'No. I don't think so. The threshold's still a long way off.' The boss shook his head. 'Otherwise, I think the Day Watch and the Night Watch would have wiped each other out already. The second path . . .'

A thin line, leading away from the black stripe. Broken off abruptly.

'Ehmination of the target. If the target dies, the vortex will disperse . . . of its own accord.'

Zabulon stirred and said politely:

'I'm prepared to help with this little initiative. The Night Watch cannot carry it out on its own, I believe? We are at your service.'

Silence. Then the boss laughed.

'As you wish,' said Zabulon with a shrug. 'I repeat, for the time being we offer you our assistance. We don't want a global catastrophe that will wipe out millions of people in an instant. Not yet.'

'The third path,' said the boss, looking at me. 'Watch carefully.'

Another line, branching off from the main root, gradually growing thinner and fading away to nothing.

'That's what happens if you get involved, Anton.'

'What do I have to do?' I asked.

'I don't know. Probability forecasting has never been an exact science. I only know one thing: you can remove the vortex.'

I suddenly had the stupid idea that maybe I was still being tested. A field work test ... I'd killed the vampire, and now . . . But it couldn't be. Not with such high stakes.

'I've never removed any black vortices.' My voice sounded different, not exactly frightened, more surprised. The Dark Magician Zabulon giggled repellently, in a woman's voice.

The boss nodded.

'I know that, Anton.'

He stood up, pulled his gown around him and walked up to me. He looked absurd, or at least his oriental garb seemed like an awkward parody in the setting of an ordinary Moscow apartment.

'Nobody has ever removed any vortices like this one. You'll be the first to try.'

I said nothing.

'And don't forget, Anton, if you mess this up, even just a tiny bit, anything at all, you'll be the first to burn. You won't even have enough time to withdraw into the Twilight. You know what happens to Light Ones when they're caught in an Inferno eruption?'

My throat went dry. I nodded.

'Pardon me, my dear enemy,' Zabulon said mockingly, 'but don't you allow your colleagues the right to choose? In such situations, even in wartime, it has always been usual to call for volunteers.'

'We've already made our call for volunteers,' the boss snapped without turning round. 'We've all been volunteers for a long time already. And we don't have any choice.'

'But we do. Always.' The Dark Magician laughed again.

'When we acknowledge that humans have the right to choose, we deprive ourselves of it, Zabulon,' said Boris Ignatievich, with a glance at the Dark Magician. 'You're playing to the wrong audience here. Don't interfere.'

'I say no more.' Zabulon lowered his head and shrank down again.

'Give it your best shot,' said the boss. 'Anton, I can't give you any advice. Try. I beg you, please, try. And . . . forget everything you've been taught. Don't believe anything I've said, don't believe what you wrote in your course notes, don't believe your own eyes, don't believe what anyone else says.'

'Then what do I believe, Boris Ignatievich?'

'If I knew that, Anton, I'd walk straight out of this headquarters and over to that building myself.'

We both looked out the window simultaneously. The black vortex was still swirling, swaying from side to side. Someone walking along the pavement suddenly turned to face into the snow and started making a wide circle round the stalk of the vortex. I noticed a path had already been trodden along the edge of the road: the people couldn't see the Evil straining to strike their world, but they could sense its approach.

'I'll watch Anton,' Olga said. 'Back him up and maintain communications.'

'From outside,' the boss agreed. 'Only from outside. Anton, go. We'll do the best we can to screen you from any kind of observation.'

The owl flew up off the bed and landed on my shoulder.

I glanced at my friends, then at the Dark Magician – he looked like he'd gone into hibernation – and walked out of the room. The noise in the rest of the apartment faded immediately.

They showed me out in total silence, without any unnecessary words, without any shoulder-slapping or helpful advice. After all, what I was doing wasn't such a big deal. I was only on my way to die.

It was quiet.

Too quiet somehow, even for a Moscow commuter suburb at that late hour. As if everyone had shut themselves in at home, turned out the lights and huddled down with their heads under the blankets, keeping quiet, saying nothing. Quiet, but not sleeping. The only movement was the trembling of the blue and red spots in the windows – the TVs were switched on everywhere. It's become a habit already, when you're afraid, when you're suffering – switch on the TV and watch absolutely everything, from the teleshopping to the news. People can't see the Twilight world. But they are capable of sensing how close it is.

'Olga, what can you tell me about this vortex?'

'Nothing definite.'

So that was it?

I stood at the entrance, watching the stalk of the vortex flexing like an elephant's trunk. I didn't feel like going in just yet.

