A small, dark sphere like a miniature black hole appeared, spinning on his palm beside the carved figure-a direct confirmation of his oath by the Primordial Power.

“Even so, I don’t think I would…,” Semyon began.

At that moment the cell phone in my pocket rang and switched itself into loudspeaker mode. I never used its multitude of various functions: speaker phone, organizer, games, built-in camera, calculator, radio. I only used the built-in music player. But this time the conference-call function came in handy.

“Take it,” said Gesar on the other end of the line. “He’s not lying about this. We’ll work out what he is lying about later.”

The connection broke off.

Zabulon laughed and continued to hold out the carved figure. I raked it off the Dark Magician’s hand without saying a word and put it in my pocket. I didn’t have to swear any oaths.

“Well then, good luck,” Zabulon continued. “Ah, yes! If it’s not too much trouble, bring me a little magnet from Edinburgh for the refrigerator.”

“What for?” I asked.

“I collect them,” Zabulon said with a smile.

And then he disappeared, dropped straight down to some deep level of the Twilight. Of course, we didn’t follow him.

“What a show-off,” I said.

“‘For the refrigerator,’” Semyon muttered. “Yes, I can just imagine what he keeps in his refrigerator… A little magnet! Bring him a little jar of strychnine. Mix it into some of that Scottish haggis and bring that back for him.”

“Haggis is a brand of diapers,” I said. “They’re good, we used them for our daughter.”

“Haggis is a kind of food, too,” said Semyon, shaking his head. “Although, as far as taste goes, there’s probably not much difference.”

Chapter 2

IT’S HARD TO GET ANY PLEASURE OUT OF FLYING THESE DAYS. BOEING 737S and Tupolev 154s crashing, Swiss air-traffic controllers getting lost in thought, and all sorts of Arab terrorists on the loose don’t exactly put you in the right mood to sit back in your comfortable seat and enjoy yourself. And although the duty-free cognac is cheap, the female flight attendant is attentive, and the food and wine are perfectly good, it’s not easy for a man to relax.

Fortunately, I am not a man. The probability lines had been checked by Svetlana and Gesar. I can feel out the future for a few hours ahead myself if need be. We would get there with no problems, make a nice, soft landing at Heathrow, and I would have time to make the connection for the plane to Edinburgh.

So I could sit there calmly in my business-class seat (I didn’t believe that this was a sudden fit of generosity from my boss; there simply hadn’t been any other seats available), sip the decent Chilean wine, and glance compassionately at the woman trying to look younger than her age who was sitting across the aisle from me. She was very frightened. Every now and then she crossed herself and whispered a silent prayer.

Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer. I reached out to her through the Twilight and stroked her head gently. Not with my hands, with my mind. I touched the hair that had been dyed so often and used the kind of affection that only human mothers can provide, the affection that instantly removes all anxieties.

The woman relaxed and a minute later she fell sound asleep.

The middle-aged man beside me was a lot calmer, and he was also pretty drunk. He briskly opened up the two little bottles of gin that the flight attendant had brought, mixed their contents with tonic in the harsh proportion of one to one, drank the result, then started dozing. He looked like a typical bohemian-jeans, cotton sweater, and a short beard. A writer? A musician? A theater director? London is a magnet for everyone-from businessmen and politicians to bohemians and rich playboys.

I could relax too, look out the window at the dark expanses of Poland, and do a bit of thinking.

Before Zabulon had shown up, everything had seemed fairly simple. The boy Victor had run into a vampire who was either hungry or stupid (or both at the same time). He had been killed. Once the vampire had sated his hunger and seen what he had done, he had gone into hiding. Sooner or later, using the old tried-and-tested police methods, the Night Watch of Edinburgh would check all the local and visiting bloodsuckers, find out if they had alibis or not, put someone under surveillance, and catch the killer. Gesar, suffering from some kind of guilt complex over Victor’s father, who had refused to become a Light Other, had decided to speed up the good work. And at the same time give me a chance to pick up some experience.

Logical?

Absolutely. Nothing odd about it.

Then Zabulon turns up.

And we are shown our noble Leonid Prokhorov, the might-have-been Light Magician, in a different light! It turns out that he is also a might-have-been Dark Magician! He has helped the Day Watch, and so Zabulon is burning with desire to punish his son’s killer!

Did such things happen?

Apparently they did. Apparently the man had decided to play for both teams at once. We Others cannot serve the Light and the Dark at the same time. But for human beings it’s simpler. That’s the way most of them live anyway.

Then…then Victor’s killing might not be a coincidence. Zabulon could have found out that Prokhorov was helping us and taken his revenge by killing Prokhorov’s son. But not with his own hands, of course.

Or the other way around. It was a sad thought, but Gesar could have given the order to eliminate Victor. Not for revenge, of course not! But the Great Magician would always find a morally acceptable way to justify what he wanted to do.

But stop! Then why would Gesar send me to Edinburgh? If he was guilty, then he had to understand that I wouldn’t try to conceal his guilt!

And if Zabulon was guilty, then he had even less reason to help me. For all his dainty manners, I would be only too glad to get rid of him!

So it wasn’t the Great Ones…

I took a little sip of wine and set down the glass.

The Great Ones weren’t responsible, but they suspected each other. And they were both relying on me. Gesar knew I wouldn’t pass up any opportunity to do Zabulon a bad turn. And Zabulon understood that under the right circumstances I could even go against Gesar.

Excellent. I couldn’t have asked to be dealt a better hand. A Great Light One and a Great Dark One, both significant figures in the worldwide struggle between the Light and the Dark, and both on my side. I could get help from them. And Foma Lermont-the Scot with a surname that echoed so sweetly in the Russian heart-he would help me too. And that meant the vampire had nowhere left to hide.

And that made me feel good. Evil goes unpunished far too often.

I got up and squeezed cautiously past the man next to me into the aisle. I looked up at the sign. The toilet at the front of the plane was occupied. Of course, the easiest thing to do would have been to wait, but I felt like stretching my legs. I moved aside the curtain that separated business class from economy and walked toward the tail of the plane.

A well-known ironic phrase says, “Economy-class passengers get there at the same time as first-class passengers, only for a lot less money.” Well, there wasn’t actually any first class on our plane, but the business class wasn’t bad at all-fine, wide seats, lots of space between the rows. And also the flight attendants were more helpful, the food was better, the drink was more abundant.

Not that the economy-class passengers were having it tough, however. Some were sleeping or dozing lightly, many of them were reading newspapers, novels, or guidebooks. A few people were working on their laptop computers and others were playing games. One highly original individual was piloting a plane. As far as I could see, it was a fairly realistic flight-simulator, and the player was actually flying a Boeing-767 from Moscow to London. Maybe that was his own cranky way of fighting his fear of flying?