«Anton, you can't anticipate the consequences. You over-reacted to a minor annoyance. Your little piece of magic led to intervention by the Dark Ones. You agreed to a compromise with them. But the saddest thing of all is that there was no need for magical intervention in the first place.»
«Okay, okay, I admit it. So now what?»
The bird's voice was sounding more lifelike now, developing more expression.
I supposed it must have been a long time since she'd last spoken.
«Now—nothing. We'll have to hope for the best.»
«Are you going to tell the boss what happened?»
«No. At least, not yet. We're partners, after all.»
I felt a warm glow in my heart. This sudden improvement in relations with my partner would have made any mistakes worthwhile.
«Thanks. What do you advise?»
«You're doing everything right. Look for the trail.»
I'd have preferred rather less predictable advice…
«Let's go.»
By two o'clock, as well as the circle line, I'd combed the entire gray line too. Maybe I am a lousy operational agent, but there was no way I could have failed to spot the trail from yesterday, when I'd captured the image myself. The girl with the black vortex spinning over her head hadn't gotten out here. I'd have to go back and start again from the point where we'd met.
At Kurskaya I went up on the escalator and out of the metro and bought a plastic tub of salad and a coffee from a van right there on the street. The very sight of the hamburgers and sausages made me start feeling sick, even though the amount of meat in them was strictly symbolic.
«Will you have something?» I asked my invisible companion.
«No, thank you.»
Standing there with the fine snow falling on me, I picked at my Olivier salad with a tiny plastic fork and sipped the hot coffee. A bum who'd been counting on me buying beer, so that he could have the empty bottle, hung about for a bit and then took off into the metro to get warm. Nobody else paid any attention to me. The girl behind the counter served the hungry passersby; faceless streams of people flooded away from the station and back toward it. The salesman at a bookstall was trying wearily and unenthusiastically to foist some book or other on a customer. The customer didn't like the price.
«I must be in a bad mood or something…« I muttered.
«Why?»
«Everything looks dark and gloomy. All the people are lowlifes and idiots; the salad's frozen; my boots feel damp.»
The bird on my shoulder gave a derisive screech.
«No, Anton, it's not just your mood. You can sense the approach of the Inferno.»
«I'm not noted for being particularly sensitive.»
«That's just the point.»
I glanced at the station, tried to get a close look at people's faces. Some of them were sensing it too. The ones who stood right on the very boundary line between human being and Other were tense and depressed. They couldn't understand why, so they were compensating by acting cheerful.
«Darkness and Light…What will it be when it happens, Olga?»
«Anything at all. You stalled the time of the eruption, but now when the vortex strikes the consequences will be absolutely catastrophic. That's the effect of delay.»
«The boss didn't tell me that.»
«Why should he? You did the right thing. Now at least there's a chance.»
«Olga, how old are you?» I asked. Between human beings the question might have been taken as an insult. But for us age doesn't have any particular limits.
«Very old, Anton. For instance, I can remember the uprising.»
«The revolution?»
«The uprising on Senate Square in 1825.» The owl chortled. I didn't say anything. The owl could be even older than the boss.
«What's your rank, partner?»
«I don't have one. I was stripped of all rights.»
«I'm sorry.»
«No problem. I came to terms with it a long time ago.»
Her voice was still cheerful, even mocking. But something told me Olga had never come to terms with it.
«If you don't mind me asking… Why did they shut you in that body?»
«There was no other choice. Living in a wolf's body is much harder.»
«Wait…« I dropped the remains of the salad in a garbage can. I looked at my shoulder, but, of course, I didn't see the owl—to do that I would have had to withdraw into the Twilight. «Who are you? If you're a shape-shifter, then why are you with us? If you're a magician, then why such a strange punishment?»
«That's got nothing to do with the job, Anton.» For just a moment here was a hint of steel in her voice. «But it all started with me compromising with the Dark Ones. Only a small compromise. I thought I'd calculated the consequences, but I was wrong.»
So that was it…
«Was that why you started talking? You wanted to warn me off, but you were too late?»
No answer.
As if Olga was already regretting being so frank.
«Let's get on with the job…« I said. And just then the phone squeaked in my pocket.
It was Larissa. What was she doing working two straight shifts?
«Anton, listen carefully… They've picked up that girl's trail. Perovo station.»
«Sugar,» was all I said. Working out in the dormitory suburbs was absolute hell.