'When . . . what size of vortex can you extinguish?'

'Five metres high, and I have a shot at it. Three metres and it's a sure thing.'

'And would the girl survive if you did that?'

'She might.'

There was something bothering me. In this unnatural silence, with even the cars in the street trying to avoid this doomed district of the city, there were still some sounds left . . .

Then it hit me. The dogs were howling. In all the apartments in all the buildings on all sides, the miserable dogs were complaining to their owners – in quiet, pitiful, helpless voices. They could see the Inferno moving closer.

'Olga, information about the girl. All of it.'

'Svetlana Nazarova. Twenty-five years old. Physician, employed in polyclinic number seventeen. Has never previously come to the attention of the Night Watch. Has never previously come to the attention of the Day Watch. No magical powers detected. Her parents and younger brother live in Brateevo, she maintains occasional contact with them, mostly by phone. Four close girlfriends, currently being checked, so far nothing exceptional. Relations with other people equable, no serious hostility observed.'

'A doctor,' I said thoughtfully. 'That's a lead, Olga. Some old man or old woman dissatisfied with their treatment. There's often an upsurge of latent magical powers in old age.'

'That's being checked out,' Olga replied. 'So far nothing's turned up.'

There was no point, it was stupid making wild guesses, people cleverer than I am had already been working on the girl for half a day.

'What else?'

'Blood group O. No serious illnesses, occasional mild cardiac arrhythmia. First sexual contact at the age of seventeen, with one of her peers, out of curiosity. She was married four months, has been divorced for two years, relations with her ex-husband have remained equable. No children.'

'The husband's powers?'

'He hasn't any. Neither does his new wife. That's the first thing that was checked.'

'Enemies?'

'Two female ill-wishers at work. Two rejected admirers at work. A school friend who tried to get a fake sick-note six months ago.'

'And?'

'She refused.'

'Well, well. And how much magic have they got?'

'Next to none. Their malevolence quotient is ordinary. They all have only weak magical powers. They couldn't create a vortex like this one.'

'Any patients died? Recently?'

'None.'

'Then where did the curse come from?' Yes, now I could see why the Watch had got nowhere with this. Svetlana had turned out to be a thoroughgoing goody-two-shoes. Five enemies in twenty-five years – that was something to be proud of.

Olga didn't answer my rhetorical question.

'I've got to go,' I said. I turned towards the windows where I could see the two guards' silhouettes. One of them waved to me. 'Olga, how did Ignat try to work this?'

'The standard approach. A meeting in the street, the "diffident intellectual" line. Coffee in a bar. Conversation. A rapid rise in the mark's attraction level. He bought champagne and liqueurs, they came here.'

'And after that?'

'The vortex started to grow.'

'And the reason?'

'There was none. She liked Ignat, in fact she was starting to feel strongly attracted. But at precisely that moment the vortex started to grow catastrophically fast. Ignat ran through three styles of behaviour and managed to get an unambiguous invitation to stay the night. That was when the vortex shifted gear into explosive growth. He was recalled. The vortex stabilised.'

'How was he recalled?'

I was frozen through already, and my boots felt horribly damp on my feet. And I still wasn't ready.

'The "sick mother" line. A call to his mobile phone, he apologised, promised to call her tomorrow. There were no hitches, the mark didn't get suspicious.'

'And the vortex stabilised?'

Olga didn't answer, she was obviously communicating with the analysts. Then:

'It even shrank a little bit. Three centimetres. But that might just be natural recoil when the energy input's cut off.'

There was something in all this, but I couldn't formulate my vague suspicions clearly.

'Where's her practice, Olga?'

'Right here, we're in it. It includes this house. Patients often come to her apartment.'

'Excellent. Then I'll go as a patient.'

'Do you need any help implanting false memories?'

'I'll manage.'

'The boss says okay,' Olga replied after a pause. 'Go ahead. Your persona is: Anton Gorodetsky, programmer, unmarried, under observation for three years, diagnosis – stomach ulcer, resident in this building, apartment number sixty-four. It's empty right now, if necessary we can provide backup on that.'

'Three years is too much for me,' I confessed. 'A year. One year, max.'

'Okay.'

I looked at Olga and she looked at me with those unblinking bird's eyes, and somewhere in there I could still see part of that dirty, aristocratic woman who'd drunk cognac with me in my kitchen.

'Good luck,' she said. 'Try to reduce the size of the vortex. Ten metres at least . . . then I'll risk it.'

The bird flew up into the air and instantly withdrew into the Twilight, down into the very deepest layers.