"Gesar isn't exactly a model of composure," Kostya chuckled. "Everyone's concerned. You're the only one taking the situation so lightly."

"I don't see it as a great disaster," I said. "There are human beings who know we exist. Not many, but there are some. One more person doesn't change the situation. If he makes a sensation out of this, we'll soon locate him and make him look like some kind of psycho. That sort of thing has already…"

"And what if he becomes an Other?" Kostya asked curtly.

"Then there'll be one more Other," I said and shrugged.

"What if he doesn't become a vampire or a werewolf, but a genuine Other?" Kostya bared his teeth in a smile. "A genuine Other? Light or Dark… that doesn't matter."

"Then there'll be one more magician," I said.

Kostya shook his head. "Listen, Anton, I'm quite fond of you. Even now. But sometimes I'm amazed at just how naive you are…" Kostya stretched-his arms rapidly sprouted a covering of short fur, his skin turned dark and coarse. "You deal with the staff," he said in a shrill, piercing voice. "If you get wind of anything, call me."

He turned his face, distorted by the transformation, toward me and smiled again. "You know, Anton, a naive Light One like you is the only kind a Dark One could ever be friends with…"

He jumped down, flapping his leathery wings ponderously. The huge bat flew off into the night, a little awkwardly, but quickly enough.

There was a small rectangle of cardboard lying on the outside sill-a business card. I picked it up and read it. "Konstantin. Research assistant, the Scientific Research Institute for Hematological Problems."

And then the phone numbers-work, home, cell. I actually remembered the home number-Kostya was still living with his parents. Most vampires tend to have pretty strong family ties.

What had he been trying to tell me?

Why all the panic?

I switched on the light, lay down on the mattress and looked at the pale-gray rectangles of the windows.

"If he becomes a genuine Other…"

How did Others appear in the World? No one knew. "A random mutation" Las had called it-a perfectly adequate term. You were born a human being, you lived an ordinary life… until one of the Others sensed your ability to enter the Twilight and pump Power out of it. After that you were "guided." Lovingly and carefully coaxed into the required spiritual condition so that in a moment of powerful emotional agitation you would look at your shadow and see it in a different way. See it lying there like a black rag, like a curtain you could pull up over yourself and then draw aside to enter another world.

The world of the Others.

The Twilight.

And the state you were in when you first found yourself in the Twilight-joyful and benign or miserable and angry-determined who you would be. What kind of Power you would go on to draw from the Twilight… the Twilight that drinks Power from ordinary people.

"If he becomes a genuine Other…"

There was always the possibility of coercive initiation, but only through the loss of life and transformation into a walking corpse. A human being could become a vampire or a werewolf and he would be forced to maintain his existence by taking the lives of human beings. So there was a route for the Dark Ones… but one that even they weren't particularly fond of.

Only what if it really was possible to become a magician?

What if there was a way for any human being to be transformed into an Other? To acquire long-very long-life and exceptional abilities. There was no doubt many people would want to do it.

And we wouldn't be against it, either. There were so many fine people living in the world who were worthy to become Light Others.

Only the Dark Ones would start building up their ranks too…

Suddenly it struck me. It was no disaster that someone had revealed our secrets to a human being. It was no disaster that information could leak out. It was no disaster that the traitor knew the address of the Inquisition.

But this was a new twist in the spiral of endless war!

For centuries the Light Ones and Dark Ones had been shackled by the Treaty. We had the right to search for Others among human beings, even the right to nudge them in the right direction. But we were obliged to sift through tons of sand in our search for grains of gold. The balance was maintained.

Then suddenly here was a chance to transform thousands, millions of people into Others.

A soccer team wins the cup final-and a wave of magic surges across tens of thousands of exultant people, transforming them into Light Others.

Then and there the Day Watch issues a command to the fans of the team that has lost-and they're transformed into Dark Others.

That was what Kostya had had in mind. The immense temptation to shift the balance of power in your own favor at a single stroke. Of course, the consequences would be clear, both to the Dark Ones and us Light Ones. The two sides would adopt new amendments to the Treaty and restrict the initiation of human beings within acceptable limits. After all, the USA and the USSR had managed to keep the nuclear arms race within bounds…

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Semyon had once told me that the arms race was halted by the creation of the ultimate weapon. Two thermonuclear devices-that was all that was required-each of which could trigger a self-sustaining reaction of nuclear fusion. The American one was installed somewhere in Texas, the Russian one in Siberia. It was enough to explode either one of them-and the entire planet would be transformed into a ball of flame.

Only that state of affairs didn't suit us, so the weapon that was never meant to be used could never be activated. But the presidents didn't need to know that-they were only human beings…

Maybe the top commands of the Watches had "magical bombs" like that? And that was why the Inquisition, which was in on the secret, policed the observation of the Treaty so fervently?

Maybe.

But even so it would be better if it were impossible to initiate ordinary people…

Even in my drowsy state I winced at my own thought. What did this mean, that I'd begun to think like a fully-fledged Other? There are Others, and there are human beings-and they're second class. They can never enter the Twilight, they're not going to live more than a hundred years. And there's nothing you can do about it…

Yes, that was exactly the way I'd started to think. Finding a good human being with the natural aptitudes of an Other and bringing him or her over to your own side-that was a joy. But turning absolutely everyone into Others was puerile nonsense, a dangerous and irresponsible delusion.

Now I had something to feel proud about. It had taken me less than ten years to finally stop being human.

My morning began with contemplation of the mysteries of the shower stall. Reason finally overcame soulless metal and I got a shower-with music playing, no less-and then concocted a breakfast out of biscotti, salami, and yogurt. Feeling uplifted by the sunshine, I settled down on the windowsill and breakfasted with a view of the Moscow River. For some reason I recalled Kostya admitting that vampires can't look at the sun. Sunlight doesn't actually burn them at all, it just gives them a disagreeable sensation.

But I had no time for indulging in sad thoughts about my old acquaintances. I had to search for… for whom? The renegade Other? I was hardly in the best position to do that. His human client? A long, dreary business.

All right, I decided. We'll proceed according to the strict laws of the classic detective novel. What do we have? What we have is a clue. The letter sent from Assol. What does it give us? It doesn't give us anything. Unless perhaps someone saw the letter being posted three days ago. There's not much chance that they'd remember, of course…