«Right,» Larissa agreed. She was no field operative… that was probably why she was sitting by the phone. But she was bright. «Anton, get across to Perovo. All our guys are being concentrated over there, they're following the trail. And another thing… they've spotted the Day Watch there.»
«I get the picture.» I folded my phone away.
I didn't get a thing. Did the Dark Ones already know about everything? Were they just yearning for the Inferno to erupt? Then maybe it was no accident that they'd stopped me?
Nonsense. A major disaster in Moscow was not in the interests of Darkness. But of course, they wouldn't try to stop the twister either: That would go against their nature.
So I didn't go into the metro after all. I stopped a car. It ought to save me a bit of time, even if not that much. I sat beside the driver, a swarthy, hook-nosed intellectual about forty years old. The car was new, and the driver himself gave the impression of doing very well for himself. It seemed a bit strange for him to be earning a bit on the side by offering a private taxi service.
… Perovo. A large city district. Crowds of people. Light and Darkness, all twisted up together into a knot. And a few institutions, casting beams of Darkness and Light in all directions. Working there was going to be like trying to find a grain of sand on the floor of a crowded discotheque with the strobe lights on…
I wouldn't be much use to anyone, or actually, I wouldn't be any use at all. But I'd been ordered to go, so I had to. Maybe they'd ask me to identify the girl.
«For some reason I was sure we'd get lucky,» I whispered, gazing at the road ahead. We drove past Elk Island Park, a pretty grim place; the Dark Ones gather there for their sabbaths. And when they do, the rights of ordinary people aren't always respected. Five nights a year we have to put up with anything. Well, almost anything.
«I thought so too,» whispered Olga.
«I can't compete with the field agents,» I said, shaking my head.
The driver squinted sideways at me; I'd accepted the price without haggling, and he'd seemed happy enough to go in our direction. But a man talking to himself always arouses suspicions.
«I just blew this job,» I told the driver with a sigh. «That is, I completely screwed it up. I thought I could make up for it today, but they got along without me.»
«So what's your hurry?» the driver asked. He didn't look like the talkative type, but he was interested enough.
«I was ordered to go,» I said.
I wondered who he thought I was.
«So what do you do?»
«I'm a programmer,» I answered. And I was telling the truth too.
«Fantastic,» the driver commented, and laughed. What did he find so fantastic about it? «Do you make a living?»
He didn't really have to ask. After all, I wasn't riding the metro. But I answered anyway:
«I do ok.»
«I wasn't just asking out of curiosity,» my driver unexpectedly confided. «My system administrator's leaving me…«
My system administrator… I see!
«I personally see the finger of fate in this. I give a man a lift and he turns out to be a programmer. I think you're already doomed.»
He laughed, like he was trying to make light of his excessive confidence.
«Have you done any work with local networks?»
«Yes.»
«A network of fifty machines. It has to be maintained. We pay well.»
I felt myself starting to smile. It was a good offer. A local network. Decent money. And no one sending you out at night to catch vampires, making you drink blood and sniff out trails on the frozen streets…
«Shall I give you my card?» The man deftly slipped one hand into his jacket pocket. «Think about it…«
«No thanks. I'm afraid no one just leaves my kind of work.»
«KGB, is it?» the driver asked with a frown.
«More serious than that,» I answered. «Much more serious. But something like it.»
«Oh, well…« the driver said, and paused. «A pity. And I thought it was a sign from on high. Do you believe in fate?»
He'd slipped into a familiar tone quite naturally. I liked that.
«No.»
«Why not?» asked the driver, genuinely surprised, as if he'd never met anyone but fatalists in his life.
«There's no such thing as fate. It's been proved.»
«By whom?»
«In the place I work.»
He laughed.
«That's great. So it's not meant to be! Where shall I stop for you?»
We were already driving down Zelyony Avenue.
I peered hard through the layer of ordinary daily reality, into the Twilight. I couldn't make anything out clearly; my powers weren't strong enough. I sensed it rather than saw it—a cluster of dim lights in the gray gloom. Almost the entire central office was there.
«Over there…«
While I was still in ordinary reality I couldn't see my colleagues. I walked over the gray city snow toward the little square buried under snowdrifts between the apartment blocks and the avenue. A few frozen little trees, a few lines of footsteps—either some kids had been having fun or a drunk had just walked straight across.