It was completely dark in the kitchen, but of course I didn't bother turning on the light. I opened the door of the refrigerator—the small light bulb I'd screwed out of its socket lay there freezing with the food. I looked at the saucepan with the colander sitting on top of it. Lying in the colander was a lump of half-defrosted meat. I lifted out the colander, raised the saucepan to my lips, and took a gulp.

If anyone thinks pig's blood tastes good, then he's wrong.

I put the saucepan with the remains of the thawed-out blood back in the refrigerator and walked through to the bathroom. The dull blue lamp hardly lightened the darkness at all. I took a long time cleaning my teeth, brushing furiously, then I gave in, made another trip to the kitchen and took a gulp of icy vodka from the refrigerator. Now my stomach didn't just feel warm, it felt hot. A wonderful set of sensations: frost on my teeth and fire in my stomach.

«I hope you…« I started thinking, about the boss, but I caught myself just in time. He was quite capable of sensing even a half-formed curse. I went through into my room and started gathering together the clothing scattered all over the place. I discovered my pants under the bed, my socks on the windowsill, and for some reason my shirt was hanging on the mask of Chkhoen.

The ancient king of Korea eyed me disapprovingly.

«Why can't you just watch over me?» I growled, and then the phone started screeching again. I hopped around the room until I found the receiver.

«Anton, was there something you wanted to say to me?» the disembodied voice asked.

«Not a thing,» I said sullenly.

«I see. Now add 'glad to serve, your honor' to that.»

«I'm not glad. And there's nothing to be done about it… your honor.»

The boss paused for a moment:

«Anton, I really would like you to take this situation we have on our hands a bit more seriously. All right? I expect you to report back in the morning, in any case. And… good luck.»

I didn't exactly feel ashamed. But I wasn't feeling quite so irritated anymore. I put my cell phone in my jacket pocket, opened the cupboard in the hallway, and wondered for a while what else I ought to pack. I had a few novel items of equipment that some friends had given me the previous week. But I settled on the usual selection anyway—it's fairly compact and gives pretty good all-round coverage.

Plus the mini-disc Walkman. I don't need my sense of hearing for anything, and boredom is an implacable enemy.

Before I went out I took a long look at the staircase through the spy-hole. Nobody there.

And that was the beginning of one more night.

I rode the metro for about six hours, switching aimlessly from line to line without any plan, sometimes dozing, letting my conscious mind take a break and my senses roam free. There was nothing going down. Well, I did see a few interesting things, but they were all ordinary incidents, tame beginners' stuff. It wasn't until about eleven, when the metro got less crowded, that the situation changed.

I was sitting there with my eyes closed, listening to Manfredini's Fifth Symphony for the third time that evening. The mini-disc in the player was totally eccentric; my personal selection, medieval Italian composers and Bach alternating with the rock group Alisa, Richie Blackmore, and Picnic. It's always interesting to see which melody coincides with which event. Today it was Manfredini.

I felt this sudden cramp—it ran all the way up from my toes to the back of my head. I even hissed as I opened my eyes and scanned the subway car.

I picked the woman out right away.

Very pretty, young. In a stylish fur coat, with a little purse and a book in her hands. And with a black vortex spinning above her head like I hadn't seen for at least three years!

I imagine I looked crazy, staring at her like that. The girl sensed it, took one look at me, back at me, and immediately turned away.

Try looking over your head instead!

No, of course, she's not able to see the twister anyway. The most she could possibly feel is a slight prickling of alarm. And out of the corner of her eye she can't get any more than the vaguest glimpse of that flickering above her head… like a swarm of midges swirling round and round, like the shimmering above the asphalt on a hot day…

She can't see a thing. Not a thing. And she'll go on living for another day or two, until she misses her step on the black ice, falls, and bangs her head so hard it kills her. Or ends up under a car. Or runs into a thug's knife in the hallway… a thug who has no real idea why he's killing this girl. And everyone will say: «She was so young, with her whole life ahead of her; everybody loved her…«

Yes. Of course. I believe it, she's a very good person, kind. There's weariness there, but no bitterness or spite. When you're with a girl like that you feel like a different person. You try to be better, and that's a strain. Men prefer to be friends with her kind, flirt a bit, share confidences. They don't often fall in love with girls like that, but everybody loves them.

Apart from one certain person, someone who has hired a Dark Magician.

