So, apparently everything in the world could sense the approaching cataclysm, including people and birds…

The cell phone in my pocket jangled. Edgar was startled and tensed up. I looked inquiringly at Arina.

“Answer it, but be discreet,” she said.

I looked at the phone. It was Svetlana. “Hello.”

As ill luck would have it, the connection was excellent. You would never have suspected that we were thousands of kilometers apart.

“Are you still working, Anton?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m driving in the car.”

Arina was watching me closely. She was bound to be able to hear every word that Svetlana said.

“I deliberately didn’t call. They told me something had happened…some terrorists or other, pumped full of magic…is that why you’re late?”

A faint spark of hope began to glimmer in my breast. I wasn’t late yet! Svetlana couldn’t have been expecting me home from work so early.

“Yes, of course, that’s why,” I said.

Come on, now, guess! Use magic! You can find out where I am now. Raise the alarm. Warn Gesar, and he’ll get in touch with Lermont. If the Edinburgh Night Watch are expecting an attack, that will be the end of the Last Watch.

“Make sure you don’t get stuck for too long,” Svetlana told me. “Surely you have enough people working for you to manage all these things? Don’t take everything on yourself. OK?”

“Of course I won’t,” I said.

“Is Semyon with you?” Svetlana asked casually.

Before I could answer, Arina shook her head. Of course, if Svetlana suspected something, she could phone Semyon after I said yes.

“No,” I said, “I’m on my own. I’ve got a separate job to do.”

“Do you want me to help? I’m getting a bit bored sitting at home,” Svetlana said, and laughed.

Arina was alarmed and tense now.

“Don’t be silly, this is nothing special,” I said. “Just an inspection visit.”

“As long as you’re sure,” said Svetlana, sounding a bit disappointed. “Call me if you get completely stuck. Oi, Nadya’s trundling something around. Bye…”

She cut off the call and I started to put the phone away in my pocket. Trying to keep cool while looking straight into Arina’s relaxed face, I pressed three buttons on the phone: Incoming Calls-Call Last Number-Off.

That was all. I couldn’t risk leaving the phone switched on. Arina might hear the ringing tone from inside my pocket. Had the call gone through? Had the international telephone network managed to process it before it was canceled? I didn’t know. I could only put my hope in the greed of the cell phone network operators-it was more profitable for them to put the call through and debit my account.

And also, of course, I put my hope in Svetlana’s common sense. When her phone rang and then stopped again, she would have to use magic instead of trying to call me back. Arina and Edgar were far older than me. For them a cell phone would always be a portable version of a cumbersome apparatus into which one had to shout, “Young lady! Young lady! Give me the Smolny Institute!”

“She suspected something,” Edgar said to Arina. “You shouldn’t have done that with the bomb…it didn’t have to be detonated, but at least we would have had a trump card in reserve!”

“Never mind,” said Arina. “Even if she did suspect something, they don’t have any time. Anton, give me that phone.”

A glint of suspicion had appeared in her eyes. I gave her the cell without saying anything, handing it to her gingerly with the tips of my fingers and not touching the keys.

Arina looked at the phone and saw that it was in waiting mode. She shrugged and switched it off completely.

“Let’s do without any calls, all right? If you need to call anyone, you can ask me for my phone.”

“I won’t bankrupt you?”

“No, you won’t.” Arina took out her own phone and dialed a number-not from the contacts list, but the old way, pressing every key. She raised the phone to her ear and waited for an answer. When it came she said quietly, “It’s time. Go to work.”

“Still haven’t run out of accomplices, then?”

“They’re not accomplices, Anton, they’re hired hands. People can be perfectly effective allies if you equip them with a small number of amulets. Especially the kind that Edgar has.”

I looked at the stately royal castle towering above the city, crowning the remains of an ancient volcano now forever extinct. Well, well, this was the second time I’d ended up in Edinburgh, and I still didn’t have time to visit its main tourist attraction…

“And what have you prepared this time?” I asked. There was an idea flickering on the edge of my consciousness, scratching away at it like Schrodinger’s Cat. Something very important.

“Funnily enough, I’ve actually prepared one of Merlin’s artifacts,” Edgar said. He had by now recovered from my un-gentlemanly blow. “It’s called Merlin’s Sleep.”

“Ah, yes, he was rather uninventive with his names for things,” I said with a nod. “‘Sleep’?”

“Just Sleep,” Edgar said, shrugging. “Arina was very upset about the high number of casualties the last time. This time it will all be very…civilized.”

“Ah, and there’s the first little spark of civilization,” I said, looking at the smoke rising from a taxi stopped in front of us. The driver had clearly fallen asleep as he took a curve, and his car had run up onto the sidewalk and crashed into an old building. But the most terrible thing was not the smoke coming from under the taxi’s hood, or even the motionless bodies inside it. The sidewalks were covered with the motionless bodies of locals and tourists-and one young woman had clearly been knocked aside by the taxi’s radiator and then crushed against the wall by its old-fashioned black box of a body. She was probably dying. The only thing I could be glad about was that she was dying in her sleep.

This was not the humane Morpheus spell that we learned in the Night Watch, the one that gave people several seconds before they lost consciousness. Merlin’s Sleep acted instantly. And it was very precisely localized: I could see the boundary line of the artifact’s influence. Two adults stepped inside it and fell to the ground, instantly overcome by sleep. But the seven-or eight-year-old boy who had been walking a few steps behind them was still awake, and now he was crying as he tugged his motionless parents from just over the zone. He had little prospect of help-those people who had not yet entered the zone of sleep were running away from it with remarkable alacrity. I could understand why. To someone who didn’t know the truth, it all looked like the effect of some highly poisonous gas. And somehow, the sight of this little boy trying to get his parents to their feet on the other side of the scattering crowd was almost as tragic as the sight of the young woman killed in the crash.

Edgar continued gazing fixedly at the smoking taxi after we had driven past it. That would probably have been a good moment to escape…if I had been intending to escape.

“Does that remind you of something?” I asked.

“Incidental casualties are inevitable,” Edgar said in a voice that had turned flat and hoarse. “I knew what I was getting into.”

“What a pity they didn’t,” I said. And I looked at Edgar through the Twilight.

This was bad, very bad. He was hung all over with amulets, dozens of charms had been applied to him, and there were spells trembling on the tips of his fingers, ready to dart off at any moment. He was positively glowing with Power waiting to be used. Arina and Gennady looked exactly the same. Even the vampire had not scorned the magical trinkets.

I wouldn’t be able to manage by using force.

We drove to the Dungeons in total silence, past sidewalks strewn with bodies and motionless vehicles (I saw three that were burning). We got out of the car.

On Princes Street, on the other side of the ravine, everything had stopped dead too, but I could already hear a siren howling somewhere. People always recover from a panic. Even if they don’t know what it is they’re up against.