«Maybe you'd like a bit of meat?»
The owl turned away.
«Have it your own way,» I said. «No doubt when you get hungry you'll find some way to communicate.»
Chapter 3
I like walking around town inside the twilight. You don't actually become invisible, or you'd have people bumping into you all the time. They just somehow look straight through you and don't notice you. But this time I'd have to work out in the open.
The day's not our time. Funny as it may seem, the adherents of the Light work at night, when the Dark Ones become active. Just at the moment there wasn't too much the Dark Ones could do. During the daytime vampires, werewolves, and Dark Magicians are obliged to live like ordinary people.
Most of them, that is.
I was walking around the Tulskaya metro station. Following the boss's advice, I'd worked through all the stations on the circle line where the girl with the black Inferno vortex could possibly have left the metro. She should have left a trail behind, a weak one maybe, but still detectable. Now I'd decided to work my way out along the radial lines.
It was a stupid station in a stupid district, with two exits set quite a distance apart from each other. A market, the pompous-looking skyscraper occupied by the tax police, a massive apartment block. With all those dark emanations all around, any chance of picking up the trail of the black vortex was looking pretty doubtful.
Especially if it had never even been there.
I walked around everything, trying to sniff out the girl's aura, sometimes glancing into the Twilight at the invisible bird nestling on my shoulder. The owl was dozing. It couldn't sense anything either, and for some reason I felt certain its reconnaissance skills were better than mine.
Once a militiaman checked my papers. Twice I was pestered by crazy young guys who wanted to give me, absolutely free—that is, for only fifty bucks—a Chinese fan, a child's toy, and a dirt-cheap Korean telephone.
And again I couldn't control myself. I brushed aside the next sidewalk salesman who pestered me and performed a remoralization. Only a slight one, right on the very edge of what's allowed. Maybe the young guy would start looking for a different kind of work. Or maybe he wouldn't…
But that very instant someone grabbed hold of my elbows. One minute there was no one there—then the next suddenly there was a young couple: an attractive-looking young woman with red hair and a solid-looking guy with a surly expression on his face.
«Hold it,» said the girl. She was the leader, I could tell that right away. «Day Watch.»
Light and Darkness!
I shrugged and looked at them.
«Give your name,» the girl demanded.
There was no point in lying; they'd captured the image of my aura already, and after that, identifying the individual is only a matter of time.
«Anton Gorodetsky.»
They waited.
«Other,» I confessed. «Night Watch agent.»
They lifted their hands off my elbows, and even took a step back. But they didn't seem disappointed.
«Okay, let's enter the Twilight,» said the guy.
They didn't look like vampires. That was one good thing. At least I could hope for a certain degree of objectivity. I sighed and shifted from one reality into another.
The first surprise was that the couple turned out to be genuinely young. A witch about twenty-five years old and a warlock about thirty, roughly my age. I thought that if I needed to, I could probably even recall their names; there weren't that many witches and warlocks born in the late seventies.
The second surprise was that the owl wasn't there on my shoulder. Or rather, she was: I could feel her claws and I could see her, but only with a bit of an effort. It was as if the bird had shifted realities at the same time as I had and moved into a deeper level of the Twilight.
This was getting really interesting!
«Day Watch,» the girl repeated. «Alisa Donnikova, Other.»
«Pyotr Nesterov, Other,» the young guy muttered.
«You have some kind of problem?»
The girl drilled me with one of those specialty «witch's glances.» She started looking even more delightful and beguiling with every moment. Of course, I'm protected against direct influence; it's not possible to bewitch me, but it certainly was impressive.
«We're not the ones with the problem. Anton Gorodetsky, you have entered into unsanctioned contact with a human being.»
«Yes? And what was that?»
«Only a seventh-degree intervention,» the witch admitted reluctantly. «But a fact is a fact. And you also urged him toward the Light.»
«Are we going to draw up a charge report?» I suddenly found the entire situation amusing. Seventh degree was next to nothing—a level of influence on the borderline between magic and ordinary conversation.
«We are.»
«And what are we going to write? A Night Watch agent slightly increased one human being's aversion to deception?»
«Thereby disrupting the established balance,» the warlock rapped out.
«Really? And what harm does it do to the Darkness? If the guy stops working as a petty crook, his life is bound to get worse. He'll be more moral, but more unhappy too. Under the terms of the commentaries to the treaty on the balance of power, that's not regarded as a violation of the balance.»
