'Are you suggesting we should check the memories of everyone here?' Gesar asked politely.
'Would you agree?' Edgar responded eagerly.
'No,' Gesar snapped. 'I appreciate the work done by the Inquisition, but there are limits.'
'Then we're stuck.' Edgar shrugged. 'Gentlemen, if you are not willing to co-operate . . .'
Svetlana cleared her throat delicately and asked:
'May I speak?'
'Yes, yes, of course.' Edgar nodded.
'I think we're on the wrong track,' said Svetlana. 'You have decided that we need to find the killer, and then we'll find the book. That's right, only we don't know who the killer is. Why don't we try to find the Fuaran? And then locate the killer through the book?'
'And how are you going to look for the book, Light One?' Zabulon asked ironically. 'Send for this James Bond?'
Svetlana reached out her hand and cautiously touched Arina's note.
'As I understand it, the witch put this note on the book. Perhaps even between its pages. The two things were in contact for some period of time, and the book is a very powerful magical object. If we summon up a simulacrum . . . the way that novice magicians are taught to do . . .'
She faltered under the gaze of the Higher Magicians and began to lose her thread. But both Zabulon and Gesar were looking at her encouragingly.
'Yes, there is magic like that,' Gesar murmured. 'Of course, I remember . . . they stole my horse once, and I was left with just the bridle . . .'
He stopped and shot a glance at Zabulon, then suggested in a friendly tone of voice:
'After you, Dark One. You create the simulacrum!'
'I'd prefer you to do it,' Zabulon replied with equal politeness. 'There'll be no unnecessary suspicion of deception.'
There was something wrong here. But what?
'Well then, as the old saying goes: 'First lash to the informer'!' Gesar responded cheerfully. Svetlana, your idea is accepted. Go ahead.'
Svetlana looked at Gesar in embarrassment:
'Boris Ignatievich . . . I'm sorry, these are such simple magical actions . . . It's such a long time since I performed them. Perhaps we ought to ask one of the junior magicians?'
So that was it . . . The Great Ones couldn't manage the basic elements of magic that were taught to beginners. They were confused and embarrassed – like academics who have been asked to multiply figures in a long column and write out letters in neat lines.
'Allow me,' I said. Without waiting for an answer, I reached out one hand towards the note. I half-closed my eyelids so that the shadow fell on my eyes and looked at the grey piece of paper through the Twilight. I imagined the book – a thick volume bound in human skin, the journal of a witch cursed by humans and Others alike . . .
Gradually the image began taking shape. The book was almost exactly as I had visualised it, except that the corners of the binding were protected by triangles of metal. Evidently a later addition – one of the Fuarans' owners had taken care to preserve it.
'So that's what it's like,' Gesar said with lively interest. 'Well, there it is . . .'
The magicians rose from their seats and examined the image of the book – which only Others could see. The note was quivering gently on the table, as if there was a draught in the room.
'Can we open it?' asked Kostya.
'No, it's only an image, it doesn't contain the essential nature of the object . . .' Gesar said. 'Go on, Anton. Stabilise it . . . and invent some kind of tracking mechanism.'
It was hard enough for me to stabilise the image of the book. And I was definitely not prepared to come up with a tracking mechanism. Eventually I settled on a grotesque simulacrum of a compass – it was huge, the size of a dinner plate, with a pointer swinging on a pin. One end of the pointer glowed more brightly – the end that was supposed to point towards the Fuaran.
'Add more energy,' Gesar said. 'Keep it working for at least a week . . . you never know.'
I added more energy.
And then, completely exhausted, but pleased with myself, I relaxed.
We looked at the compass floating in the Twilight. The pointer was pointing directly at Zabulon.
'Is this a joke, Gorodetsky?' he enquired, getting up and moving to one side.
The pointer didn't waver.
'Good,' Gesar said, sounding pleased. 'Edgar, get your agents back in here.'
Edgar walked to the door and called, then returned to the table.
One by one the Inquisitors came in.
The pointer didn't move. It still pointed at empty space.
'Quod erat demonstrandum – that's what we needed to prove,' Edgar said, relieved. 'Nobody here is involved in the theft of the book.'
'It's trembling,' said Zabulon, looking closely at the compass.
'The pointer's trembling. And since we didn't observe any legs on the book . . .'