A black vortex is actually a fairly ordinary phenomenon. If I looked closely, I could make out another five or six of them hanging above other passengers' heads. But they were all blurred and pale, barely even spinning. The results of perfectly ordinary, non-professional curses. Someone yelling after someone else: «I hope you die, you bastard.» Someone had put it more simply and forcefully: «Go to hell, will you!» And a little black whirlwind had moved across from the Dark Side, draining good fortune and sucking in energy.

But an ordinary, amateurish, formless curse lasts no more than an hour or two, twenty-four hours at most. And its consequences may be unpleasant, but they're not fatal. That black twister hanging over the girl was the genuine article, stabilized and set in motion by an experienced magician. The girl didn't know it yet, but she was already dead.

I automatically reached for my pocket, then remembered where I was and frowned. Why don't cell phones work in the subway? Don't the people who have them ride underground?

Now I was torn between my principal assignment, which I had to carry through, even without any hope of success, and the doomed girl. I didn't know if she could still be helped, but I had to track down whoever had created this vortex…

Just at that moment I got a second jolt. But this time it was different. There was no cramp or pain; my throat just went dry and my gums went numb, the blood started pounding in my temples, and my fingertips started itching.

This was it!

But the timing couldn't have been worse.

I got up—the train was already braking as it pulled into a station. I walked past the girl and felt her eyes on me, following me. She was afraid. There was no way she could see the black vortex, but it was obviously making her feel anxious, making her pay close attention to the people around her.

Maybe that was why she was still alive?

Trying not to look in her direction, I lowered my hand into my pocket and fingered the amulet—a smooth rod carved out of cool onyx. I hesitated for a moment, trying to come up with some other course of action.

No, there was no other way.

I squeezed the amulet tight in the palm of my hand, feeling a prickly sensation in my fingers as the stone started warming up, giving out its accumulated energy. The sensation was no illusion, but you can't measure this heat with any thermometer. It felt like I was squeezing a coal taken out of a fire… it was covered with cold ash, but still red hot at the center.

When I'd drained the amulet completely, I glanced at the girl. The black twister was shuddering, leaning over slightly in my direction. This vortex was so powerful that it even possessed a rudimentary intelligence.

I struck.

If there'd been any Others in the carriage, or even anywhere in the train, they'd have seen a blinding flash that could pierce metal or concrete with equal ease…

I'd never tried striking at a black vortex with such a complex structure before. And I'd never used an amulet with such a powerful charge.

The effect was totally unexpected. The feeble curses hanging over other people's heads were completely swept away. An elderly woman who'd been rubbing her forehead looked at her hand in amazement: Her vicious migraine had suddenly disappeared. A young guy who'd been gazing dully out the window shuddered. His face relaxed and the look of hopeless misery disappeared from his eyes.

The black vortex above the girl was tossed back five meters; it even slipped halfway out of the carriage. But it maintained its structure and came zigzagging back through the air to its victim.

This was real power!

With real perseverance!

They say, though I've never actually seen it myself, that if a vortex is pushed even two or three meters away from its victim, it gets disoriented and attaches itself to the nearest person it can find. That's a pretty lousy thing to happen to anyone, but at least a curse meant for someone else has a much weaker effect, and the new victim has a good chance of escaping.

But this vortex just came straight back, like a faithful dog running to its master in trouble.

The train was stopping. I threw one last glance at the vortex—it was back in place, hanging there above the young woman's head; it had even started spinning faster… and there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could do about it. The target I'd been hunting all over Moscow for a week was somewhere close, right here in the station. My boss would have eaten me alive… and maybe not just in the figurative sense…

When the doors parted with a hiss, I gave the woman a final glance, hastily memorizing her aura. There wasn't much chance of ever finding her again in this massive city. But even so, I would have to try.

Only not right now.

I jumped out of the carriage and looked around. It was true, I was a bit short of field-work experience; the boss is absolutely right about that. But I didn't like the method he'd chosen for training me at all.

How in hell's name was I supposed to find the target?

Not one of the people I could see with my normal vision looked even slightly suspicious. There were plenty of them still jostling each other here—it was the circle line, after all, the Kursk station; there were passengers who'd just arrived on the main line, street traders making their way home, people in a hurry to change trains and ride out to the suburbs… But if I closed my eyes I could observe a more fascinating picture. Pale auras, the way they usually are by evening, and in among them the bright scarlet blob of fury, the strident orange glow of a couple obviously in a rush to get to bed, the washed-out, brownish-gray stripes of the disintegrating auras of the drunks.