I couldn't help squirming on my chair. She had the most magnificent proof possible of the existence of 'black' magic hanging right there over her head, a textbook case.

'I could show you one,' I said. I remembered how they'd brought Danila into the office one time. It was after an ordinary fight – not absolutely ordinary, but not so heavy either. He'd just been unlucky. They were detaining a family of werewolves for some petty violation of the Treaty. The werewolves could have given themselves up and nothing more would have come of it than a brief joint investigation by the two Watches.

But the werewolves decided to resist. They probably had an entire trail of bloody crimes behind them that the Night Watch knew nothing about – and now they never would. Danila went in first, and got badly mauled. His left lung, his heart, a deep trauma to the liver, one kidney torn right out.

The boss fixed Danila up, with a helping hand from almost everyone in the Watch who had any strength right then. I was standing in the third circle, our job was not so much to provide the boss with energy as to cut out external influences. But sometimes I took a look at Danila. He kept sinking into the Twilight, either on his own or with the boss. Every time he surfaced into reality his wounds were smaller. It was impressive, but not really all that difficult, after all the wounds were still fresh and they weren't predestined. But I had no doubt that the boss could cure Svetlana's mother. Even if the line of her destiny broke off in the near future, even if she was definitely going to die. She could be cured. Death would simply be due to other causes . . .

'Anton, aren't you afraid to talk like that?'

I shrugged. Svetlana sighed.

'If you give someone hope, you become responsible, Anton. I don't believe in miracles. But right now I just might. Doesn't that scare you?'

I looked into her eyes.

'No, Svetlana. There are lots of things that scare me. But different things.'

'Anton, the vortex is down by twenty centimetres. The boss says to tell you well done.'

There was something about her voice I didn't like. A conversation through the Twilight isn't like an ordinary one, you can sense emotion.

'What's happened?' I asked through the dead grey shroud.

'Keep going, Anton.'

'What's happened?'

'I wish I could feel so self-assured,' said Svetlana. She looked at the window: 'Did you hear that? A kind of rustling sound . . .'

'The wind,' I suggested. 'Or someone walking by.'

'Olga, tell me!'

'Anton, everything's fine with the vortex. It's slowly shrinking. You're increasing her internal resistance somehow. They calculate that by morning the vortex will I have shrunk to a theoretically safe size. Then I can get to work.'

'Then what's the problem? There is one, Olga, I can sense it!'

She didn't answer.

'Olga, are we partners or not?'

That worked. I couldn't see the owl, but I knew her eyes had glinted and she'd glanced towards the windows of our field headquarters. Into the faces of the boss and the observer from the Dark Ones.

'Anton, there's a problem with the boy.'

'With Egor?'

'Anton, what are you thinking about?' Svetlana asked. It was hard work holding simultaneous conversations in the real world and the Twilight one.

'Just wishing I could be in two places at the same time.'

'Anton, your mission is far more important.'

'Tell me, Olga.'

'I don't understand, Anton.' That was Svetlana again.

'You know, I've just realised that a friend of mine is in trouble. Big trouble,' I said, looking into her eyes.

'The girl vampire. She's taken the boy.'

I didn't feel a thing . . . No emotions, no pity, no anger, no sadness. I just felt cold and empty inside.

I must have been expecting it. I didn't know why, but I was.

'But Bear and Tiger Cub are there!'

'It just happened.'

'And what's happened to him?'

As long as she hadn't initiated him. Death, simple death. Eternal death was more terrible.

'He's alive. She's taken him as a hostage.'

'What?'

That had never happened before. It had simply never happened. Taking hostages was a game humans played.

'The girl vampire's demanding negotiations. She wants a trial. . . she's hoping to find some way out.'

In my head I gave the vampire ten out of ten for inventiveness. She didn't have a chance of getting away and she'd never had one. But if she could shift all the blame on to her eliminated friend, the one who'd initiated her ... I don't know anything, I don't understand a thing. I just got bitten and turned into what I am. I didn't know the rules. I hadn't read the Treaty. I'll be a normal, law-abiding vampire . . .

It might even work! I thought. Especially if the Night Watch made a few concessions. And we would . . . we had no choice. Every human life had to be protected.