He laughed a wicked, devilish laugh, clapped Edgar on the shoulder and asked.
'Well then, senior comrade? Do you require any assistance with the arrest?'
Edgar was also watching the compass carefully. Then he asked:
'Anton, how accurate is the device?'
'Not very, I'm afraid,' I admitted. 'The trace left by the book was very weak.'
'How accurate?' Edgar repeated.
'To within about a hundred metres,' I suggested. 'Maybe fifty. If I'm right, when the target's close, the pointer will start to swing about chaotically. I'm sorry.'
'Don't let it bother you, Anton, you did everything right,' Gesar said. 'No one could have done better with such a weak trace to work on. A hundred metres it is . . . can you determine the distance to the target?'
'Roughly, from how brightly the pointer glows . . . About a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty kilometres.'
Gesar frowned.
'The book's already in Moscow. We're wasting time, gentlemen. Edgar!'
The Inquisitor put one hand in his pocket and took out a small yellowish-white sphere. It looked like a pool ball, only a little smaller, and it had incomprehensible pictograms engraved haphazardly on its surface. Edgar squeezed the sphere tightly in his hand and concentrated.
A moment later I felt something changing. As if there had been a shroud hanging in the air – invisible to the eye, but palpable nonetheless – and now it was disappearing, being sucked into the small sphere of ivory . . .
'I didn't know the Inquisition still had Minoan spheres,' said Gesar.
'No comment,' said Edgar. He smiled, pleased at the effect he had produced. 'That's it, the barrier has been removed. Put up a portal, Great Ones!'
Of course. A direct portal, without any reference points in place at 'the other end' was a riddle for Great Ones to solve. Edgar either couldn't do it, or he was saving his strength . . .
Gesar squinted at Zabulon and asked:
'Do you trust me to do it again?'
Zabulon made a pass with his hand without speaking – and a gap opened up in mid-air, oozing darkness. Zabulon stepped into it first, then Gesar, gesturing for us to follow. I picked up Arina's precious note, together with the invisible magical compass – and stepped in after Svetlana.
Despite the difference in external appearances, inside the portal was exactly the same. Milky-white mist, a sensation of rapid movement, total loss of any sense of time. I tried to concentrate – soon we would find ourselves near the criminal who had killed a Higher Vampire. Of course, we had Gesar and Zabulon leading us; Svetlana was just as powerful, if less experienced; Kostya was young, but he was still a Higher Vampire; and there was Edgar and his team with their pockets full of Inquisitors' artefacts. Even so, the fight could turn out to be deadly dangerous.
But a moment later I realised there wasn't going to be any fight.
At least, not straight away.
We were standing on a platform at Moscow's Kazan railway station. There was no one very close to us – people sense when a portal is opening nearby and spontaneously move out of the way. But we were
surrounded by the kind of crush that even in Moscow you can only find at a railway station in summer. People walking to their suburban trains, people getting off trains and carting baggage along, people smoking in front of the mechanical noticeboards, waiting for their train to be announced, people drinking beer and lemonade, eating those monstrous railway station pies and bread wraps with suspicious fillings. There were probably at least two or three thousand people within a hundred-metre radius of us.
I looked at the spectral compass – the pointer was spinning lazily.
'We need Cinderella here,' said Zabulon, gazing around. 'We have to find a poppy seed in a sack of millet.'
One by one the Inquisitors appeared beside us. The expression of readiness for fierce battle on Edgar's face was suddenly replaced by confusion.
'He's trying to hide,' said Zabulon. 'Excellent, excellent . . .'
But he didn't look too happy either.
An agitated woman pushed a trolley full of striped canvas bags up to our group. Her red, sweating face was set in an expression of firm determination that could only be mustered by a Russian woman who works as a 'shuttle trader' importing goods by train to feed her idle, useless husband and three or four children.
'Haven't announced the Ulyanovsk train yet, have they?' she asked.
Svetlana closed her eyes for a moment and replied:
'It will arrive at platform one in six minutes and leave with a delay of three minutes.'
'Thank you,' the woman said, not surprised in the least by such a precise answer. She set off for platform one.
'That's all very nice, Svetlana,' Gesar muttered. 'But what suggestions do you have concerning the search for the book?'
Svetlana just shrugged.
