior-school- age loafers kicking a ball around on it. There were a few young men there as well, in fact. Even though the recently concluded World Cup had been, to put it mildly, an inglorious one for our team, it had still had a positive effect. In the few courtyards that still survived, the spirit that had seemed lost was reviving.

  I was put on a team. The side that had only one adult – with an impressive paunch, but extremely agile and frisky. I'm not a very good player, but these guys weren't World Cup material either.

  For about an hour I ran around on the dusty, trampled earth, yelling and shooting at the goal made out of rusty wire mesh, even scoring a few times. Once a huge senior-school hulk deftly dumped me on the ground and gave me an amiable smile.

  But I didn't take offence or get upset.

  When the game tailed off – of its own accord, somehow – I went into the nearest shop, bought some mineral water and beer and – for the very youngest footballers – Baikal fizzy drink. Of course, they would have preferred Coca-Cola, but it's time we stopped drinking that foreign poison

  The only thing bothering me was the realisation that excessive generosity would arouse all kinds of suspicions
. So I had to be moderate in my good deeds.

  After saying goodbye to the players, I walked as far as the river beach and enjoyed a swim in the water that was dirty, but cool. The pompous palace spires of the Assol complex towered up into the sky on one side.

  Well, let them . . . I didn't care.

  The funniest thing of all, I realised, was that in my place any Dark Magician could have done exactly the same thing. Maybe not one of the really young ones still into pleasures previously out of reach, like fresh oysters and expensive prostitutes. But a Dark One who had already lived a bit and come to understand that everything in the world was nothing but vanity, the vanity of vanities, in fact.

  And he would have scampered round that pitch, yelling and kicking the ball, and hissing at the teenagers' clumsy attempts to swear: 'Hey, watch your lip, kid!' And afterwards he would have gone to the beach, and splashed about in the muddy water, and laid on the grass, looking up at the sky . . .

  Where was it, that dividing line? Okay, with the lower Dark Ones, everything was clear. They were non-life. They had to kill in order to survive. And there was nothing any verbal gymnastics could do about that. They were Evil.

  But where was the real boundary?

  And why did it sometimes seem on the part of dissolving? Like now, at a time when the only problem was one single human being who wanted to become an Other? Just one, that was all! But just look at the resources that had been thrown into the search. Dark Ones, Light Ones, the Inquisition . . . And I wasn't the only one working on this business, I was just a pawn who had been advanced, carrying out local reconnaissance work. Gesar was wrinkling his brow, Zabulon knitting his eyebrows, Witiezslav scowling and baring those teeth. A human wanted to become an Other – hunt him down, get him!

  But who wouldn't want it?

  Not the eternal hunger of the vampires, not the insane fits of the werewolves, but the full, complete life of a magician. With everything that ordinary people had.

  Only better.

  You're not afraid anyone will steal the expensive stereo from your car when you leave it unwatched.

  You don't get sick with flu, and if you come down with some vile incurable disease, the Dark Sorcerers or the Light Healers are at your service.

  You don't wonder how you're going to survive until pay day.

  You don't feel afraid of dark streets at night or drunken bums.

  You're not even afraid of the militia.

  You're certain your child will get home safely from school and not run into some crazy maniac in the front hallway . . .

  Yes, of course, that was where the real problem lay. Your nearest and dearest were safe, they were even excluded from the vampire lottery. Only you couldn't save them from old age and death.

  But after all, that was still a long way off. Somewhere in the future, far ahead.

  On the whole it was far better to be an Other.

  What's more, you wouldn't gain anything if you refused initiation, even your human relatives would be right to call you a fool. After all, if you became an Other, you'd be able to help them out. Like that story of Semyon's . . . someone put a hex on a peasant's cows, and his Other son had an investigator sent in to help him. Blood is thicker than water, after all, your own flesh and blood is dearest. Nothing to be done about that . . .

  I jerked upright as if I'd been electrocuted. I jumped to my feet and stared up at the buildings of the Assol complex.

  What reason could a Light Magician have for making a rash promise to do absolutely anything?

  There was only one reason.

  That was it, the lead.

  'Have you come up with something, Anton?' a voice asked behind my back.

  I turned round and looked into the black lenses of Kostya's glasses. He was wearing just bathing trunks – appropriate attire for the beach – and a child's white panama hat perched on the back of his head like a skullcap (no doubt he'd taken it away from some toddler without any qualms of conscience) as well as the dark glasses.

  'Finding the sun hot?' I asked spitefully.

  'It's oppressive. Hanging up there in the sky like a flat-iron . . . Why, aren't you feeling hot?'

  'Sure,' I admitted. 'But it's a different kind of heat.'

  'Can we manage without the sarcasm?' Kostya asked. He sat down on the sand and fastidiously tossed aside a cigarette butt from near his feet. 'I only go swimming at night now. But this time I came . . . to have a word with you.'

  I felt ashamed. The person sitting in front of me was a moody young man, it made no difference that he was undead. And I still remembered the gloomy teenager hovering uncertainly at the door of my apartment. 'You shouldn't invite me in, I'm a vampire, I could come in the night and bite you . . .'

  And that boy had held out for a pretty long time. He'd drunk pig's blood and donors' blood. He'd dreamed of becoming alive again. 'Like Pinocchio' – he must have read Collodi or seen the movie AI, but anyway he'd found the right comparison.

  If only Gesar hadn't detailed me to hunt vampires . . .

  No, that was nonsense. Nature would have taken its course. And Kostya would have been given his licence.

  And in any case I had no right to scoff at him. I had one huge advantage – I was alive.

  I could approach old people without feeling ashamed. Yes, without any shame, because Witiezslav hadn't been honest with me. It wasn't fear or revulsion that had made him avoid the old woman.

  It was shame.

  'Sorry, Kostya,' I said and lay down on the sand beside him. 'Let's talk.'

  'It seems to me that the permanent residents at Assol have nothing to do with it,' Kostya began gloomily. 'The client is only there occasionally.'

  'We'll have to check them all,' I said faking a sigh.

  'That's only the start. We have to find the traitor.'

  'We are looking.'

  'I can see the way you're looking . . . Realised that he's one of yours, have you?'

  'How do you make that out?' I protested indignantly. 'Some Dark One could quite easily have blundered . . .'

  We discussed the situation for a while. We seemed to have reached the same conclusions simultaneously.

  Only now I was just half a step ahead. And I had no intention of helping Kostya out.

  'The letter was posted with the heap of letters that builder brought to the post office,' said Kostya, not suspecting how cunning I was being. 'Nothing could be easier. All those Gastarbeiter live in an old school, they use it as a hostel. They put all their letters on the attendant's table on the ground floor. In the morning someone goes to the post office and posts them. It would be no problem for an Other to get into the hostel and divert the attention of the attendant . . . or simply wait for him to go to the toilet. Then drop the letter into the general pile. And there you go! No leads.'

  'Simple and effective,' I agreed.

  'In the Light Ones' style,' Kostya said with a frown. 'Get someone else to do the dirty work for you.'

  For some reason I didn't take offence. I just smiled mockingly and turned over on to my back, looking up at the sky and the glorious yellow sun.

  'Okay, we do the same . . .' Kostya muttered.

  I didn't say anything.

  'Come on, tell me, haven't you ever used people for your operations?' Kostya asked crossly.

  'Sometimes. Used them, but never put them in danger.'