I even went limp in relief. You might say, what was the boy to me, anyway? If he'd drawn the short straw, he could have been the legitimate prey of vampires and werewolves. That's just the way life is. And I'd have walked straight by. Never mind the short straw – how many times had the Night Watch got there too late, how many people had been killed by the Dark Ones? But it was a strange thing. I was already involved in the struggle for him, I'd stepped into the Twilight and spilled blood. And it wasn't all the same to me any more. Not by a long way . . .

Conversations in the Twilight move a lot faster than they do in the human world. But I still had to divide myself between Olga and Svetlana.

'Anton, don't bother your head about my problems.'

In spite of everything, I felt like laughing. Right then there were hundreds of heads trying to deal with her problems, and Svetlana had no idea, she knew nothing about it. But it was enough to mention other people's problems, so tiny in comparison with the black Inferno vortex, and she immediately started worrying about them.

'You know,' I said, 'there's a law called the law of paired events. You have problems, but I wasn't talking about them. There's someone else who has really big problems. His own personal problems. But that doesn't make them any easier.'

She understood. I liked the fact that she wasn't embarrassed either. She just added:

'My problems are personal too.'

'Not entirely,' I said. 'At least, I don't think so.'

'And that other person – can you help him?'

'Someone else will help him,' I said.

'Are you sure? Thanks for listening to me, but it's impossible to help me. It's just my dumb destiny, I guess.'

'Is she throwing me out?' I asked through the Twilight. I didn't want to touch her mind right then.

'No,' Olga replied. 'No . . . Anton, she can feel it.'

Did she really have some Other powers? Or was it just a freak upsurge, triggered by the Inferno being there so long?

'What can she feel?'

'That you're needed at the other place.'

'Why me?'

'That crazy bloodsucking bitch is demanding you for the negotiations. The one who killed her partner.'

That really made me feel sick. We'd done an elective on anti-terrorist tactics, more so that we could avoid having to use our powers as Others if we got caught up in human disputes than for any real requirements of the job. We'd covered terrorist psychology, and in those terms, the girl vampire was acting perfectly logically. I was the first Watch agent she had ever come across. I'd killed her mentor and wounded her. For her the image of her enemy was concentrated in me.

'How long has she been asking for me?'

'About ten minutes.'

I looked into Svetlana's eyes. Dry, calm, not a single tear. The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.

'Sveta, would you mind if I went now?'

She shrugged.

'This is all so stupid . . .' I said. 'It seems to me that you need help right now. At least someone who can listen to you. Or is willing to sit beside you and drink cold tea.'

A faint smile and a barely perceptible nod.

'But you're right, there is someone else who needs help.'

'Anton, you're strange.'

I shook my head:

'Not just strange. Very strange.'

'I have this feeling . . . I've known you for a long time, but it's like we'd never met before. And then – it's like you're talking to me and someone else at the same time.'

'Yes,' I said. 'That's it exactly.'

'Maybe I'm going insane.'

'No.'

'Anton . . . this wasn't just a chance visit, was it?'

I didn't answer. Olga whispered something and stopped talking. The gigantic vortex rotated slowly above Svetlana's head.

'No, it wasn't,' I said. 'I came to help.'

If the Dark Magician who had cursed her was watching us . . . That is, if it wasn't just an accidental 'mother's curse', but a calculated blow struck by a professional. . .

We looked at each other without saying anything.

I had the feeling I could almost grasp what was really going on here. The answer was there, right beside me, and all our theories were stupid nonsense, we were following the old rules and maps that the boss had asked me to disregard. But to do that, I needed to think, I had to cut myself off for at least a second from what was going on, stare at a blank wall or a mindless TV screen and stop feeling torn between the desire to help one small human being or tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Stop swinging one way then the other trying to resolve this lousy mess, which would still turn out badly whichever way the cards fell, and the only difference it would make to me was that I would die quickly when the blast of the Inferno flung me into the grey expanses of the Twilight world, or slowly and painfully, kindling the dull flame of self-contempt in my own heart.

'Sveta, I've got to go,' I said.

'Anton!' It wasn't Olga, it was the boss. 'Anton . . .'

He stopped, he couldn't give me any orders, the situation was an ethical impasse. The girl vampire was obviously sticking to her demands and refusing to negotiate with anyone except me. If he ordered me to stay, the boss would condemn the young hostage to death. He couldn't order me, he couldn't even ask me.

'We're organising your withdrawal. . .'

'Better just tell the vampire I'm coming.'

Svetlana reached out and touched my hand:

'Are you going away for ever?'

'Till the morning,' I said.

'I don't want you to go,' she said simply.