The café was as cosy and clean as a railway station café could be. Maybe because it was in such a strange place – in the basement, beside the baggage rooms. The countless station bums obviously didn't show their faces here – the owners had cured them of that habit. There was a middle-aged Russian woman standing behind the counter, and the food was carried out from the kitchen by taciturn, polite Caucasian men.
A strange place.
I took two glasses of dry wine from a three-litre box for Svetlana and myself. It was surprisingly cheap and also – to my great amazement – pretty good. I went back to the table where we were sitting.
'It's still here,' said Svetlana, nodding at Arina's note. The pointer in the compass was spinning idly.
'Maybe the book's hidden in the baggage rooms?' I suggested.
Svetlana took a sip of her wine and nodded, either in agreement with my suggestion or in approval of the Krasnodar Merlot.
'Is something bothering you?' I asked cautiously.
'Why the station?' Svetlana asked in return.
'To make a getaway. To hide. The thief must have realised he'd be followed.'
'The airport. A plane. Any plane,' Svetlana replied laconically, taking small sips of her wine.
I shrugged.
It really was strange. Once he had the Fuaran, the renegade Other, whoever he might be, either could have tried either to hide or make a run for it. He'd chosen the second option. But why a train? A train as a means of escape – in the twenty-first century?
'Maybe he's afraid of flying?' Svetlana suggested.
I just snorted. Of course, even an Other didn't have much chance of surviving a plane crash. But even the very weakest Other was capable of examining the lines of probability for the next three or four hours and figuring out if there was any danger of a plane crashing.
And Witiezslav's killer was anything but weak.
'He needs to get somewhere the planes don't go,' I suggested.
'But he could at least have flown out of Moscow to shake off the pursuit.'
'No,' I said, enjoying the feeling of putting Svetlana right. 'That wouldn't be any good. We would have identified the thief 's approximate location, worked out which plane he'd taken, questioned the passengers, taken information from the surveillance cameras at the airport and discovered his identity. Then Gesar or Zabulon would have opened a portal . . . they could open one to any place he happened to go. And we'd all be right back where we are now. Except that we'd know what our enemy looks like.'
Svetlana nodded. She looked at her watch and shook her head, then closed her eyes for an instant, and smiled calmly.
That meant Nadiushka was okay.
'Why does he have to try to get away at all?' Svetlana said thoughtfully. 'I doubt if the ritual described in the Fuaran requires much time. The witch turned a lot of her servants into Others when she was attacked. It would be much easier for the killer to use the book and become a Great One . . . the Greatest of all. And then either take us on or destroy the Fuaran and hide. If he becomes more powerful than us, we simply won't be able to unmask him.'
'Perhaps he has already become more powerful,' I remarked. 'Since Gesar raised the subject of initiating Nadya . . .'
Svetlana nodded in agreement:
'Not a very pleasant prospect. What if Edgar himself used the Fuaran? And now he's acting out a comedy, just pretending to search. He didn't get along too well with Witiezslav, and he's crafty . . . if he wanted to become the most powerful Other in the world . . .'
'But then what would he need the book for?' I exclaimed. 'He could just have left it where it was. We wouldn't even have known that Witiezslav had been killed. We'd have put it all down to protective spells that the vampire failed to notice.'
'That makes sense,' Svetlana agreed. 'I think you're right, the killer isn't after power. Or not only power. He wants the book as well.'
I suddenly remembered Semyon:
'There's someone the killer wants to make into an Other! He realised he wouldn't be allowed to use the book. That's why he killed Witiezslav . . . it doesn't matter now exactly how. He performed the ritual and became a hugely powerful Other, then hid the book . . . somewhere here, at the station. And now he's trying to get it away from Moscow.'
Svetlana reached out to me under the table and we shook hands triumphantly.
'Only how is he planning to get it out?' she queried. 'The two most powerful magicians in Moscow are here . . .'
'Three,' I corrected her.
Svetlana frowned and said:
'Then it's four. After all, Kostya's a Higher . . .'
'He's a snot-nosed kid, even if he is Higher . . .' I muttered. Somehow I just couldn't get my head round the fact that this boy had killed ten people in just a few years.
And the most despicable thing was that we gave out the licences . . .
Svetlana sensed what I was thinking. She stroked my hand and said softly:
'Don't get upset. He couldn't go against his own nature. What could you have done? Except kill him . . .'
I nodded.
Of course, he couldn't have acted differently.