"There's no need…" I protested weakly.

"We are all working for the same cause," the vampire reminded me. "I know how hard it is to work undercover. Good-bye."

And instantly he disappeared. Edgar gave a guilty smile and walked out the door.

I left the office too, without waiting for the security boss to wake up.

Fate, which our magicians claim does not exist, was kind to me.

In the Assol's vestibule (well, you couldn't call that spacious hall an entrance) I saw the old woman that the vampire had been afraid to approach. She was standing by the elevator, gazing pensively at the buttons.

I glanced at the old woman through the Twilight and realized that she was totally confused, almost in a panic. The well-trained security guards were no help here-on the outside the old woman seemed entirely calm and collected. I realized she was an "elderly lady"-not an ordinary old Russian woman at all. I set off decisively toward her.

"Excuse me, can I be of any help?" I asked.

The elderly lady cast me a sideways glance. Not a glance of senile suspicion, more of embarrassment.

"I've forgotten where I live," she confessed. "Do you happen to know?"

"The eleventh floor," I said. "Allow me to show you the way."

The gray curls with the delicate pink skin showing through them swayed ever so slightly.

"Eighty years old," said the old woman. "I remember that… it's painful to remember it. But I do."

I took the lady by the arm and led her toward the elevator. One of the security men started walking toward us, but my aged companion shook her head. "The gentleman's showing me the way…"

The gentleman did show her the way. The elderly lady recognized her own door and even quickened her step in delight. The apartment was not locked. It had been magnificently refurbished and furnished, and there was a lively girl about twenty years old striding to and fro in the hallway and complaining into a phone. "Yes, I've looked downstairs! She slipped out again…"

The girl was absolutely delighted when we showed up. Only I'm afraid the sweet smile and the touching concern were mostly meant for me.

Good-looking young women don't take servants' jobs in homes like that because the money's good.

"Mashenka, bring us some tea," said the old woman, interrupting the girl's cackling. She probably had no illusions either. "In the large room."

The girl went dashing obediently to the kitchen, but not before she had smiled once more and deliberately brushed her pert breasts against me as she said in my ear, "She's gotten really bad… My name's Tamara."

Somehow I didn't feel like introducing myself. I followed the old woman into the "large room." Well, it was very large. With old furniture from Stalin's time and clear traces of an expensive designer's work. The walls were covered with black-and-white photographs-at first I even took them for elements of the design. But then I realized that the blindingly beautiful young woman with white teeth, wearing a flying helmet, was my elderly lady.

"I bombed the Fritzes," the lady said modestly as she sat down at a round table covered with a maroon velvet tablecloth with tassels. "Look, Kalinin himself presented me with that medal…"

Absolutely dumbfounded, I took a seat facing the former flyer.

Even in the best cases people like that live out their final days in old state dachas or in monolithic, dilapidated Stalinist buildings. But in an elite residential complex-no way! She had dropped bombs on the fascists, not ferried the Reichstag's gold reserves back home to Russia.

"My grandson bought the apartment for me," the old woman said, as if she had read my thoughts. "A big apartment. I don't remember anything here… it all seems familiar, like it's mine, but I don't remember…"

I nodded. She had a good grandson, what could I say? Of course, transferring an expensive apartment to your war-heroine grandmother's name and then inheriting it later was a very clever way to do things. But in any case it was a good deed. Only the servant should have been chosen with more care. Not a twenty-year-old girl obsessed with the profitable capital investment of her pretty young face and good figure, but rather an elderly, reliable nurse…

The old woman looked pensively out the window. "I'd be better off in those houses, the little ones… I'm more used to that…"

But I wasn't listening any more. I was looking at the table, heaped high with letters bearing the eye-catching stamp "no longer at this address." It was hardly surprising. The addressees included such figures as the old Soviet Union figurehead Kalinin, and Generalissimus Joseph Stalin, and Comrade Khrushchev, and even "Dear Leonid Ilich Brezhnev."

Our more recent national leaders had clearly not been retained in the old woman's memory.

I didn't need any Other abilities to guess what kind of letter the old woman had posted three days earlier.

"I can't bear having nothing to do," the old woman complained, catching my glance. "I keep asking to be assigned to the schools, the flying colleges… so I could tell the young people what our life was like…"

I took a look at her through the Twilight anyway, and I almost exclaimed out loud.

The old flyer was a potential Other-maybe not a very powerful one, but it was absolutely clear.

Only, to initiate her at that age… I couldn't imagine it. At sixty, at seventy… but at eighty? The stress of it would kill her. She'd just fade away into the Twilight, an insane, insubstantial shadow…

You can't check everyone. Not even in Moscow, where there are so many watchmen.

And sometimes we recognize our brothers and sisters too late…

The girl Tamara appeared carrying a tray set with dishes of biscuits and candy, a teapot, and beautiful old cups. She set the dishes down on the table without making a sound.

But the old woman was already dozing, still perched on her chair as firm and upright as ever.

I got up carefully and nodded to Tamara. "I'll be going. You keep a closer watch on her-you know she forgets where she lives."

"But I never take my eyes off her!" Tamara replied, fluttering her eyelids. "I'd never…"

I checked her too. No Other abilities at all.

An ordinary young woman. Even quite kind in her own fashion.

"Does she often write letters?" I asked with the faintest of smiles.

Taking the smile as a sign of absolution, Tamara began smiling too. "All the time! To Stalin, and Brezhnev… Isn't that hilarious?"

I didn't argue with her.

Of all the cafes and restaurants that Assol was crammed with, the only one working was the cafe in the supermarket. A very nice cafe, on the second-floor mezzanine above the checkouts, with an excellent view of the entire hall of the supermarket. It had to be a good place to drink a nice cup of coffee, mapping out your route for a pleasant stroll as you bought the groceries- doing your "shopping": that terrible word, that monstrous Anglicism that has eaten its way into the Russian language, like a tick boring into its helpless prey.

That was where I had my lunch, trying not to feel horrified by the prices. Then I bought a double espresso and a pack of cigarettes-which I only smoke very rarely-and tried to imagine I was a detective.

Who had sent the letter?

The renegade Other or the Other's human client?

It didn't look like there was any advantage in it for either of them. And the scenario with another individual attempting to forestall the initiation was just too melodramatic altogether.

Think, head, think! You've come across more confused situations than this before. We have a renegade Other. We have his client. The letter was sent to the Watches and to the Inquisition. So the letter was most likely sent by an Other. A powerful, intelligent, well-informed Other.