«Sophistry,» the young woman said curtly. «You're a Night Watch agent. What might be pardonable for an ordinary Other is not acceptable from you.»
She was right. It was still a violation, even if it was petty.
«He was obstructing me. I have the right to use magical intervention in the course of conducting an investigation.»
«Are you on duty, Anton?»
«Yes.»
«Why during the day?»
«I have a special assignment. You can direct your inquiry to my superiors. Or rather, you have the right to address your inquiry to your superiors.»
The witch and the warlock exchanged glances. No matter how opposed our goals and our moralities might be, the two hierarchies had to collaborate.
Only, to be quite frank about it, nobody really likes to get the bosses involved.
«Very well,» the witch agreed reluctantly. «Anton, we can limit ourselves to a verbal warning.»
I looked around. All around me there were people moving slowly through the gray gloom. Ordinary people, incapable of moving out of their own little world. We were Others, and though I stood on the side of Light and the other two were on the side of Darkness, we had far more in common with each other than with any of those ordinary human beings.
«On what terms?»
You must never try to second-guess the Darkness. You must never make any concessions. And it's even more dangerous to accept any gifts from it. But rules are made only in order to be broken.
«No terms.»
Well, that was a surprise!
I looked at Alisa, trying to figure out the catch in what she'd said. Pyotr was obviously indignant at his partner's behavior; he was angry, he wanted to expose an adept of the Light as a criminal. That meant I didn't have to worry about him.
Where was the trap?
«That's not acceptable to me,» I said, with a sigh of relief—I'd spotted the catch. «Alisa, thank you for your offer of a peaceful resolution. I can accept it, but in a similar situation I promise to forgive you a minor magical intervention, up to and including the seventh degree.»
«Very well, Other,» Alisa agreed readily. She held out her hand and I automatically shook it. «We have a personal agreement.»
The owl on my shoulder flapped its wings. There was a furious screech right in my ear. And a moment later the bird materialized in the Twilight world.
Alisa took a step back and the pupils of her eyes rapidly extended into vertical slits. The young warlock took up a defensive posture.
«We have an agreement,» the witch repeated sullenly.
What was going on?
I realized too late that I shouldn't have entered into an agreement with Olga there. But then—what was so terrible about what had happened? As if I hadn't been there when other guys from the Watch had concluded alliances like this, made concessions, agreed to terms for cooperating with the Dark Ones; even the boss himself had done it! Sure, it's undesirable, but sometimes you have to do it!
Our goal is not to exterminate the Dark Ones. Our goal is to maintain the balance. The Dark Ones will disappear only when human beings conquer the Evil in themselves. Or we'll disappear, if they decide they like the Darkness better than the Light.
«The agreement's been made,» I told the owl. «Cool it. It's no big deal. Just standard collaboration.»
Alisa smiled and gave me a wave. She took the warlock by the elbow, and they moved away. A couple of moments later they were out of the Twilight and setting off along the sidewalk. An ordinary young couple.
«What's eating you?» I asked. «Well? Field work has always been built on compromises!»
«You made a mistake.»
Olga's voice was strange; it didn't match her appearance. It was soft, velvety, musical. The way werecats talk, not birds.
«Oho! So you can talk now?»
«Yes.»
«Then why didn't you say anything before?»
«Everything was okay before.»
I laughed, remembering the old joke about the child who didn't speak for years.
«I'll leave the Twilight, okay? And meanwhile you can explain what mistake I've made. Minor compromises with the Dark Ones ate inevitable in this line of work.»
«You're not well-enough qualified to make compromises.»
The world around me turned colored. It was like switching modes in a video camera, when you change from «sepia» or «old movie» to the standard view. The comparison is really quite apt in some ways: The Twilight is an «old movie,» a really old one that humankind has managed to forget. It finds it easier to live that way.
I set off toward the steps down into the metro, snarling to my invisible companion on the way:
«And just what have qualifications got to do with it?»
«A high-ranking Watch member is able to foresee the consequences of a compromise. Whether it's no more than just a minor bilateral trade-off and the effects will be self-neutralizing, or a trap, a trick—and you'll lose out.»
«I doubt if a seventh-grade intervention's likely to lead to disaster!»
A man walking along beside me glanced at me in surprise. I was just about to tell him something like: «I'm harmless, the non-violent kind of psycho.» It's a great way of curing excessive curiosity. But the man had already sped up; he must have come to a similar conclusion himself.